APRNEWS - Belgium is prepared to accept former Democratic Republic of Congo vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba, after he was cleared of war crimes last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Didier Reynders disclosed on Thursday.

REUTERS - At least 15 people were killed and six were raped during a referendum campaign in Burundi that could let President Pierre Nkurunziza hold power until 2034, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.

REUTERS - The remaining fighters started to withdraw from the last rebel-held enclave in central Syria on Wednesday, state television reported, sealing the government’s control over the area and opening a major stretch of the country’s most important highway.

FRANCE24 - Tens of thousands of Houthi rebel supporters demonstrated in Yemen’s capital on Monday to mark three years of the Saudi offensive, hours after Riyadh said it had intercepted seven rebel missiles.

AFP - New regime strikes hit the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta on Sunday despite a UN Security Council demand for a ceasefire to end one of the most ferocious assaults of Syria's civil war.

AFP - A UN rights commission in South Sudan said Friday there was sufficient evidence to charge at least 41 senior officers and officials with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

South Sudan's four-year-old civil war has been characterised by extreme brutality and attacks on civilians.

AFP - Some 1,600 people have been invited to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi next week for a Syria peace congress with the aim of agreeing a post-war constitution, Moscow said Thursday.

REUTERS - The Syrian government hit back on Thursday against French criticism of its military campaign in rebel-held Idlib, saying it was targeting terrorist groups that were not party to an agreement to reduce fighting in the rebel-held region.

AFP - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced that he had suspended peace talks with National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels in response to what he said were guerrilla attacks earlier Wednesday.

"I have talked with the head of the government delegation in Quito to tell him to return immediately to assess the future of the process," Santos said in a televised address.

AFP - Air strikes and artillery fire killed at least 15 civilians on Tuesday in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus targeted by near-daily regime bombardment, a war monitor said.

Three children were among the dead in Eastern Ghouta, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said the air raids were carried out by regime and Russian warplanes.

The deadliest strikes hit the Hammuriyeh district where eight civilians were killed, the Britain-based monitor said.