Air strikes by Syrian or Russian warplanes killed at least 26 people, most of them school children, in a village in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province yesterday, rescue workers and a monitoring group said.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said yesterday they had developed a “suicide drone” capable of delivering explosives to blow up targets at sea and on land.

Islamic State fighters kept up yesterday their fierce defence of the southern approaches to Mosul, which has held up Iraqi troops there and forced an elite army unit east of the city to put a more rapid advance on hold.

Ride-hailing service Uber plans to make Cairo a regional hub with an investment of more than $50mn in the next two years, building on its breakneck growth in the infamously traffic-clogged city, its Egypt general manager said.

Jihadists with the Islamic State group were shaving their beards and changing hideouts in Mosul, residents said, as a major Iraqi offensive moved ever closer to the city on Wednesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said air strikes killed at least 16 people in the Haas village in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province on Wednesday, six of them children.

A suspected Syrian army helicopter dropped barrel bombs on Turkish-backed rebels on Tuesday, the Turkish military said, in what appeared to be the first direct clash with Syrian forces since Turkey launched a cross-border incursion in August.

The UN envoy for Yemen yesterday presented a proposal to the Houthi rebels and their allies on advancing prospects for peace as protests marred the final day of his talks in Sanaa.

Iraqi forces were inching to within striking distance of eastern Mosul yesterday as defence chiefs from the US-led coalition met in Paris to review the offensive on the militant bastion.

Russia said yesterday it would extend a moratorium on air strikes on Syria’s Aleppo into a ninth day, but a monitor and a civil defence official said that rebel-held parts of the divided city had been struck in recent days.

Unidentified gunmen killed two Saudi policemen in the mainly Shia eastern city of Dammam early on Tuesday, authorities in the region said.

Islamic State fighters expanded the area under their control in a remote western Iraqi town near the borders with Syria and Jordan from a third to about half, security sources said on Tuesday.