An air strike on a school in Syria's Eastern Ghouta late Monday killed 15 children and two women who were using its basement as a bomb shelter, a monitor said.

A British woman fighting alongside Kurdish forces in the Syrian region of Afrin was killed in the Turkish-led offensive on the area, a spokeswoman for the forces said Monday.

Turkey on Monday said it would investigate reports of looting by Ankara-backed forces who seized the Syrian city of Afrin a day earlier.

An Israeli military court has blocked a bid to make the high-profile trial of Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi public, meaning it will continue behind closed doors, her lawyer said Monday.

The Czech Republic on Monday said it would not extradite to Turkey a prominent Syrian Kurdish leader who was briefly detained in Prague last month, as Saleh Muslim has already left the country. 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas labeled the U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman a "son of a dog" on Monday during a scathing attack on Donald Trump's policies.

An Israeli soldier convicted of manslaughter for shooting dead a prone Palestinian assailant in a case that divided the country had his sentence reduced by a third Monday by a military parole board.

The head of the international Red Cross called Monday for access to civilians in the Kurdish-majority city of Afrin, warning Turkish aid workers lacked credibility after Ankara-led forces took the city.

In the eastern Damascus suburb of Jaramana, a group of somber young Syrians lights candles under a massive portrait of two smiling men: brothers killed in rebel shelling on the capital. 

The district has been pounded by anti-government fighters entrenched in Eastern Ghouta, long the opposition's main enclave on the capital's outskirts but now facing a ferocious government assault. 

Turkey on Monday insisted pro-Ankara forces did not plan to remain in Afrin as occupiers after they ousted Kurdish militia from the northern Syrian city.