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.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, now controls more than two-thirds of the Islamic State group's former Syrian stronghold Raqa, a monitor said Thursday.

Yemeni forces backed by the United Arab Emirates have driven Al-Qaeda militants from a southern district that is the birthplace of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, security sources said Thursday.

Wadea is located in Abyan province, which for months was a no-go zone for pro-government troops and where Al-Qaeda fighters fled after a similar offensive in the neighbouring province of Shabwa last month.

The UN agency for migration is trying to improve "terrible" conditions for migrants detained in Libya, and repatriate those willing and able to go home, its deputy head told AFP.