ANKARA / AP The United States risks major damage to its relationship with NATO ally Turkey if the US includes Kurdish forces in the fight to retake Raqqa, the IS group’s de facto capital, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Thursday. Turkey and the US are locked in a heated dispute about US plans to liberate Raqqa, with …

  BEIRUT / AP At least 20 civilians, including some children, were killed in suspected US-coalition airstrikes on a village east of the IS group’s de-facto capital in Syria, activists reported on Thursday. The report comes as the militants come under mounting pressure by rival US-backed and Russian-backed forces working to seize the capital, Raqqa. Also on Thursday, engineers restored two …

  BUCHAREST / AFP Moldova has accused Russia’s intelligence service of intimidating politicians and other officials, amid an investigation in the former Soviet republic into alleged money laundering by Russian officials. Moldova’s Parliament said on Thursday that Russia intelligence agents had “abusively stopped…. interrogated, and treated in a humiliating manner” 25 Moldovan lawmakers, intelligence officials, and pro-European politicians in recent …