Live updates (closed)
Pentagon says Islamic State holding civilians in Mosul
Obama warns recapturing Iraq’s second city from jihadists ‘will be difficult fight,’ but is ‘major step forward’
- MK Hilik Bar (4th right) attends an anti-war protest at the Quneitra Crossing on the Syrian border, October 18, 2016. Bar is holding a poster of Sadat, Carter and Begin clasping hands at the White House signing of a 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
- Hagi Hasan Brita, president of the civil committee of Aleppo (C), Abdulrahman Almawwas (R), vice-president of the Syrian White Helmets, and Tammam Allodami, a member of the White Helmets, take part in a meeting at the National Assembly in Paris on October 18, 2016. (AFP PHOTO/FRANCOIS GUILLOT)
- An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man holds up a Palestinian flag in a sukkah in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim on October 18, 2016. (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
- Jewish worshipers pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City on October 14, 2016. (AFP PHOTO/MENAHEM KAHANA)