Gazan authorities said Israeli forces shelled a shelter at a U.N.-run school on Thursday, killing at least 15 people as the Palestinian death toll in the conflict climbed over 760 and attempts at a truce remained elusive.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his horror at the attack on the school at Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza strip. “Many have been killed – including women and children, as well as U.N. staff,” he said in a statement. “Circumstances are still unclear. I strongly condemn this act.”

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Central African Republic’s mainly Muslim Seleka rebels signed a ceasefire with the “anti-balaka” Christian militia on Wednesday, after having dropped their demand for the country to be split in two along religious lines.

Seleka’s call for the country to be officially partitioned into a Muslim north and a Christian south risked derailing talks in Congo Republic aimed at ending religious violence that has killed thousands of people.

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In what would mark the bloodiest two days of fighting in the Syrian civil war, more than 700 people were reported killed in fighting between government and rebel forces loyal to the radical Islamic State (IS) — more than have been killed during the 15-day-old Gaza conflict that has dominated media attention in recent days.

The two-day death toll occurred last Thursday and Friday, with brutal fighting between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and the IS that centered around a gas field, according to reports released this week from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based anti-Syrian government group that keeps tabs on the war’s dead.

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Resumed fighting from July 20 till July 21, 2014 between Burma Army Battalion 248 and Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) Brigade 72 in Kehsi township, southern Shan State, has displaced people from six villages.

According to Sai Harn, a Shan youth who assisted the displaced villagers, the six villages include Parng Jay, Wan Kyawng, Par Teap, Wan Kwarn, Parng Mong and Parng Mike Kay, in Kehsi township. Sai Harn could not confirm the number of newly displaced villagers.

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Three Turkish soldiers and six militants of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), an offshoot of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), were killed during a clash on the Turkish-Syrian border, the Turkish army has said.

In a written statement released on Tuesday, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) stated that Turkish soldiers conducting patrol duty near the town of Ceylanpınar, in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, realized a group of 10 or 15 people was attempting to illegally cross over to the Turkish side from Syria late on Monday. After ignoring the warnings from troops to stop, the armed group opened fire on the soldiers and the troops on the border retaliated, the TSK said.

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Forces loyal to South Sudan former vice-president, Riek Machar claimed they were fully in control of Nasir, a strategic Upper Nile state town.

A military spokesperson for the rebels said forces under the command of Maj. Gen. Gathoth Gatkuoth liberated Nasir town from pro-government forces at dawn.

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Syrian government forces have launched a counter-attack to recapture a gas field seized by Islamic extremists, activists said, as the death toll from three days of fighting there rose to more than 200.

The fighting in the Shaer field, in the desert region of Palmyra in the central province of Homs, has been among the deadliest battles between government forces and the Islamic State group since the start of the Syrian uprising more than three years ago.

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