Russia, Iran and Turkey on Friday agreed a deal to jointly police a fourth safe zone around Syria's Idlib province as part of a Moscow-led plan to ease the six-year conflict.

In a joint statement after two days of talks in Kazakhstan the three powers said they agreed "to allocate" their forces to patrol the zone covering rebel-held Idlib province and parts of the neighbouring Latakia, Hama and Aleppo regions. 

Gunmen and suicide bombers killed at least 84 people in southern Iraq in the deadliest attack by the Islamic State group since it lost second city Mosul, according to a new toll released on Friday.

Two Hamas militants died in separate tunnel collapses in the Gaza Strip overnight, the Palestinian Islamist group, which controls the territory, said on Friday.

A man believed to be an American citizen who was fighting with Islamic State militants has surrendered in Syria and is now in U.S. custody, raising questions about how the Trump administration will deal with such detainee cases.

Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, said the man surrendered to Syrian Democratic forces around Tuesday and was turned over to U.S. military force in Syria. Rankine-Galloway said the man is being legally detained as a known enemy combatant.

Hamza bin Laden, son and would-be heir of late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, has urged Muslims around the world to join the jihad in Syria against "crusaders" and Shiites.

Friends including Tony Blair joined with old political rivals Thursday in saluting Israel's Nobel laureate Shimon Peres and his dream of peace, on the first anniversary of his death.

Iraq and Turkey on Thursday stepped up the pressure on Iraqi Kurdistan over its planned independence referendum, as the governor of oil-rich Kirkuk province that decided to take part in the vote was sacked.

Gunmen and suicide car bombers on Thursday killed at least 74 people, including Iranians, near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

A Saudi pilot was killed in Yemen while providing air support for an operation against al-Qaida militants, a Saudi-led coalition backing the government said on Thursday.

The Saudi Royal Air Force plane crashed in the southern province of Abyan on Wednesday night "due to a technical failure," coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Maliki told the official Saudi Press Agency.

Iraq's parliament voted on Thursday to sack the governor of oil-rich Kirkuk over his decision for the northern province to vote in a Kurdish independence referendum opposed by Baghdad.