U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to the Gulf on Monday to stress the urgent need to unite a region riven by conflict against the threat from the jihadist Islamic State group.

Kerry believes his ambitious plan to bring Syria's other warring parties to the negotiating table is the key to isolating and ultimately defeating the extremists.

Gulf monarchs are to hold their annual summit on December 10 in the Saudi capital, three weeks before an international target date for bringing together Syria's government and opposition.

A Saudi official confirmed on Monday that the heads of state of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council will meet in Riyadh on December 10.

British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was Monday under increasing pressure to allow his Labor Party's lawmakers a free vote in parliament on British air strikes against the Islamic State group in Syria.

Prime Minister David Cameron will present the case for action this week before asking parliament to vote, and looks set to receive the backing of some Labor MPs despite Corbyn's opposition to the strikes.

The Syrian army recaptured a town and village in the central province of Homs from the Islamic State jihadist group on Monday, state media and a monitoring group said.

"The army in cooperation with Popular Defense groups (pro-regime militias) took control of Maheen and Hawareen in the southeast of Homs province after inflicting heavy losses on Daesh," state television said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

Flights to and from two northern Iraqi airports were suspended for 48 hours beginning on Monday due to danger posed by Russian cruise missiles heading for neighboring Syria, officials said.

Iraq's "Civil Aviation Authority decided to suspend all departing and arriving flights from and to Arbil and Sulaimaniyah airports" for 48 hours from 8:00 am (0500 GMT) on Monday, it said in a statement, referring to airports in the autonomous Kurdish region.

President Barack Obama says Russia needs to make a strategic decision to go after the Islamic State group, not the moderate opposition forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

He says initial military operations by Russia did not add to efforts to deter IS, and in some ways, strengthened it.

More than 1,300 people, around two-thirds of them combatants, have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria since Moscow's aerial campaign began on September 30, a monitor said Friday.

The figure supplied by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is more that double the overall toll it gave in its last report on the Russian campaign three weeks ago.

The Turkish authorities have seized close to the Syrian border a record haul of almost 11 million pills of the synthetic stimulant drug captagon which is believed to play a crucial part in Syria's civil war, reports said Friday.

Anti-narcotics police confiscated over 10.9 million pills weighing almost two tonnes in two separate raids in the Hatay region on the border with Syria this week, the official Anatolia news agency and Hurriyet daily quoted the interior ministry as saying.

Hussam al-Roustom lost everything in Syria. After fleeing the horrors of war, he's working 12-hour night shifts in a bakery, learning English and watching his children flourish in America.

After resettling in Jersey City as a refugee, he now has a message for the country that gave him a second chance.

A U.N. General Assembly committee strongly condemned human rights violations in Syria's nearly five-year war on Thursday and said perpetrators of war crimes should face trial.

A resolution presented by Saudi Arabia was adopted by a vote of 115 to 15, with 51 abstentions.