Two people were killed and 14 wounded Thursday in a rare rebel rocket attack on the provincial capital of President Bashar Assad's coastal heartland, a monitoring group said. 

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, rebel groups stationed around the city of Latakia fired rockets into the city center and along the waterfront. 

Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State (IS) jihadists in northern Iraq have reported being attacked with chemical weapons, the German defense ministry said Thursday.

"We have indications that there was an attack with chemical weapons" against the peshmerga fighters that left many suffering from "respiratory irritation," a ministry spokesman told AFP.

Turkey is ready to begin operations against Islamic State (IS) jihadists along with its NATO ally the United States after a "pause" for coordination purposes, a Turkish foreign ministry official said on Wednesday.

Ankara launched its first air strikes against IS targets in late July but then put them on hold, instead concentrating its firepower on Kurdish militants in operations that have troubled some allies.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Wednesday, and called on regional countries to "fight terrorism and extremism."

Assad, in turn, thanked key ally Iran for its support in a four-year civil war that has cost more than 240,000 lives.

Police arrested a Syrian in Germany on Wednesday suspected of helping to set a freighter packed with migrants on a collision course with the Italian coastline.

Italian and German forces, working in collaboration, handcuffed the 26-year-old alleged trafficker in Soest in the country's northwest and were hunting for his brother, 22, also believed to have played a role in the major maritime drama.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday vowed to fight on against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants, in the face of mounting attacks on security forces blamed on the Kurdish rebels.

"Let me put it clearly, the operations will continue," he said in a televised speech in Ankara, as Turkey presses on with air strikes on PKK targets in the country's southeast and in northern Iraq. 

Syrian opposition figures head to Moscow this week although they are unlikely to welcome Russia's plan for a new anti-jihadist coalition that would include embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Moscow has since June been pushing a plan for a broader grouping than the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) group, to include Syria's government and its allies.

Turkish authorities on Wednesday detained at least a dozen suspected members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group amid rising concerns about security throughout Turkey in an escalating cycle of violence.

Police detained the militants in coordinated dawn raids in the capital Ankara, as well as Istanbul, Hatay province near the Syrian border and the central Anatolian province of Kirikkale, the official Anatolia news agency reported.

At least eight civilians, including five children, were killed in U.S.-led air strikes on a weapons depot belonging to a rebel group allied with al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, a monitor said Wednesday.

The overnight raid hit the Atmeh region of the northwest Idlib province and also killed 10 members of the Jaish al-Sunna group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. 

President Barack Obama's administration vowed to press ahead with a half-billion-dollar mission to train Syrian opposition fighters Tuesday, despite fears that its initial failures have dented U.S. credibility. 

After the routing of a 54-strong U.S.-trained force by al-Qaida allied rebels, Pentagon spokeswoman Commander Elissa Smith told Agence France Presse there was no plan to pause or scale back the program.