The United States called on Cuba on Wednesday to allow an imprisoned American contractor to travel home to attend his mother's funeral as a humanitarian gesture.

Alan Gross, 65, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Cuba in 2011 after being convicted of "acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state" for allegedly distributing communications equipment as a contractor for the U.S. aid agency USAID.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said that jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) would have reached Beirut had his party not sent its fighters to Syria.

“Had we not interfered in Syria at the appropriate moment, ISIL would have been in Beirut now,” he told the leaders of al-Mahdi Scouts Association during a meeting on Sunday.

The United States is preparing to launch direct talks with Iran on how the longtime foes can halt a radical Sunni insurgency that has seized a swathe of Iraq, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Set to begin next week, the dialogue comes with Shiite Iran's neighbor mired in crisis once more with Sunni militants seizing a large swathe of Iraq and advancing toward Baghdad.

The United States on Sunday condemned a "horrifying" massacre by Islamic militants said to have killed hundreds of Iraqi soldiers as they advanced on the capital after seizing vast swathes of northern Iraq.

Iraq said it had "regained the initiative" against fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, amid grisly reports of atrocities committed during the militants' lightning offensive.

Pro-Russian rebels shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane Saturday in the separatist east, killing all 49 troops on board in the biggest single loss of life in the two-month insurgency.

The attack came hours before top Moscow and Kiev officials were expected to meet in the Ukrainian capital for 11th-hour gas negotiations aimed at averting an imminent cut in Russian supplies that would also impact large swathes of Europe.

A U.S. official said Thursday the United States has repatriated a dozen inmates from a secretive military prison in Afghanistan where foreign terror suspects have been held for years without trial.

A French national, a Kuwaiti and 10 Pakistani detainees were sent back to their home countries last month from the Parwan prison, the defense official told Agence France Presse.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Sudan Thursday of intensifying attacks on civilians in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, and of deliberately bombing schools and hospitals.

Samantha Power condemned "in the strongest possible terms" attacks she said were being carried out by the Sudanese government and its rapid support forces against ordinary people.

A NATO air strike in Afghanistan killed five U.S. soldiers in an apparent "friendly fire" accident during clashes with insurgents, officials said Tuesday, as troops try to ensure security for the presidential election.

Local police and the Afghan army said that the U.S. troops, as well as one Afghan soldier, were killed in the restive province of Zabul when air support was unleashed to try to beat back Taliban fighters.

The United States Monday offered to aid Pakistan in investigating a deadly siege on Karachi airport and denounced the assault which left 30 people dead.

"The United States condemns the attack on the Karachi airport. And our hearts go out to the families of the victims and those who were wounded in that attack," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

A senior State Department official will represent the United States at Sunday's inauguration of the new Egyptian president, but in a sign of U.S. unease, no cabinet-level ministers will attend.

The U.S. delegation to the swearing-in of president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will be led by State Department counselor Thomas Shannon, a senior adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry, a U.S. official said Thursday.