Taliban fighters have poisoned and killed 17 people, including 11 policemen and six civilians, in an overnight attack on a post manned by a government-backed local police in eastern Afghanistan. Details of Wednesday's pre-dawn attack on an Afghan Local Police (ALP) checkpoint were still not clear, as officials were investigating how the fighters breached security at the post in Ghazni province. Ab ...
Russia has urged the warring sides in Syria to halt their almost two-year conflict and start talks, warning that both sides risk "mutual destruction." Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said on Wednesday that Moscow was working to encourage dialogue between the rebels and the regime of president Bashar al-Assad. "Neither side can allow itself to bet on a military settlement a ...
Attacks on Afghan government employees rose by 700 percent last year, said the U.N. on Tuesday. Meanwhile the overall civilian death toll from the war fell for the first time in six years, according to AFP. Women employed in government service have been specifically targeted by Taliban-led insurgents. The U.N. mission labeled the trend as “particularly disturbing.” A total of 2,754 civ ...
North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday in defiance of UN resolutions, drawing condemnation from around the world, including from its only major ally, China, which summoned the North Korean ambassador to protest. Pyongyang said the test was an act of self-defense against "US hostility" and threatened stronger steps if necessary. The test puts pressure on US President Bara ...
(AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says decisions to strike potential terrorist targets with unmanned drones don't "come lightly." Panetta says those who authorize the drone strikes make sure they "are focused on somebody who is ... a direct threat to the United States." In an interview released Sunday by NBC, he describes it an "intricate process" of establi ...
At least six people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up amongst a group of security officials outside the Somali prime minister's office on Tuesday, AFP reported army officials as saying. “I saw the dead bodies of six people and several others were injured,” said Abdukadir Ali, a Somali military official who stayed near the scene of the attack in central Mogadishu. It is ...
Palestinian activists have spent their first night at a protest camp set up in the occupied West Bank to demonstrate against Israel's illegal settlement policy. A mosque and several tents were established in the village of Beit Iksa near Jerusalem on Friday. The protesters have named the camp "al-Karamah", meaning "dignity" in Arabic. The move comes a week after activists set u ...
A Chicago businessman was sentenced to 14 years in jail for helping a Pakistani militant group plot an attack on a Danish newspaper, which originally sparked outrage after cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed were published. Tahawwur Hussain Rana aged 52, was convicted of letting a childhood friend use his immigration business as a cover while conducting surveillance at the newspaper for the banned Pa ...
Just before the mandate of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is up for review, the Somali government arrested 790 suspects in a coordinated operation on Thursday as part of an extensive and ongoing crackdown. The crackdown aims to fulfill Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon’s promise to cleanse the city of terrorists, made earlier this week when he issued his administration’s ...
With the French military operations in Mali expected to last longer than expected, Paris has sought funding from rich Arab Gulf states, saying "everybody" should help in fighting the al-Qaeda-linked extremists in the African country. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius has said donors would meet by the end of January to provide funding for an African force due to be deployed in Mali w ...
