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05/26/2012 09:34 GMT

MOGADISHU, May 26, 2012 (AFP) - Al-Qaeda-linked Somali militants vowed Saturday to intensify the war against government and African Union troops, despite the fall of their key stronghold of Afgoye, the latest in a string of military losses.

"God willing we will continue the war and we will win the battle without doubt," said Sheik Abdiaziz Abu Musab, spokesman for the hardline Shebab, a day after AU and Somali troops entered Afgoye, a former strategic rebel base.

05/26/2012 02:58 GMT

JAKARTA, May 26, 2012 (AFP) - A landslide in Indonesia killed eight people, an official said Saturday, after days of heavy rain hit a mountainous part of the country's main island.

"The landslide occurred on Thursday night and killed eight people. We were able to retrieve all eight bodies by late Friday night," Bogor Disaster Mitigation Agency official Makmur Rozak told AFP.

05/26/2012

Kabul, May 26, 2012 (AFP) - The death toll from flash floods in a northern Afghan province has hit 50 -- most of them women and children -- an official said on Saturday, a week after the disaster struck.

The floods that inundated Sari Pul province were triggered by torrential rain and have left thousands of people homeless, provincial governor Abdul Jabar Haqbeen told AFP.

"The floods have killed 50 people so far, mostly women and children," he said.

05/26/2012 13:59 GMT

DAMASCUS, May 26, 2012 (AFP) - UN observers rushed on Saturday to a town in central Syria where scores of civilians were reportedly massacred, including 25 children, as the opposition renewed calls for air strikes on regime forces.

The shelling of the town of Houla by regime forces, which began at around midday on Friday and continued until dawn on Saturday, killed more than 90 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

25/05/2012 20h40 GMT

UNITED NATIONS, May 25, 2012 (AFP) - Syrian groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad now control "significant" parts of some cities, UN leader Ban Ki-moon said in his latest report on the worsening conflict.

UN efforts to end the conflict have seen only "small progress" and there is "considerable physical destruction" across Syria, Ban said in a report to the UN Security Council obtained by AFP on Friday.

Doctors, activists, and aid groups like Doctors Without Borders are teaming up with smugglers in Jordan to supply field hospitals for the injured in Syria's war.

Read the full article in the Christian Science Monitor.

No stranger to the world of missions, Caroline has built up a wealth of experience in the field of humanitarian aid. After an initial posting in Haiti, where she worked on our schools health education project, she decided to specialise in this field and took a Masters in public health. In 2005, after completing her course, Caroline began her first mission in Mali, where she spent two years as the maternal health project manager. Conscious that Handicap International’s mission was making a difference, she decided to return to Mali as health coordinator in 2009.