Forces loyal to a former Libyan general leading an offensive against Islamist militia launched a new push Wednesday to try to recapture the second city of Benghazi, witnesses said.

Gunfire and explosions were heard in the flashpoint eastern city, according to an Agence France Presse correspondent, after ex-general Khalifa Haftar announced that he was ready to "liberate" Benghazi.

A rising number of Americans think the battle against the Islamic State group should broaden to include U.S. ground troops, according to a poll published Wednesday.

U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to continue his country's humanitarian assistance to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to help those countries bear the burden imposed by the large influx of Syrian refugees.

The three countries “are obviously bearing an extraordinary burden from the displaced persons not just recently over the last few months, but for several years now as a consequence of the civil war in Syria,” Obama said at the end of a meeting for military leaders from more than 20 partner nations in the coalition to degrade and destroy Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Washington.

The Libyan militia leader charged in a deadly attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been hit with a slew of new criminal counts, some punishable by death.

U.S. Justice Department announced on Tuesday that a federal grand jury in Washington indicted Ahmed Abu Khatallah with more offenses linked to his alleged role in the September 11, 2012, attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry slammed the Islamic State group for "abhorrent" abuses on Tuesday after the jihadists boasted of selling captured women and girls as slaves.

Islamic State militants said abducted Yazidi women and children had been divided among its fighters according to sharia law. 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that he and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov have agreed to step up intelligence sharing over the Islamic State (IS) group.

"I suggested to Foreign Minister Lavrov that we intensify intelligence cooperation with respect to ISIL and other counter-terrorism challenges of the region and we agreed to do so," Kerry said using an alternative name for the IS jihadists. 

A former employee of a U.S. defense contractor shot dead one American colleague and wounded another in the Saudi capital Tuesday, officials said, in a rare attack on Westerners in the kingdom.

The alleged shooter, Abdulaziz Fahad Abdulaziz Alrashid, 24, "worked at the same company as the victims, and was recently dismissed from his job due to drug related issues," Riyadh's embassy in Washington said in a statement.

The family of British photojournalist John Cantlie on Monday urged his Islamic State jihadist captors to make contact with them.

In a statement, the hostage's sister Jessica Cantlie urged IS to "restart" dialogue, saying previous communications had broken down and new efforts to speak to the jihadists were ignored.

U.S. and Saudi warplanes carried out eight air strikes in Syria on Sunday and Monday, mainly targeting Islamic State jihadists fighting for a key border town, the U.S. military said.

Bombers and fighter aircraft hit IS positions in seven strikes around Kobane, the scene of heavy fighting between the jihadists and Kurdish rebels near the Turkish border, U.S. Central Command said.

Leader of the Progressive Socialist Party Walid Jumblat on Monday dismissed the U.S.-led coalition to counter “terrorism” in Syria and Iraq as a “lie.”

"The Arab situation began to deteriorate since the 2003 calculated conspiracy to invade Iraq,” Jumblat said in his weekly editorial in the PSP's al-Anbaa electronic newspaper.