Politics

  Berlin /AFP German police on Tuesday arrested five men suspected of links to the IS organisation, who allegedly sought to recruit fighters for the jextremist group. “The five accused formed a pan-regional extremist network, with the accused Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A. taking on the leading role,” said a statement from the prosecutors’ office, referring to the 32-year-old Iraqi. “The ...

  Berlin / AFP Germany is open to providing protection for Turks who have been “politically persecuted” by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government in its widening crackdown following a failed putsch, a senior German official said on Tuesday. “Critics in Turkey should know that the German government stands in solidarity with them,” Michael Roth, state secretary at the foreign ministry, told Die ...

  Paris / AFP French investigators have identified a Moroccan-Belgian extremist based in Syria as a key plotter of attacks in Paris and Brussels, sources said on Tuesday, announcing a breakthrough in their multi-country probe. Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old believed to be a member of the IS group, was already a suspect in the March 22 attacks on Brussels but ...

  Goma /AFP A young girl was killed and 31 Indian peacekeepers were injured Tuesday in a grenade explosion in Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN said. “A grenade exploded regretably killing a girl of roughly eight-years-old… another civilian was injured,” said Bilamekaso Tchagbele, the information chief for the UN’s force in the country. The blue helmets ...

  Hong Kong / AFP Hundreds of lawyers and law students, all dressed in black, marched silently through Hong Kong on Tuesday in protest at a ruling by China which effectively bars two pro-independence legislators from taking office. They snaked peacefully through the city from the high court to the court of final appeal after the unprecedented decision on Monday, ...

  Ramallah/ AFP A museum dedicated to Yasser Arafat, including the room where the Palestinian leader spent much of his final years under Israeli siege, will open on Wednesday ahead of the anniversary of his death. Current Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will formally open the Yasser Arafat Museum next to the gravesite of the fighter-turned-statesman in Ramallah in the occupied ...

  Ain Issa/ AFP A US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance pushed closer to Raqa and Iraqi forces seized a key town near Mosul as offensives advanced on Monday against the two IS group strongholds. After announcing the start of the long-awaited offensive on Raqa on Sunday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance said it had moved south towards the city despite fierce extremist ...

  Ankara /AFP Turkey on Monday warned the United States not to allow demographic changes in the Syrian city of Raqa after Kurdish-Arab forces launched a US-backed operation to capture the extremist bastion. Turkish forces are conspicuously absent from the operation, even though they are present in northern Syria in their own incursion in support of pro-Ankara Syrian rebels against ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia on Monday said its air force was continuing to hold off on strikes against war-ravaged Aleppo, after rebels snubbed Moscow’s offer to quit Syria’s second city. “The ceasefire in the operation of the Russian air force is continuing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. Russia has halted air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo since October 18, ...

  Bamako / AFP A peacekeeper from Togo and two Malian civilians were killed in an attack on a military convoy in Mali, rounding off a bloody week for foreign forces stationed there, a UN statement said. Seven other peacekeepers, also from Togo, were wounded in the attack in the central Mopti region on Sunday, according to the statement by ...