Abbas Khan, the British doctor who died in a Syrian jail last year, was unlawfully killed, an inquest jury in London ruled on Monday.

Syrian authorities claimed that Khan, who was arrested last year after travelling to Aleppo to treat wounded civilians, committed suicide and was found hanging in a prison cell in Damascus on December 16.

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces are ready to depart for Syria to aid the embattled town of Kobane but are being held up by neighboring Turkey, a senior official said Monday.

The town on the Turkish border has become a crucial battleground in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, which overran large parts of Iraq in June and also holds significant territory in Syria.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea hoped on Monday that the latest battles between the army and extremists in the northern city of Tripoli were decisive.

Geagea's press office said that the LF chief telephoned Army commander Maj. Gen. Jean Qahwaji stressing his “support for the military institution against terrorism and extremism.”

Syrian rebels led by al-Qaida loyalists launched a major assault on the government-held city of Idlib Monday in a bid to consolidate their control over the northwest, a monitoring group said.

Rebels seized control of most of Idlib province early in the three and a half year old civil war but troops have held out in the provincial capital, resupplied by air.

Forty-four German riot police were injured in clashes with far-right hooligans rallying against "Islamist extremism" in the western city of Cologne overnight, police said Monday.

Police used batons, pepper spray and water cannon against the protesters, who hurled rocks, bottles and firecrackers at them, a spokesman said.

The army deployed heavily in the Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood in the northern coastal city of Tripoli on Monday and detained a number of militants, who have engaged in deadly battles with the military since Friday.

The military said in a communique that troops found several arms depots and a factory for manufacturing bombs during raids in Bab al-Tabbaneh.

Speaker Nabih Berri expressed concern on Monday over the situation in the northern coastal city of Tripoli, stressing that “security can only be implemented by using force.”

“The developments in Tripoli didn't come as a surprise. They are the normal result of incitement speech and the proliferation of arms,” Berri's visitors quoted him as saying in comments published in al-Joumhouria newspaper.

The main Kurdish party in Syria "does not want" Kurdish peshmerga fighters from Iraq to come to help it fight Islamic State jihadists trying to overrun the town of Kobane, Turkey's president has asserted according to reports Sunday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Turkish reporters aboard his presidential plane that the Syrian Kurdish party the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has been leading the defense of Kobane, feared losing its influence in northern Syria when the peshmerga arrive.

More than 800 people have been killed in ground fighting for Kobane since Islamic State group militants attacked the Syrian Kurdish enclave on September 16, a monitoring group said Sunday.

The jihadists have lost 481 dead, while 313 Kurds have been killed fighting to defend the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syrian government air strikes on two rebel-held areas of the central province of Homs killed at least 25 civilians, 11 of them children, a monitoring group said on Sunday.

Sixteen members of a single family were among 18 people killed in raids late Saturday on the town of Talbisseh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.