Politics

  Tripoli / AFP Libya has shipped the last of its chemical weapons stocks out of the country, officials said on Tuesday, under a UN-backed plan to ensure the arsenal could not fall into the wrong hands. The move will ease fears that extremists like the Islamic State group could gain access to the weapons in Libya, which has been wracked ...

  Bishkek / AFP A van driven by a suicide bomber exploded after ramming through a gate at the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday, wounding three people, authorities said. “As a result of the explosion, only the suicide bomber terrorist died. Security guards were injured,” Kyrgyzstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Jenish Razakov told journalists at the scene. Razakov said the ...

  Dhaka / AFP A wealthy tycoon who was a chief financier for Bangladesh’s largest radical party could be executed in days after losing his final appeal on Tuesday against a death sentence from a controversial war crimes tribunal. The Supreme Court rejected Mir Quasem Ali’s last attempt to overturn the death penalty handed down two years ago by the domestic ...

  Beirut / AFP An IS group militant rammed his explosives-laden car into an army recruitment centre in Aden on Monday, killing 60 people in the deadliest extremist attack to hit the city in over a year. Yemen’s army, supported by a Saudi-led coalition, is training young recruits to join its nationwide war against Shiite Houthi rebels and their allies, as ...

  Maputo / AFP A South African hotelier said on Monday he had picked up a piece of aircraft wreckage off the Mozambican coast in the latest possible find of debris from the missing MH370 flight. Mozambique’s aviation authorities in Maputo said they had been informed of the discovery, but were yet to receive the item. Australia, which is leading ...

  Kashmir / AFP Authorities lifted a curfew in Indian-administered Kashmir after 52 days of lockdown amid deadly violence, but street clashes broke out again on Monday between protesters and security forces. Restrictions were lifted throughout most of the tense Kashmir Valley including the main city of Sringar “following improvement in the situation”, police said in a statement late Sunday. ...

  Sirte /AFP Libya’s pro-government forces on Monday cornered IS group extremist in their last holdouts in the city of Sirte, after heavy fighting that left dozens dead and wounded. The battle for IS’s North African stronghold was launched more than three months ago by forces loyal to the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. Those forces have been backed by ...

  Dhaka / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that there was evidence to link the extremists behind a recent series of deadly attacks in Bangladesh to the IS group. “We talked very openly about this and we made it very clear … that there is evidence that ISIL in Iraq and Syria has contacts with ...

  Kabul / AFP Afghanistan launched a polio vaccination campaign on Monday aimed at reaching children in areas previously controlled by IS group militants, officials said. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic—a fact blamed on opposition to immunisation by extremist groups, who claim the vaccines are a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims ...

  Karbala /AFP Attackers armed with suicide vests, rifles and grenades killed 18 people in the Iraqi oasis town of Ain Al Tamer, many of them guests at a wedding party, local officials said on Monday. “They were carrying Kalashnikovs, hand grenades. One of them blew himself up and the others were killed by the security forces,” said the head ...