The ferocious battle for the Islamic State group's last bastion in eastern Syria entered its fifth day on Wednesday, as exhausted families left the ever-shrinking scrap of land where holdout jihadists have been boxed in by Kurdish-led forces.

A Russian official said Sunday that Moscow had repatriated a fresh batch of children whose mothers are being held in Iraq for belonging to the Islamic State group.

Three men who allegedly plotted "chilling" terror attacks in Melbourne were charged early Tuesday, less than two weeks after a stabbing rampage inspired by the Islamic State group left two dead in Australia's second city, police said.

Authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan said Tuesday they had detained some 4,000 suspected members of the Islamic State group, including foreigners, in recent years.

The US Treasury Tuesday placed a Jamaica-based Islamic cleric on its terror blacklist, calling him a key recruiter for the Islamic State group and a propagandist who inspired numerous notorious jihadist attacks.

A third Turkish national has been arrested in Malaysia, his lawyer said Friday, after two others were taken into custody this week on suspicion of funding the Islamic State group.

A US-backed alliance of Arab-Kurdish forces entered the key jihadist-held town of Tabqa on Monday as they pursued their campaign against the Islamic State group in northern Syria.

German police said Saturday they had no evidence a teenage gunman who killed nine people in Munich had any links to the Islamic State group and described the attack as "a classic act by a deranged person."

A key French member of the Islamic State group, Salim Benghalem, who had ties to the Charlie Hebdo attackers, was sentenced in absentia by a Paris court on Thursday to 15 years in prison.

The US-led coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria killed about 2,500 jihadists last month, a military spokesman said Wednesday