Beirut, Lebanon / AFP Air strikes on the IS group’s de facto Syrian capital Raqa killed 25 civilians, six of them children, a monitoring group said on Wednesday. “Dozens more were wounded, some of them critically,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding it was not immediately able to determine who carried out the Tuesday raids. The Syrian ...

  United Nations / AFP The UN Security Council on Tuesday urged the international community to live up to its “moral and political obligation” to aid Iraqi civilians who fled an operation against the IS group in Fallujah. Council members “welcomed the successful counteroffensive” launched by Iraqi forces and coalition partners on May 22-23 to retake Fallujah, a key extremist ...

  Seoul, South Korea / AFP Nuclear-armed North Korea conducted two back-to-back tests of a powerful new medium-range missile on Wednesday, with both achieving a significant increase in flight distance over previous failed launches, South Korea’s Defence Ministry said. Both tests were believed to be of a much-hyped, intermediate-range Musudan missile — theoretically capable of reaching US bases as far away ...