Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is expected to make a televised speech on February 16 to commemorate the “Martyr Leaders Day”, As Safir newspaper reported on Monday.

Nasrallah's speech will address the local and regional developments, in addition to the conflict with Israel, the daily said.

Former rebel militiamen who have switched sides and joined Syria's regime forces are engaged in a fierce battle against Islamist insurgents near Damascus, sources said on Sunday.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, pro-regime Jaysh al-Wafaa launched its "fiercest battle yet" on Saturday night against Jaysh al-Islam fighters near the rebel bastion of Douma, east of the capital.

Jordan said Sunday it destroyed 56 targets in three days of strikes on the Islamic State group after it murdered one of its pilots, and is determined to destroy IS.

Air Force chief Major General Mansour al-Jobour did not specify where the strikes took place, but told reporters the air raids launched since Thursday had destroyed 20 percent of IS capabilities.

French police detained six people Sunday suspected of recruiting potential jihadists, just days after another operation saw five charged on similar grounds, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

France is slowly recovering from the January 7-9 Islamist attacks in Paris that left 17 people dead but remains jittery after incidents such as Tuesday's knife attack on three soldiers outside a Jewish community centre on the French Riviera.

Syrian Kurdish forces have recaptured more than a third of the villages around Kobane from the Islamic State group since routing the jihadists from the town a fortnight ago, a monitor said Sunday.

"The (Kurdish) People's Protection Units (YPG) have recaptured 128 villages out of some 350 in the past two weeks," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman.

An international coalition battling against Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria is beginning to win back territory and deprive the jihadists of key funds, U.S. top diplomat John Kerry said Sunday as he denounced the group's "new level of depravity".

Washington has rallied more than 60 countries in the fight against the Islamic State group, and while Kerry told a global security conference it would be a long battle, he said there were signs the strategy was working.

Japan has seized the passport of a journalist planning to travel to Syria following the brutal killing of two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State group there, local media said Sunday.

It was the first time Tokyo had taken such a measure on the grounds it was needed to protect the passport-holder's life, the Asahi Shimbun and other news reports said.

The parents of a U.S. hostage who Islamic State jihadists claimed had been killed in an airstrike said on Friday they were "hopeful" she was still alive and appealed to her captors to contact them.

The militants said Kayla Jean Mueller had been buried under rubble after a raid by a Jordanian warplane in the Syrian city of Raqa, the extremists' self-proclaimed "capital."

The U.N. Security Council plans to adopt a resolution next week aimed at halting funding to Islamic State militants from oil, antique trafficking and ransoms, diplomats said Friday.

A draft text, drawn up by Russia, was distributed to the 15 member countries ahead of closed-door discussions.

Security forces have stepped up in recent days their security precautions in anticipation of threats and attacks, reported al-Akhbar newspaper on Saturday.

It said that they suspect the presence of five would-be suicide bombers in the northeastern border town of Arsal and the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh in the southern city of Sidon.