BBC News with Marion Marshall

The BBC has learned that US military planes are carrying out air strikes against Islamic State militants in northern Iraq to help Kurdish forces retake a strategic dam near the city of Mosul.Sources in Mosul say at least 11 militants have been killed.Tom Esslemont reports from Washington.

The air strikes began early on Saturday and set to be continuing, a defense official told BBC that they would provide air cover to Kurdish Peshmerga forces who have been trying to retake the dam.It was seized by Islamic State militants earlier in the month.The dam is the largest in Iraq and a major source of water and power to the north,if destroyed experts say as the potential to cause mass devastation in gulfing the city of Mosul and flooding parts of Baghdad.Kurdish forces have made repeated appeals to western countries for more ammunition to allow them to take on the Jihadists.The United States says it's already helping to arm them.

President of Syria opposition coalition has called on the world intervening Syria to deal with the threat there of the militant group of Islamic state in the way they have done in Iraq. Hardy Abahard said that Islamic state and forces loyal to the President Bashar al-Assad had carried out Massacres, he appealed to the United Nations and the United States to end what they called a suffering of the Syrian people.

The governor of the American state of Missouri Jay Nixon has signed an order declaring a state of emergency in the St.Louis surburb of Ferguson as violent disturbances and looting continue a week after police shot died an unarmed black teenager.The policeman in charge of security in Ferguson is captain Ron Johnson.

The governor has acted a curfew to allow us to provide safety for the civizens at Ferguson and also to maintain the right of people. That curfew is started today and will run for twelve midnight. The curfew will end in the morning. We would enforce that curfew as an effort to provide safety and security for the area.

The Kenyan health authorities have banned the entry of people arriving from the countries worst effected by the deadly outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa. As a result, Kenya airways said that it is to ban the flights to and from Sierra Leone and Liberia because of the outbreak. But flights going and out of Nigeria will continue. Will Ros reports from Legas.

Kenya airways had initially rejected calls to suspend the flights. But it had no choice after the government had announced that it was not being allowing to travel from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone into the country with the exception of returning Kenya citizens and helping workers. The flight suspension was started on Wednesday. The fear that virus could spread beyond western Africa is clearly growing. The effected countries are slowly but surely been cut off from the rest of the world. It is getting hard for medical staff to reach the countries when they are so badly needed.

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Reports from Nigeria say Chadian troops have rescued about 90 Nigerian villagers who were abducted at this week in a raid by Boko Haram militants, one report said the Chadian troops stopped several buses carrying the villagers during a routine border check.Survivors of last Sunday's raid have told BBC that the militants killed at least 25 people and injured many others before taking the hostages away on boats and across lake of Chad.

A group of victims from five decades of conflict in Colombia have for the first time joined left wing Farc rebels and government negotiators in peace talks that taking place in Cuba. Arturo Wallace reports on the visit.

Many see this visit by 12 victims of the Columbian conflict to the peace talk in Havana as powerfully symbolic. President Juan Manuel Santos has called it a historic step. He called it a historic step. He said it was necessary if the country was to achieve peace. They are the first of 60 victims who attend the talks over the next few weeks. Among them are victims of the leftist guerrillas but also of right wing Paramilitary group and the Columbia security forces. The United Nation High Commissioner for Human Right Navi Pillay praised the move, calling it unprecedented and a potential model for all the countries dealing with issues of justice based on reconciliation.

A pro-Russian militant leader in eastern Ukraine has said some 1,200 fighters trained in Russia will soon join his separatist movement.However Alexander Zakharchenko Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Denetsk People's Republic said these were volunteers not Russian forces.

Abdullah Ocalan the jailed leader of Turkey's Kurdish militant group the PKK has suggested that the PKK's 30 year conflict with Turkish authorities for more autonomy is coming to an end.In a statement from his island prison Mr.Ocalan said that Turkey was on the verge of historic developments following the presidential election earlier this month.

BBC News.