A court in ex-Soviet Azerbaijan on Wednesday slapped jail terms of between 12 and 14 years on three men for fighting in Syria, a source familiar with the case told AFP.

Bakhtiyar Shahbazi and Sadig Mamedzade got 14 years while Shahbazi's son, Bahruz, was handed 12 years after having been found guilty of taking part in an armed conflict outside their country.

Saudi King Salman will visit the United States next month for the first time since acceding the throne and following a rift over America's rapprochement with Iran, a diplomat said Wednesday.

The monarch, who pulled out of a Gulf leaders' summit with U.S. President Barack Obama in May at the last minute, would travel to Washington on September 4, the Saudi diplomat said.

A commander of a Syrian rebel group fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad was killed Wednesday in a car bomb attack in southern Turkey, local officials said.

Jamil Raadoun died of his wounds in hospital after the bomb exploded outside his home in Antakya in the southern Hatay region, regional governor Ercan Topaca told the state-run Anatolia news agency.

The Pentagon is investigating whether military officials have improperly rewritten intelligence assessments to give a more optimistic view of the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The inspector general probe began after at least one civilian analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency said he had evidence that U.S. Central Command officials were reworking intelligence report conclusions prepared for President Barack Obama and other policymakers.

General Security has arrested in the past two days three Lebanese nationals tasked with recruiting gunmen to fight alongside the Islamic State extremist group, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The agency's Intelligence Branch arrested the three men in separate raids in northern Lebanon. One of them was apprehended in the area of al-Mankoubine north of Tripoli and another in the city's Bab al-Ramel neighborhood.

Syrian President Bashar Assad described on Tuesday as "legitimate" the presence of fighters from Hizbullah in Syria to back his forces against anti-regime gunmen.

"The difference (between Hizbullah and foreign anti-regime fighters) is legitimacy. Who invited Hizbullah to Syria?" Assad asked. 

European ministers will gather in Paris for security talks at the weekend following last week's "targeted and premeditated" jihadist attack on a high-speed train that was foiled by passengers, it was announced Wednesday.

Prosecutors have charged 25-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El Khazzani over the attack, which saw him watch a jihadist video on his phone before entering a toilet in the train, remove his shirt, and step out armed with an assault rifle, 270 rounds of ammunition and a Luger pistol strapped to his chest.

Activists and medical organizations have documented an alleged chemical weapons attack on a Syrian town last week that affected dozens of civilians, with one source blaming the Islamic State group.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had treated civilians apparently exposed to a chemical agent in Marea, without saying what type or providing overall casualty figures.

French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that the "neutralization" of Syrian leader Bashar Assad was a precondition to resolving the crisis in the war-torn country.

"We must reduce the terrorist influence without maintaining Assad. The two are bound up together," Hollande told a gathering of French diplomats in Paris.

The Islamic State group on Tuesday published images showing the destruction of the Baal Shamin temple in Syria's Palmyra, after international condemnation of the act.

The series of images showed militants placing barrels and small containers, presumably containing explosives, into the temple, as well as similar containers placed on parts of its columns.