Tunisia's main trade union said Wednesday that the government had notified it of "serious threats" to its leaders aimed at undermining its efforts to broker an end to a lingering political crisis.

"The union's management has been informed of the existence of serious threats targeting its leaders... with the information coming from the relevant departments of the interior ministry," the UGTT said on its Facebook page.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's party finished third behind an opposition movement in the autonomous Kurdish region's parliamentary polls, shaking a decades-long duopoly on power, according to final results released Wednesday.

Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Kurdish region president Massud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party have long dominated politics in the three-province region in northern Iraq.

Gunmen shot dead a naval officer in eastern Libya on Wednesday, a security official told Agence France Presse, the latest in a string of killings targeting members of the security forces.

"Unknown men fired at navy Captain Saleh al-Houdheiry, killing him instantly," in the city of Benghazi, security service spokesman Abdullah al-Zayedi told AFP.

Rights group Amnesty International said Wednesday that it fears for the health of prominent Syrian human rights lawyer Khalil Maatuq and his colleague, a year after they disappeared.

Maatuq and Mohamed Thatha were "reportedly arrested while on their way to their office in Damascus" a year ago, said the London-based group, although the government has denied holding them.

A Yemeni court on Wednesday jailed five al-Qaida militants for up to 10 years for plotting a suicide bombing that killed 86 soldiers and wounded 171 others last year.

The court specializing in terrorism-related charges sentenced two defendants to 10 years in prison and a third to seven years.

Algeria has seized more than 127 tonnes of cannabis smuggled from Morocco in the first eight months of 2013, the head of the narcotics squad announced on Wednesday.

"In total, 127,098.875 kilos of cannabis resin... were seized in the first eight months of 2013," said Mohamed Zouggar, cited by official media.

Seventeen countries including the United States, France and Australia have agreed to receive quotas of refugees fleeing the bloody conflict in Syria, the U.N. refugee agency said on Wednesday.

"So far, UNHCR has 17 countries participating in the Syria resettlement/Humanitarian Admission Program effort," Peter Kessler, regional spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told Agence France Presse.

Gunmen shot down an Iraqi helicopter on Wednesday killing four security forces members during a military operation against militants in the desert, army officers said.

The dead were two crew members and two soldiers who were on board when the helicopter was shot down in a desert area west of Baiji, a town north of the Iraqi capital.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called on the emir of Kuwait to host a second donors' conference to raise aid for Syrian refugees, the official KUNA agency said on Wednesday.

Kuwait hosted the first donors' conference in January, when participating nations pledged $1.5 billion (1.1 billion euros) for Syrian refugees.

In Syria's war-ravaged city of Aleppo, Abu Hussein hurries along little Ali, who has stopped just a few steps from school to buy a bag of potato chips.

"You'll be late!" he chides.