Investigators probing the first attack claimed in Pakistan by the Islamic State group believe a notorious local sectarian group may have carried out the massacre as it seeks to expand its ties to the Middle East.

Gunmen stormed a bus in Karachi last month, killing 45 members of the Shiite Ismaili community in one of the deadliest incidents in Pakistan this year.

Turkish police detained a young French woman who crossed back into Turkey after joining Islamic State (IS) jihadists in neighboring Syria, a security official said on Thursday.

During a three-month stay in Syria, the woman married and then split up from a jihadist and was put in a jail operated by the IS group before being released, the official said.

Islamic State group jihadists, emboldened by a string of battlefield victories, advanced Thursday to the gates of the Syrian city of Hasakeh after intense fighting with regime troops.

In neighboring Iraq, security forces foiled car bomb attacks by IS on two military bases west of Baghdad, a day after U.S.-led coalition warplanes destroyed a massive jihadist bomb factory.

At least 14 civilians, including seven children, were killed Thursday when Syrian regime helicopters dropped barrel bombs on northern Aleppo province, a monitoring group said.

The attacks came as part of an intensified air campaign over Aleppo in recent weeks, despite an international outcry over the civilian deaths.

The owners of refrigerated trucks in Lebanon blocked the main road in the eastern town of Chtaura on Thursday to protest the government's procrastination in finding ways to export their goods after a land transportation crisis.

The drivers called on the government to help them transport the goods by sea two months after al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front rebels seized Syria's Nasib crossing on the border with Jordan.

Municipal chief of Arsal Ali al-Hujeiri stressed Thursday that the residents of the northeastern border town will defend it until the last day.

“The residents of Arsal will defend it from any harm by Hizbullah or the gunmen,” Hujeiri told As Safir newspaper.

The Israeli army would seek to evacuate more than a million civilians in southern Lebanon before striking Hizbullah targets in the area, a senior military official has said.

The source, who was not identified, told the Jerusalem Post daily published on Thursday that large-scale Hizbullah rocket and missile fire would be met with civilian evacuations, massive Israeli aerial strikes, followed by a ground offensive.

Russia backs moves to determine who is responsible for a wave of chlorine gas attacks in Syria that the West blames on the Damascus regime, Moscow's ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday.

But it remains unclear if a U.N. Security Council resolution, as proposed by the United States, is the best way to provide answers, Vitaly Churkin told reporters.

Thousands of Iranian and Iraqi fighters have been deployed in Syria in past weeks to bolster the defenses of Damascus and its surroundings, a Syrian security source told AFP on Wednesday.

"Around 7,000 Iranian and Iraqi fighters have arrived in Syria over the past few weeks and their first priority is the defense of the capital. The larger contingent is Iraqi," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The Islamic State group is a "global threat" which will take a generation or more to defeat, Washington's envoy for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the jihadists said Wednesday.

Despite "strategic momentum" against IS -- or Daesh as he called it -- General John Allen conceded that the fight would continue for several years in a keynote speech to the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar.