Britain is still exporting arms and military equipment to Russia, according to a parliamentary report released Wednesday just hours after Prime Minister David Cameron rapped France for selling weapons to Moscow.

Known for kidnapping, public stonings, lashings and executions, the Islamic State (IS) is now expanding into tourism, taking jihadists on honeymoon and civilians to visit other parts of its "caliphate".

U.S. lawmakers voted Tuesday to thwart efforts to fund Hizbullah by punishing banks and other financial organizations that help the funneling of money to the group.

A suicide car bomb explosion ripped through a police checkpoint in Baghdad Tuesday, killing 23 people and wounding more than 40, police and medical sources said.

Rebel-held eastern Damascus was hit by its fiercest fighting in months Tuesday, as the sacking of a Syrian opposition chief deepened divisions among those bidding to oust President Bashar Assad.

The Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 170,000 people since March 2011, has grown increasingly complex this year, with the rebels fighting to topple Assad also training their sights on the Islamic State's jihadists.

Syria's oil and gas industries have suffered total losses of $21.4 billion since the outbreak of the country's war three years ago, Oil Minister Suleiman Abbas said Tuesday.

"The circumstances the country is going through have caused considerable losses to the oil and gas sectors," said Abbas in a statement.

The Qatar-backed head of the Syrian opposition's interim government was sacked Tuesday, under pressure from Saudi Arabia, once again exposing the sharp divisions between the opposition's main backers.

Since the National Coalition was created in late 2012, rivalries between Riyadh and Doha have consistently undermined the group, which acts as the main opposition body.

Two Turkish soldiers and at least six Kurdish rebels were killed in clashes in southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border, the Turkish military said Tuesday.

The clashes erupted on Monday after Kurdish rebels attempting to cross from Turkey into Syria started firing at a patrol team in Turkey's Sanliurfa province, the army said in a statement.

The United Nations called for help Tuesday to vaccinate 765,000 Syrian toddlers against polio, in a bid to prevent a resurgence of the childhood killer across the restive Middle East.

"Inside Syria, 765,000 children under the age of five live in hard-to-reach areas where conflict and restriction make it extremely difficult to reach them with humanitarian assistance including regular access to vaccines," U.N. agencies said.

European Union foreign ministers agreed Tuesday to expand sanctions on Syria over the government's "violent repression" of its civilian population.

The ministers added three people and nine entities to the current list of those subject to an asset freeze and a ban on entering the EU, a statement said.