Barrels bombs hit Syria's Aleppo on Thursday just hours after a temporary truce announced by regime ally Russia came into effect in the northern war-torn city.

A large aid convoy is ready to go to al-Waer, a besieged area in Syria's Homs governorate, and is expected to bring in desperately needed aid Thursday, the U.N. said.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards killed 12 Kurdish rebels near the Iraqi border in clashes in which three Guards were also killed, an Iranian news agency reported on Thursday.

A senior French envoy held talks in Egypt on Thursday on his country's bid to organize an international conference later this year to revive the moribund Palestinian-Israeli peace process, officials said.

A Bahraini court Thursday sentenced eight Shiites to 15-year jail terms for forming a "terror" group, as the authorities crack down on opposition in the Sunni-ruled kingdom, a judicial source said.

Israel's new Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman is to visit the United States this weekend for talks with his U.S. counterpart, his office said Thursday, after Washington raised concerns over the hardliner's appointment.

Yemen's warring parties are struggling to seal a peace deal as mutual mistrust has overshadowed eight weeks of U.N.-brokered talks in Kuwait that have failed to achieve any major breakthrough.

The United Arab Emirates has said war is over for its troops in Yemen after a nearly 15-month intervention as part of a Saudi-led coalition in which around 80 lost their lives.

A search team on Thursday recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month in a major step towards establishing the cause of the tragedy.

A suicide car bombing on Thursday killed 10 members of forces allied to Libya's unity government who are fighting the Islamic State jihadist group, hospital sources said.