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At least eight people were killed when jets believed to be Russian bombed a Syrian refugee camp on the border with Jordan on Tuesday, activists say.

Dozens more were injured when tents at Hammad, a remote desert area, were struck around noon (09:00 GMT).

Most of the casualties were reportedly families of members of a rebel group known as the Eastern Lions, which is fighting so-called Islamic State (IS). There was no immediate comment from Russia, which backs Syria’s government.

However, a senior Western diplomat told the Reuters news agency that initial information suggested Russian aircraft carried out the raid.

Last month, Russian jets twice attacked another Syrian rebel group’s base in the border town of Tanf, to the north-east. Said Seif, a local activist, told the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) network that cluster munitions were used in Tuesday’s air raid on the makeshift camp at Hammad. At least 15 people were killed and 40 others wounded, he said.

Another activist, Ahmed al-Maslameh, put the death toll at eight, the Associated Press reported.

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Egypt’s security services have forcibly made hundreds of people disappear and tortured them in the past year to try to tackle dissent, a rights group says.

Students, political activists and protesters – some as young as 14 – have vanished without a trace, according to a new report by Amnesty International. Many are alleged to have been held for months and often kept blindfolded and handcuffed for the entire period.

Egypt’s government has denied it uses enforced disappearances and torture.

More than 1,000 people have been killed and 40,000 are believed to have been jailed since President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi led the military’s overthrew of Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected head of state, in 2013.

Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa director, Philip Luther, said enforced disappearances had become a “key instrument of state policy” under Mr Sisi and his Interior Minister, Magdy Abdul Ghaffar, who took office in March 2015.

Citing local non-governmental organisations, Amnesty said that on average three to four people per day had been seized, usually when heavily armed security forces led by the National Security Agency (NSA) stormed their homes. Hundreds of people were thought to be held at the NSA’s offices, inside the interior ministry’s headquarters at Cairo’s Lazoughly Square. Mr Luther said the report exposed collusion between the security services and judicial authorities, who he alleged had been “prepared to lie to cover their tracks or failed to investigate torture allegations, making them complicit in serious human rights violations”.

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The FBI has collected nearly 430,000 iris scans over the past three years, an investigation by technology website The Verge, has revealed.

What started as a pilot in 2013 has grown into a database “without any public debate or oversight”, said the American Civil Liberties Union. It amounted to “runaway surveillance”, director of technology Nicole Ozer tweeted.

The FBI said it was developing “best practices” for iris image capture.

The project was launched in September 2013 and has seen the FBI collaborate with agencies in Texas, Missouri and California. The iris data, taken from people who have been arrested, can be scanned in a fraction of a second.

The scan takes a detailed image of the ridges in the coloured part of the eye, which are as detailed and distinctive as a fingerprint.
An average of 189 iris scans were collected every day in California at the start of 2016, according to documents obtained by The Verge.

The programme was started to “evaluate technology, address key challenges and develop a system capable of performing iris image recognition services”, according to the FBI’s website. Such technology is necessary in order to easily track criminals and quickly catch repeat offenders and suspects who try to hide their identities, the FBI argued.

The project falls under its $1bn (£750m) next-generation identification system that aims to expand the bureau’s old fingerprinting database to other identifiers such as facial recognition and palm prints.

A ceasefire appears to be holding in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, after four days of heavy fighting between rival forces left more than 270 people dead.

The city is quiet, with no reports of helicopter gunships in the sky or tanks on the streets.

President Salva Kiir and his rival, Vice-President Riek Machar, announced a ceasefire which came into force on Monday at 15:00 GMT.

Clashes between troops loyal to the two men had threatened a recent peace deal. South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011 but its short history has been marred by civil war.

Mr Kiir and Mr Machar are under intense diplomatic pressure to end the violence. The UN said some 36,000 people had been left homeless by the fighting, with 7,000 of them taking refuge at its compounds. The US said anyone impeding efforts to end the fighting would be held fully accountable. The UN called for an immediate arms embargo, as well as attack helicopters to strengthen its 13,000-strong peacekeeping force.

Two Chinese UN peacekeepers and one South Sudanese UN worker were among those killed in the fighting.

US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said: “This senseless and inexcusable violence – undertaken by those who yet again are putting self-interest above the well-being of their country and people – puts at risk everything the South Sudanese people have aspired to over the past five years.”

The US is to send 560 more military personnel to Iraq to help in the fight against so-called Islamic State (IS), Defence Secretary Ash Carter has said.

It will bring to about 4,650 the number of US personnel in Iraq, most of them serving in training and advisory roles.

The extra troops, including engineers and logistics experts, would help local forces planning to retake the IS stronghold of Mosul, Mr Carter said. He made the announcement on a surprise visit to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Troops from the new deployment will be stationed at Qayara airbase, which was recaptured from IS militants by Iraqi government forces on Saturday.

The facility is about 65km (40 miles) south of Mosul, IS’s last urban bastion in Iraq. “These additional US forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight,” Mr Carter said.

IS seized control of Mosul in June 2014 after routing the Iraqi army. It is the biggest city ruled by IS in either Iraq or neighbouring Syria. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul from IS before the end of the year, though it is unclear when a concerted campaign will begin.

The latest US troop increase in Iraq comes just over two months after President Barack Obama announced the deployment of an extra 250 soldiers to Syria, adding to the 50 that were already on the ground.