Politics

  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 ...

  Istanbul / AFP Turkey warned on Monday it would carry out more strikes on a Syrian Kurdish militia if it failed to retreat beyond the Euphrates River, as Washington condemned their weekend clashes as “unacceptable”. Turkish forces pressed on with a two-pronged operation inside Syria against the IS extremists and the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), shelling over ...

  Berlin / AFP German federal prosecutors said on Monday they had brought charges against a 16-year-old girl who allegedly stabbed a policeman in February in an operation for the IS extremist group. The German-Moroccan teenager, identified only as Safia S., was charged on August 12 with attempted murder, grievous bodily harm and support for a foreign terrorist organisation, the federal ...

Bangkok / AFP A Thai military court on Monday issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect in a spate of bomb attacks on tourist towns, all three of them Muslims from the insurgency-plagued south. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing and arson spree, which hit popular resorts across the south this month, killing four and wounding dozens including ...

  Brussels / AFP Several attackers rammed a car through the gates of Belgium’s national crime laboratory on Monday in Brussels and then started a fire in what prosecutors said may have been an attempt to destroy evidence. Five people were arrested nearby and are being questioned, but there is no confirmed link to terrorism so far. No one was ...

Brasília / AFP Suspended president Dilma Rousseff arrived on Monday at Brazil’s Senate for a dramatic finale to an impeachment trial likely ending 13 years of leftist rule in Latin America’s biggest country. Rousseff, 68, was greeted by cheering supporters as she arrived in the Senate to testify for the first time in her defense, just hours before senators were ...

  Bogota / AFP Colombia on Monday began its first day of peace with the country’s largest insurgency after a ceasefire between the FARC and the government went into effect, ending 52 years of warfare. The full ceasefire ordered by President Juan Manuel Santos and the head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Timoleon Jimenez, began at midnight Sunday ...

  Sirte / AFP Forces loyal to Libya’s UN-backed unity government on Sunday pushed into the last areas of Sirte held by the IS group in what was the extremists’ coastal stronghold. The battle for the hometown of Libya’s slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi was launched more than three months ago by forces loyal to the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. ...