Politics

  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 ...

  Goma / AFP About 30 civilians have been killed in a massacre in an area of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that has been shaken by violence since 2014, the army said on Sunday. Suspected rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a partly radical armed group of Ugandan origin, killed “about 30 people” in the town of Beni on ...

  Bangkok / AFP Thai police discovered unexploded bombs in three top tourist destinations over the weekend as they searched for clues to a wave of blasts that rocked resort areas and killed four last week. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing spree, which hit seven southern provinces on Thursday and Friday and left dozens wounded, including European tourists. ...

  Beirut / AFP The IS group has freed hundreds of civilians used by the extremists as human shields while retreating in northern Syria, US-backed forces and a monitor said on Saturday. A source from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which pushed IS out of the city of Manbij this week with the aid of US-led air strikes, said that ...

  United Nations / AFP The UN Security Council has authorized the deployment of a robust force of 4,000 troops to South Sudan after heavy fighting set back efforts to end the country’s devastating war. The council adopted a US-drafted resolution that also threatened to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan if the government blocks the deployment. Eleven countries in ...

  Hua Hin / AFP Thai authorities on Saturday hunted for culprits behind a wave of bombings targeting popular holiday destinations, as businesses braced for the economic fallout from the attacks on the crucial tourism industry. The kingdom was on edge after 11 small bombs and a series of suspected arson attacks exploded across five southern provinces on Thursday night and ...

  Arbil / AFP The nephew of the governor of a key province where Iraqi forces are battling the IS group has been gunned down in the country’s north, officials said on Saturday. The shooting in Iraqi Kurdish regional capital Arbil came just hours after Nowfal Al Aqoub, the governor of Nineveh, made controversial remarks about children being fathered by IS ...

  Islamabad / AFP Six crew members of a Pakistani government helicopter which crash-landed in Afghanistan’s volatile east have been released, an official said on Saturday, after they were taken hostage by the Afghan Taliban. The crew “was released in an inter-tribe exchange on the Pakistan-Afghan border (and) arrived in Islamabad today,” foreign ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria said in a statement. ...