At least 28 people were killed Tuesday in Syrian government air strikes on a village in northwestern Idlib province and a suburb of Damascus, a monitor said.

At least 18 people died in government raids on the village of Ehsim in northwestern Idlib province, the Syria Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Islamic State group has beheaded two women in eastern Syria accused of "witchcraft and sorcery", a monitor said Tuesday, in the jihadists' first decapitations of female civilians.

The extremist group has become infamous for gruesome executions and mass killings, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the two women were the first female civilians to be beheaded by IS.

Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas has said that Lebanese authorities no longer need to wait for the United Nations to spend a Kuwaiti grant aimed at helping Beirut confront the burden of Syrian refugees.

Derbas told An Nahar daily published on Tuesday that “this grant means Lebanon no longer has to wait for the U.N.”

An attack on Huthi rebel leaders in Yemen's capital claimed by the Islamic State group has killed at least 28 people, medics said Tuesday, in the latest anti-Shiite assault by the Sunni extremists.

Yemen was previously the preserve of IS' jihadist rival al-Qaida, which controls swathes of the south and east, but since March the group has claimed a string of high-profile attacks.

U.S. authorities arrested a 23-year-old New Jersey man Monday on charges of conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State group after he helped his brother travel to the Middle East, allegedly to join the group.

The Justice Department said Alaa Saadeh bought his brother a plane ticket and drove him to New York's John F Kennedy Airport along with another person on May 5.

Israel's defense ministry on Monday warned Syrian rebels that they should keep jihadists at bay and avoid attacking the Druze minority if they wanted to receive humanitarian and medical aid from Tel Aviv.

Israel has a policy of giving medical assistance to wounded Syrians who reach Israeli lines, but tensions have flared recently due to rebel violence against Druze in Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chaired a top security meeting Monday as media speculated that Ankara was planning a military intervention in Syria, following gains there by Kurds against the jihadists.

The regular National Security Council meeting comes days after Erdogan said he would "never allow" the formation of a Kurdish state along Turkey's southern borders. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged to support Syria's government "politically, economically and militarily," the war-torn country's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in Moscow on Monday.

"I received a promise from President Putin to support Syria politically, economically and militarily," Muallem said at a press conference with his Russian counterpart after meeting Putin.

Syrian regime forces took back several parts of a neighborhood in the northeastern city of Hasakeh from the Islamic State group on Monday, but heavy clashes continued, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said regime forces had seized parts of Al-Nashwa district in southern Hasakeh, which IS fighters entered last Thursday.

The Islamic State group's "caliphate" enters its second year Monday with the jihadists expanding their territory in Syria and Iraq and their global reach by claiming attacks in Tunisia and Kuwait.

The extremist group headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced on June 29, 2014 that it was reviving a form of Islamic government known as the "caliphate", pledging it would "remain and expand".