Al-Shura / AFP Iraqi forces launched an offensive on Monday to retake Mosul and deal a death blow to the IS group’s “caliphate” in the city where it was declared two years ago. Some 30,000 federal forces are leading the offensive, backed by a 60-nation US-led coalition, in what is expected to be a long and difficult assault on …

  Yangon/ AFP Searchers have recovered 25 bodies from a ferry that sank in central Myanmar and expect to find scores more corpses as workers begin raising the boat from the riverbed, officials said Monday. A total of 154 people have been rescued since the boat sank early Saturday on the Chindwin River about 72 kilometres (45 miles) north of the …

  Moscow / AFP An unidentified man on Monday blew himself up at the state-owned TV centre in Abkhazia, a tiny Russian-backed breakaway region of Georgia, local officials said. “A man blew himself up on the territory of the TV centre. It was obviously clear that he had a bomb,” Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Abkhaz interior minister Aslan …