General Security has arrested three Syrians on suspicion of recruiting fighters and monitoring the activities of the Hizbullah-linked Resistance Brigades.

As Safir daily said Tuesday that Abu Khattab, one of the group's members, is a resident of the town of Shehim in Iqlim al-Kharroub. He left Lebanon through the Arida border crossing in December 2012, heading to the Syrian city of Aleppo where he joined al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front.

Greece's police department on Monday said it had suspended an officer serving on the Aegean island of Kos after he was caught on camera allegedly striking a migrant.

"An investigation has been ordered in relation to pictures posted on websites and social media, showing punishable acts by a police officer," the department said in a statement.

Al-Qaida's Syria affiliate Al-Nusra Front has announced a surprise withdrawal from its front lines against its jihadist rival Islamic State in areas along Syria's northern border with Turkey.

It said the decision was being taken to avoid cooperating with a U.S.-Turkish plan to create an IS-free zone in northern Aleppo province, along the Turkish border.

The United States for the first time Sunday deployed half a dozen F-16 warplanes to Turkey to help operations against the Islamic State group, U.S. officials said.

The deployment marks the first time since an international coalition began bombing IS targets in Iraq and Syria a year ago that U.S. jets will launch strikes from Turkey, following an accord signed with Ankara late last month.

Nearly 400 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed and hundreds injured in two weeks of Turkish airstrikes on positions in northern Iraq, the official Anatolia news agency reported on Sunday.

The report, which could not be independently verified, said at least four PKK leaders and 30 female rebel fighters were among the dead.

Iran issued an advisory warning its citizens Saturday to avoid land travel to neighboring Turkey after an Iranian bus was attacked by gunmen.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack but Turkish authorities blamed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants.

Five people including a Turkish soldier died and several others were injured in clashes in Turkey's restive Kurdish-majority southeast, officials said Friday, as violence raged between Kurdish militants and security forces.

Three people, including a teenager, were killed in a gunbattle that erupted overnight in the Silopi district of Sirnak province, near the border with Iraq and Syria, the Sirnak governor's office said in a statement.

Turkey has frozen the assets of officials from Yemen's former regime including ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, along with Huthi rebel leaders, the official Anatolia news agency reported on Friday.

The move by Ankara followed U.N. Security Council sanctions on the same five men for threatening peace in the impoverished, conflict-torn country.

Turkey's Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtas on Thursday urged the world to denounce Ankara's new "unjust war" on rebel Kurds and asked the EU to push clearly for a truce.

During an unscheduled visit to Brussels, Demirtas told AFP he spoke by telephone last week with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and that he would meet with her top aide Stefano Manservisi here on Friday.

Iran and Turkey must work with one another to root out the threat of extremism in the region, President Hassan Rouhani told his Turkish counterpart, the official IRNA news agency reported. 

The two countries "should achieve a joint plan and a practical solution, with each other's help, for uprooting terrorism in the region," Rouhani told Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a Wednesday night telephone call.