Hanoi / AFP President Barack Obama on Monday confirmed Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a US air strike, hailing his death as an “important milestone” in efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan. Saturday’s bombing raid, the first known American assault on a top Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil, marks a major blow to the militant movement, …

  Istanbul / AFP Nearly half of the schools run by the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees have been hit by conflict in the last five years, it said on Monday on the sidelines of the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon earlier reminded participants on the opening day of the two-day summit that attacks on …

  Beirut/ AFP More than 120 people were killed on Monday in a wave of bombings claimed by the IS group in northwestern Syria, the deadliest attacks yet in the regime’s coastal heartland. Seven near-simultaneous explosions targeted bus stations, hospitals and other civilian sites in the seaside cities of Jableh and Tartus, which until now had been relatively insulated from Syria’s …