Turkish jets and artillery have struck US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, killing as many as 200 fighters, according to Turkey's state-run news agency.

Update (1.27pm): A Syrian man arrested on suspicion of planning a bomb attack in eastern Germany is believed to have contacts in the so-called 'Islamic State' (IS) group, according to police.

Update 4.47pm: A news agency run by the so-called 'Islamic State' group has claimed the man who stabbed and wounded eight people at a shopping mall in Minnesota, before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer, was a "soldier of the Islamic State".

Update 6.11pm: The so-called 'Islamic State' group has claimed responsibility after a Syrian blew himself up outside a wine bar in Ansbach, injuring 15 people.

Islamic State militants have kidnapped 300 cement workers and contractors in an area north-east of Damascus, Syrian state TV said.

The Pentagon is moving to increase the number of American troops in Iraq in the wake of new strikes that killed the Islamic State's finance minister and other top leaders of the terror group.

Investigators in the US believe the woman who carried out Wednesday's gun attack in California with her husband had sworn allegiance to the so-called Islamic State.

Russia's deputy defence minister has accused Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family of personally profiting from oil trade with militants from the so-called 'Islamic State' group.

The US-backed Kurdish administration in northern Syria has deliberately displaced thousands of mainly Arab citizens and demolished homes, according to Amnesty International.

David Cameron has urged schools to recognise their role in the “fight against Islamist extremist terror” as police urgently try to trace three girls believed to have fled to Syria to join Islamic State.

A new video by the militant Islamic State group claims that US aid worker Peter Kassig has been beheaded.

President Barack Obama has acknowledged that US intelligence agencies underestimated the threat from Islamic State militants and overestimated the ability and will of Iraq’s army to fight.