At least 13 people, among them a child, were killed in Syrian government raids on the Islamic State group-held town of Al-Bab on Monday, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said seven women were among those killed in raids using explosive barrel bombs on the town in northern Aleppo province.

Talks last week between Afghan and Taliban negotiators were hailed by officials as a major breakthrough, but insurgent commanders on the ground have responded far more skeptically, highlighting the huge challenges facing the embryonic peace process.

Members of the Afghan High Peace Council sat down with Taliban cadres last week in Murree, a tourist town in the hills north of Islamabad, for their first official talks to try to end the militants' bloody fight, now in its 14th year.

Malala Yousafzai told world leaders they were failing Syria's children, as the Nobel Peace Prize winner spent her 18th birthday Sunday in Lebanon near the Syrian border.

As she became an adult, the teenager, who was shot by militants in her native Pakistan for campaigning for girls' rights, opened a school for more than 200 Syrian girls living in refugee camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

A bomb explosion Sunday in a tunnel near Aleppo Citadel in Syria damaged a wall of the fortress that is part of the UNESCO-listed Old City, state media and a monitor reported.

The blast partly destroyed the wall of the monumental 13th century citadel that overlooks the Old City, said the official SANA news agency and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria's regime killed at least 28 people, mostly civilians, on Saturday when its warplanes dropped massive makeshift bombs on a town held by the Islamic State group, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bombs used in the attacks on Al-Bab, in the northern province of Aleppo, were three times more destructive than so-called barrel bombs, which have already drawn widespread international condemnation.

The U.N. peace envoy for Syria plans to present new proposals at the end of July on the next steps needed in efforts to end the war, the U.N. spokesman said Friday.

Staffan de Mistura briefed U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and several ambassadors about his new peace plan during week-long talks at U.N. headquarters in New York.

A Franciscan priest serving in northern Syria has been released after almost a week in the hands of allegedly jihadist kidnappers, his church announced on Friday.

The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, with which he is affiliated, said on its website that Father Dhiya Aziz, a parish priest at Yacoubieh, in the northwestern province of Idlib, was apparently "treated well" during his ordeal.

A Lebanese Islamic State group fighter, who hails from the northern city of Tripoli, has been killed in Iraq, media reports said Friday.

Hassan al-Masri, known as Aba Qassem al-Lubnani, died while fighting alongside the IS, they said, without specifying in which area.

The United States on Thursday asked the U.N. Security Council to set up an investigative panel to identify those behind deadly chlorine gas attacks in Syria.

The panel comprised of experts from the United Nations and the OPCW chemical watchdog could be able to establish whether President Bashar al-Assad's forces are carrying out the attacks, as western countries claim.

Pope Francis demanded an immediate end Thursday to what he called "a genocide" of Christians taking place in the Middle East and beyond, describing it as a third world war.

The pope, who has never been afraid to weigh into delicate issues both religious and political, made the comments in Bolivia, the second stop on a three-nation tour to his home continent of South America.