APRNEWS - At least eight Afghan police were killed in an airstrike during a clash with the Taliban, an official said Friday, in the latest incident of potential friendly fire in the conflict.

Police were fighting the Taliban in Helmand province late Thursday when the Afghan forces called for air support.

APRNEWS - Torched tents, a rain of bullets, the thunderous whoosh of warplanes muffling the call to prayer: survivors say life inside the Islamic State group's dying "caliphate" was a bleak catalogue of despair.

APRNEWS - Kurdish-led forces on Thursday moved deep into Hajin, the main village in the last pocket still held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, a war monitor said.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with support from air strikes conducted by the US-led coalition, deployed across the Euphrates Valley village.

APRNEWS - The Islamic State group left behind more than 200 mass graves in Iraq containing up to 12,000 victims that could hold vital evidence of war crimes, the UN said Tuesday.

APRNEWS - Egyptian security forces have killed “terrorists” in a shootout in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, where the Islamic State group is active, an interior ministry source said Sunday.

The Egyptian army has since February been conducting a major operation focused on Sinai to wipe out jihadists from IS.

AFP - Despite his eagerness to remove American troops from Syria, US President Donald Trump has given up on doing so immediately for reasons including the war against jihadists and regional politics.

- Mission accomplished? -

AFP - Pope Francis on Sunday called for an immediate end to violence in Syria to allow aid deliveries, especially in the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta which has been hit by regime bombardment.

AFP - The Turkish army on Monday said 31 soldiers had been killed since Ankara launched its offensive against a Kurdish militia in Syria last month.

AFP - Iraq needs $88.2 billion to rebuild after years of war against the Islamic State group, Planning Minister Salman al-Jumaili said Monday, as an international conference on the country's reconstruction opened in Kuwait.

AFP - The United Nations will make a fresh push from Thursday to jump-start Syrian peace talks, as violence continues to rage in a seven-year-old war that has killed more than 340,000 people.