A new report says the plight of people fleeing Syria's civil war has reached "a new level of hopelessness" as overstretched neighbors make it more difficult to escape and developed countries like the United States resettle a tiny number of refugees. Less than 2 percent have been given a new home.

The report released Wednesday by the International Rescue Committee and the Norwegian Refugee Council says the number of refugees from Syria has dropped sharply, with 18,483 registered in October, while an average of 150,000 were registered each month in 2013 with the United Nations refugee committee.

U.S. forces have carried out the overwhelming majority of air strikes against Islamic State jihadists since August, with American warplanes conducting about 85 percent of the raids, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Arab coalition partners have carried out 56 out of 393 air strikes over Syria, and Western allies have conducted about 70 out of more than 470 bombing raids in Iraq, Colonel Patrick Ryder, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, told AFP.

Iran on Wednesday denied a report that one of its nuclear scientists was killed in an ambush near the capital of its war-torn ally Syria.

"There are no Iranian nuclear scientists in Syria," said Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Ghashghavi, quoted by state news agency IRNA.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Wednesday sacked 36 army officers in an anti-corruption drive at a time when the military is locked in conflict with Islamic State group jihadists.

His office said that Abadi, who also serves as armed forces commander in chief, and has already sacked a number of senior army officers, dismissed 26 military commanders and sent 10 into retirement.

Israel approved new settler homes in east Jerusalem on Wednesday despite mounting unrest, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was set for talks with the Palestinian leader on easing tensions.

The new settlement construction was announced just hours after suspected Jewish extremists torched a West Bank mosque, in another development likely to inflame tempers in an already heated atmosphere.

Israel's parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a draft bill which would ban the free distribution of Israel HaYom, a freesheet which solidly backs Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A preliminary reading of the bill was passed by 43 in favor to 23 against with nine abstentions.

Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghuti has been placed in solitary confinement after publishing a letter calling for a return to "armed resistance" against Israel, a Palestinian NGO said on Wednesday.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners' Club said in a statement that Barghuti had been placed in solitary as a "punishment" for a letter published on Tuesday on the 10th anniversary of the death of veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Syrian authorities detained a veteran dissident living in Damascus on Wednesday as he tried to leave the country to visit his family in Spain, his party said.

Louay Hussein is part of the regime-tolerated opposition, but is especially outspoken and recently published a stinging statement that said President Bashar Assad's regime is "collapsing".

A string of attacks killed five people and wounded more than 20 in eastern Libya on Wednesday, including in a stronghold of the internationally recognized authorities, officials said.

An interior ministry official said a suicide attack hit the center of Tobruk, a town close to the Egyptian border and 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) east of Tripoli that is the base of a contested parliament elected in June.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday beheaded a convicted drug trafficker, the interior ministry announced, bringing to 66 the number of executions this year despite international concerns.

Mohammed bin Abd al-Ghani bin Hassan al-Khatir, a Saudi, "was caught smuggling a large quantity of drugs in the form of pills into the kingdom, inside his luggage," the official Saudi Press Agency said, citing the ministry.