Tunisians vote Sunday to elect their first parliament since the country's 2011 revolution, in a rare glimmer of hope for a region torn apart by post-Arab Spring violence and repression.

After three weeks of largely low-key campaigning, more than five million voters are to elect 217 deputies in a ballot pitting the Islamist Ennahda movement -- the country's largest party -- against a host of secular groups.

Kurdish fighters in the battleground Syrian town of Kobane weathered an onslaught by Islamic State group militants on Tuesday as they awaited promised reinforcements.

The Kurdish militia faced a fierce attack by IS fighters, including suicide bombers, late on Monday, that appeared aimed at cutting off the border with Turkey before any reinforcements could arrive, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A Syrian professor at a Saudi Arabian university has disappeared and joined the Islamic State group fighting U.S.-backed forces in her homeland, a newspaper reported on Monday.

Al-Hayat quoted Ibrahim al-Khaldi, the spokesman for the University of Dammam, as saying Iman Mustafa al-Boga had resigned for unknown reasons.

Syrian Kurdish refugees who streamed into Turkey from Kobane have found sanctuary in a new camp named after a female Kurdish suicide bomber who blew herself up in the battle against jihadists for the besieged Syrian town.

The new camp in the Turkish border town of Suruc has been named by the municipality -- which is controlled by the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) -- after Arin Mirkan.

European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to expand sanctions against Syria, adding 16 names and two entities to the blacklist for their role in a "brutal war" against their own people.

The move targeted 14 individuals with asset freezes and travel bans for taking part in "the violent repression of the civilian population," a statement said.

Extremist groups are set to launch a wide attack on north Lebanon, according to French intelligence reports that were conveyed to Lebanese authorities.

As Safir newspaper reported on Monday that the concerned authorities received a French tip off that extremists will launch their attack from the northern district of Akkar.

The UNHCR's representative in Lebanon, Ninette Kelley, has said it was difficult to know the number of Syrians who have taken refuge in the northeastern border town of Arsal.

“We know that we have registered 45,000 refugees there. And we believe that the town continues to embrace refugees whose numbers cannot be determined,” Kelley told An Nahar newspaper in remarks published in An Nahar daily on Monday.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam is expected to tackle the lingering crisis of Syrian refugees on Lebanese soil during a visit to Germany on October 27 and 28.

According to al-Liwaa newspaper published on Monday, Salam will discuss during a meeting for the International Support Group for Lebanon in the German capital Berlin the exerted efforts to limit the Syrian influx into Lebanon.

Kurds battling jihadists for the Syrian border town of Kobane welcomed a first U.S. airdrop of weapons Monday as neighboring Turkey said it will help Iraqi Kurds to join the fight.

Ankara has refused land deliveries of arms to the Syrian Kurds, who are linked with Turkey's outlawed rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but said it was helping Iraqi Kurds to reinforce the strategic town.

An Arab Israeli doctor has been killed fighting for the Islamic State group in Syria, Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service said on Sunday.

The agency said Othman Abu al-Qiyan, who studied medicine in Jordan and worked as an intern at an Israeli hospital, had died in the fighting in August.