Politics

Damascus / AP Syrian government forces backed by Russian airstrikes drove IS fighters from Palmyra on Sunday, ending the group’s reign of terror over a town whose famed 2,000-year-old ruins once drew tens of thousands of visitors each year. Government forces had been on the offensive for nearly three weeks to try to retake the central town, known among Syrians ...

Jerusalem / AP Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the military on Sunday following uproar over footage of a soldier lethally shooting a Palestinian attacker who had already been shot and subdued. Netanyahu said the incident in question does not reflect the military’s conduct, and that criticism of the armed forces as a whole over the incident is “outrageous and ...

Dhaka / AFP Four Bangladeshis have been killed in gunfights between rival groups in the war-torn Libyan city of Benghazi, a minister said on Sunday. State minister for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam said he did not yet have full details on the dead. Alam said embassy officials had received three bodies and they were being stored in a hospital in ...

Makhmur / AFP Thousands of desperate civilians were fleeing fighting on Sunday on the new front opened by Iraqi forces against the IS group south of the city of Mosul. Families crammed in the back of pickup trucks, sometimes bringing dead and wounded with them, emerged from the dust after crossing the front line and were met by Kurdish forces. ...

Naypyidaw / AFP Myanmar’s powerful army chief vowed on Sunday to keep the nation “on the path to democracy”, days before Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government takes office after decades of army rule. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing made the remarks at an annual display of military might by Myanmar’s armed forces, a body that long crushed democratic aspirations ...

Idomeni / AFP Hundreds of hopeful refugees flooded back to Greece’s overwhelmed Idomeni camp on the border with Macedonia on Sunday following rumours that the closed frontier would be forced open. The renewed influx came as Greek authorities were trying to evacuate an estimated 11,500 people who were stranded at the squalid camp after Balkan states slammed shut their borders, ...

Brussels / AFP Police pressed ahead on Saturday with the search for suspects in Belgium’s worst ever terror attack, as a series of raids and arrests revealed more links with the November Paris killings and a new French plot. The government meanwhile came in for a torrent of criticism, with key ministers on the back foot saying they had done ...

Washington / AFP The brothers who carried out the airport and metro suicide bombings in Belgium’s capital this week were known to US authorities and listed in American terrorism databases, television network NBC reported on Thursday. The report cited two unnamed US officials as saying that Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui were listed as a “potential terror threat” in US ...

Brussels / AFP Brussels airport will not reopen before Tuesday as it implements new security measures and repairs the departure hall wrecked by a suicide bomb attack earlier this week, it said on Saturday. “Passenger flights at Brussels Airport will not resume before Tuesday 29 March,” Zaventem airport said in a statement. “Brussels Airport is starting preparations to partially resume ...

Washington / AFP US states Alaska, Hawaii and Washington take their turn voting on Saturday in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, with Hillary Clinton unlikely to deliver a knockout blow against resilient rival Bernie Sanders. The trio of western caucuses marks a chance for Vermont Senator Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, to chisel away at Clinton’s formidable lead in the ...