Lawmakers passed a bitterly opposed anti-terror law Wednesday dramatically expanding the powers and reach of Canada's spy agency, allowing it to operate overseas for the first time. 

The move came in response to the first terror attacks on Canadian soil last October, when a gunman killed a ceremonial guard and stormed parliament, and a soldier was run over in rural Quebec.

The Islamic State jihadist group launched an offensive Wednesday in Deir Ezzor city in eastern Syria in a bid to seize a major regime airport nearby, a monitor and activist said.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman said clashes and at least one suicide explosion had rocked eastern neighborhoods of Deir Ezzor controlled by regime forces.

A shell fired from the Syrian side of the border landed between the western Bekaa towns of al-Manara and al-Suwairi on Wednesday, amid a border clash between the Syrian army and militants.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said the shell hit a cement plant between the two towns, causing material damage.

Creating a humanitarian safe zone in Syria would entail a "major combat mission" requiring U.S. troops to fight Islamist jihadists and the Damascus regime, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Turkey has long called for a safe area to be set up along the Syrian-Turkish border to protect civilians but President Barack Obama's administration has yet to endorse the idea.

The United States wants the U.N. Security Council to set up an investigation on the use of chemical weapons in Syria following reports of chlorine gas attacks, diplomats said Wednesday.

The investigation would be carried out by a team of experts appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and tasked with establishing who is to blame for the attacks. 

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday that setbacks are a normal part of war and do not mean the conflict is lost, in his first comments after several regime defeats.

"Today we are fighting a war, not a battle. War is not one battle, but a series of many battles," he said at a rare public appearance on Syria's Martyrs Day.

Army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji said on Wednesday that the differences among the country's rival leaders would not stop the military from defending Lebanon, vowing to continue the battle against terrorists.

“The political disputes will not thwart the army's sacred duties in defending Lebanon,” he said in a speech at the Beirut Bar Association.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea stressed on Wednesday the need to set as a priority the approval of a new parliamentary electoral law during the next legislative session.

He stated before a delegation from Hawsh al-Oumara: “The LF and Free Patriotic Movement are working hard to adopt a new electoral law during the first legislative session because there are no other issues that are more pressing.”

Nadir Soofi, one of the gunmen who attacked a Texas venue that featured a contest to draw the Prophet Mohammed, was a charismatic "ladies' man" as a teenager, contemporaries from an elite Pakistani school told Agence France Presse Wednesday.

Soofi, 34, and Elton Simpson were shot dead by police on Sunday as they tried to storm the cartoon drawing event. 

Conflicts and violence in places like Syria and Ukraine have displaced a record 38 million people inside their own countries, equivalent to the total populations of New York, London and Beijing, a watchdog group said Wednesday.

Nearly one third of them -- a full 11 million people -- were displaced last year alone, with an average of 30,000 people fleeing their homes every day, the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said in a report.