Riyadh / AFP Saudi Arabia is determined to prevent external “interference” in neighbouring war-torn Yemen, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud said in an annual address on Wednesday. He did not explicitly refer to the kingdom’s regional rival Iran but Saudi officials have accused Tehran and the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah of aiding rebels in Yemen. Since March 2015, …

  Juba / AFP President Salva Kiir called on Wednesday for a “national dialogue” to end the three-year-long civil war in South Sudan. In a speech to parliament, Kiir, whose wrangling for power with his former deputy Riek Machar plunged the world’s newest nation into a brutal, destructive and ongoing civil war in December 2013, said the dialogue would “consolidate peace” …

  Qaraqosh / AFP Factories churning out tens of thousands of munitions and an entire street turned into a conveyor belt for car bombs: advances by Iraqi forces around Mosul have laid bare the scale of the IS group’s arms industry. In the more than two years since it seized control over swathes of the country, IS established a sprawling and …