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Nigerian soldiers have killed about 30 suspected members of Boko Haram, including a close associate of the group’s leader, during a gun battle in northeastern Yobe state, an army spokesman says.
“About 30 suspected Boko Haram terrorists were killed in the battle which lasted several hours,” Lieutenant Eli Lazarus, an army spokesman, said in a statement on Sunday.
President Benigno Aquino 3rd announced on Sunday that a deal had been reached with Muslim separatist rebels to end a decades-long insurgency that has left more than 150,000 people dead.
“This framework agreement paves the way for a final and enduring peace in Mindanao,” Aquino said, referring to the southern third of the Philippines that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) regards as its ancestral homeland.
A fierce fighting between somali forces and al-Shabaab fighters reported flared up again in the south-western volatile region of Gedo, leaving scores of people dead, officials said.
Jamal Hassan Farah, the Somali army chief in Garbaharey town, the provincial capital of Gedo, told Shabelle Media that the combat erupted overnight when al-Shabaab agents armed with rocket-propelled launchers and machine-guns attacked army bases in the city.
Another mortar shell from Syria struck Turkish territory on Saturday, prompting a fourth straight day of retaliatory artillery fire, and reviving fears that the crisis in Syria could spiral into a regional conflict.
The latest shelling comes a day after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Syria not to test Turkey’s “limits and determination” and insisted that his country “was not bluffing” with its warnings.
Syrian rebels have shot down a military helicopter east of the capital Damascus, according to British based observers.
The new attack comes hours after rebels seized an air defence base nearby.