A top Tunisian jihadist and associate of late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Libya last month, The New York Times reported Friday.

Seifallah Ben Hassine, listed as a "global terrorist" by the US, was killed in mid-June in an airstrike that targeted a top al-Qaida-linked Islamist, the paper said.

A senior Islamic State leader who coordinated suicide bombings and recruited funds and fighters for the jihadists has been killed in a coalition air strike in Syria, the Pentagon said Thursday.  

Tariq bin Tahar al-Awni al-Harzi was killed in the northern city of Shaddadi on June 16, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement. 

The old courthouse in central Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and the birthplace of the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi, is a shelled-out ruin — a testimony to the destruction and chaos that permeate this North African country four years after the civil war that ousted the longtime dictator.

The building is steeped in symbolism. It was here that the rallying cry first came against Gadhafi's 42-year rule. It was here that pro-democracy protesters and rebels first raised the tri-colored Libyan flag, replacing Gadhafi's green banner.

Libya's rival governments will not return to peace talks this week after rebel forces Wednesday rejected the latest proposal, defying threats the U.N. Security Council would impose sanctions on anyone who stands in the way of a deal.

The National General Congress parliament in Tripoli, which was seized by rebel forces last year, said it would consult for a week on the new draft, ruling out returning to the talks due to begin in Morocco on Thursday.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday urged Libya's parties to sign an agreement to form a national unity government and threatened sanctions against those who stand in the way of a deal. 

U.N. envoy Bernardino Leon has submitted a draft proposal that he said could be ready for endorsement when peace talks resume in Morocco on Thursday.

The State Department released nearly 2,000 emails from Hillary Clinton's time as top U.S. diplomat late Tuesday, following orders from a federal judge.

The large tranche of emails were made public shortly before 9:00 pm (0100 GMT Wednesday) on the State Department's Freedom of Information Act website.

The Tunisian gunman who killed 38 tourists at a beach resort received weapons training from jihadists in chaos-wracked Libya, secretary of state for security Rafik Chelli told AFP on Tuesday.

"It is confirmed that he went to Libya illegally. He was trained in Sabratha (west of Tripoli)," Chelli said.

Fighting raged between government forces and Islamists in eastern Libya on Tuesday, with 21 soldiers killed since the clashes broke out at the weekend, a medical official said.

The continued fighting came a day after U.N. envoy Bernardino Leon said he hoped the rival parliaments in the largely lawless North African country would endorse his proposals for a unity government later this week.

U.N. envoy Bernardino Leon said Monday he hoped Libya's rival parliaments would endorse his proposals for a unity government later this week after they failed to do so at the weekend.

Leon said that there were only two or three remaining stumbling blocks and that he hoped those could be addressed when the talks resume in Morocco on Thursday.

Delegates from Libya's rival parliaments met face-to-face on Sunday for the first time since U.N.-brokered peace talks were launched in January aimed at forming a unity government.

"Libyan dialogue participants hold first joint working meeting in Skhirat Morocco on Sunday 28 June," said a tweet on the official website of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).