Kunduz / AFP Afghan forces have recaptured a district that had fallen briefly to the Taliban, officials and residents said on Sunday, after thousands of people fled their homes in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunduz province. Khan Abad district, which is around 30 kilometres east of Kunduz city—the provincial capital where militants last year scored their biggest ever victory—had fallen to ...

  Nasiriyah / AFP Iraq on Sunday hanged 36 men convicted over the 2014 massacre by extremists and allied militants of hundreds of military recruits, officials said. They had been found guilty of involvement in the “Speicher” massacre, named after a base near Tikrit where up to 1,700 recruits were kidnapped before being executed in a massacre claimed by the ...

Tehran / AFP Iran released images of its first domestically built long-range missile defence system on Sunday, a project started when the country was under international sanctions. Images on multiple state news agencies showed President Hassan Rouhani and Minister of Defence Hossein Dehghan standing in front of the new Bavar 373 missile defence system. The system was designed to intercept ...