Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi arrived Sunday in war-torn Syria for a pastoral visit and called for "peaceful solutions" to the country's bloody conflict.

"We came for peace and for peaceful solutions in Syria and for the endurance of Syrians in their land, both Christians and Muslims," al-Rahi during a visit to the French hospital in Damascus.

The army shelled on Sunday the positions of gunmen near the border with Syria, reported the National News Agency.

It said that it targeted with artillery the armed groups on the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal.

U.S.-led aircraft bombed Islamic State group fighters as they battled rival Syrian rebels, including al-Qaida loyalists, in a first such intervention, a monitoring group said on Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described the overnight raids in northern Aleppo as an intervention on the side of the rival rebels, which include forces who have been targeted previously by U.S.-led strikes.

In a nondescript office in central London, researcher Melanie Smith stares at her laptop, scrolling down the Twitter feed of a 17-year-old British girl who ran away to join Islamic State militants.

"What we're looking at here is when she announced her husband's death," said Smith, pointing to a post from a few months ago that says: "May Allah accept my husband."

A year after the Islamic State group launched a brutally effective offensive, Iraq is struggling to survive as a unified nation, gripped by seemingly endless violence, sectarianism and humanitarian tragedy.

IS began the offensive on June 9, 2014, and overran a third of the country, declaring it and areas in neighboring Syria a "caliphate" and carrying out atrocities from beheadings and mass executions to enslavement and rape.

A rebel alliance including al-Qaida's al-Nusra Front seized more territory in northwestern Syria overnight, strengthening its position on the borders of two key largely regime-controlled provinces, a monitor said Saturday.

The Army of Conquest rebel alliance had made a series of sweeping gains in Idlib province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor. 

An international military intervention is needed to end unrest in Libya, where the Islamic State group is gaining a foothold, Spanish Defense Minister Pedro Morenes said in an interview published Saturday.

"We went to Afghanistan to stop all of that from coming here, we are in Iraq, Mali or Somalia with the same objective. And now we have it nearby. Something may need to be done," he told the top-selling Spanish daily El Pais when asked if there would be a military intervention in Libya.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday stepped up his attacks on foreign media a day ahead of legislative elections, telling the Guardian to "know your limits" and lamenting that "Jewish capital" was behind the New York Times.

Erdogan has during the campaign leading up to Sunday's polls repeatedly criticised foreign media, amid growing concerns over an erosion of freedom of expression in Turkey under his rule.

Hizbullah seized control Saturday of a hilltop on the outskirts of the town of Fleita in the Syrian al-Qalamoun region.

The party's mouthpiece al-Manar TV station reported that Hizbullah fighters, backed by Syrian regime troops, captured Sadr al-Bustan hilltop.

The army intelligence detained the leader of a terrorist group in the Bekaa as he was heading to the outskirts of Arsal to join armed men, the state-run National News Agency reported Saturday.

NNA said that Syrian national Hazem B. was arrested on Friday in the town of al-Labweh.