SRI LANKA: President Ranil Wickremesinghe said today he will appoint a committee led by a retired supreme court judge to probe claims made in a British TV report that the Sri Lankan intelligence service was complicit in 2019 bombings that killed 269 people.

The Easter Sunday attacks, which included suicide bombings, targeted three churches and three tourist hotels. The dead included 42 foreigners from 14 countries.

PALESTINE: Occupying Israeli forces killed teenager Milad al-Rai on Saturday at al-Aroub refugee camp in the southern West Bank, Palestinian health officials said.

The Israeli military said that troops set off tear gas and opened fire at a group of Palestinians outside the camp whom it claimed had thrown Molotov cocktails at troops. 

A hundred and eighty-five Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank this year. 

SUDAN: A drone attack today on an open market south of the capital Khartoum killed at least 40 people and injured about three dozen more, activists and medical workers said, as the military and the powerful Rapid Support Forces militia battle for control of the country.

The RSF blamed the air force for the attack but the claim could not be verified.

SYRIA: UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen urged donors today not to cut their funding as the war-torn country’s economic crisis spirals.

The UN says there is a massive shortfall in aid funding while it estimates some 90 per cent of Syrians in government-held areas live in poverty.