US President Barack Obama on Thursday condemned Israel's ongoing settlement building as unhelpful to the pursuit of peace.

Sri Lanka announced on Thursday it would repossess part of a strategic oil storage depot from a state-run Indian firm after Delhi supported international calls to probe war crimes on the island.

US President Barack Obama arrived in the West Bank on Thursday to a more prickly welcome from Palestinian leaders than the warm embrace he won in Israel the day before.

Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan called Thursday for a ceasefire in the 29-year-conflict with Turkey and for rebel fighters to withdraw.

President Bashar al-Assad called the more than two-year deadly conflict in Syria a "battle of will and resistance," in remarks published in newspapers on Thursday.

Syrian opposition leader Soheir Atassi of the Syrian National Coalition grouping said on Thursday she was rejoining the body a day after abruptly "freezing" her membership.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday slammed violence against civilians, including Gaza rocket fire after two projectiles hit Israel as US President Barack Obama visits.

Two rockets fired by militants in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Thursday hit southern Israel as US President Barack Obama was visiting the Jewish state, police said.

Jailed Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan was set to call a "historic" ceasefire on Thursday, raising expectations for an end to a three-decade conflict with Turkey that has cost tens of thousands of lives.

Hundreds of mourners massed ahead of the cremation of a co-founder of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, highlighting the stark divide between supporters and victims of the brutal communist regime.

Sri Lankan pro-government activists protested outside the US embassy in Colombo on Thursday as the UN Human Rights Council was set to vote on a resolution pressing for a war crimes probe against Sri Lanka.

India's top court upheld the death penalty Thursday for a mastermind of a series of bombings which killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993, the deadliest set of attacks in the country's history.

Pakistan is stepping up an offensive to dislodge the Taliban from a key stronghold in an effort to safeguard May's general election and crack down on militants behind a wave of attacks.

US and Japanese officers are discussing worst-case contingency plans for retaking disputed islands in the East China Sea if China moves to seize them, US officials said.

US President Barack Obama will travel to the West Bank Thursday to meet Palestinian leaders dismayed by his failure to make good on soaring expectations that he could help deliver Middle East peace.

Two people died and several mosques were destroyed in central Myanmar, police said Thursday, in the worst riots since Buddhist-Muslim clashes rocked western Rakhine state last year.

The United States offered bounties of $5 million each for the arrest of two Americans, including a man known as the rapping jihadist, said to have joined Islamic militants in Somalia.

Two people including a Buddhist monk were killed and at least three mosques were destroyed after riots broke out in a town in central Myanmar, police said Thursday.

Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda, who turned himself in at the US embassy in Rwanda for extradition to the International Criminal Court, will be transferred to The Hague within days, the court's chief prosecutor said Wednesday.

The International Criminal Court will not drop the crimes against humanity charges against Kenyan president-elect Uhuru Kenyatta, The Hague-based court's chief prosecutor said Wednesday.