French authorities say three men in custody in a probe into explosives found in a Paris suburb had talked about wanting to target banks and had spoken by phone with someone in Syria.

The Paris prosecutor's office said a third man was detained early Thursday after two others were detained the day before. The prosecutor's office said the men are between 36 and 47 years old but provided no further information.

Syria's state-run news agency says a convoy of 40 trucks carrying 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid has arrived in Deir el-Zour after troops secured a corridor to the eastern city.

The land convoy is the first since Syrian government forces and allied militiamen breached a nearly three-year-old siege by the Islamic State group on government-held parts of the city on Tuesday.

Bahrain has retreated from promised reforms and "dramatically" escalated a clampdown on political dissent over the past year, rights watchdog Amnesty International said Thursday.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia will make an official visit to Washington early next year for talks with President Donald Trump, the White House said Wednesday.

Morocco has been added to a list of countries whose citizens no longer need visas to enter Qatar, official Moroccan media has said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Wednesday for the International Committee of the Red Cross to help return civilians and the bodies of soldiers held in Gaza as he met the organization's head.

Russia's military on Wednesday said it had set up a zone north of the Syrian city of Aleppo to stop clashes between Kurdish fighters and opposition rebels.

Syria's opposition must accept that it has not won the country's civil war, the U.N. envoy said Tuesday, voicing hope that the realities of the conflict could help forge a peace deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel is enjoying its greatest relations ever with the Arab world, even without a peace accord with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu was addressing Foreign Ministry personnel ahead of the Jewish new year, saying the extent of relations has yet to fully be made public. He said their scope was greater than "any other period in Israeli history."

United Nations war crimes investigators on Wednesday said they had evidence that Syrian government forces were behind the chemical attack that killed dozens of people in Khan Sheikhun in April.

In the first U.N. report to officially lay blame for the attack on Damascus, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria said it had gathered an "extensive body of information" showing Damascus was behind the horrific sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhun on April 4 that killed at least 83 people.