Amnesty International said Wednesday it is enlisting the help of thousands of online activists to speed up its investigation into the U.S.-led campaign that drove Islamic State militants from their self-styled capital of Raqqa but left the Syrian city in ruins.

The London-based rights group said the new phase of its investigation enables thousands of online activists, using satellite imagery of the city, to map out the destruction over the four-month campaign, which ended in October 2017.

A United Arab Emirates court sentenced British student Matthew Hedges to life in jail on Wednesday after convicting him of spying, a family spokesperson said. 

Skin and bones, 10-year-old Ghazi Saleh lies on a hospital bed in Yemen's government-held third city Taez barely breathing. He weighs just eight kilogrammes (less than 18 pounds).

The UN Yemen envoy faced his "sternest test" on Wednesday as he flew into the rebel-held capital Sanaa for talks on averting all-out fighting for the lifeline port of Hodeida and widespread famine.

A suicide attack that claimed the lives of at least 55 people at a religious event marking the Prophet Mohammad's birthday in Kabul on Tuesday is among the deadliest in the country since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Amnesty International on Wednesday launched a crowdsourcing data project using satellite imagery to assess damage from US-led coalition air strikes last year on the Syrian city of Raqa.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has issued a mocking response to President Donald Trump's announcement that he would stick by Saudi Arabia despite the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Nearly eight years into the Syrian war, Selim still refuses to perform his military service, just like many fellow Druze from Sweida province rejecting the regime's conscription call.

"I don't want to get involved in the Syrian bloodbath," said the 27-year-old, who gave a pseudonym for fear of reprisals.

U.N. envoy Martin Griffiths was preparing Tuesday to head to war-torn Yemen to lay the groundwork for peace talks in Sweden, after fresh fighting shook the flashpoint city of Hodeida.

Griffiths -- whose efforts at kickstarting peace talks failed in September -- is again trying to get the Iran-aligned Huthi rebels and the Saudi-backed government to the negotiating table by the end of the year.

The U.N envoy for Syria has signaled that he is ready to abandon efforts to set up a committee on drafting a post-war constitution if no deal is reached by the end of December.

The planned constitutional committee agreed at a Russia-hosted conference in January has run into objections from the Syrian government over allowing religious leaders, representatives from women's groups and independent experts to take part.