| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK TWITTER FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
A total of 37 foreign workers died in a hostage crisis at an Algerian desert gas plant and seven are still missing, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said on Monday.
Mr Sellal also told a news conference that a Canadian had co-ordinated the attack by Islamists on the site near the Libyan border.
Colombia’s largest rebel group FARC on Sunday announced the immediate end of a two-month unilateral truce and renewed its call for a bilateral truce to hold peace talks with the government “in a tranquil environment.”
While talking to press in the Cuban capital Havana, the leader of the FARC’s negotiating team, “Ivan Marquez,” said that “with pain in our heart we must admit that we return to the time of military warfare that nobody wants.”
A Kachin rebel at Hka Ya Bhum, an outpost of KIA in Lajayang. (Photo: Steve Tickner / The Irrawaddy)
Ethnic Kachin rebels in Burma said clashes in the country’s north continued Saturday despite a government promise to cease fire, casting doubt over hopes that the bloody conflict there could end soon.
Burma’s military had declared Friday it would stop attacks against rebels around the town of Lajayang, near the country’s northeastern border with China, starting Saturday morning because it had achieved its goal of securing an army outpost there that had been surrounded by insurgents.
The Malian government forces, backed with French bombardments, retook the town of Diabaly, about 360 km northeast of Bamako, on Friday, the second victory after they captured Konna in further north on Thursday, security sources said.
After two days of fierce fighting, supported by airstrikes by French troops, the Malian army entered Diabaly, a small town near Niono, as the rebels abandoned the town that they seized on Monday.
Three Kachin rebel posts fell to Burmese government troops on Friday after a week of continuous government attacks that combined ground forces, artillery fire and airstrikes, Kachin rebels along the frontline said.
Government soldiers however, failed to take the strategic mountaintop post of Hwkya Bhum, which has been the focus of the recent attacks in the mountainous around Laiza, a town located on the Burma-China border where the rebels have their headquarters.