French and Russian air strikes in northern Syria have killed at least 33 jihadists with the Islamic State group in the last 72 hours, a monitoring group said on Wednesday.

Dozens of IS fighters were also wounded in the raids on weapons depots, barracks and checkpoints in the jihadists' de facto Syrian capital of Raqa, said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday slammed U.S. domestic "hysteria" about the security risks posed by Syrian refugees, accusing his political foes of demonizing "widows and orphans."

In an unusually fierce rebuke, Obama struck out at American politicians who have called for migrant curbs in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.

A passport found near the body of one of the Stade de France suicide bombers may have belonged to a Syrian regime soldier killed several months ago, a source close to the investigation told AFP.

The passport is in the name of Ahmad al-Mohammad, born September 10, 1990 in the Syrian city of Idlib.

Two U.S. states say they will block or suspend a program to resettle Syrian refugees within their borders, citing security concerns after Friday's wave of deadly assaults in Paris.

"After full consideration of this weekend's attacks of terror on innocent citizens in Paris, I will oppose any attempt to relocate Syrian refugees to Alabama," said Robert Bentley, governor of the southern U.S. state.

In a tent in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Sanaa al-Absi extracts a condom from its wrapper in front of a group of giggling Syrian refugee women and begins explaining its use.

It is the first time some of the women have seen the contraceptive, which they are learning about as part of a rare program teaching Syrian refugees family planning in Lebanon.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian will attend international talks on the Syrian conflict this weekend in Vienna, official IRNA news agency reported Friday.

The talks due to start Saturday will bring together 17 countries and three international bodies and are the second round of negotiations between foreign actors with a stake in Syria's war.

Syria's army scored its second important victory in two days on Thursday ahead of international talks in Vienna, but the U.S. warned a deal is unlikely without agreement over the fate of President Bashar Assad.

State television announced the capture of Al-Hader, a former opposition bastion near the key Aleppo-Damascus highway, just 48 hours after regime forces broke a siege by the Islamic State group of the Kweyris air base in the east of Aleppo province.

When Oxana's sailor father left his home in Crimea's Black Sea port of Sevastopol in September, he just said he would be going to "the Mediterranean Sea".

But the family soon realized the true purpose of his mission -- Russia's military operation in Syria.

Syria's army on Wednesday recaptured the only road into the government-held side of Aleppo city from Islamic State group fighters, state media reported, effectively breaking a nearly two-week-long siege.

The army gained full control of the route from the regime-controlled west of Aleppo to Khanasser, Ithriya and al-Salmiyeh "after eliminating a number of Daesh (IS) terrorists," state television said.

A U.N. panel will soon begin work on tracking those responsible for deadly gas attacks in Syria, but the head of the investigation says it will be difficult to come up with a complete list of perpetrators.

Virginia Gamba stressed that the team of 24 multi-skilled experts she is assembling will adhere to "sound, objective, impartial" guidelines "that no one can question" to find the culprits.