Islamic State jihadists subjected a group of teenagers from the Syrian battleground town of Kobane to a string of abuses, including torture, during six months in captivity, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

A group of 153 schoolchildren was taken hostage by IS in May en route to their hometown of Kobane after sitting exams in the Syrian city of Aleppo, according to HRW.

Twenty-seven candidates are standing for president in Tunisia on November 23, including the outgoing head of state, a football club chief, former ministers and a sole woman.

The contenders include:

Campaigning opened Saturday for a presidential election in Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, with secularist Beji Caid Essebsi seen as the front-runner after his party won milestone parliamentary polls.

Essebsi, 87, leads a field of 27 candidates in the November 23 vote, after Nidaa Tounes came out on top in last Sunday's legislative election, beating the previously dominant moderate Islamist movement Ennahda.

Tunisia's secular Nidaa Tounes won landmark parliamentary elections, results showed Thursday, beating Islamist rivals in a vote that raised hopes of a peaceful transition in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

Sunday's election has been hailed as a victory for democracy in the North African nation, which touched off the so-called Arab Spring when protests drove longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power in 2011.

Pro-government and rebel militias vying for control of western Libya are committing war crimes including torturing detainees and targeting civilians, Amnesty International said Thursday. 

Libya is being rocked by fighting between militias in the west and in second city Benghazi, where troops are trying to dislodge Islamists who control most of what was the cradle of the 2011 uprising that ousted dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Islamist party Ennahda, dominant in Tunisian politics since the 2011 revolution, has won praise for its grace in conceding defeat in landmark parliamentary elections, as the country awaited preliminary results Wednesday.

Just hours after polling stations closed Sunday, Ennahda acknowledged that it had been beaten into second place by secular rival Nidaa Tounes.

Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old pillar of Tunisian politics under the country's first president and his dictatorial successor, is making a comeback after his Nidaa Tounes won Sunday's parliamentary election.

But while Essebsi served as premier after the 2011 overthrow of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 and led the country toward free elections, his detractors accuse this member of the erstwhile inner circle of wanting to take Tunisia back to the old ways.

Foreign observers on Tuesday praised Tunisia's landmark "free" elections, after the Islamists conceded defeat in a vote that raised hopes of a peaceful transition in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

The Islamist Ennahda party, which had steered the North African nation through the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, congratulated its secular rival Nidaa Tounes which it said would be the largest party in parliament.

Tunisia's first parliamentary election since the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 was transparent and credible, the head of the EU observer mission said on Tuesday.

"The Tunisian people have reinforced their commitment to democracy with credible and transparent elections that gave Tunisians of all political tendencies a free vote," Annemie Neyts-Uytterbroeck told a news conference.

The leader of Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda party congratulated his secular rival Monday for "his party's win" in a general election seen as critical for democracy in the cradle of the Arab Spring.

The first parliamentary election since Tunisia's 2011 revolution pitted Ennahda against secular opponent Nidaa Tounes, with an array of leftist and Islamist groups also taking part.