Kurdish forces backed by foreign jets pressed an ambitious operation against the Islamic State group in northern Iraq on Thursday, taking on the jihadists in the heart of their "caliphate".

After mass bombing by aircraft of the U.S.-led coalition paved the way for ground troops Wednesday, Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga retook several villages and closed in on the Sinjar area.

The Lebanese army engaged on Thursday in clashes with militants on the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Arsal, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said the military targeted the fighters with mortars in the area of Wadi Ata.

Britain's Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood has said that he encouraged rival leaders to engage in dialogue and elect a new head of state.

Ellwood told An Nahar daily in remarks published on Thursday that during talks with Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Tammam Salam he called for dialogue and stressed the importance of swiftly filling the vacuum at Baabda Palace.

The U.N. Security Council agreed on Wednesday to extend for a year cross-border deliveries of desperately-needed humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas in Syria.

Militants from the Islamic State group have abducted two reporters working for the Iraq-based Kurdish TV channel Rudaw in northeastern Syria, the network announced Wednesday.

The bodies of 230 people killed by the Islamic State group have been found in a mass grave uncovered by their relatives in Syria's Deir Ezzor province, a monitoring group said Wednesday.

London police stopped a plane on the runway at Heathrow Airport to remove a 15-year-old girl intent on joining Islamist fighters in Syria, a report said Wednesday.

The Syrian regime is in talks with a U.N. peace envoy over a possible "freeze" in fighting in the northern city of Aleppo, U.N. and pro-regime sources said Wednesday.

Deputy U.N. envoy Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy presented Monday a copy of a plan for Aleppo to Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad, "and the Syrian side asked for time to study it," daily newspaper Al-Watan said.

Shiite Muslim militiamen from Afghanistan have been fighting in Syria for months alongside President Bashar Assad's troops, a monitoring group said Wednesday.

Syria's passport office has recorded a sharp rise in applications since civil war broke out nearly four years ago, a pro-regime newspaper reported Wednesday.

"A thousand passport applications are being made a day in Damascus and its province, including 200 by people aged under 18," said a passport authority official quoted by Al-Watan daily.