Since 2011 Syria has been ravaged by a war which has killed 370,000 people and displaced millions.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi made a formal request to parliament on Saturday to fire the governor of Niniveh province where 100 people were killed in a ferry capsize.

US President Donald Trump is again breaking diplomatic norms in backing Israel's capture of the Golan Heights, with experts warning that he risks justifying expansionism by other countries.

Israel conquered the Golan from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and annexed it in 1981, but until now, the international community has not accepted the move, hoping the territory could serve as a bargaining chip in a future peace deal between the countries.

Kurdish-led forces pronounced the death of the Islamic State group's nearly five-year-old "caliphate" Saturday after flushing out diehard jihadists from their very last bastion in eastern Syria.    

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that the Islamic State jihadist group has been "100 percent" defeated in Syria.

For Marla van Meter, like many Israeli settlers on the Golan Heights, U.S. President Donald Trump has simply faced facts by pledging to recognize Israeli ownership of the occupied plateau, changing nothing in practice.

France's foreign ministry said Friday that it had summoned the Israeli government's representative in Paris over what it called an "intrusion" by Israeli forces at its cultural center in Jerusalem.

Almost 100 people, mostly women and children, died Thursday as a ferry packed with families celebrating Kurdish New Year sank in a swollen river in the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, in Iraq's worst accident in years.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif expressed shock on Friday at US President Donald Trump's acceptance of Israeli sovereignty over Syria's Golan Heights.

"All shocked by @realDonaldTrump continuing to try to give what is not his to racist Israel: first Al-Quds & now Golan" Zarif tweeted from Istanbul where he was attending an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

US-led warplanes bombed the north bank of the Euphrates River in eastern Syria early Friday to flush out holdout jihadists from the last sliver of their crumbling "caliphate".

Friday's bombardment ended two days of relative calm on the front line in the remote village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border.