At least 52 people – including many women and children – have been killed when air strikes by Iraqi forces mistakenly targeted civilians gathering in the ISIL-held western city of al-Qaim, military officials told Al Jazeera.

At least 29 civilians were killed and scores of others were injured on Tuesday in airstrikes launched by the Assad regime’s aircrafts over Idlib and Aleppo, according to a civil defense official.

Civilians in rebel-held eastern Aleppo are expressing desperation over their survival as fighting between the government and the opposition carves deeper into their half of the city.

Some 20,000 people have fled intensified attacks on rebel-held eastern Aleppo in Syria since Sunday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Tuesday.

Fighting between Iraqi forces and ISIL fighters has cut water supplies across a large part of Mosul, affecting 40 percent of residents in the city where poorer families are already struggling to feed themselves.

Freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall have killed at least 20 people, mostly children, this week in a remote northern province in Afghanistan, local officials say.

At least 80 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a massive suicide truck bomb blast at a petrol station south of Iraq’s capital Baghdad, according to security sources.

Business and political leaders from around the Islamic world will meet in Istanbul starting Monday to discuss and address the economic challenges their countries face.

Syrian government forces and allied fighters advanced further into rebel-held Aleppo on Monday, pressing an offensive in defiance of international concern for the fate of the city and its beleaguered civilians.

Food has run out in eastern Aleppo and the medical sector is “kneeling under the burden of so many wounded civilians”, a senior UN humanitarian official has told The World.