The uncle of Syrian President Bashar Assad is under investigation in France for amassing a 90-million-euro fortune, including a stud farm and luxury apartments, despite being kicked out of Syria "with nothing" 30 years ago. 

French investigators have provided details to Agence France Presse of their year-long probe into the finances of Rifaat al-Assad, the younger brother of late dictator Hafez al-Assad. 

Israel's military said it launched an airstrike on its border with Syria on Sunday evening after spotting militants carrying a bomb.

A military statement said the army launched the strike after troops saw "a group of armed terrorists" approach the border with an explosive that could target Israeli troops.

Syrian authorities will allow citizens abroad, including refugees who fled the war, to obtain passports without an intelligence service review for the first time, Syria's al-Watan newspaper said on Sunday.

The daily, which is close to the government, said the move would "create an appropriate climate" for consultations in Geneva next month on the possibility of renewed peace talks.

Syrian government air strikes on a marketplace Sunday killed at least 40 civilians, including women and children, in a rebel-held town near the border with Turkey, a monitoring group said.

The strikes on Darkush came a day after rebels seized Jisr al-Shughur, another town some 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the south and in the same province of Idlib.

When security fears forced Jordan to close its last border crossing with Syria this month, it severed its most important trade route to the outside, further straining an economy already hit by fallout from war.

But the damage to heavily import-reliant Jordan is not just hypothetical -- hundreds of importers and exporters lost millions of dollars worth of goods when rebels pillaged the vast free trade zone that straddled the border, most of it on the Syrian side.

Two Swedish men held hostage by Syrian jihadists have been reunited with their families in Sweden, the country's foreign ministry said on Sunday.

The hostages, named in the Swedish media as Thomas Olsson, 50, and Martin Reen, 33, were freed with the help of Palestinian and Jordanian authorities, said the ministry.

Brazilian federal police have seized documents, computers and flash drives from a lawyer in Brasilia suspected of terror links, local media reported.

Police said in a statement that the investigation was classified and that they were responding to a warrant to search and seize documents that may have been falsified. 

The Islamic State jihadist group killed two senior officers and 10 other soldiers in a suicide bombing and heavy fighting in Iraq's Anbar province, a general said on Saturday.

"The commander of the 1st Division, Staff Brigadier General Hassan Abbas, and the commander of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division, Staff Colonel Hilal Matar, and 10 soldiers were killed and 10 wounded," Staff Major General Mohammed al-Dulaimi said.

Controversial reports surfaced on Saturday over an alleged Israeli airstrike on Hizbullah and Syrian military posts in the strategic Qalamoun region.

Al-Arabiya's Al-Hadath TV channel reported on Saturday that Israel targeted overnight a missile depot in the region.

Hizbullah has allegedly constructed a runway that consists of a single unpaved strip with a length of 670 meter and width of 20 meter in the Bekaa town of Hermel to operate its drones.

IHS Jane's Defense Weekly said in a report that the area is remote and unpopulated.