President Barack Obama will nominate Marine General Joseph Dunford as the next chairman of the joint chiefs, choosing an officer with battlefield experience in Iraq and Afghanistan for the U.S. military's top job.

If confirmed by the Senate for the post, Dunford will be drawing on his years fighting insurgents over the past decade when he advises Obama on the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State group.

Hundreds of residents have protested against al-Qaida controlling Mukalla, the capital of southeast Yemen's Hadramawt province, a month after jihadists overran the city, witnesses said on Monday.

"Batarfi out out, Hadramawt wants freedom," they chanted late on Sunday, referring to Khalid Batarfi, a senior al-Qaida figure who has reportedly been named the "emir of Mukalla".

Mexican police arrested an American man Sunday who had 6,356 rounds of ammunition and an array of weapons in his car, authorities said.

The man was driving a BMW vehicle with license plates from the state of Ohio, police said in a statement.

U.S. military helicopters began reconnaissance trips Monday to assess remote areas of Nepal devastated by an earthquake that killed more than 7,300 people, an official said.

Nine days after a 7.8-magnitude quake brought death and destruction to the Himalayan nation, the helicopters surveyed mountain villages.

The U.S. military denied Sunday a report that strikes led by Washington had killed at least 52 civilians in northern Syria earlier this week, saying those killed were actually fighters.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor director Rami Abdel Rahman had told Agence France Presse that seven children were among the dead from U.S.-led coalition strikes overnight Thursday into Friday on the village of Birmahle in Aleppo province.

Baltimore's mayor on Sunday lifted a curfew that was imposed across the East Coast city following widespread riots, as thousands of National Guard troops began withdrawing from the scarred metropolis.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had faced growing calls for the curfew to be scrapped, particularly from store and restaurant owners who said the 10:00 pm to 5:00 am nightly restriction was wrecking business.

Maldives authorities have detained 175 supporters of jailed former president Mohamed Nasheed for two weeks, according to court documents Sunday, after the U.S. warned that democracy was in danger on the honeymoon islands.

Police fired tear gas and baton-charged protesters demanding Nasheed's release at a demonstration in the tiny capital island of Male on Friday night, arresting 193 people.

Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) has claimed responsibility for the murder of an American atheist blogger in Bangladesh over two months ago, according to SITE Intelligence Group.

Avijit Roy was hacked to death by two assailants with machetes on the streets of the capital Dhaka in February as he returned from a book fair with his wife.

The Saudi-led coalition has been using U.S.-supplied cluster bombs in its air campaign against Yemeni rebels, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday, warning of the long-term dangers to civilians.

The widely banned munitions contain dozens of submunitions, which sometimes do not explode, becoming de facto landmines that can kill or maim long after they were dropped.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ended a visit to Sri Lanka Sunday after pledging support for minority Tamils following decades of ethnic war, a local Tamil politician said.

Kerry met heads of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the main political party from the ethnic minority, a day after holding talks with Sri Lanka's new President Maithripala Sirisena.