The Syrian Red Crescent says that aid trucks entered the Syrian towns of Madaya, Foua and Kefraya simultaneously.
That was part of the deal to allow humanitarian aid trucks to enter Madaya.
The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has tweeted this update about the situation in Madaya, Syria, where aid trucks have now entered the town.
AFP is reporting that the gunmen who detonated a car bomb, fired into a crowded area and took hostages in an eastern Baghdadi shopping mall are still holed up in the mall.
"They are inside the Zahrat Baghdad mall. When the security forces got too close, they killed three hostages," a police official said.
"We are taking a cautious approach now. We want this attack to end with the lowest possible number of casualties," the official said.
He described the mall as a building of four or five floors in a busy commercial area of Baghdad al-Jadida, a populous Shi'ite-majority area on the eastern edge of the Iraqi capital.
Syria Direct reports on the situation in Madayan and explains the background to the truce with the Syrian government that resulted in today's humanitarian aid being allowed to enter the town.
Syria Direct have also interviewed Amr a-Sheikh, a member of Madaya's opposition council in charge of overseeing aid to Madaya.
A few truckloads of food is not a solution, says a-Sheikh. “This morning, two more people died from starvation,” he said, bringing the total number of starvation deaths in the town to 60.
“The besieged people of Madaya do not care about the arrival of aid as much as they care about the opening of the road and a settlement to end the blockade once and for all,” says a-Sheikh.
Bosnian police detained five people on suspicion of planning to join the IS group and seized a cache of weapons and ammunition in raids in the northwest of the country today, police said according to Reuters. One of the five was later released.
The U.S. and Russian foreign ministers spoke by telephone about topics including the Syrian political process and the fight against IS militants, the U.S. State Department has said.
There are conflicting reports about the events in eastern Baghdad, where unknown gunmen have stormed a shopping mall after setting off a car bomb.
The Wall Street Journal's Matt Bradley says that, contrary to some of the initial reports, no hostages have been taken.
The Wall Street Journal's Matt Bradley has these comments about the attack on an eastern Baghdad mall by unknown gunmen.
Here is the Wall Street Journal's report on the events in eastern Baghdad where unknown militants attacked a shopping center in the New Baghdad neighborhood.
The WSJ report -- which cites police and other Iraqi officials -- contradicts other reporting that said gunmen stormed the Al-Jawhara mall, taking hostages, after detonating a car bomb.
WSJ says there were two attackers who were suicide bombers -- other reports said there were four gunmen.
Two suicide bombers attacked a shopping mall in a bustling neighborhood of eastern Baghdad on Monday evening, killing at least nine people and wounding 22 others, Iraqi officials said.
WSJ report that the attackers did not storm the mall and take hostages but killed themselves outside on the street.
The attackers didn’t take any hostages and killed themselves on a busy street outside the shopping mall, police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
And the siege is now over, WSJ report.
The siege lasted less than an hour, police said.
So what happened? According to WSJ this was the sequence of events:
- Two attackers detonated a car bomb in a parked vehicle outside the Al-Jawhara mall early this evening
- The attackers then threw hand grenades at a crowd of people on the sidewalk
- The attackers also sprayed the pedestrians with bullets
- The two men then detonated their suicide vests as they stood on the sidewalk outside the mall.