The first American soldiers of about 10,000 due to leave Afghanistan this year have flown home, military officials said Friday, kicking off a gradual drawdown due to be completed in 2014.

U.S. President Barack Obama in June announced that 33,000 American troops would leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer, leaving behind 65,000 and effectively ending a military surge ordered into the country late 2009.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported to U.N. Security Council members on Syria's suspected nuclear activities Thursday during a closed-door meeting.

"Council members were briefed by the IAEA, who provided the technical details that led to its conclusion of the violation by Syria of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations," said a French source.

The United States said Thursday that it disagreed with the Arab League after it said it would submit a request for recognition of a Palestinian state to the United Nations.

"We do not believe attempts to resolve final status issues in international bodies like the United Nations are able to bring about the enduring peace, which both the parties and the United States seek," the State Department said in a written statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Tuesday that Syrian leader Bashar Assad has missed a series of chances for reform, as he also denounced an attack on the U.S. embassy in Damascus.

Assad, Obama told CBS television, has "missed opportunity after opportunity to present a genuine reform agenda.

A volley of U.S. missile strikes killed 25 militants after destroying their compounds in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas on the Afghan border, security officials said Tuesday.

Twin drone attacks hit militant strongholds in North and South Waziristan 12 hours apart, as the United States announced it was suspending more than a third of its annual military aid to Pakistan, bringing relations to a new low.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Syrian leader Bashar Assad had "lost legitimacy" after loyalists attacked the U.S. and French embassies for alleged meddling in internal affairs.

Angry mobs besieged the U.S. and French missions Monday after the countries' ambassadors last week traveled to the flashpoint protest city of Hama.

Three rockets slammed into Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone on Monday, wounding a woman and her children, officials said, as U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta began the second day of a visit to press Iraqi leaders on security.

The rockets wounded the woman and her three children, a security official said, but there was no report or indication the missiles had landed anywhere close to the U.S. Embassy inside the zone.

China's top military officer on Monday called the timing of American naval exercises in the sensitive South China Sea "inappropriate", after holding talks with his U.S. counterpart in Beijing.

Chen Bingde also urged the United States to be "more modest and prudent in words and deeds", amid growing tensions over China's territorial claims in the strategic and potentially resource-rich South China Sea.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour denied that Lebanon has received an Israeli warning through Washington on the maritime boundary line between the two countries and the conflict over huge oil and natural gas reserves.

In remarks to An Nahar daily Monday, Mansour said that Washington hasn’t warned Lebanon about anything linked to the issue.

The United States is holding back some military aid to Pakistan, President Barack Obama's chief of staff confirmed Sunday, after a New York Times report said $800 million was being withheld.

"They've taken some steps that have given us reason to pause on some of the aid which we're giving to the military, and we're trying to work through that," William Daley told ABC's "This Week With Christiane Amanpour."