Arab world

    Children were among 14 people killed when missiles hit a hospital and school in a rebel-held Syrian town near the Turkish border. Scores more were injured in the strikes on Azaz where tens of thousand of refugees had fled to escape heavy fighting between Syrian troops and opposition militias. Russia has been blamed for the attacks, carried out in support of a government ground offensive. We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital, said medic Juma Rahal. Meanwhile, in a separate raid, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said a hospital supported by the aid group had been "deliberately" targeted in a suspected Russian airstrike. At least nine civilians, including a child, were killed in the attack on Maaret al Numan, about 170 miles north of the capital Da...

    Turkish artillery on Saturday bombarded areas of Aleppo province in northern Syria controlled by Kurdish forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The monitoring group's head, Rami Abdel Rahman, said Turkish shelling struck areas of Aleppo, including Minnigh, recently taken by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia from Islamist rebels. Ankara considers the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG militia to be branches of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. The shelling came shortly after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ankara would, if necessary, take military action against the PYD. A YPG source told AFP that the Turkish shelling targeted the strategic ...

    A teenage girl sent by extremist group Boko Haram to blow up a refugee camp tore off her explosive vest and fled as soon as she was out of sight of her handlers. Her two companions blew themselves up in the Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria, killing at least 58 people. The girl who refused to kill herself and others was later found by local security forces. She is now in custody and has given officials information about other planned bombings, helping them to increase security at the camp. "She said she was scared because she knew she would kill people," Modu Awami, a self-defence fighter who helped question the girl, said. "But she was also frightened of going against the instructions of the men who brought her to the camp." The girl was among thousands held captive...

    A cessation of hostilities is to come into force in Syria within a week and humanitarian aid is to be delivered to besieged areas across the country in the next few days, the US, Russia and other powers said late on Thursday night at talks in Munich. There was no clear commitment to end Russian airstrikes, however. Galvanised by mounting international concern over the war, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said progress had been made towards implementing a nationwide cessation of hostilities, although it was not clear how this could happen unless Russia stops bombing civilians and mainstream rebels who are fighting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Action against Islamic State would continue. Western diplomats confirmed that there had been no agreement by Moscow ...

    A Saudi billionaire’s plea of diplomatic immunity, exploited to avoid his former wife’s claim for maintenance, has been branded as “spurious” and struck down by the high court. Christina Estrada, a one-time Pirelli calendar girl, is seeking a multimillion-pound share of Sheikh Walid Juffali’s estimated £4bn fortune after 13 years of marriage and the birth of a daughter. Juffali, 60, said he had already provided them with a generous settlement, and his diplomatic status shielded him from financial claims in the courts. But Mr Justice Hayden, sitting in the family division of the high court in London, described the diplomatic immunity defence as “spurious” and refused to dismiss Estrada’s claim. Juffali’s legal team indicated he would appeal. The businessman said he acquired...

    A displaced woman walks through Wuro Ahi IDP settlement, a host community outside of Fufore to the east of Yola. “They have a look in their eyes—they look like they are possessed,” says Amira, a Nigerian woman held captive by Boko Haram fighters for several years. “They would even drink the blood of the people they killed,” she adds, using her hands to tip an imaginary bowl of blood to her mouth. Amira is in her mid-50s, and the signs of a life of hard agricultural labor show across her face and hands. (She asked Newsweek to identify her only by the pseudonym Amira because she fears reprisals.) She is dressed in clean but worn clothes, a long skirt and a head wrap. Leaning forward in her plastic lawn chair in the modest administrative office of a camp for internally displa...

    A passenger jet was forced to make an emergency landing after an explosion blew a gaping hole in its fuselage. The pilot of the plane, which was forced to land minutes after taking off from Somalia's Mogadishu airport, said he thought a bomb was the cause. An aviation expert who examined pictures of the hole in the fuselage said the damage was consistent with an explosive device. Two people suffered minor injuries as 74 passengers and crew of the airliner were evacuated after the plane made a safe landing, Somali aviation official Ali Mohamoud said. There are unverified reports that a male passenger fell out of the hole caused by the blast. Mohamed Hassan, a police officer in Balad town - 30km north of Mogadishu - said residents had found the dead body of an old man who mi...

    A young activist shows her stomach with the words 'Fashion Kills' written on it during a demonstration against working conditions at production sites used by the H&M clothing chain Two of Britain’s high street giants have found Syrian refugee children working in their clothing factories in Turkey, leading to calls for other retailers to investigate their own supply chains. H&M and Next were the only retailers that admitted to identifying child labour in supplier factories in Turkey, but there are fears that the phenomenon could be far more widespread after several other companies failed to answer questions on the use of Syrian workers in their factories. Along with China, Cambodia and Bangladesh, Turkey is one of the largest producers of clothing sold on the Britis...

    A former Oxford schoolboy has denied reports he has joined Isis in an exclusive interview with The Independent but labelled David Cameron an evil creature and described the US-led bombing of Syria as a diseased plot designed to kill off all Muslims one by one. In his first interview since reports accused him of becoming the first white British man to travel to Syria and join the jihadist group, Jack Letts insists he has travelled to the so-called Islamic State to spread the word of Allah and help "take down" the government of Bashar al-Assad. I can speak Arabic and English, he said. That’s like my only skill. I’ve spent efforts to take down the Syrian government. In the interview, conducted over messaging app Telegram, Mr Letts, who has been widely dubbed "Jihadi Jack", co...

    A Saudi prince may have just beaten Donald Trump at a game of Twitter trolling. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said on Twitter that he's bailed the billionaire out twice -- and suggested the GOP presidential frontrunner might need his help a third time. The exchange was initiated by Trump, who had retweeted a badly Photoshopped image showing the prince with Fox News host Megyn Kelly, calling him a co-owner of the network: The reply from bin Talal: The prince's tweet included news stories showing that he bought Trump's yacht in 1991, which had been turned over to creditors when he was $900 million in debt, according to Buzzfeed. He also included a link to a story showing that he was part of the group that bought New York City's Plaza Hotel from Trump in 1995. As part of the deal...