Politics

  Tripoli / AFP Forces loyal to Libya’s unity government said on Monday at least 80 extremists were killed at the weekend in the city of Sirte, a former stronghold of the IS group. “Commanders of front line units have counted at least corpses (of extremists) killed as they tried in vain to attack behind the lines” of the loyalists, ...

  Rabat / AFP Moroccan police have arrested 10 women who had allegedly pledged allegiance to the IS extremist group and planned to carry out suicide bombings across the country, authorities said on Monday. The all-female cell had “tried to obtain the chemicals used to make explosive belts” and were planning to attack “vital installations”, the interior ministry said. The women ...

  Ramallah / AFP The Palestinian high court on Monday ordered municipal elections to be held only in the West Bank and not in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, though a new date for the suspended polls was not set. The ruling could bring to an end hopes that the municipal elections would be the first polls since 2006 in which ...

  BAGHDAD / AP Militants on Monday unleashed a series of attacks in Shiite-majority neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 15 civilians, officials said. The deadliest attack took place in the southwestern neighborhood of Al Amil when a bomber set off his explosives-laden vest in a busy outdoor market, killing seven shoppers and wounding up to 25 ...

  Idlib / AFP The frail cries of four-month-old Wahida made the rescue worker who carried her out of the rubble in Syria’s Idlib break down in sobs. The full story is one of tragedy. “I was in the shop when the airplane began carrying out air strikes,” recalls 32-year-old father Yehya Maatouq almost matter-of-factly. He was speaking to AFP on ...

  Kunduz / AFP Explosions echoed across Kunduz as Afghan commandos began to push back a Taliban assault on Monday, forcing residents to shelter in their homes one year after militants briefly seized the strategic provincial capital. Government helicopters were targeting gunmen from the air in a bid to repel the attack, a day before President Ashraf Ghani is due ...

  Moscow / AFP Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered a halt to an agreement with the United States on plutonium disposal, citing Washington’s “unfriendly actions”. The deal, signed in 2000, was meant to allow both nuclear powers to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium from their defence programmes, a move seen as a key step in the disarmament process. The two ...

  Bogota / AFP Colombian voters rejected a peace deal with communist FARC rebels, near-complete referendum results indicated, unexpectedly blasting away what the government hoped would be a historic end to the 52-year conflict. Reversing the trend of earlier opinion polls, voters appeared to have narrowly defied the government’s pleas for a new era of peace in the South American country. ...

  Stockholm / AFP Yoshinori Ohsumi of Japan won the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday for his pioneering work on autophagy — a process whereby cells “eat themselves” — which when disrupted can cause Parkinson’s and diabetes. A fundamental process in cell physiology, autophagy is essential for the orderly recycling of damaged cell parts and understanding it better has major implications ...

  Srebrenica/ AFP The Bosnian town of Srebrenica, known for the wartime massacre of 8,000 Muslims by Serb forces, looked set to get its first Serb mayor in 17 years after elections on Sunday. A Muslim war criminal was also poised to become mayor in the northwestern town of Velika Kladusa following the poll, which came at a time of renewed ...