Growing numbers of Westerners appear to be trying to join the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq before it's too late, frontline volunteer warriors say.

IS group jihadists have suffered a string of setbacks in Iraq and Syria in recent months, including the loss of key towns and facilities surrounding the remaining major strongholds in their self-declared "caliphate" -- Mosul in Iraq and Raqa in Syria.

Iraq on Sunday hanged 36 men convicted over the 2014 massacre by Sunni jihadists and allied militants of up to 1,700 military recruits, officials said.

They had been found guilty of involvement in the "Speicher" massacre, named after a base near Tikrit where the recruits were kidnapped before being executed in a massacre claimed by the Islamic State group.

The older brother of the little Syrian boy who was pictured sitting in an ambulance dazed and covered in blood after an air strike, died Saturday from wounds sustained in the attack on the family's apartment, a monitoring group said.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says his country is willing to accept a role for Syrian President Bashar Assad during a transitional period in Syria.

However, Yildirim told foreign media representatives on Saturday that Assad has no place in Syria's future.

Mosques are going up, women are covering up, and shops selling alcoholic beverages are shutting down in a changing Algeria where, slowly but surely, Muslim fundamentalists are gaining ground.

The North African country won its civil war with extremists who brought Algeria to its knees in the name of Islam during the 1990s. Yet authorities show little overt concern about the growing grip of Salafis, who apply a strict brand of the Muslim faith.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis are marching in support of Shiite Houthi rebels and their ally, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The Saturday march in the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, was in support of a new combined governing council the rebels and Saleh announced late last month. The internationally recognized government and the United Nations rejected the council.

More than 300 civilians have been killed in a three-week surge of fighting and bombardment in Syria's devastated Aleppo city, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

Turkey wants to repair its ties with Egypt, after relations soured over the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Saturday.

Relations between Ankara and Cairo took a nosedive after the Egyptian military deposed Morsi on July 30, 2013.

Syrian government warplanes were in the air again Saturday over the flashpoint northeastern city of Hasakeh, despite a US warning against new strikes that might endanger its military advisers.

In another escalation of the five-year war, regime planes this week bombarded positions held by US-backed Kurdish forces in the city fighting the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

The U.S. military has slashed the number of intelligence advisers directly supporting the Saudi-led coalition's air war in Yemen, the US Navy said on Saturday, after concerns over civilian casualties.

The reassignment of personnel, around June, occurred because "there was not the same sort of requests coming in for assistance" from the Saudis, Fifth Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey told AFP from Bahrain.