Iraqi forces battled yesterday through booby-traps, sniper fire and suicide car bombs to tighten the noose around Mosul, while also hunting Islamic State group militants behind attacks elsewhere in the country.

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said yesterday the door to electing a president was “wide open” and his members of parliament would vote for ally Michel Aoun at a parliamentary session at the end of October.

Clashes and air strikes shook the Syrian city of Aleppo yesterday, as heavy fighting resumed after the end of a three-day ceasefire declared by government ally Russia.

Kurdish fighters said they had taken the town of Bashiqa near Mosul from Islamic State on Sunday as coalition forces pressed their offensive against the jihadists' last stronghold in Iraq.

Iraq's Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi said on Sunday his country should be exempted from output restrictions as it was fighting a war with Islamic State.

Iran hopes non-OPEC Russia and OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia can agree to coordinate on possible actions on the global oil market, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said on Sunday.

A police officer was killed and 10 people were wounded when a car bomb exploded near a passing police vehicle in the eastern Turkish province of Bingol on Sunday, security sources said.

On a dusty road in northeast Syria, a woman and her four children stand beside a freshly erected green sign for Joldara, the Kurdish name of her village known for decades as Shajra.

US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter arrived in Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan on Sunday to review the ongoing military offensive to retake the jihadist bastion of Mosul.

Heavy clashes erupted between regime and rebel forces in Syria's divided city of Aleppo after a "humanitarian" ceasefire announced by government ally Russia expired before the UN could evacuate wounded civilians from rebel-held areas.

Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition attacked targets in Sanaa at dawn on Sunday, hours after a three-day truce in Yemen's war expired, residents in the capital said.

Fierce gun battles erupted overnight between Yemeni rebels and pro-government forces along the border with Saudi Arabia despite a three-day ceasefire due to end late yesterday, military officials said.