The Berlin market attacker, Anis Amri, has been shot dead by police in Milan.
Thousands of civilians have fled Mosul in the last week as the Iraqi military and Kurdish peshmerga attempt to retake the city from Islamic State control.
An operation to retake control of the city of Mosul from the Islamic State has been launched by a coalition of the Iraqi military, Kurdish Peshmerga, and other allied forces.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bomb attacks in Damascus and Homs, which left at least 140 people dead.
The Syrian government carried out a policy of extermination against thousands of detainees at prisons across the country, say investigators from the UN Human Rights Council.