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In a huge setback to Maoists, its top leader Kishanji was today killed in a gunbattle with security forces in a forest in West Midnapore district of West Bengal, a day after he narrowly escaped from there.
The body of 58-year-old Molajula Koteswar Rao, better known as Kishanji, was found and identified after the encounter, a top counter-insurgency force official said.
The Sudanese army said on Tuesday that it has taken control of another position held by the rebel Sudan - People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) twenty days after the capture of the rebel stronghold of Kurmuk in Blue Nile border state.
The Sudanese army, which is fighting the SPLM-N in the Blue Nile since the first of last September, intensified its efforts to clear the region from the rebels pushing them South in a series of attacks hampered by the rainy season.
Five ethnic armed groups, including two major Karen and Shan rebel organizations, held peace talks with a Naypyidaw delegation at the Thai-Burmese border on Saturday and three informally agreed a ceasefire, according to sources.
The Karen National Union (KNU) and Shan State Army-South (SSA-South) met with a Burmese government delegation led by Aung Min, the minister for railways, who was sent by President Thein Sein.
“We talked about peace. We asked what was the role for ethnic armed groups in the government’s peace process,” said Maj Sai Lao Hseng, a spokesperson for the SSA-South.
“The Minister, Aung Min, explained to us that there are three steps toward the emergence of peace—a ceasefire, cooperation between ceasefire groups and Naypyidaw for development, and a meeting hosted by the government to tackle unsolved political conflicts,” he added.
At least 40 al Shabaab fighters are reported to have been seriously injured following fighting between them and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government troops in Kulbiyow and Badhaadhe areas in Lower Juba.
Kenya Defence Forces and TFG troops backed by Ras Kamboni militia have been slowly moving into al Shabaab strongholds and taking over training camps in the joint quest to rout the militia.
The injured fighters who have since withdrawn from their camps were transported from a forested area between Kulbiyow and Badhaadhe in their battle wagons to a hospital.
Several hundred Ethiopian troops crossed on Saturday into southern and central Somalia, local elders said, but Addis Ababa dismissed the reports as ‘absolutely not true.’
‘There are several hundred Ethiopian troops here in lorries and some armoured vehicles too,’ said elder Abdi Ibrahim Warsame, speaking by telephone from Gurel town, in Somalia’s central Galgudud region.
Ethiopian forces were also reported in the Hiran region at the town of Beletweyne, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) into Somalia, an area contested by Islamist al-Shabaab rebels and pro-government militia.