United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has informed the Security Council that he wishes to appoint Norwegian diplomat Geir Pedersen as the next special envoy to Syria, diplomatic sources told AFP Tuesday.

Fierce clashes have broken out between rebels and jihadists in the planned buffer around Syria's Idlib region set out under a Russian-Turkish deal, a monitor said Tuesday. 

The Istanbul summit on Syria took "huge steps" toward ending its civil war, but the situation remains dangerous with so many foreign armed forces in the country, a top U.S. envoy said Tuesday.

The leaders of Turkey, Russia, France and Germany met in Istanbul at the weekend and called for a political solution to Syria's seven-year war and a permanent truce in the last major rebel-held bastion of Idlib.

The father of a British-Canadian dual national held by Kurds in Syria pleaded Tuesday for Ottawa's help to rescue him and at least 18 other Canadians, amid concerns that some of them pose a security risk.

The Israeli military said Tuesday it did not know a weekend air strike on the Gaza border that killed three teens was targeting minors, after accusations of excessive force. 

Egyptian economist Abdel Khalek Farouk said Tuesday he has been released from jail after being arrested over his new book, which takes a critical look at the country's finances.

A suicide attack by an unemployed graduate woman on a busy street in the Tunisian capital this week was an "isolated act," a government minister said Tuesday.

Turkey has dismissed as "unrealistic" demands to close a military base in Qatar as sought by a Saudi-led bloc caught up in a row with the emirate, according to reports Tuesday.

Hundreds of Kurdish fighters have arrived in eastern Syria to help a U.S.-backed alliance fight the Islamic State group after a major setback last week, a monitor said Tuesday.

Turkey has completed preparations for a new operation in northern Syria to "destroy" a US-backed Kurdish militia that Ankara considers to be a terrorist group, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday.