The jihadist Islamic State seized control Thursday of a major Syrian oil field on the Iraqi border, as rival fighters withdrew, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

By seizing the Al-Omar oil field, IS now controls most oil and gas fields in the oil-rich Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, most of whose countryside is also under its control.

The spiraling refugee crisis from Syria's civil war could pose a serious threat to Lebanon's security and destabilize the entire region unless donors quickly provide the unfunded 70 percent of the $3.74 billion needed for emergency needs, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said Thursday.

The estimate of how much money will be needed is based on an upwardly revised assessment that Guterres plans to formally present on Friday. It includes a new estimate there will be at least 3.6 million Syrian refugees in the region by the end of the year.

An EU court on Thursday said it had overturned a travel ban and asset freeze on a former Syrian minister due to lack of proof of his links with the regime after leaving office.

The European Union's second highest court, the General Court of the European Union, said it "annuls the restrictive measures imposed on Mr. Mohamad Nedal Alchaar solely because of his status as a former Syrian Minister of Economy and Trade."

The surprise declaration of a "caliphate" by jihadists accused of committing atrocities in Syria and Iraq has provoked an outcry even among Islamists who dream of a state under Sharia law.

The caliphate, an Islamic system of rule, was abolished nearly 100 years ago, although many Arabs and Muslims still associate it with a golden age.

The vague group known as the Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade vowed to task gunmen to attack churches in Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa valley in particular.

The Brigade announced on its twitter account that a “specialized group of free jihadists were tasked with cleansing the Islamic state of Bekaa in particular and in Lebanon in general from the churches.”

The transfer of Syrian chemical weapons from a Danish container ship to a U.S. vessel was completed on Wednesday in an Italian port, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The disposal process marks the culmination of a program to rid Syria of its chemical weapons stockpile after the outcry that followed chemical attacks by the Bashar Assad regime in the suburbs of Damascus on August 23 last year, that may have killed as many as 1,400 people.

Malaysian police said Wednesday they were looking for a university lecturer and four others allegedly involved in terror activities and now believed to be hiding in the Philippines as it cracks down on suspected militants.

The announcement comes as authorities express concern about youths in the Muslim-majority country being radicalized and recruited to fight in hotspots such as Syria.

Rebels from northern and eastern Syria on Wednesday threatened to lay down their arms in a week if the country's exiled opposition does not help them fight the jihadist Islamic State (IS).

"We, the leaders of the brigades and battalions... give the National Coalition, the (opposition) interim government, the (rebel) Supreme Military Council and all the leading bodies of the Syrian revolution a week to send reinforcements and complete aid," the statement said.

The international operation to destroy Syrian chemical weapons entered its final phase on Wednesday, as they were transferred by workers at an Italian port from a Danish freighter to a U.S. military ship equipped to dispose of them.

The first three containers to be transferred held a total of 20 tons of mustard gas. The remaining 75 contain the raw materials for Sarin nerve gas, among other things.

A Norwegian citizen previously accused of making threats against the country's royal family has reportedly shown up in a jihadist video shot in Iraq, police said Tuesday.

Bastian Vasquez, a 25-year-old of Chilean origin, allegedly appears in the video, said to have been produced by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), gloating over the fall of an Iraqi border post.