Afghan Taliban and Pakistan agree short truce after deadly clashes
Pakistan and Afghanistan's Taliban government say they have agreed a temporary ceasefire after fresh border clashes and reported Pakistani air strikes on Kabul and Kandahar, BBC reported.
Both sides claimed the other requested the 48-hour ceasefire, which Pakistan said took effect from 13:00 GMT on Wednesday.
Earlier a Taliban spokesman said 12 civilians had been killed and more than 100 wounded by Pakistani firing. Both sides claimed the other suffered heavy casualties. None of the deaths could be independently confirmed, according to BBC.
Hamas returns two more bodies but says it cannot retrieve remaining dead hostages
Hamas says it has handed over the bodies of two more Israeli hostages under the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire deal, but says it needs time and specialised equipment to recover the rest of the deceased from the ruins of Gaza, BBC reported.
The group's armed wing said in a statement it was committed to the deal but had returned all the bodies of hostages it was able to reach.
US President Donald Trump has said Israeli forces could resume fighting in Gaza if Hamas does not uphold the agreement, according to BBC.
Former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga dies aged 80
Former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has died at the age of 80, family sources have told the BBC.
Odinga died on Wednesday while receiving medical treatment at a hospital in India.
In recent weeks, there has been speculation about his health, although family members and political allies had dismissed reports suggesting he was critically ill, BBC reported.
Syria’s Assad government secretly moved mass grave to cover up killings
Bashar al-Assad’s government carried out a two-year clandestine operation to truck thousands of bodies from one of Syria’s largest known mass graves to a secret location more than an hour away in the remote desert, a Reuters investigation has found, Reuters reported.
The conspiracy by the then-Syrian president’s military to excavate the mass grave in Qutayfah and create an enormous second mass grave in the desert outside the town of Dhumair has not been previously reported.
To uncover the location of the Dhumair grave site and detail the vast operation, Reuters spoke to 13 people with direct knowledge of the two-year effort to move the bodies, reviewed documents produced by officials involved, and analyzed hundreds of satellite images of both grave sites taken over the course of several years, according to Reuters.
