Politics

  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. ...

  Dhaka / AFP Bangladesh police said on Sunday they were hunting more extremist leaders after shooting dead the suspected mastermind of a deadly cafe attack, on the eve of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s first visit. Security forces stormed a militant hideout outside Dhaka on Saturday, killing three suspected extremists including the Bangladesh-born Canadian accused of organising last month’s ...

  Caracas / AFP Venezuela sent an opposition leader who was under house arrest back to jail and expelled a delegation of Ecuadoran lawmakers, amid rising political tension over a campaign to recall leftist President Nicolas Maduro. Former San Cristobal mayor Daniel Ceballos was abruptly taken from his home before dawn by members of the Venezuelan intelligence services, his wife said ...

  Marawi / AFP Muslim extremists who support the IS group staged a daring jailbreak in the southern Philippines, freeing 23 detainees in the latest in a series of mass escapes, officials said on Sunday. About 50 heavily armed members of the Maute group raided the local jail in the southern city of Marawi on Mindanao island on Saturday and freed ...

  Brasília / AFP The final witnesses in the defense of suspended Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff testified late Saturday in her senate impeachment trial, days before a vote that could permanently remove her from power. Rousseff, 68, is accused of taking illegal state loans to help bridge budget shortfalls and mask the true state of the economy during her 2014 reelection ...

  Beirut / AFP Turkish shelling and air strikes killed at least 40 Syrians on Sunday, a monitor said, in the first significant civilian casualties in Turkey’s intensifying campaign in northern Syria. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the army had killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” in air strikes as part of its unprecedented operation inside Syria. The bombardments came after Ankara ...

  Abuja / AFP Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Sunday that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau is “wounded”, in his first comments on military claims that the extremist leader was injured in an attack. Nigeria’s armed forces said on Tuesday that Shekau had been wounded in an air strike on Boko Haram’s forest stronghold, but released no further statement ...

  Cairo / AFP Egyptian authorities on Sunday released a renowned human rights lawyer arrested after protests against President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s decision to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia. Malek Adly had been held in pre-trial detention since being arrested by plainclothes police on May 5. His defence team confirmed his release. “The case has not been referred ...

  Riyadh /AFP Yemen’s exiled government has said it welcomes in principle a US-backed plan to resume peace talks with Iran-backed rebels on the basis of forming a unity government. At a meeting in Riyadh, the cabinet gave an “initial welcoming to the ideas that came out of the meeting in Jeddah,” which included US Secretary of State John Kerry, ...

  Berlin / AFP Germany expects up to 300,000 asylum seekers to arrive this year, less than one-third of the total during 2015’s record influx, the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees (BAMF) said on Sunday. BAMF chief Frank-Juergen Weise told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Germany’s healthy economy and improvements to refugee services meant that the country was ...