Monday, August 15, 2011
Syrian troops have kept up their assault on the coastal city of Latakia for a third day, reportedly killing three people.
Residents told Al Jazeera that the army was using heavy machine guns and tanks, and had rounded up people in a sports stadium in the city on Monday.
“As of 10GMT, the army instructed all residents in southern and southeastern Latakia to evacuate”, Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from the Jordanian side of the Jordan-Syria border, said.
According to activists, most people started fleeing to the heart of the city and there Syrian troops arrested many of them.
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Sunday, August 14, 2011
Libyan rebels in pickup trucks mounted with weapons and troops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi battled in the streets of Zawiya Sunday, a day after opposition forces pushed from the western mountains into the strategic city in their most dramatic advance in months.
Pro-Gadhafi snipers shot at rebels from an overpass deep in the city, while loud booms echoed and a column of heavy black smoke rose over the outskirts. Dozens of civilians crammed in cars with their belongings fled the city. In one car, four women cried desperately, as their male driver called out:
“There are dead people in our neighborhood”.
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A suicide bomber attacked a police station in eastern Algeria early Sunday wounding 33 people, including 11 policemen and two Chinese nationals, El Watan daily reported. The attack took place in the city of Tizi Ouzou, some 100 km east of Algiers.
The huge blast was heard all around the city, the report added. The bomber rammed his Toyota Hilux pick-up into the police headquarters building. According to witnesses, shots were heard just before the explosion.
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
Syrian security forces on Friday killed at least 20 people as thousands of anti-regime protesters rallied in cities after the Ramadan weekly prayers, rights activists said.
A man was shot dead in a dawn assault on the Damascus suburb of Saqba while a woman died when troops opened fire in the town of Kahn Sheikhun in northwestern Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, according to AFP.
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Russian forces in the restive north Caucasus Dagestan region killed seven suspected rebels, including a top commander, Russia’s anti-terror committee said Thursday.
One of those killed during the operation conducted on Wednesday and Thursday in the Dagestan capital Makhachkala was Abdullah Magomedaliev, the committee said, according to Russian news agencies.
The gunman, who was born in 1977, was described as “the leader of a battalion specialised in spectacular attacks against the security forces.”
“Magomedaliev trained a suicide bomber and planned the the suicide attack against interior ministry base in Bouinaksk that killed 56 troops in September 2010,” the committee said.
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