Japan signed a grant and loan agreement with Cambodia on Sunday totalling over $90 million, despite concerns from the international community over Prime Minister Hun Sen’s crackdown on government critics ahead of a July general election. Japan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Kono and Cambodia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Prak Sokhonn signed the $4.6 million grant and $86 million loan, for economic and electricity transmission projects, in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh.

Syria and its Russian ally accused Israel on Monday of carrying out a deadly dawn bombing raid on a military airbase, as global outrage mounted over an alleged poison gas attack outside Damascus. US President Donald Trump and French counterpart Emmanuel Macron had vowed a strong response to the suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Douma and the UN Security Council was expected to discuss the crisis later on Monday.

Three Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces during fresh protests on Gaza's border with Israel, Palestinian health ministry officials say. The Israeli military said troops had opened fire when people attempted to breach the fence on the frontier. The protesters are demanding that refugees be allowed to return to ancestral lands that are now in Israel.

At least 30 people, most of them children, have died after a school bus fell into a gorge in a mountainous region of India, officials say.

Most of the passengers were below the age of 10, police said. The bus driver and two teachers were also killed in the accident on Monday evening.

The incident occurred in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.

Afghanistan forces killed an Islamic State commander in an air strike, one year after he defected from the Taliban and established a new IS foothold within the country, security officials said. Rueters reports that, Qari Hekmat was killed in a drone strike on Thursday afternoon in the Darz Aab district of Afghanistan’s northern Jawzjan province, said Hanif Rezaee, spokesman for the Afghan National Army Air Corps.

The Russian government has started legal proceedings to block the Telegram messaging app in the country. The Roskomnadzor media regulator is seeking the block because the firm has refused to hand over encryption keys used to scramble messages. Telegram, which is based in Dubai, was given a deadline of 4 April to hand over the keys.