Islamic State has set up departments to handle "war spoils," including slaves, and the exploitation of natural resources such as oil, creating the trappings of government that enable it to manage large swaths of Syria and Iraq and other areas.

A man tried to stab an Israeli police officer yesterday near Jerusalem's Old City and was killed, a police spokeswoman said. On Friday, Israeli border guards shot

Fierce clashes in northern Syria between regime loyalists and rebels including al-Qaeda fighters have left more than 70 dead, a monitoring group said yesterday.

Iraqi forces yesterday clashed with diehard jihadists from the Islamic State group defending the former government complex in the heart of the city of Ramadi.

Zahran Alloush, head of the powerful Jaish al-Islam Syrian rebel group, is killed east of Damascus, a monitoring group and Syria's opposition say.

Syria's regime yesterday said it was ready to take part in new talks in Geneva aimed at ending the war but appeared to make its participation conditional on which opposition groups will attend.

Japan yesterday said it was investigating the reported kidnapping of a Japanese journalist in Syria by an armed group, after two of its citizens were beheaded

China should play a more active role in fighting Islamic State, a senior figure in a body that advises Iran's Supreme Leader said yesterday, according to the country's Fars news agency.

Israeli forces killed four Palestinian assailants in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank yesterday, the army said, as a 12-week surge in street violence showed no sign of abating.

At least 18 migrants drowned yesterday when their overcrowded boat sank in the Aegean Sea on the way to the Greek island of Lesbos in the latest tragedy involving refugees seeking to enter Europe.

The UN Security Council on Wednesday endorsed a UN-brokered agreement among Libya's warring factions to form a national unity government, a deal Western powers hope will bring stability and help to combat a growing Islamic State presence.

Military planes have dropped food and ammunition to besieged Afghan forces battling to push Taliban insurgents out of Sangin, officials said yesterday, two days after the emboldened militants stormed the opium-growing district.

Iraqi security forces yesterday advanced into the centre of Ramadi for a final push aimed at retaking the city they lost to the Islamic State group in May, officials said.

Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan have taken to the airwaves to win recruits as they try to build strength and replace the Taliban as the leading force in the Islamist insurgency.

Clashes intensified yesterday as the Taliban pressed an offensive to capture a key district in Helmand's opium-growing heartland, a day after an official warned the entire southern Afghan province was on the brink of collapse.

The killing of minorities by so-called Islamic State should be recognised as genocide, more than 60 parliamentarians say in a letter to the UK PM.

Israel's Interior Minister Silvan Shalom has resigned after a series of sexual harassment allegations.

A Palestinian tried to attack Israeli soldiers with a knife in the West Bank yesterday and was shot dead, the army said, the latest incident in more than two-months of violence.

Yemeni pro-government forces and rebels completed an exchange of hundreds of detainees yesterday, an official said, amid a shaky ceasefire on the third day of UN-sponsored peace talks in Switzerland.

New evidence has been released that up to 7,000 Syrians who died in government detention centres in Syria were tortured to death, a rights group said in a report.