Global defense news, analysis and opinion

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.

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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Turkish Soldier Killed in Syria’s Idlib

One Turkish soldier was killed by a roadside bomb Wednesday while on patrol in Syria’s Idlib region, the defense ministry said. The soldier “succumbed to his injuries after being taken to hospital,” the ministry said. The private DHA news agency said a bomb exploded on the key M4 highway in Idlib as a Turkish military convoy passed by. It is an area where Turkish-Russian joint patrols take place but it was not immediately clear if the Russian military were present at the time of the blast. In March, Russia and Turkey launched their first joint military patrol along the M4 highway following a ceasefire agreement. The deal raised hopes of an end to one of the bloodiest phases in the 9-year conflict in Syria. A Russian-backed government offensive on the last rebel bastion in the country has killed hundreds of civilians since December and displaced close to a million people.

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ADF Militia Kills Dozens in Eastern DR Congo

Dozens of civilians have been killed in eastern DR Congo in the latest of a string of massacres by the notorious ADF militia, a UN source and a local NGO told AFP on Wednesday. The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have killed hundreds in the region since late 2019, in apparent retaliation for a military offensive against their bases. The UN source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least 22 people were killed in two attacks on Monday and Tuesday in the south of Ituri province, near the border with North Kivu province. At least 16 others were killed last Friday and on Sunday, the source said. A local NGO called Cepadho said in a statement that “at least 40 civilians (were) massacred” on Monday and Tuesday in the territory of Irumu in southern Ituri. A separate source, a monitoring group called the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), said the bodies of 17 civilians had been found in Makutano, in Irumu, on Monday and Tuesday. KST said the number of massacres in eastern DRC was “increasing sharply.” The group said that since May 7 it had recorded the deaths of 50 civilians, attributed to the ADF, in the North Kivu area of Beni …

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Five Jihadists, Two Soldiers Killed in Cameroon Clash

Two soldiers were killed early on Tuesday when jihadists attacked a military position in northern Cameroon after crossing from Nigeria, sources said, while seven other soldiers were injured in a mine blast in the same village. The device exploded when the soldiers’ vehicle was passing, according to an army colonel. Both the explosion and the overnight attack took place at Soueram, close to the Nigerian border in Cameroon’s Far North region, the colonel and a local official told AFP. “Two Cameroonian soldiers were killed” in the overnight assault, while five jihadists died in the counter-attack, the colonel said. The attack was claimed by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist activity. ISWAP is a splinter group of Nigeria’s Boko Haram, which has led a bloody 11-year campaign against perceived Western influence. An army vehicle was destroyed and the jihadists made off with a piece of heavy weaponry, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A local leader, who also asked not to be identified, confirmed the attack and the toll, adding that there were no civilian casualties. The Far North is an impoverished tongue of land that lies between Chad to the east and …

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Nine Militia Fighters Arrested in Central African Republic Killings

Nine fighters from an armed group that launched a week-long attack last week in south-eastern Central African Republic have been arrested. The assailants belong to a branch of the CAR’s biggest armed group, the Unity for Peace in Central Africa (UPC), the country’s special criminal court said in a statement on Monday. The court is responsible for trying cases of serious human rights violations in the country, which has been ravaged by conflict for more than 20 years. The UPC has committed “widespread and systematic attacks on the civilian population,” the court said. During the attacks on the town of Obo last week, government forces backed by U.N. troops killed around 10 fighters from the rebel militia and captured others, a government spokesman had told AFP. Led by a mercenary named Ali Darassa, the UPC has been campaigning for months to extend its grip in the southeast, at the crossroads of the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. The UPC is one of myriad armed groups that have controlled most of the CAR since the country plunged into violence in 2013. A few months away from high-risk presidential elections due in December, the CAR continues to be plagued by militia …

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Russia Sent Warplanes to Back Mercenaries in Libya: US Military

Russia recently sent fighter jets to Libya to support Russian mercenaries fighting for strongman Khalifa Haftar, the U.S. military command for Africa (Africom) said Tuesday, in a major escalation in the long-running conflict. The military fighter aircraft left Russia and first stopped in Syria where they “were repainted to camouflage their Russian origin” before arriving in Libya, said Stuttgart-based Africom. The U.S. military did not specify when exactly the jets arrived, only saying that it was “recently.” The announcement comes a day after Libya’s U.N.-recognised government said hundreds of Russian mercenaries backing rival military commander Haftar had been evacuated from combat zones south of the capital Tripoli. The retreat follows a series of setbacks for Haftar’s years-long offensive to seize the capital from the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). The Kremlin has always denied involvement in the conflict. But United Nations experts said in a report last month that the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian paramilitary organization seen as close to President Vladimir Putin, had sent fighters to back Haftar. “For too long, Russia has denied the full extent of its involvement in the ongoing Libyan conflict. Well, there is no denying it now,” said U.S. Army General Stephen Townsend …

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Russia Begins Building First Stealth Bomber: Report

Russia has begun manufacturing the prototype of its first strategic stealth bomber, state news agency TASS reported on Tuesday, as the country presses ahead with the modernization of its military. Quoting defense industry sources, TASS said the state-controlled United Aircraft Corporation was overseeing the project. It said material was being shipped for the project and that work had begun on the cockpit of the bomber, known as the PAK DA. “The final assembly of the entire machine should be complete in 2021,” one of the sources told TASS. Stealth bombers are designed to evade radar detection while carrying large amounts of weaponry. Russian officials have revealed few details of the project, though last year Deputy Defence Minister Alexei Krivoruchko said aircraft maker Tupolev — which is part of United Aircraft Corporation — was in charge. Reached by AFP, United Aircraft Corporation spokesman Sergei Loktionov declined to comment on the report. Tupolev also did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Reports have said the plane will feature a flying wing design similar to U.S. stealth bombers, fly at subsonic speeds and carry strategic cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. The U.S. Air Force’s B-2 stealth bombers are among the world’s most feared …

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