A rare U.N.-backed deal between Syria's warring sides saw hundreds of fighters and civilians evacuate three towns on Monday.

President Bashar Assad's regime has agreed to several ceasefires with rebel groups in the past but Monday's evacuation plan was one of the most elaborate in the nearly five-year war.

Iran will maintain its backing for the Syrian regime, a senior Iranian official said, after the U.N. Security Council unanimously endorsed a plan to end the war.

"We will continue to give our support to Syria," said Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian.

The U.N. Security Council's backing for a plan to end the civil war in Syria is a "great step forward" for resolving the crisis, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Saturday.

The plan could potentially bring about a ceasefire as early as January.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Friday demanded that talks on Syria's future yield assurances that President Bashar Assad will leave power.

"There must be safeguards regarding the exit of Bashar Assad," Fabius told the U.N. Security Council after the adoption of a resolution endorsing a peace process.

From war-torn Syria to a windswept island off the west coast of Scotland, nine newly-arrived refugee families are struggling to adjust to new lives in a very unfamiliar world.

"It's hard. We don't know anyone!" said a woman from Aleppo, who was helping a fellow refugee from Homs pick out tea cups and bowls in a charity shop on the seafront in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute.

A Swedish court on Monday sentenced two men to life in prison on terrorism charges over their role in two "cruel and brutal" murders in Syria in 2013.

Hassan al-Mandlawi, 32, and Al-Amin Sultan, 30, both Swedish nationals, were convicted after graphic videos showed them taking part in the killing of two men in the northern city of Aleppo which has been ravaged by the more than four-year war in Syria.

A meeting of Syrian rebel groups in Saudi Arabia has made progress, boosting the chances that peace talks can resume next week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday.

Riyadh is hosting negotiations between Syria's diverse array of rebel and opposition groups to decide who will negotiate with President Bashar Assad's regime.

The Islamic State jihadist group on Thursday recaptured two areas in central Syria from government forces, just weeks after losing them, a monitor said.

"Syrian army units withdrew from all of the Maheen and Hawareen areas after an IS attack," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The first of 25,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled in Canada will arrive in the country on Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, declaring it will be "a great day."

The new prime minister campaigned on the plan to resettle 25,000 people displaced by the four-year civil war in Syria, but the idea came under increasing political fire following the attacks in Paris.

The United States has charged a naturalized American citizen with providing military supplies to a Syrian rebel group that often fights alongside the country's Al-Qaida affiliate, the Washington Post reported.

The Post identified the man late Monday as Amin al-Baroudi, aged 50, and said he was charged in an indictment unsealed last week.