Anadolu said that during his questioning, Yusuf Nazik confessed to having received orders from Syrian intelligence to plan an attack in Turkey.

The nine suspects were each handed 101 life sentences, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Russian and Syrian jets stepped up their bombing of an Islamic State bastion along the Jordan-Israel border in southwestern Syria, as the militants pushed into areas abandoned by other rebel groups, diplomatic and opposition sources said.

A suicide bombing Sunday targeting a warehouse in Kirkuk where ballot boxes from Iraq's May elections were stored wounded 19 people, days before a vote recount, a security source said.

At least four people were killed in northeast Nigeria on Thursday in a suicide blast at an open-air mosque, militia and refugee camp officials told AFP.

Four people were killed and 27 others wounded Wednesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a tent filled with mourners in north Baghdad, Iraqi police and medical sources said.

At least five people, including four civilians and an Afghan soldier, were killed in a suicide car bombing near a security facility in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand on Saturday morning ...

The event underlined the risks of greater use of air power under a new US strategy announced last year to try to force the Taliban to the negotiating table.

The three people were each given 12 aggravated life sentences, 12 terms of 16 years and 16 eight-year terms for the injuries caused.

Chris Parker, 33, had claimed to have helped some of those injured in last year's attack but CCTV footage shown at Manchester Crown Court captured him rifling through the purse of victim Pauline Healey.

Turkish warplanes struck positions of a US-backed Kurdish militia in Syria's Afrin province on Saturday, a senior Turkish official said, in a move likely to drive a deeper wedge between Ankara and the United States.

Former residents and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were heavy aerial strikes on eastern Syria's largest city as troops pushed towards the Hay al Umal area.