Despite a raging war, Syria has kept in place subsidies for electricity and basic foods, the prime minister said Monday, as the regime tries to drum up support in areas  its control.

"The government continues to subsidize staple food products, as well as the electricity sector," Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi told parliament.

The U.N. Security Council demanded the immediate release of all hostages held by the Islamic State group, as Jordan vowed to do everything it can to save the life of a pilot captured by the militants.

The 15-member council condemned on Sunday the "heinous and cowardly" murder of a Japanese journalist after the jihadist group claimed he had been beheaded.

Security forces arrested on Sunday a Syrian officer suspected of having defected from the Syrian army, reported the National News Agency.

It said that the forces arrested Alaa Issam Mohammed at a checkpoint in the northern Akkar town of Shadra near the border with Syria.

A blast ripped through a bus carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in Damascus on Sunday, killing at least nine people, a monitor said, in an attack claimed by al-Qaida's Syrian branch.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 20 people were wounded in the explosion near Souq al-Hamadiyeh district, and that six of the dead were Lebanese citizens.

U.S. politicians are calling for changes to a law that allows Europeans and other foreigners to enter the country without visas, citing fears that jihadists could exploit the rules to stage attacks on American soil.

The visa waiver program, which covers tourists from 38 countries, represents the "Achilles' heel of America," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is urging a tightening of the rules.

Kurdish fighters' success in recapturing the key Syrian town of Kobane from Islamic State jihadists was a "big deal," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday.

Kerry, speaking during a trilateral meeting with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts in Boston, noted that the IS group has been "forced to acknowledge its own defeat."

Kurdish forces engaged in sporadic battles with Islamic State jihadists around the Syrian town of Kobane on Saturday, seeking to expand their control in the area, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) had seized a village on Saturday as they battle to expel IS from the region.

Everything seems normal as the passengers stream out of a routine flight from a Middle Eastern country after landing at a major Turkish international airport.

But as they cross the air bridge from the plane into the airport, two plainclothes Turkish police -- on the lookout for jihadists on their way to Syria -- scrutinize their appearance and behavior.

An Egyptian interior ministry employee was killed in North Sinai, security officials said Saturday, two days after jihadists aligned with the Islamic State group killed 30 people in the peninsula.

The 50-year-old, who worked for the road traffic department, was shot in the head in his home in the regional capital of El-Arish on Friday night, the officials said.

Japan' deputy foreign minister has said negotiations with the Islamic State group threatening to execute a Jordanian pilot and a Japanese journalist have become "deadlocked," local media reported Saturday.

Yasuhide Nakayama, who is leading Tokyo's emergency response team in Amman, told reporters in the Jordanian capital late Friday that there had been no progress in trying to secure the release of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto and airman Maaz al-Kassasbeh.