Syria's war killed at least 3,000 people including 955 civilians in September, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said Sunday, in the deadliest month of the conflict this year.

"More than 70 percent of the civilians were killed in regime and Russian air strikes, or in air raids of the international coalition" fighting the Islamic State group, the Britain-based monitor's head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

A university in Saudi Arabia has said it will open a driving school for women, in a first for the ultra-conservative country after a ban on women driving was lifted.

"Princess Nourah University is preparing to set up a driving school in cooperation with the relevant authorities," the women's university said on Saturday.

Iran has embargoed exports and imports of fuel products to and from Iraqi Kurdistan in response to the region's controversial independence referendum, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

Just after sunrise outside Syria's Raqa, dozens of Islamic State group jihadists donned Kurdish military uniforms, piled into cars with weapons, and broke back into a district they lost control of months ago.

Iraq's military prepared Saturday to take control of the international borders of the northern Kurdish region.

The move is part of the central government's stepped-up efforts to isolate the Kurds following their vote on independence earlier this week.

At least 28 civilians were killed in air strikes on northwestern Syria where a planned safe zone has been overshadowed by a bombing campaign against jihadists, a monitor said Saturday.

French President Emmanuel Macron has invited Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to visit on October 5 to discuss the Kurdish independence referendum, offering France's help in calming tensions over the vote.

The Iraqi government cut autonomous Kurdistan's direct air links with the outside world indefinitely on Friday, partially isolating the northern region after it voted a massive "yes" in an independence referendum.

The US ambassador in Tel Aviv has angered Palestinians with a comment downplaying Israel's 50-year occupation of the West Bank, the second such spat in a month.

The Islamic State group killed at least 58 Syrian government troops and militia as the jihadists put up fierce resistance to a Russian-backed offensive against some of its last bastions, a monitor said Friday.