The jihadist Islamic State (IS), which has taken over large swathes of war-torn Syria in just a few months, was on Thursday engaged in fighting Kurds and members of a Sunni tribe.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the well-equipped Kurds, who started fighting IS soon after it emerged in Syria in spring last year, had on Wednesday taken back several hills surrounding the city of Ain al-Arab (Kobane in Kurdish) in the north.

The U.S. suicide bomber who blew himself up at an army post in northwest Syria spent several months back home after training as a militant, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The ongoing debate over the controversial pay hike for public employees is the center of a heated debate among political parties as the Progressive Socialist Party called for a balanced new wage scale.

“Consultations are ongoing between the concerned parties to agree on a balanced pay hike,” PSP chief Walid Jumblat told As Safir newspaper on Thursday.

Twelve people were killed, among them a child, in Syrian army shelling late Wednesday on Douma, a rebel-held town near Damascus, a monitoring group said.

The United States on Wednesday unveiled $378 million in new humanitarian aid for the Syrian people, denouncing "appalling 'starve or surrender' tactics" by the regime of President Bashar Assad.

"The regime is asphyxiating half a million Syrians in Aleppo by obstructing deliveries of food, water, and medicine," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement.

Two rockets landed near the Bekaa town of Hermel on Wednesday after being fired from the Eastern Mountain Range on the Lebanese-Syrian border, where clashes are still ongoing between Syrian rebels and Hizbullah fighters.

“Two rockets fell in the vicinity of the town of Hermel after they were launched from the Eastern Mountain Range,” state-run National News Agency reported.

Human Rights Watch sharply criticized the Syrian air force Wednesday for intensifying strikes on Aleppo, despite a U.N. Security Council resolution ordering all sides in the conflict to stop indiscriminate attacks.

The New York-based group also rapped the Security Council for inaction over the violence in Syria in a statement issued ahead of a meeting of the U.N. body.

The Lebanese army detained overnight a number of Syrian nationals suspected of having links with an an offshoot of al-Qaida, the military and the state-run National News Agency said Wednesday.

The army said in a communique that it seized 8 Syrians in the eastern border town of Arsal for illegal entry. Some of them were driving unregistered cars and motorcycles and are suspected of belonging to terrorist organizations, it added.

Australia has issued arrest warrants for two men suspected of fighting alongside militants in Iraq and Syria, police said Wednesday, including one who reportedly posed with severed heads.

A high-ranking Hizbullah official was killed on Monday in the ongoing battles between the party's fighters and Syrian opposition militants in Syria's al-Qalamoun region, which is strategically located on the border with Lebanon.

The clashes also took the lives of three other Hizbullah fighters.