A court in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday cleared a Swedish woman of allegations that she belonged to the Islamic State group due to lack of evidence, a judicial source said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pick for Jerusalem mayor has failed to make it past the first round of polling, local election results showed Wednesday.

Turkey cast doubt Wednesday on whether Saudi Arabia was willing to "genuinely cooperate" in the investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as international pressure increased on Riyadh to provide answers.

France's foreign minister cast doubt on Saudi Arabia's investigation into the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Wednesday, saying "not enough" was being done to find those responsible for his murder.

US forces have been handing over suspected jihadists captured in Syria to the authorities in Iraq, where they face torture and botched trials, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi was strangled as soon as he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and then dismembered as part of a premeditated plan, Turkey's chief prosecutor said Wednesday, making details of the murder public for the first time.

The revelations came just hours after Saudi Arabia's chief prosecutor left Istanbul, and the Turkish prosecutor's office said it was "obliged" to reveal the details after the talks produced "no concrete results."

The United States called Tuesday for a ceasefire and peace talks in Yemen, as the Saudi-led military coalition sent more than 10,000 new troops toward a vital rebel-held port city ahead of a new assault.

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.