That concludes our live blogging for today. Please join us again tomorrow for more coverage.
A Reuters report:
The United States and its allied targeted Islamic State militants in Iraq with 18 strikes on Friday and five strikes in Syria, the U.S. military said on Sunday.
Four of the strikes in Iraq were near Mosul, destroying two Islamic State heavy machine guns, two fighting positions, five assembly areas, and a checkpoint, the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement.
Near Ramadi, also in Iraq, seven strikes struck three separate Islamic State tactical units, it said.
An AP report:
A survivor hidden in a tree says he watched Boko Haram extremists firebomb huts and heard the screams of children burning to death, among 86 people officials say died in the latest attack by Nigeria's homegrown Islamic extremists.
Scores of charred corpses and bodies with bullet wounds littered the streets from Saturday night's attack on Dalori village and two nearby camps housing 25,000 refugees, according to survivors and soldiers at the scene just 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram and the biggest city in Nigeria's northeast.
The shooting, burning and explosions from three suicide bombers continued for nearly four hours in the unprotected area, survivor Alamin Bakura said, weeping on a telephone call to The Associated Press. He said several of his family members were killed or wounded.
The violence continued as three female suicide bombers blew up among people who managed to flee to neighboring Gamori village, killing many people, according to a soldier at the scene who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to journalists.
Troops arrived at Dalori around 8:40 p.m. Saturday but were unable to overcome the attackers, who were better armed, said soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The Boko Haram fighters only retreated after reinforcements arrived with heavier weapons, they said.
Journalists visited the carnage Sunday and spoke to survivors who complained it had taken too long for help to arrive from nearby Maiduguri, the military headquarters of the fight to curb Boko Haram. They said they fear another attack.
Eighty-six bodies were collected by Sunday afternoon, according to Mohammed Kanar, area coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency. Another 62 people are being treated for burns, said Abba Musa of the State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri.
Boko Haram has been attacking soft targets, increasingly with suicide bombers, since the military last year drove them out of towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria.
The 6-year Islamic uprising has killed about 20,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.
An abridged report from AP:
The lifeless body of Yemen's top Salafi cleric in the southern port city of Aden was found disfigured on Sunday hours after he was abducted following an anti-extremism sermon, security officials told The Associated Press.
Government forces repelled Shiite rebels from Aden last July, but have been unable to restore order there ever since. With government forces now pushing north toward the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, the vacuum in Aden has given rise to affiliates of extremist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, who have grabbed lands and exercised control in various parts of the city for months.
The influential cleric, Samahan Abdel-Aziz, also known as Sheikh Rawi, had delivered a fiery sermon against the al-Qaida and IS branches on Friday, the officials said. His body was found bloodied and bearing signs of torture in Sheikh Othman, an area largely controlled by extremists, they added.
Abdel-Aziz was kidnapped by gunmen outside his mosque late Saturday in the pro-government neighborhood of Bureiqa, they said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media. They remain neutral in the war that has splintered the Arab world's poorest country.
An abridged report from AFP:
International pressure mounted Sunday on Libya to form a national unity government as the Islamic State jihadist group expands at the doorstep of Europe and the rest of Africa.
In Libya itself, prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj met controversial army chief General Khalifa Haftar as part of a series of encounters to press the creation of a UN-backed unity cabinet.
The meeting came as African Union leaders at a summit in Addis Ababa called for a political solution in Libya to curb the spread of IS.
In Paris, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said IS could infiltrate the ranks of refugees using Libya as a springboard to reach Europe, adding that a unity government ould help "eradicate" IS.
Libya has been in political turmoil and rocked by violence since the 2011 toppling of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Since the summer of 2014, the country has had two rival administrations, with the recognised authorities based in the country's far east and a militia-backed authority in Tripoli.
The situation has been further compromised with the emergence of IS in the oil-rich North African country and a brisk business by people smugglers ferrying migrants to Europe.
The jihadist group, which controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, has claimed several attacks and beheadings in Libya and last year captured the coastal city of Sirte.
In January, IS jihadist pushed east from Sirte in an attempt to seize oil terminals in Ras Lanuf and Al-Sidra, which lie in an "oil crescent" along the northern coast.
That same month it claimed responsibility for a January 7 truck bombing at a police school in Zliten, east of Tripoli, that killed more than 50 people, the deadliest attack since the 2011 revolt.
An AP report:
Greek police say they have arrested two men suspected of possessing weapons and attempting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group.
One of those arrested was a 29-year-old Serbia-born Swedish citizen who was released from prison in 2011 after serving six years for possessing explosives and threatening to carry out an attack, a police officer told The Associated Press on Sunday. The man had been arrested and convicted in Bosnia before he was transferred to serve the last part of his sentence in Sweden.
He was arrested again Thursday near the Greek-Turkish border along with a 20-year-old man originally from Yemen. Both were traveling on Swedish passports and Greek police said they found two long knives, a rifle holster and military uniforms in their luggage.
The police officer, who demanded anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak about an ongoing investigation, said they are believed to have been on their way from Sweden to Syria. They had left Sweden by car and then flew from Copenhagen to Athens. After that, they traveled by bus to Thessaloniki and then to the northeastern city of Alexandroupolis, where they were arrested while trying to find local transport to the Turkish border, which they planned to cross on foot.
An official police statement said the two were arrested during a routine inspection, but the officer told the AP they had been tracked throughout their journey.
Sweden's Foreign Ministry confirmed that two Swedish citizens had been detained in Greece but gave no other details.
Sweden's security police are "aware" of the arrest, but haven't been cooperating with Greek security officials on the case, Swedish security police spokeswoman Sirpa Franzen told the AP, without providing further details.
The two suspects will appear before a magistrate on Tuesday.
Reuters says U.S. officials told them they don't think there are nine Americans among those detained in Saudi Arabia on suspicion of terrorism:
U.S. officials said on Sunday they did not believe nine U.S. citizens were among 33 suspects detained on terrorism charges in Saudi Arabia over the past week, as reported by a Saudi newspaper.
The English-language daily Saudi Gazette, citing an unnamed source, on Sunday reported that four Americans were detained last Monday, followed by another five in the following days. Saudi authorities also detained 14 Saudis, three Yemenis, two Syrians, an Indonesian, a Filipino, a United Arab Emirates citizen, a Palestinian and a citizen of Kazakhstan, the report said.
Six U.S. officials told Reuters that the U.S. government could not confirm that any Americans were among the 33 suspects detained.
However, two officials said U.S. authorities were still checking names against databases. Saudi authorities were also investigating the citizenship of those detained, one of the officials said.
None of the U.S. officials was authorized to speak publicly, and the U.S. embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Saudi Arabia in 2014 declared Islamic State a terrorist organisation and has detained hundreds of its supporters. The group, which controls territory in Iraq and Syria, has staged a series of attacks in the kingdom.
On Friday an attack at a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Saudi Arabia's al-Ahsa district in Eastern Province killed four people and injured 18, the latest in a string of attacks claimed by Sunni jihadists that have left over 50 dead in the past year.
The website of the Interior Ministry's militant rehabilitation centre listed four U.S. citizens as having been detained on Jan. 25 and four more over the previous three months. It did not list any more recent detentions.
An abridged report from AFP:
A delegation including senior US diplomat Brett McGurk met with members of a Kurd-Arab alliance fighting the Islamic State jihadist group inside Syria on Saturday, Kurdish sources said Sunday.
The visit appeared to be the first by a senior US government official inside Syrian territory.
McGurk, who is US President Barack Obama's envoy to an international coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq, was accompanied by French and British officials, the sources told AFP.
One Kurdish source close to the meeting said a "high-level military delegation from the international coalition (against IS)," met Saturday with senior members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance.
The source said the talks in the Kurdish town of Kobane covered "military plans" for the fight against IS.
"These meetings will have an impact on many developments that will be seen in the area," he added, without providing further details.
The talks were confirmed by a second Kurdish source on the ground and reported in Kurdish media.
Contacted by AFP, the US State Department was not immediately able to confirm or deny the reported visit.
The SDF is an alliance of Syrian Kurds and Arabs who are fighting IS with support from the US-led coalition.
It is composed mostly of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), a powerful militia that has proved Syria's most effective force against IS, along with smaller units of Syrian Arab Muslim and Christian fighters.
The meetings come after the YPG's political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), was excluded from new peace talks in Geneva being organised by the UN.
Another abridged report from AP:
One of two attackers who wore explosive belts in Friday's deadly assault on a Shiite mosque in the country's east was a 22-year-old Saudi national, Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry announced.
Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, in a statement released Saturday night, identified the suicide bomber as Abdulrahman bin Abdullah bin Suleiman al-Tuwaijri. He had been briefly detained in 2013 in the Saudi city of Buraydah during a protest to demand the release of imprisoned Saudis accused of fighting abroad and having ties to extremist groups.
Al-Tuwaijri died when he detonated his suicide vest at the entrance of the Imam Reda Mosque in al-Ahsa during Friday prayers. A second attacker was detained after an exchange of gunfire with police. He was not identified.
Al-Turki said four Saudis were killed and 33 people were wounded in the attack. Fourteen of those wounded are still receiving treatment for their injuries, he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Islamic State militants have targeted the kingdom's minority Shiites in the past.
An abridged report from AP:
The number of Syrian refugees stranded on Jordan's border and waiting for permission to enter has risen to 20,000, with 4,000 to 5,000 more arriving in the remote desert area every month, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in the kingdom said Sunday.
In recent months, Jordan has permitted only several dozen refugees to enter each day, leading to rapidly growing crowds of Syrians, including women and children, who are stuck in two areas along the Syrian-Jordanian border.
Jordanian authorities have cited security concerns for the bottle neck, saying many refugees come from areas controlled by the Islamic State group and need to undergo strict vetting. International aid officials have urged Jordan to speed up the process and move refugees quickly to the U.N.-run Azraq refugee camp which is still more than half empty and could house thousands of newcomers.