The Kremlin on Monday deplored the lack of cooperation with the United States in Palmyra after Islamic State jihadists re-entered the ancient Syrian city at the weekend.

A barrage of air strikes on Monday killed 53 civilians, including 16 children, in a string of villages held by the Islamic State group in central Syria, a monitor said.

The European Union said it had sent a plane Monday carrying aid for people in Mosul affected by the offensive to take the Iraqi city from the Islamic State group.

Grief-stricken mourners gathered in Cairo on Monday for the funeral of 24 people killed when a blast tore through a Coptic church, in the deadliest attack on Egypt's Christian minority.

Wooden coffins, each bearing a cross, were covered with the Egyptian flag and lined up at the Saint Mary and Saint Athanasius Coptic Orthodox Church in Nasr City district a day after Sunday's tragedy.

Bahrain's appeals court on Monday upheld a nine-year jail sentence against opposition chief Sheikh Ali Salman, a judicial source said, the latest move in a crackdown on the Shiite majority.

The sentence against Salman, for inciting hatred and calling for regime change by force, had been overturned by the court of cassation in October.

A crowd of men rushed through the narrow hallway of Mosul's al-Zahra clinic carrying a slight 10-year-old boy. Yousef Oday's face was covered in blood.

A team of doctors quickly gathered around his cot. "What happened to you?" one of the men asked.

Syrian rebels on Monday withdrew from six more neighborhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The press took out of context comments by Britain's foreign secretary about "proxy wars" waged by longtime ally Saudi Arabia, the Saudi foreign minister said Sunday, deeming the matter closed.

Syrian forces pushed forward in Aleppo Sunday as thousands fled rebel-held areas, but they lost ground to the south where the Islamic State group recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra.

Forty-eight Yemeni soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group in the southern port city of Aden, officials said Sunday in an updated casualty toll.