Politics

  Ankara / AFP Eighteen people were killed on Sunday when a van packed with five tonnes of explosives blew up in Turkey’s restive southeast in an attack blamed on Kurdish militants, the prime minister said. The bombing, which killed 10 soldiers and eight civilians, was one of the single deadliest attacks on the Turkish security forces since the attempted ...

  Seoul / AFP Analysis published on Sunday of recent satellite images fuelled concerns that North Korea may be on the brink of another nuclear test or long-range rocket launch. Speculation that Pyongyang is preparing such a show of force has been linked to Monday’s anniversary of the founding of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party. Past nuclear tests and missile ...

  Aleppo / AFP The Syrian regime pressed its assault on rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Saturday ahead of a showdown at the United Nations between Western governments and its ally Russia. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned that the mounting tensions between Washington and Moscow over the conflict had created a situation “more dangerous” than the Cold War. US ...

  Dhaka / AFP Bangladeshi forces on Saturday killed 11 suspected extremists including the new leader of a banned group behind a Dhaka cafe massacre, a minister said. “Eleven extremists were killed. They are all members of the new JMB (Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh),” Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said, referring to the outlawed group that killed 22 mostly foreign hostages at ...

  Ankara / AFP Two people suspected of planning a car bomb attack on the Turkish capital Ankara on Saturday blew themselves up after being confronted by police, averting what the justice minister called a “huge disaster”. The suspects, who both died in the explosion, were believed to be preparing an attack when they set off the explosives, the official ...

  DUBAI / Reuters A top general in forces loyal to Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government has been killed in fighting with Iran-aligned Houthi troops east of the capital Sanaa, sources on both sides of the conflict said. Major-General Abdel-Rab al-Shadadi, commander of Yemen’s Third Military Region — which has its headquarters in the city of Marib east of ...

  Beirut / AFP Before war broke out they were bakers, decorators or students. Now Syria’s volunteer rescuers known as the White Helmets risk their lives trying to pull victims from the rubble. Footage of the daring, often heart-rending rescues carried out by the group’s nearly 3,000 volunteers has frequently gone viral, earning it plaudits around the world. Images of ...

  Washington / AFP US officials formally accused the Russian government of trying to “interfere” with the American presidential election, and vowed to respond at an undisclosed time and place. The assertion against Russia comes with relations already frayed over NATO defenses and stalled efforts to end the bloody civil war in Syria. A joint statement from the Department of ...

  Rabat / AFP The Islamist party which has headed Morocco’s coalition government since Arab Spring-inspired protests five years ago has beaten liberal rivals in parliamentary elections, results showed on Saturday. Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) took 125 seats out of 395, the interior ministry said after all ballots were counted. Its main rival, the ...

  Brussels / AFP Belgian police missed 13 opportunities to unmask the participants of the deadly Paris November attacks before the events, according to an internal report leaked to a newspaper on Saturday. The police report in the De Tijd daily shows that as early as February 2015, the force were in possession of phone records linking known terrorist suspects ...