Football Federation Australia said Thursday the World Cup qualifying second-leg playoff between Australia and Syria on Oct. 10 will be played at Sydney's Olympic stadium.

The first leg of the Asia Confederation decider will take place on Oct. 5, probably in Malaysia where Syria plays home games which can't be held in its war-torn homeland.

Syria's state-run news agency says a convoy of 40 trucks carrying 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid has arrived in Deir el-Zour after troops secured a corridor to the eastern city.

The land convoy is the first since Syrian government forces and allied militiamen breached a nearly three-year-old siege by the Islamic State group on government-held parts of the city on Tuesday.

Syria's army said Israeli air strikes on Thursday killed two people at a military facility in the country's west, and that the missiles were fired from Lebanon's air space.

The army said the air raid targeted a facility near the western town of Masyaf, close to the Mediterranean coast, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad.

Voters in Spain's prosperous Catalonia region will be asked to choose in less than a month if they want to secede from Spain, the region's pro-independence ruling government announced Wednesday in a move that puts it in open defiance of central authorities in Madrid.

Regional President Carles Puigdemont signed a decree that officially calls for a "self-determination referendum of Catalonia" to be held on Oct. 1. His entire cabinet, which includes politicians from various pro-independence parties, also approved the document to dilute responsibility in case of prosecution.

Aid agencies were struggling to cope with a nonstop flood of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, where some 146,000 have arrived hungry and terrified after fleeing renewed violence in Myanmar — a crisis the country's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, dismissed as a misinformation campaign.

With the influx pushing existing Rohingya refugee camps to the brink, Bangladesh pledged to build at least one more. The International Organization for Migration has pleaded for $18 million in foreign aid to help feed and shelter tens of thousands now packed into makeshift settlements or stranded in a no-man's land between the two countries' borders.

Hurricane Irma has killed at least eight people and injured 23 in French Caribbean island territories as the dangerous Category 5 storm roared over the Caribbean, France's interior minister said Thursday.

Speaking on French radio France Info, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the death toll in Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthelemy could be higher because rescue teams have yet to finish their inspection of the islands.

Hizbullah, whose fighters are among Iranian-backed forces pushing toward Syria's Deir Ezzor, congratulated Wednesday the Syrian leadership for breaching a siege by the Islamic State group on parts of the eastern city.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel is enjoying its greatest relations ever with the Arab world, even without a peace accord with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu was addressing Foreign Ministry personnel ahead of the Jewish new year, saying the extent of relations has yet to fully be made public. He said their scope was greater than "any other period in Israeli history."

United Nations war crimes investigators on Wednesday said they had evidence that Syrian government forces were behind the chemical attack that killed dozens of people in Khan Sheikhun in April.

In the first U.N. report to officially lay blame for the attack on Damascus, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria said it had gathered an "extensive body of information" showing Damascus was behind the horrific sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhun on April 4 that killed at least 83 people.

A trawler carrying Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar capsized, drowning at least five people, as the country's leader Aung San Suu Kyi blamed a misinformation campaign for fueling a crisis that the U.N. says has now pushed more than 125,000 refugees into Bangladesh.

Residents of Shah Porir Dwip fishing village recovered five bodies from the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday, hours after the boat capsized around midnight, said police official Yakub Ali.