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At least five Maoist rebels are dead following a gun battle with police in India’s western state of Maharashtra.
Officials say the insurgents opened fire on a police patrol in a forested region of the Gadchiroli district.
“We have recovered five of the Maoists’ bodies from the scene,” Gadchiroli deputy police chief RK Shinde said by phone on Thursday.
Battles in Damascus intensified Thursday, as the regime shelled suburbs surrounding the city, and fierce clashes between rebels and the army erupted in the outer suburbs, activists said.
By early afternoon 56 people had been killed across the country, including seven women and two children, and 12 in Damascus and suburbs, according to the Local Coordination Committees network.
Ratcheting up the rhetoric, North Korea warned early Thursday that its military has been cleared to wage an attack on the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear” weapons.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, said in Washington that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack from North Korea. The defense secretary said the United States was seeking to defuse the situation.
At least 54 people were killed and 90 others wounded Wednesday in an insurgent attack on a government compound in western Afghanistan where Taliban fighters were facing trial, local officials said.
Nine insurgents with explosives strapped to their bodies stormed the compound in Farah province, bordering Iran, Reuters reported. Explosions were followed by protracted gunbattles.
Gaza militants have fired a rocket into southern Israel after the death in custody of a Palestinian who suffered from cancer, Israeli police say.
“There was a rocket that was fired,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP on Tuesday. “It landed in an open area,” he said, adding there were no immediate reports of casualties or property damage.