Ukrainian forces and separatist rebels fought fierce street battles for control of the strategic railway hub of Debaltseve, impeding implementation of a peace plan.

At least 1,075 people have been killed in Iraq during June, most of them civilians, according to United Nations human rights monitors.

US President Barack Obama has asked for a review of the botched execution of an Oklahoma inmate which he said he found “deeply troubling”.

At least 60,000 people have been killed in Syria’s civil war, with monthly casualty figures steadily increasing since the conflict began almost two years ago, according to a new analysis released by the UN.

Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s decree that put his decisions above legal challenge until a new parliament has been elected has caused fury amongst hisopponents who accused him of being the new Hosni Mubarak and hijacking the revolution.

The UN said today that entire families were shot in their homes during a massacre in Syria last week that killed more than 100 people, including children.

The UN’s human rights office has said three men recently sentenced to death in the Palestinian territory of Gaza were executed unlawfully.

Syria’s president defied international pressure to end the year-old crackdown on an uprising against him and said yesterday he was determined to go on fighting what he called “foreign-backed terrorism”.

Experts have warned a similar disaster to the Honduras prison fire could happen again in Central America.

The burial of Muammar Gaddafi has been delayed until his death can be examined by the International Criminal Court, Libyan officials said.

The UN’s top human rights official has urged the international community to take “immediate measures” to protect civilians in Syria as the death toll from the anti-government unrest rose above 3,000.

EGYPT’S deputy prime minister has resigned over clashes that killed 25 people, mainly Coptic Christians, amid mounting anger at the ruling military and calls for the premier to quit.

Artillery hit the residence of France’s ambassador to Ivory Coast for the second time in two days, the French embassy said, a possible show of defiance from the country’s strongman who has resisted international pressure to emerge from a bunker and cede power.

The UN has said that more than 100 bodies had been found in Ivory Coast in the past 24 hours, some of them burned alive.

Up to one million people have fled their homes in the Ivory Coast capital Abidjan fearful that post-election unrest will explode into all-out war, the UN refugee agency says.

HAITIAN police led ex-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier out of his hotel and took him to court without saying whether he was being charged with crimes committed under his brutal regime.

A draft UN report says the Rwandan army that ended the 1994 slaughter of more than 500,000 people retaliated with killings in Congo two years later that also could be classified as a genocide.

RIOTING has killed several hundred people in the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan, the Red Cross said yesterday, as new reports strengthened suspicions that the violence was deliberately ignited to undermine the interim government.

Several hundred people have been killed in rioting in Kyrgyzstan, the Red Cross said today, as new reports strengthened suspicions that the violence was deliberately ignited to undermine the Central Asian nation’s interim government.

A video purportedly showing troops shooting blindfolded, naked Tamils in the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war has revived calls for a war crimes investigation and cast a shadow over the upcoming presidential election.

Colombia’s defence minister has denied accusations that army troops massacred eight peasants, including four children, in a remote village in northwest Colombia a week ago, saying no soldiers were in the area at the time.