Two al-Qaida-linked militants have been arrested in the Philippines over a 2001 kidnapping of a group of tourists in which two American hostages were murdered, a military official said Thursday.

The Abu Sayyaf members were arrested on the southern island of Mindanao on Wednesday following an 11-year manhunt for the killers of Christian missionary Martin Burnham and fellow American citizen, Peru-born Guillermo Sobero.

Security has been stepped up in the area around the US embassy in Cairo, a security official told Agence France Presse, after a film deemed offensive to Islam sparked violence outside the U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya.

"There is an increased security presence in central Cairo, particularly around the American embassy, following the protest yesterday," the official told AFP.

U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three officials were killed when a mob attacked the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, the interior ministry said Wednesday.

"The ambassador was killed along with three other officials," said Wanis al-Sharif, the deputy minister of the interior. Stevens' death in Tuesday's attack was confirmed in a tweet by Mustafa Abu Shagur, the deputy prime minister.

U.S. Treasury Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin stressed that his country isn't targeting the Lebanese banking sector rather than it's calling on it to be aware of the risks of dealing with Iran and Syria.

An Nahar daily said Wednesday he pointed out that Lebanon should be keen not to allow Iran and Syria to exploit its banks to evade the sanctions imposed on it.

President Barack Obama will not receive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the United States later this month, an Israeli official told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

Netanyahu, who will be attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York, had asked for a meeting with Obama, proposing to travel to Washington for it, the official said

Turkey on Tuesday said it won't extradite Iraq's fugitive vice president Tareq al-Hashemi, who has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death in absentia by an Iraqi court.

"We will host Hashemi in our country as long as he wants to remain in Turkey. We will not hand him over," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara.

A rocket fired by insurgents on a U.S. base in Afghanistan destroyed a military helicopter on the eve of the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, killing three Afghans, officials said Tuesday.

The Chinook helicopter caught fire and was destroyed as it prepared to take off late Monday from Bagram air base, the largest U.S. military base in the war-torn country, a NATO military spokesperson said.

President Barack Obama nominated a career diplomat as the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Monday, after the previous candidate withdrew amid allegations of sexual impropriety.

The White House said it was nominating Robert Stephen Beecroft, who has served at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad since July 2011, first as the deputy chief of mission and since June as the charge d'affaires.

Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Treasury Neal Steven Wolin is expected to arrive in Beirut in the coming two days where he will meet senior Lebanese officials, An Nahar newspaper reported on Monday.

Wolin will seek to reiterate his country's decision to control individual cases of financial deception.

The United States is due to hand over formal control of a controversial prison housing Taliban fighters to the Afghan government on Monday, in a move hailed by Kabul as a victory for sovereignty.

But disagreements between both sides have led to some suggestions that the transfer is merely symbolic as NATO accelerates the withdrawal of 117,000 combat troops and hands over national security to Afghans by the end of 2014.