The country's top court is slated to decide Thursday whether it will hear the case of four Canadian men held in Syria who argue Ottawa has a legal duty to help them return home.

More than 1,000 people were killed with chemical weapons in two attacks in 2013. France issued war crime arrest warrants for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The strike by two U.S. F-15 fighter jets was on a weapons storage facility in Syria linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the Pentagon said.

A delegation presented a report in Ottawa on Thursday after visiting the region, which is home to camps filled with family members of Islamic State group militants.

Jack Letts, a Canadian citizen, is among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps and jails run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-ravaged region from ISIL.

A Russian fighter jet flew within a few meters of a U.S. drone over Syria and fired flares at it, striking the American aircraft and damaging it.

More than 50,000 people were killed while development experts from the United Nations estimate that about 1.5 million people were left homeless by the quake.

An official said the U.S. will send F-16 fighter jets to the Gulf region this weekend to augment the A-10 attack aircraft that have been patrolling there for more than a week.

The family is among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps and prisons run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State.

The federal government has rebuffed an offer from a civil society delegation to travel to northeastern Syria on Ottawa's behalf to repatriate detained Canadians.