An asylum seeker suffered serious burns after setting himself alight inside a French courthouse when his final chance at obtaining asylum was thrown out, according to police and witnesses.

A police source said the man was a Chadian national who had arrived in France via Syria.

Aircraft from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined U.S. warplanes in a new wave of bombing raids Friday against Islamic State jihadists in Syria.

Coalition fighter jets and robotic drone planes conducted six strikes in Syria on Thursday and Friday, hitting militant tanks, oil refineries and a training camp, the U.S. military said.

Aid agencies are close to breaking point in their efforts to help millions of desperate victims of conflicts around the globe, U.N. refugee agency chief Antonio Guterres warned on Friday.

"The international humanitarian community is really reaching the limits of its capacity, with multiplication of conflicts," Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, told reporters.

The Syrian government said Friday any Turkish military intervention on its soil would be considered an act of aggression, and urged the U.N. Security Council to prevent any such action by Ankara.

A day after Turkey's parliament authorized military action against the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq, the foreign ministry said the "declared policy of the Turkish government represents a real aggression against a member state of the United Nations."

Syrian troops have seized a village just north of Aleppo that could allow them to cut off a supply line to rebel-held districts of the country's second city, a monitoring group said Friday.

Soldiers, backed by fighters from Lebanon's Hizbullah, took Handarat, four kilometers (2.5 miles) north of the ring road around Aleppo, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Residents of Syria's capital have set up a Facebook page to track near-daily mortar rounds fired by rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

Called the "Diary of a mortar round in Damascus", the page provides information on how many were launched, where they struck and the number of casualties.

Health Minister Wael Abou Faour briefed on Friday the relatives of Arsal captives, who are holding a sit-in on the eastern Dahr al-Baydar road, on cabinet discussions regarding the abduction ordeal.

“They have the right to know everything and the government's stance on this case,” Abou Faour told reporters.

Turkey will do whatever it can to prevent the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane falling to jihadists, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after the Turkish parliament gave the green light for military action.

Islamic State (IS) militants have now advanced to a few kilometers from Kobane, known as Ain al-Arab in Arabic, which lies just across the Turkish border. Turkey is hosting tens of thousands off refugees from the region.

The Syrian civil war has emerged as one of the conflicts most heavily covered by media, yet least understood. The claims and counterclaims of massacres, conspiracies, and mayhem abound. Following from afar, the international mainstream news portrays Syria as if it ceased to exist as a society, and a certain “normalization” of the war has set in. However, while cliches continue to oversimplify the complex situation and thus indirectly fuel the violence, one should take a closer look at the emerging civil society working inside the country on peace initiatives among Syrians from different political and religious backgrounds. These civil society groups are taking the responsibility of holding the society together into their own hands. They are preserving a humane space where Syrians still accept each other as equal citizens despite the hate perpetuated around them.

In the midst of this chaos, many Syrians – individually and in groups – are taking a stance against reductionist narratives, resisting the temptation to dehumanize each other, rejecting the peer pressure of adhering blindly to one’s own sect or clan, contesting hate speech, and ultimately refusing to be utilized as fodder for war. The emerging peace initiatives take different shapes and forms. Youth groups are disseminating the values and skills of active citizenship to promote social cohesion; others are working on innovative communication strategies to demonstrate the costs of war and raising awareness on the devastating impact of continued hostilities.

Heavy clashes erupted on Friday between Kurdish militiamen and Islamic State jihadists who have besieged a key Syrian town near the Turkish border, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.