Talks between South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir and his rival Riek Machar, resumed on Monday in the Ethopian capital, Addis Ababa.

"This session of negotiations must make progress, we must end the war," the chief mediator Seyoum Mesfin was quoted by the BBC as saying.

The talks, which began following internal conflict between the government and rebel groups backing Riek Machar in December, came to a halt in June.

2nd lead

At least 10 people were killed at a United Nations school in Rafah following an Israeli airstrike according to Palestinian officials, as fighting continued in the Gaza strip.

The attack, the second on a UN school this week, also killed at least one UN staffer. Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said:

"It is believed that there was an air strike that hit outside the gate of an UNRWA school, a designated shelter for at least 3,000 displaced residents."

The Telegraph obtained a video of the aftermath of the strike here.

 

International condemnation of UNRWA school shelling

The United States condemned the attack as "disgraceful" and added that the coordinates of the school had "been repeatedly communicated to the Israeli Defense Forces".

"The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians," the US added in a statement released on Sunday shortly after the attack.

Full statement:

The United States is appalled by today's disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3000 displaced persons, in which at least ten more Palestinian civilians were tragically killed. The coordinates of the school, like all UN facilities in Gaza, have been repeatedly communicated to the Israeli Defense Forces. We once gain stress that Israel must do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties. UN facilities, especially those sheltering civilians, must be protected, and must not be used as bases from which to launch attacks. The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians. We call for a full and prompt investigation of this incident as well as the recent shelling of other UNRWA schools.

We continue to underscore that all parties must take all feasible precautions to prevent civilian casualties and protect the civilian population and comply with international humanitarian law.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said the attack was "a moral outrage and a criminal act", AFP reports.

"This madness must stop," he added.

Describing the attack as "unacceptable", the French president Francois Hollande said "those responsible for this violation of international law answer for their actions."

The US President, Friday, criticised CIA’s previous treatment of terror suspects as having "crossed the line", whilst stating that he could understand why controversial techniques were used in the aftermath of 9/11, reports The Guardian.

"We tortured some folks," Obama said at a White House press conference, ahead of a widely-anticipated Senate report, which is expected to criticise the CIA for abusing terrorist suspects in its custody without yielding any life-saving intelligence.

ISIS fighters made significant gains on Sunday, seizing control of Iraq's largest electricity generating dam, an oilfield and two towns, report Reuters and Al Jazeera.

This is the first major defeat experienced by Kurdish troops, which including the elite Peshmerga fighters.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah called the offensive in Gaza a "war crime" and "state sponsored terrorism" on Friday, breaking his silence after over three weeks of violence in between Israel and Hamas.

“We see the blood of our brothers in Palestine shed in collective massacres that did not exclude anyone, and war crimes against humanity without scruples, humanity or morality,” Abdullah said on state television.

“This [international] community, which has observed silently what is happening in the whole region, has been indifferent to what is happening, as if what is happening is not its concern. Silence that has no justification."

See here and here.

Chile, El Salvador and Peru followed Brazil and Ecuador on Wednesday by recalling their ambassadors from Israel, protesting against Israel's offensive.

Violence escalated on Saturday as Israel launched a hunt for a missing soldier, that it alleges was captured alive by Hamas during the humanitarian cease that broke down on Friday. 

Fighters from the Al-Nusra Front have killed two Lebanese soldiers and seized a police station in Lebanon, as fighting spilled across the border from Syria earlier today.

The town of Arsal saw fighters from the Islamist group clash with Lebanese security forces and storming a security building, with at least two civilians also reported dead.

Nabil Boumonsef from the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar told Reuters,

France, Germany and the UK have advised their nationals in Libya to leave immediately, as the conflict between government forces and militias intensified, reports the BBC.

The Turkish Prime Minister, in a mass rally to support his candidacy in presidential elections, deemed the current Gaza offensive a genocide, reports i24.news.

Speaking on an award that was presented to him by the American Jewish group in 2004, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said,

Kenya’s President ordered his government to repossess illegally appropriated areas of land, in the Lamu County, that he said were causing instability in northern regions.

Uhuru Kenyatta, said that a government audit showed that, over 500,000 acres, had been acquired by companies "under dubious and corrupt circumstances."