Politics

  Phnom Penh / AFP Cambodia’s UN-backed court on Tuesday heard harrowing new details about the Khmer Rouge’s forced marriages, one of the brutal regime’s less reported atrocities. The Khmer Rouge oversaw the deaths of up to two million Cambodians from 1975-1979—nearly one-quarter of the population—in their quest for a Marxist agrarian utopia. But the testimony is the first time the ...

  Ankara / AFP Turkey on Tuesday pounded IS extremists in Syria with new artillery strikes as expectations grew of a major Ankara-backed offensive against the extremists after a deadly suicide bombing on its soil. With tensions flaring on the Turkey-Syria border following the bombing in the nearby city of Gaziantep that left 54 people dead, Turkish howitzers hit extremist and ...

  Lille / AFP One Sudanese migrant was killed and another injured in clashes with Afghan migrants outside the French port of Calais, authorities said on Tuesday. The two migrants were among a group of people from the “Jungle” camp who tried to access a motorway to smuggle onto trucks crossing the Channel to Britain on Monday night, local police ...

  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” ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  Brussels / AFP Turkey said on Monday the Syrian border region must be “completely cleansed” from the IS group, after a weekend suicide bombing in Gaziantep blamed on the extremists left at least 54 dead. In a sign of a key battle to come, Syrian rebel fighters have amassed on the Turkish side of the border in preparation for an ...

  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 ...

  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 ...