Iraq's Kurds are to vote on their independence in a September 25 referendum, but the poll is more of a tool to pressure Baghdad than a step towards real secession, observers say.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani announced the referendum in June and has pushed ahead with the vote despite strong opposition from regional powers, the Kurds' international backers and the central government in Baghdad, which considers it unconstitutional.

A young soldier participating in operations against al-Qaida in Yemen has murdered three jihadist detainees who confessed to killing his colonel father, a security source said on Sunday.

Twelve Yemeni civilians including women and children have been killed in an air raid by the Saudi-led coalition northeast of the capital Sanaa, an official, residents and rebel media said Sunday.

At a mobile medical clinic in central Syria's Homs province, a Russian doctor takes an elderly woman's blood pressure. Nearby, his colleague examines a dazed teenager on a gurney. 

U.S. ally Kuwait has given North Korea's ambassador a month to leave the Gulf state and will downgrade its diplomatic representation with Pyongyang, a senior Kuwaiti diplomat told the AFP news agency Sunday.

Hamas said Sunday it had agreed to steps toward resolving a decade-long split with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah, announcing it would dissolve a body seen as a rival government and was ready to hold elections.

The statement comes after Hamas leaders held talks with Egyptian officials last week, and with the Gaza Strip run by the Palestinian Islamist movement facing a mounting humanitarian crisis.

An Egyptian court Saturday condemned to death seven people for membership of the Islamic State group and over the beheading on a Libyan beach of 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt, judicial officials said.

A US-backed force battling the Islamic State group in eastern Syria said six of its fighters were wounded on Saturday in air strikes by regime and Russian warplanes. 

An Iraqi military commander says troops have launched a multi-pronged operation to capture a town near the Syrian border from the Islamic State group.

Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Rasheed Yar Allah said Saturday the operation to liberate Akashat aims at securing part of the borders and the area north of the vital highway that links Baghdad to neighboring Jordan and Syria.

Qatar's ruling emir met German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday on his first trip abroad since a diplomatic crisis erupted between the tiny Gulf nation and its neighbors, and the German leader voiced "great concern" that no end to the conflict is in sight.

Merkel, addressing reporters alongside the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said she hoped dialogue could lead to "fair compromises."