Twelve people were killed on Thursday in the Turkish capital Ankara when a bus plowed into commuters waiting at a bus stop, Turkish media and officials said.

The bus hit passengers waiting at the bus stop in the Dikimevi district of Ankara due brake failure, the health ministry said.

Four former senior Turkish prosecutors and an ex-military commander went on trial Thursday over the interception last year of an alleged consignment of arms bound for Syria, with the court immediately imposing a secrecy order on the hugely controversial case.

The case goes to the heart of claims -- repeated on occasion by the West but denied by Turkey -- that Ankara has worked far too closely with Islamist rebels in the hope of ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Internal Security Forces arrested on Wednesday scores of Palestinians while trying to leave the port of the northern city of Tripoli on a migrant boat, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The ISF Intelligence Branch made the arrest of 40 Palestinians, including women, who reside in the southern refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh, said NNA.

Sixteen Turkish workers who had been kidnapped in Iraq nearly a month ago were freed on Wednesday and are in good health, Turkish officials said.

The men were among 18 employees of major Turkish construction firm Nurol Insaat kidnapped on September 2 in the Sadr City area of north Baghdad, where they were working on a football stadium project.

The U.N. chief's Deputy Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Philippe Lazzarini, has lamented that the response of the international community to the needs of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and other countries is weak.

In an interview with An Nahar daily published on Wednesday, Lazzarini said: “The response does not meet the needs.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Tuesday there would no let-up in operations against Kurdish rebel strongholds, after a cross-border raid this week killed more than 30 militants.

"We will not stop," Erdogan said in a televised speech in Ankara, adding that operations by Turkey's security forces in the southeast of the country and in northern Iraq would continue "without pause."

Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Monday ruled out creating a processing center for the thousands of mostly Syrian migrants trying to enter Europe from Turkish territory, calling instead for them to be hosted in "safe zones" inside Syria.

Responding to repeated calls by EU members for migrants' asylum claims to be handled in the countries from which they set sail for Europe, Davutoglu told Hurriyet newspaper: "We have told Europe that there will be no reception center in Turkey."

Russia and the United States are expected to take part in Syria peace talks in October, along with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, Russia's deputy foreign minister said Monday.

A meeting of an international contact group of the "most influential outside players" will "be pushed forward to October after the U.N. General Assembly," deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency.

Seventeen Syrian refugees drowned Sunday when their boat sank in Turkish waters on its way to Greece, local media reported, while the Italian coastguard said it had rescued some 500 migrants in the Mediterranean this weekend.

The bodies of the dead Syrians -- including five children -- were discovered by the Turkish coastguard inside the cabin of their wooden boat, which had set off from the holiday resort town of Bodrum for the Greek island of Leros, the Dogan news agency reported.

His eyes crinkle as he smiles softly at the camera, a trim white moustache contrasting with his tanned, weathered skin, the top button of his striped shirt casually undone.

"Mohammad Abo Khaled (64) From: Syria. He was on his way to Greek island last contact: 20/8/2015," reads a post next to the photo published on a Facebook page for missing refugees.