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Theresa May, left, during a meeting in Taormina, Sicily, on May 26, 2017.

The Group of Seven nations must help Iraq and its neighbors catch and prosecute foreign nationals who travel to fight for Islamic State, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said as she called for global action in the wake of the Manchester bombing.

Speaking at the G-7 summit in Taormina, Sicily, May warned that foreign nationals who travel to Syria and Iraq will try to return to their home countries to carry out attacks on civilians.

Allies must share the names of terror suspects to help the countries they pass through to catch them -- and should also hand over evidence such as videos or papers that show citizens who have traveled to conflict zones, she said.

May also wants the G-7 to help Iraq and other countries prosecute foreign fighters they capture in their own courts. Her call came four days after a suicide bomber killed 22 people including children at a concert in Manchester, northern England.

It is vital we do more to cooperate with our partners in the region to step up returns and prosecutions of foreign fighters, May said. This means improving intelligence-sharing, evidence gathering and bolstering countries police and legal processes.

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U.K.'s May Urges G-7 to Help Iraq Prosecute Foreign Jihadists - Bloomberg

Common Dreams

Iraq and Afghanistan: The $6 Trillion Bill for America's Longest War Is Unpaid Common Dreams The high rates of injuries and increased survival rates in Iraq and Afghanistan mean that over half the 2.5 million who served there suffered some degree of disability. Their health care and disability benefits alone will easily cost $1 trillion in ... and more »

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Iraq and Afghanistan: The $6 Trillion Bill for America's Longest War Is Unpaid - Common Dreams

WASHINGTON Three senior Islamic State military leaders and planners were killed in coalition attacks in Iraq and Syria over the past two months, the coalition fighting the militants said in a statement released by the Pentagon on Friday.

Mustafa Gunes, an Islamic State operative from Turkey, was killed in an air strike in Mayadin, Syria, on April 27, the statement said. Abu Asim al-Jazeri, an Islamic State planner from Algeria, was killed in Mayadin on May 11, it said.

Abu Khattab al-Rawi, an Islamic State military leader, was killed in al Qaim, Iraq, on May 18, the statement said. It said all three were foreign fighters but did not identify al-Rawi's home country.

(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

MINYA, Egypt Egyptian air force planes on Friday carried out strikes directed at camps in Libya where Cairo believes militants responsible for a deadly attack on Christians earlier in the day were trained, Egyptian military sources said.

WASHINGTON Two Chinese fighter jets intercepted a U.S. Navy surveillance plane over the South China Sea on Wednesday, with one coming within 200 yards (180 meters) of the American aircraft, U.S. officials told Reuters.

TRIPOLI Heavy clashes erupted in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Friday, as armed groups aligned with the U.N.-backed government fought to fend off a major offensive by rival Islamist-leaning forces and militia fighters.

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Three top Islamic State militants killed in Iraq, Syria: Pentagon - Reuters

IRBIL, Iraq The U.S. Army failed to properly keep tracks of hundreds of humvees, tens of thousands of rifles and other pieces of military equipment that were sent to Iraq, according to a governmentaudit from 2016 that was obtained by Amnesty International and released Wednesday.

The price of the equipment meant to equip the Iraqi army, Shiite militias and the Kurdish peshmerga totaled more than $1 billion.

This audit provides a worrying insight into the U.S. Armys flawed and potentially dangerous system for controlling millions of dollars worth of arms transfers to a hugely volatile region, Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty Internationals Arms Control and Human Rights researcher, said in an emailed statement.

[Tracking U.S. weapons grows harder in the fog of Iraqs fragmented war]

The arms and equipment transfers were apart of the Iraq Train and Equip Fund, a program that initially appropriated $1.6 billionunder the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act to help Iraqi forces combat the rise of the Islamic State. The 2017 act is slated to lend$919.5 million to the fund.

The audit found that improper record-keeping, including duplicatedspreadsheets, handwritten receipts and a lack of a central database to track the transfers, contributed to the reportsfindings. Additionally, the audit claimed that under the Iraqi Train and Equip Fund, once the equipment was transferredto the government of Iraq, the Pentagon no longer had to monitor the materialas it was no longer U.S. government property.

While likely not an issue for things such as uniform items and body armor, the lack of any post-transfer accountability on U.S. arms and munitions raises the chances for illicitdiversion from the intended supply chain. Currently, the Middle East is awash in U.S. weapons and equipment, and with President Trumps decision to equip Kurdish forces in Syria with more weapons, it is unclear whether the United States has learned from any of its past mistakes in the region.

The need for post-delivery checks is vital, Wilcken said. Any fragilities along the transfer chain greatly increase the risks of weapons going astray in a region where armed groups have wrought havoc and caused immense human suffering.

The audit said the training and equipment fundsmanagementhad initiateda two-step corrective action plan to implement visibility and accountability systems following concerns raised by the Pentagons inspector general. The audit does not detail what the corrective actions might entail. However, it wouldlikely include greater oversight by the Pentagons End Use Monitoring division. The division runs the Golden Sentry Program, with the intended purpose ofmonitoring the transfer and stockpiles of U.S. equipment that is providedto other countries.

[Afghanistan may have lost track of more than 200,000 weapons]

A 2015 audit on the Iraq Train and Equip Fund found similar issues, including almost no record-keeping on the Iraqi side.

Iain Overton, a former BBC journalist, and histeam of researchers pulled 14 years of Pentagon contracts, revealing that the United States has supplied more than 1.45 million firearms to various armed groupsin Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a New York Times magazine report. Those includemore than 978,000 assault rifles, 266,000 pistols and almost 112,000 machine guns. It is unclear how many of those remain in possession of their intended recipients.

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U.S. failed to keep proper track of more than $1 billion in weapons and - Washington Post

The father and a brother of suspected Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi have been detained by security personnel in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, according to witnesses and officials.

Ramadan Abedi, at his home before being detained in Tripoli, Libya, on May 24.

Photographer: Ghaith Shennib/Bloomberg

Three vehicles drove up to the Abedi home Wednesday evening and several men wearing uniform, some of them masked, detained Ramadan Abedi, the alleged attackers father, and two other unidentified men in the street. It wasnt immediately possible to reach a spokesman for the United-Nations backed government in Tripoli for comment.

Separately, security forces announced they had Salman Abedis younger brother, Hesham, in custody. In a statement, theSpecial Deterrence Force said he had admitted to having links with Islamic State and being in the U.K. at the time the Manchester attack was being planned. The statement said Hesham had received money from his elder sibling. The force couldnt immediately be contacted.

The 22 people killed in the Manchester bombing included elementary school students, with the youngest just eight years old. Of the 59 wounded, many were children under 16. The U.K.s terrorism threat has been raised from severe to critical -- the highest level -- for the first time since 2007, meaning another attack may be imminent. The army will be deployed to guard national sites under police review as campaigning for the June 8 general election resumes on Thursday. Authorities fear Abedi wasnt working alone.

Ramadan Abedi was detained hours after he described in an interview with Bloomberg his disbelief over newshis 22-year-old son had carried out the U.K.s deadliest act of terrorism in more than a decade. He said the two had last week spoke about meeting in Tripoli during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

When asked if he had been contacted by British authorities about his son, who was reportedly known to the U.K. security services before Mondays bombing of a pop concert in Manchester, northwest England,Ramadan Abedi answered No.

The fasting month starts this weekend. I was really shocked when I saw the news, I still dont believe it,he said in Libyas capital.

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My son was as religious as any child who opens his eyes in a religious family, said Ramadan Abedi, who arrived in the U.K. from his native Libya in the 1990s and stayed until 2008. As we were discussing news of similar attacks earlier, he was always against those attacks, saying theres no religious justification for them. I dont understand how hed have become involved in an attack that led to the killing of children.

Salman Abedi made frequent trips to visit his family in Libya, his father said, and was in the country last week, where he had told his mother he intended to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

My son was supposed to be with us for Ramadan, but he told us he was going to do Umrah, via the U.K., and thats why he left,he said, using the term for a lesser pilgrimage to Mecca that can be undertaken at any time of the year.

Until now my son is a suspect, and the authorities havent come up with a final conclusion, Ramadan Abedi, who was born in 1965, said in the interview, insisting on his sons innocence. Every father knows his son and his thoughts, my son does not have extremist thoughts.

Abedi was first revealed as the attacker on Tuesday by CBS in the U.S., prompting U.K. police to put out a statement saying speculation was unhelpful and potentially damaging to the investigation. The U.K. later confirmed his identity. British Home Secretary Amber Rudd later criticized U.S. officials for the initial leaks in an usually blunt rebuke.

On Wednesday, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told a television interviewer that Abedi had traveled to Syria and had Islamic State links.

Islamic State claimed the Manchester attack in a short message in Arabic and Englishposted on the online messaging service Telegram and picked up by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant websites. It did not give any details about the attacker, or how the blast was carried out, leading some analysts to question the extent of the militant groups involvement.

Ramadan Abedi said he served as a security officer during Muammar Qaddafis rule before being accused by the regime of links to extremist groups, accusations he strongly denies. He left for the U.K. in 1993, returning to Libya in 2008, where he was joined by most of his family after the ouster of Qaddafi in the 2011 revolution. Salman and one brother stayed in the U.K. to finish their studies.

Libya descended into turmoil after the NATO-backed uprising that ousted Qaddafi in 2011, with myriad armed groups -- some of them Islamist -- and two administrations vying for influence.

I was working with homeland security, under Qaddafi, the father said. I know the dangers of those extremist groups, and I was raising my children to make them aware of those groups.

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Father and Brother of Manchester Bomber Arrested in Libya ...