Spotlight
Nineteen children were among at least 31 civilians killed in air strikes on rebel-held northern Yemen last week, the United Nations said on Thursday.

Israel has ended its ban on Palestinian agricultural exports after the Palestinian Authority lifted its curb on calf imports from Israeli livestock farmers, the defence ministry said Thursday, seemingly resolving a months-long trade dispute.

The UN refugee agency on Thursday appealed to Turkey to take in more refugees from Syria, as hundreds of thousands flee the regime's brutal assault on the last rebel enclave.

Libya's unity government has announced it is halting its participation in UN talks aimed at brokering a lasting ceasefire in the war-torn country where a fragile truce has been repeatedly violated.

Egypt has begun building a concrete wall along its border with Gaza, said AFP journalists and a Palestinian security official from Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the enclave, on Wednesday.

Eight of the Yemeni defense minister's bodyguards were killed Wednesday when their vehicle hit a landmine east of the capital Sanaa, but the official was unhurt, a ministry source said.

The U.N. envoy to Syria said Wednesday that the country was on the brink of worsening violence after an exchange of threats between key players Turkey and Russia.

Turkey and Russia exchanged warnings on Wednesday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened an "imminent" operation in Syria to end the regime's brutal assault on the last rebel enclave.

Libyan eastern commander Khalifa Haftar met Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday for talks on resolving the conflict in the north African state, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

A Syrian commercial flight landed at Aleppo airport on Wednesday from Damascus, marking the resumption of internal flights between Syria's two largest cities for the first time since 2012.
The flight carrying Syrian officials and journalists was a symbolic message from President Bashar Assad's government, days after its forces consolidated control over the northwestern province of Aleppo and seized the last segments of the strategic M5 highway linking Aleppo to Damascus. The motorway between Syria's two biggest cities was reopened for the first time in eight years.
