Twin bomb attacks on the offices of Turkey's pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) were carried out by a militant linked to an ultra-leftist group, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday.

Davutoglu said a suspect had been identified as having links to the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) although no one has been arrested over the attacks on Monday on HDP's regional headquarters in the southern cities of Adana and Mersin. 

The United States and Cuba launched a fourth round of talks Thursday, seeking to overcome hurdles blocking the restoration of diplomatic ties, as Cuban exiles warned of a fresh crackdown on dissidents in Havana.

The delegations, led by top U.S. diplomat for Latin America Roberta Jacobson and Cuba's chief negotiator Josefina Vidal, met at the imposing State Department building in Washington, the hub of U.S. diplomacy.

An Ankara court on Thursday fined one of Turkey's top newspapers for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a column, as tensions between government and media grow ahead of June 7 elections.

The court deemed that the August 25, 2014 column by one of the star commentators on the Hurriyet daily, Mehmet Yilmaz, was an "attack on the personal rights" of Erdogan.

After a Swiss court reportedly ordered an Israeli oil firm to compensate Iran over a scrapped joint venture, Israel said Thursday that its laws prohibited any payment to "the enemy."

Iranian state news agency IRNA said Wednesday that the court had found  Israel's Trans-Asian Oil (TAO) liable for payment of $1.1 billion to the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).

At least 40 rebels were killed as a regime air strike on their base in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo triggered a huge explosion Thursday, a monitoring group said.

The Islamist rebels had shells stored at the base, which magnified the blast, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.

An Israeli military court said Thursday it had ordered the release of Palestinian legislator Khalida Jarrar, detained at her home in the West Bank city of Ramallah on April 2.

At the time of her arrest, the army had said she posed unspecified "substantial security risks."

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on Thursday warned of potential war crimes in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Palmyra after Islamic State fighters seized the ancient Syrian city.

"With the reported occupation of the ancient city of Palmyra by Da'esh, yet again hundreds of people have been killed and thousands more risk to be exposed to arbitrary violent actions and more destructions of cultural sites might be perpetrated," Mogherini said in a statement, using an alternative name for Islamic State fighters.

Saudi-led coalition warplanes carried out fresh raids on rebel positions in southern Yemen Thursday as pro-government tribesmen advanced on Shiite Huthi strongholds in the north, tribal and army sources said.

On the political front, Iran said it backed U.N.-brokered efforts to relaunch political talks but was opposed to foreign interference in Yemen's conflict, in which it backs the rebels.

Three members of a Danish human rights group faced possible deportation Thursday after being accused of breaching immigration rules, a Russian rights activist told AFP Thursday.

The Danish, German and Latvian citizens were participating in a workshop jointly organized by the prominent Russian rights group Committee Against Torture and the Danish Institute Against Torture.

Iran voiced support Thursday for efforts to relaunch political talks on the Yemen crisis but said it opposed foreign interference in the conflict in which it backs the Huthi rebels.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also called for a ceasefire in Yemen, where Saudi-led coalition warplanes have stepped up raids on the Shiite rebels who have overrun much of the country.