Politics

Boko Haram’s Shekau ‘wounded’ in air strike

  Lagos / AFP Nigeria’s military claimed on Tuesday to have seriously injured Boko Haram’s elusive leader Abubakar Shekau and killed other commanders in an air strike on the extremist group’s forest stronghold. Nigeria has repeatedly claimed to have killed Shekau in previous raids only for him to appear shortly afterwards in videos. Shekau was “fatally wounded in the shoulder” ...

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Iraq forces launch push to retake town south of Mosul

  Kirkuk / AFP Iraqi special forces led an operation on Tuesday aimed at retaking the extremist-held town of Qayyarah, a key staging base for operations to attack Mosul, military sources said. Qayyarah lies on the western bank of the Tigris river, about 60 kilometres (35 miles) south of Mosul, the IS group’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq. With the ...

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Merkel wants migrant deals with N African states

  Berlin / AFP German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Tuesday on the EU and North African countries to do deals modelled on a controversial agreement with Turkey to stem migrant flows to Europe. Under the EU-Turkey agreement, Ankara agreed to take back one Syrian who made it to Greece in return for being allowed to send one from its massive ...

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3 held in France in August for planning attacks

  Paris / AFP Seven people with links to terrorist networks, at least three of whom were planning attacks, have been arrested in France this month, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Tuesday. Cazeneuve said at a press conference that French police had arrested as many people for terror links in the first half of 2016 as for the whole ...

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South Sudan vice president starts first Khartoum visit

  Tripoli / AFP Fighters of Libya’s unity government, backed by US air strikes, have recaptured more ground from extremists holed up in the centre of the coastal city of Sirte, loyalist forces said on Monday. “Our forces have retaken the internal security building used as a prison by the IS” group, as well as a courthouse, the Al-Naga district ...

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China state media casts doubt on Syria Omran video

  Beijing / AFP China’s state broadcaster has questioned the authenticity of the video of Syrian boy Omran which went viral worldwide, alleging it may have been faked as part of a Western “propaganda war”. The video showed the stunned-looking four-year-old covered in blood and dust after an air strike in Aleppo last week, with the US State Department calling ...

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Kerry in Kenya for security talks

  Nairobi / AFP With a peace deal unravelling in South Sudan and extremist attacks continuing in Somalia, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi on Monday. The two discussed regional security and terrorism before Kerry met with the foreign ministers of Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda for talks focusing on a ...

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Egypt’s Sisi says Putin ready to host Mideast peace talks

  Cairo / AFP Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said his Russian counterpart and close ally Vladimir Putin wants to host an Israeli-Palestinian summit to revive peace talks, in an interview published on Monday. Sisi told state newspaper editors that he believed Israel was increasingly convinced of the need for a peace deal, saying it was a “positive sign.” But ...

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Hundreds of flights grounded as typhoon hits Tokyo

  Nasiriyah / AFP A powerful typhoon struck near Tokyo on Monday, the first for 11 years to hit the densely populated region, temporarily shutting down Japan’s biggest airport and grounding more than 500 flights nationwide. Typhoon Mindulle made landfall at about 12:30 pm (0330 GMT) in Tateyama city, 80 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency ...

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