The Palestinian leadership is to demand the international community set a deadline for Israel to end its occupation of the territories, a senior official told Agence France-Presse on Monday. 

The move comes as Palestinian and world leaders continue to push for a halt to seven weeks of bloodshed in Gaza, and seek a more permanent end to violence between Israel and the Islamist movement, Hamas.

There is no place for weapons or armed groups outside Iraqi state control, premier-designate Haidar al-Abadi said Monday, after suspected Shiite militiamen killed 70 worshipers at a Sunni mosque.

"I confirm that weapons must remain in the hand of the state -- there is no place for any armed group," Abadi told a news conference.

Qatar, which mediated the release of a U.S. hostage held by al-Qaida in Syria, seeks to prove its role in confronting the Islamist radicals it has been accused of supporting, experts say.

The Qatari foreign ministry, in a statement, said the tiny gas-rich nation had "succeeded in releasing American journalist Peter Theo Curtis," after he spent 22 months in captivity.

The German government said it did not pay to secure the release earlier this year of a 27-year-old German national kidnapped in Syria by jihadist militants.

A Libyan jihadist group urged other Islamists to unite under its banner on Monday after parliament appointed a new army chief to tackle the unrest sweeping the North African nation.

Ansar al-Sharia, which Tripoli and Washington have both branded a "terrorist" organization, made the call as Libya's foreign minister and his counterparts from neighboring states met in Cairo to discuss the Islamist threat.

A suicide bomber attacked Shiite worshipers during prayers in eastern Baghdad on Monday, killing 11 people, security and medical officials said.

U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said on Monday a ruthless campaign of "ethnic and religious cleansing" by Islamic State jihadists in Iraq amounted to a crime against humanity.

She said their reign of terror against non-Arab ethnic groups and non-Sunni Muslims alike involved targeted killings, forced conversions, abductions, trafficking, slavery, sexual abuse, and destruction of holy and cultural sites.

The U.N. Monday accused jihadists in Iraq of waging a campaign of "ethnic and religious cleansing", as Syria said it was ready to work with the global community against "terrorism".

The accusation by U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay came as Kurdish peshmerga forces pushed back Islamic State (IS) jihadists northeast of Baghdad a day after the militants overran a key military airport in Syria.

Hundreds of Istanbul residents angered by the presence of Syrian refugees clashed with police early Monday in a violent protest in a suburb of Turkey's biggest city, reports said.

The clashes were the latest violence amid growing tensions between Turkish locals and Syrian refugees who fled the civil war in their country and whose numbers in Turkey have now swelled to 1.2 million.

Kurdish peshmerga forces supported by Iraqi air strikes pushed back jihadist fighters in northern Iraq on Monday, even as the militants overran a key military airport in neighbouring Syria.