Politics

  Washington / AFP Nearly a million refugees fleeing the brutal conflict in South Sudan, most of them women and children, are suffering dire conditions in camps across the region, the UN said on Monday. Refugee agency UNHCR said arrivals in Uganda alone had peaked at “more than 8,000 in one day” last month after an outbreak of fresh fighting in ...

  Srinagar / AFP A police paramilitary commander was shot dead in Kashmir’s main city while at least two suspected separatist militants were killed in gun-battles on Monday as violence flared in the disputed Himalayan region on Indian Independence Day. The unnamed commander was critically injured in an ambush and died in hospital, a senior officer of India’s Central Reserve Police ...

  Riyadh / AFP The Saudi-led coalition battling rebels in Yemen said it would allow humanitarian flights into Sanaa’s international airport from Monday, after several days’ closure due to renewed hostilities around the capital. “Sanaa international airport will be reopened to United Nations flights and those of other agencies from Monday,” a coalition statement said. The airport in the rebel-held capital ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia is close to joining forces with the United States around Syria’s ravaged second city of Aleppo, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said in comments aired on Monday. “Step by step we are getting closer to the situation in which — and I’m only speaking about Aleppo here — we will be able to begin battling together so ...

  Washington / AFP Emergency crews in flood-devastated Louisiana have rescued more than 20,000 people after catastrophic inundations that left at least five dead, news reports said on Monday. As many as 10,000 people are living in shelters after a weekend of torrential rains that has prompted the federal government to declare a disaster, according to Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards. ...

  Goma / AFP Civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday said the number of people hacked to death in the restive east this weekend has risen to 51. “Our team on the ground has counted 51 bodies slain with machetes,” said Teddy Kataliko, a member of a local alliance of NGOs and unions working in the ...

  Beirut / AFP Syrian and Russian warplanes have launched a wave of air strikes in northern Syria, killing dozens in areas held by a rebel alliance battling to take control of second city Aleppo. The strikes, which began on Saturday and were continuing on Sunday, killed at least 45 civilians in Aleppo and west of the city and 22 ...

  New York / AFP A gunman shot and killed a New York imam and his assistant near their mosque in the borough of Queens during a brazen attack carried out in broad daylight on Saturday. Police said the imam, identified as Maulama Akonjee, 55, and his assistant, 64-year-old Thara Uddin, were shot just before 2:00 pm (1800 GMT) in the ...

  Rome / AFP Libyan authorities have warned Italy about an IS cell based in the Milan area with links to one of the extremist group’s battle-hardened veterans, Italian media reported on Sunday. The existence of the network was reportedly revealed by documents seized by Libyan agents after government forces took over an IS headquarters in the city of Sirte earlier ...

  Tokyo / AFP Japan will develop a new land-to-sea missile as part of plans to beef up its defence of remote southern islands, as tensions with China increase over the disputed territory, a report said on Sunday. The two countries are locked in a long-running dispute over the uninhabited islets known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in ...