President Emmanuel Macron hit back at Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday after the Syrian leader accused France of supporting terrorism in the war-torn country, saying the comment was "unacceptable". 

Assad had on Monday called Paris "a standard-bearer of support for terrorism in Syria since the early days of the conflict", referring to early French support for rebels fighting his regime.

As President Bashar Assad seeks to reassert his authority in Idlib, the only remaining province in Syria where his forces have almost no presence, he may be aided there by deep fractures within al-Qaeda, the militant group that dominates the region.

A recent wave of detentions and a spate of violence within al-Qaeda have also raised fears of an all-out war between insurgents in the heavily populated province near Turkey as Assad's forces make their push.

Protesters in Iraqi Kurdistan torched a mayor's office and stormed a ruling party building on Tuesday as anger raged for a second day at the disastrous fallout from a September independence referendum.

The UN Security Council will vote Tuesday on extending for one year cross-border deliveries of humanitarian aid to Syria's opposition-held areas after Russia demanded changes to the relief effort.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a scathing attack on France, accusing it of backing "terrorism" and saying it has "no right to talk about peace" in the war-torn country.

Israeli ministers on Monday challenged a Supreme Court ruling that the bodies of Palestinian assailants killed during attacks must be released for burial and not used as bargaining chips.

The mayor of Libya's third-largest city Misrata has been killed by unidentified assailants who abducted him as he returned from an official trip overseas, a security source said on Monday.

Iran has reopened all its border crossings with Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday, after their closure over a controversial independence vote.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday called U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters "traitors", sparking an exchange of insults with a force that controls more than a quarter of the country.

Protesters Monday torched the offices of the five main political parties and a security services building in Iraqi Kurdistan's Sulaimaniyah province to protest corruption and demand the governor resign, one of the parties said.