Manila / AFP Media groups expressed outrage on Wednesday at Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s endorsement of killing corrupt journalists, warning his comments could incite more murders in a nation already one of the world’s most dangerous for reporters. Duterte, who won last month’s elections in a landslide after pledging to kill tens of thousands of criminals, told reporters on ...

Near Fallujah / AFP Iraqi forces struggled on Wednesday to break into Fallujah city centre where hundreds of fighters from the IS group and some 50,000 increasingly desperate civilians were holed up. Fighting also raged hundreds of kilometres further up the Euphrates Valley in Syria, as US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters opened a new front against the extremists in the ...

  BEIRUT / AP Kurdish-led Syrian fighters have launched a new advance on the northern town of Manbij, a key IS stronghold, with the aid of US-led airstrikes, a spokesman for the fighters and a monitoring group said on Wednesday. The United Nations meanwhile said it was looking into “every possible means” to deliver life-saving aid to besieged Syrians now ...