-
Middle East
Roadside Bomb Kills 7 Civilians in Afghanistan
Seven civilians were killed by a roadside bomb linked to the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday, even as authorities pressed for peace talks with the militants. Overall violence across much of Afghanistan has dropped, however, since May 24 when the Taliban announced a surprise three-day ceasefire to mark the Eid al-Fitr holiday. The latest blast struck a small truck carrying a group of laborers late Monday in the volatile district of Khan Abad, in the province of Kunduz. No group claimed responsibility, but Kunduz provincial spokesman Esmatullah Muradi pointed the finger at the Taliban. “The Taliban usually plant roadside bombs to target security forces, but their bombs usually kill civilians,” he told AFP. Two of six others wounded in the blast were in critical condition, said district chief Hayatullah Amiri. President Ashraf Ghani had welcomed the Taliban ceasefire offer and authorities responded by announcing around 2,000 Taliban prisoners would be released in a “goodwill gesture” with a view to kickstarting peace talks. Afghanistan’s former chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, who has been appointed to lead the talks, said his team was ready to begin negotiations “at any moment.” Late on Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been …
Read More » -
Africa
Libya Rivals Agree Return to Ceasefire Talks: UN
The United Nations’ Libya mission said Tuesday the country’s warring parties had agreed to restart talks aimed at reaching a lasting ceasefire, after a three-month suspension. In a statement, UNSMIL “welcomed” moves by the Government of National Accord and forces backing eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar to accept “restarting negotiations on a ceasefire and the related security arrangements.” Pro-Haftar forces have been battling since April last year to seize the capital Tripoli from the UN-recognised GNA, in fighting that has left hundreds dead and forced 200,000 to flee their homes. A military commission made up of five GNA loyalists and five Haftar delegates held talks in February, but the dialogue was suspended. A January truce brokered by GNA backer Turkey and key Haftar ally Russia has been repeatedly violated. Neither side immediately commented on the UN statement. Haftar’s rapid advance on Tripoli last year stalled to a bloody stalemate on the edges of the capital. In recent weeks, GNA forces buoyed by Turkish drones and air defense systems have taken back a string of coastal towns and a key airbase, Haftar is supported by neighboring Egypt and the United Arab Emirates as well as Russia. The UN mission urged “states backing either …
Read More » -
Asia Pacific
Indonesian Policeman Killed by Sword-Wielding Militant
A sword-wielding militant killed an Indonesian policeman and critically injured another on Monday in what authorities described as a suspected Islamic State-linked attack. The attacker was shot dead during the early morning raid at a police post in South Daha district on Kalimantan — Indonesia’s section of Borneo island. Indonesia’s national police initially said there were two attackers, but local authorities later said only one militant was directly involved. “One police officer was killed and the attacker also died,” South Hulu Sungai police chief Dedy Eka Jaya told AFP. “We’re still investigating possible links” to IS, he added. The militant — identified as a 19-year-old local named Abdurrahman — initially set a car on fire outside the police post, Jaya said. “When it exploded, one of the officers came outside to check and that’s when the initial attack started,” he added. Images from the scene showed an apparently deceased man lying on his back inside the police station. Authorities said they confiscated his sword, a Koran, a handwritten letter calling for jihad, and a flag bearing the “tauhid” — which expresses the belief in Allah as the one and only god. Images of the black and white-lettered flag showed it resembled one commonly used …
Read More » -
Africa
At Least 50 Die in Burkina Attacks Blamed on Jihadists
Ten people were killed when an aid convoy was ambushed in Burkina Faso, the government said Sunday, bringing to at least 50 the death toll from a string of attacks blamed on jihadists. The ambush occurred on Saturday near the northern town of Barsalogho, it said in a statement, adding that an attack on a livestock market in the east of the country earlier in the day had claimed 25 lives, according to a provisional toll. The humanitarian convoy was returning from the northern town of Foube after delivering food there, the statement said. At least five civilians and five gendarmes were killed and around 20 people were injured. Saturday’s attacks came a day after a convoy of mainly shopkeepers escorted by a local self-defense unit came under fire in the north of the West African country, killing 15 people. That attack, in Loroum province, was also blamed on jihadists. The east and north of the former French colony are the hardest hit by attacks by jihadists, who have killed more than 900 people and caused some 860,000 people to flee their homes in the past five years. A local governor, Colonel Saidou Sanou, said in a statement that the …
Read More » -
Africa
Mozambique May Have Killed Jihadist Leaders: President
Mozambican security forces may have killed the leaders of the Islamist militants who have terrorized communities in the central and northern districts of Cabo Delgado, President Filipe Nyusi said. In an interview late Saturday on state television channel TVM, Nyusi said top officials were still trying to confirm their deaths which appear to have occurred after Thursday’s attack and occupation of the Macomia district headquarters. “We have information that senior officers of this force have been slaughtered, which we can consider to be the leadership, but the Defence and Security Forces will confirm this at a proper moment,” President Nyusi said. “We are learning how to deal with that force and we are encouraging the Defence and Security Forces to fight them.” Since 2017, a shadowy Islamist group has wreaked havoc among communities in the gas-rich north, burning huts, decapitating villagers, and killing more than 1,100 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The jihadists have grown bolder over the past two months, stepping up attacks by destroying more important infrastructure such as government headquarters buildings, bank branches, and looting money. They have now ventured into towns as part of a declared campaign to establish an Islamist caliphate. Outnumbering …
Read More » -
Middle East
14 Afghan Security Force Members Killed in Attack Claimed by Taliban
Taliban fighters stormed an Afghan border post Friday, killing at least 14 security force members, the insurgents and officials said, the latest in a series of attacks since the end of a brief ceasefire. Despite the clashes, Afghan authorities have vowed to press on with efforts to help reduce violence following the temporary pause in fighting. “Last night the mujahideen carried out attacks against the newly established posts of the enemy in Dande Patan district of Paktia province,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter. “The enemy has been recently trying to expand its rule in mujahideen territories,” he said, adding that two Taliban fighters were also killed. Afghan officials confirmed the attack in the early hours of Friday had killed 14 Afghan security force members. Dande Patan district governor Eid Mohammad Ahmadzai told AFP that 15 security force members and 20 Taliban fighters were killed in the fighting. Officials had also accused the Taliban of carrying out two other raids on separate checkpoints on Thursday, killing 14 Afghan security force members, but the Taliban have not commented on those attacks. A three-day truce offered by the militants officially ended late on Tuesday, with the overall lull in the country’s grinding violence largely holding, officials and experts have said. The country’s National Security …
Read More » -
Africa
Ten Jihadists Killed in Western Burkina Faso: Army
Ten “terrorists” died in an offensive against a jihadist base in the west of Burkina Faso on Thursday, according to the army’s chief of staff. The West African country is battling an Islamist revolt, which has also exacerbated deadly inter-ethnic tensions. Since 2015, nearly 900 people have died and 840,000 have fled their homes. A unit of soldiers and gendarme carried out the offensive in the rural locality of Worou in Sourou province, said the statement, which was not independently verifiable. “This anti-jihadist operation allowed us to neutralize 10 terrorists and to recover weapons and motorcycles,” it said, adding that one gendarme was injured. Burkina Faso’s armed forces are leading counter-terror operations with increasing frequency. The impoverished Sahel country is part of a regional effort to battle an Islamist insurgency, along with Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and Chad. Their militaries, under-equipped and poorly trained, are struggling despite help from France, which has 5,000 troops in the region. Unrest in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger killed around 4,000 people last year, according to UN figures.
Read More » -
Africa
Fresh Jihadist Violence Hits Northern Mozambique
Islamist militants terrorizing remote communities in Mozambique’s Muslim-majority north mounted a fresh attack on Thursday, police sources said, striking Macomia district in an early morning assault. Gunmen forced the population of several thousand inhabitants to flee, while the military and police withdrew from the area according to a police officer who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity. “We can’t defeat them. They’re very strong,” the officer who hid in the bush since dawn told AFP. The attack comes a week after Mozambique called on its southern African neighbors to help it fend off the escalating jihadist insurgency that began in 2017. Despite President Filipe Nyusi‘s promises, neither the police nor the army, recently shored up by foreign private security companies, has succeeded in preventing attacks. Called in from the port city of Pemba some 156 kilometers (96 miles) away, reinforcement helicopters operated by private security companies flew in a few hours after the assault erupted, to repel the attackers. The officer said although government buildings were destroyed, the damage could have been worse if not for the air force response that pushed the militants back. Over the last two years over 1,100 people have been left dead by the Islamist …
Read More » -
Middle East
Iran Guards Warn US After Receiving New Combat Vessels
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Thursday warned the United States against its naval presence in the Gulf as they received 110 new combat vessels. The vessels included Ashura-class speedboats, Zolfaghar coastal patrol boats, and Taregh submarines, state television reported. “We announce today that wherever the Americans are, we are right next to them, and they will feel our presence even more in the near future,” the Guards’ navy chief Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said during a ceremony in southern Iran. Iran and the United States have appeared to be on the brink of an all-out confrontation twice in the past year. The latest confrontation between the arch-foes came after the United States accused the Guards of harassing its ships in the Gulf in mid-April. “Advancing while remaining defensive is the nature of our work,” said Guards commander Major General Hossein Salami. “But this does not equal passivity against the enemy,” he added, noting that Iran “will not bow down to any foe.” According to Salami, the Guards’ navy had been instructed to expand Iran’s naval power until it can adequately defend “territorial independence and integrity, protect naval interests and pursue and destroy the enemy.” Decades-old acrimony between the two worsened in 2018 when …
Read More » -
Middle East
US Troop Pullout From Afghanistan Ahead of Schedule
The US military withdrawal from Afghanistan is considerably ahead of schedule, an official told AFP on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump reiterated calls for the Pentagon to bring troops home. The developments came as questions loomed over the next phase of Afghanistan’s long war following a historic, three-day ceasefire that led to a major drop in civilian casualties. The truce, which the Taliban called to mark the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Fitr, ended Tuesday night, leaving Afghans anxious about whether it would be extended, or when the war might come raging back. Violence levels remained low even after the end of the ceasefire, but Afghan security forces conducted airstrikes in the south that killed 18 “militants,” police said. Under a deal the US signed with the Taliban in February, the Pentagon was to bring troop levels down from about 12,000 to 8,600 by mid-July, before withdrawing all forces by May 2021. But a senior US defense official said the troop number was already at approximately 8,500, as commanders accelerate the withdrawal over fears of the coronavirus. “The drawdown was accelerated due to COVID-19 precautions,” the official told AFP, noting that the departure of anyone with health concerns or over a certain age …
Read More »