Israeli aircraft struck a Hamas facility in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday after alleged cross-border mortar fire, the Israeli army said.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday that talks are taking place to include Syria’s Aleppo province in the temporary “regime of calm” lull in fighting, Russian agencies reported.

Syria called local truces near Damascus and in a northern province on Friday but no halt to combat on the main battlefield in Aleppo, after a surge in fighting the United Nations said showed “monstrous disregard” for civilian lives.

At least 20 people were killed on Saturday in a spate of attacks across Iraq’s capital.

A major Taliban suicide bomb and gun attack on a government security office in central Kabul during rush hour on Tuesday killed at least 28 people and wounded more than 320, a week after the militant group announced a spring offensive.

Air strikes on two markets in northwest Syria have killed more than 50 people, local sources told Al Jazeera, as Syria’s opposition negotiators said they were leaving peace talks that were held in Geneva.

A visiting Saudi religious official and Turkey’s top cleric on Tuesday said that by working together, the two countries can solve the problem of Islamophobia.

A bomb blew up a bus and set fire to another in Jerusalem on Monday, wounding 16 people in an attack that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu linked to a six-month-old wave of Palestinian street violence.

Sheikh Mohammed Ayub, former imam of the Prophet’s Mosque, was buried in Baqih Al-Gharghad in Madinah on Saturday.

The accusation of incitement to violence is a commonly employed tactic by the Israeli security apparatus to legitimize the abuse of Palestinians.