France called Thursday for an urgent but also political response from Iraq to the offensive by jihadist ISIL forces, and said it was "ready" to contribute to reinforcing the democratic opposition in Syria. 

The Iraq crisis, where ISIL forces have seized control of large swathes of the country north of Baghdad, is "a dramatic consequence of the situation in Syria", said the French presidency in a statement.

A Danish freelance photographer has been freed after being held hostage in Syria for 13 months, the Danish government said late Thursday.

Daniel Rye Ottosen was captured in Syria on 17 May last year after travelling to the country to "document the conflict and the living conditions of civilians, especially children," his family said in a statement emailed by the foreign ministry.

Tunisia's main Islamist party on Thursday urged politicians to agree on a "consensual" presidential candidate, to assuage tensions that have plagued the country since the 2011 revolution.

"We call on political parties to find a consensual candidate for the presidency, someone independent or who belongs to a political party," said Ali Larayedh, a former premier and senior Ennahda member.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday said he was ready to send 300 military advisers to Iraq and if necessary to take "targeted" and "precise" military action to counter radical Sunni fighters.

Obama said Washington was ready to deploy advisers to study how to train and equip Iraqi forces and had already increased its surveillance and intelligence capabilities in the country.

Militants who have overrun a swathe of territory north of Baghdad in a lightning offensive released on Thursday 48 foreigners, including four Turks, held for several days, Iraqi police said.

The construction workers, who were helping build a hospital in the now insurgent-held city of Tikrit, are from Turkey, Nepal, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.

A car bomb in Homs in central Syria Thursday killed six people in an Alawite-majority neighbourhood of the city, a monitoring group said as state media gave a lower toll.

Some 300 people marched in Tunis Thursday to condemn the act of a man who allegedly burned his 13-year-old daughter to death because she was walking with a boy.

"No to violence against women and children," "Nowhere is safe," and "Eya is a victim of extremism and fanaticism," were among the messages on banners at the demonstration, dubbed "Silent march for Eya."

Syrian warplanes Thursday launched 23 air raids on Mleiha southeast of Damascus, a key rebel bastion President Bashar Assad's regime has struggled for weeks to recapture, a monitor said.

Regime ground forces also targeted the Mleiha area with nine surface-to-surface missiles, as troops backed by Lebanon's Hizbullah battled rebels and their jihadist Al-Nusra Front allies, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

An Egyptian court sentenced Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohamed Badie and 13 others to death Thursday over violence that killed 10 people in Cairo last summer.

Since the army ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July, hundreds of his supporters and Badie himself have been sentenced to death in speedy mass trials that have sparked international outrage.

An explosion killed at least five members of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in a tunnel under the Israeli border Thursday, Palestinian officials said.

"Five martyrs were killed in a resistance activity in Saghira neighborhood" in eastern Gaza City, the local Hamas information office said, without elaborating.