The head of a local council in the east of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo on Wednesday called for a "safe corridor" to allow desperate civilians to flee.

A leading Syrian opposition body on Wednesday demanded the United Nations act immediately to protect residents of Aleppo, battered by advancing regime forces.

Kuwait's emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah on Wednesday renamed the outgoing prime minister to form a new cabinet following polls in which the opposition made a strong showing.

President Mahmud Abbas addresses his Fatah party's first congress since 2009 on Wednesday as he contends with internal dissent and grim prospects for advancing his decades-long goal of achieving a Palestinian state.

France and Britain said Tuesday they would soon submit to the U.N. Security Council a resolution that slaps sanctions on Syrian authorities responsible for the use of chemical weapons.

A joint investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that several units of the Syrian army had used toxic weapons against three villages in northern Syria in 2014 and 2015.

More than 50,000 people have fled rebel-held east Aleppo in the last four days as government forces advance, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday.

Up to 500,000 civilians in Mosul face a "catastrophic" drinking water shortage as Iraqi forces advance on the Islamic State group in the city, the United Nations warned on Wednesday.

"Nearly half a million civilians, already struggling to feed themselves day to day, are now without access to clean drinking water. The impact on children, women and families will be catastrophic," said Lise Grande, UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq.

Two Israeli television news programs were briefly hacked, with images promoting Islam and a message suggesting a recent wave of fires was divine retribution shown in their place, reports said Wednesday.

Syrian government shelling killed 21 civilians, including two children, in an eastern district of Aleppo early Wednesday, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens more were wounded in the artillery fire on the rebel-held Jubb al-Qubbeh district.

Two Turkish soldiers are missing in Syria, the army said late on Tuesday, as the military presses an operation to expel Islamic State (IS) jihadists from the border area.