| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK TWITTER FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
The top negotiator for Colombia’s leftist FARC rebel group said Monday he was confident that the nearly 50 year old guerrilla war is almost over.
“We understand, and the country understands it as well, that wars are not eternal, and we feel certain somehow that Colombia is near the end of the conflict,” Ivan Marquez said in a radio interview.
The Democratic Republic of Congo says its forces have killed 120 rebels and captured another dozen in fighting in North Kivu province.
Government spokesman Lambert Mende said Monday that about 10 army soldiers have died in the fighting north of Goma, the provincial capital.
The United Nations mission in Congo says it started Sunday when the M23, which holds territory near Goma, attacked government troops near the towns of Mutaho and Rusayo.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda-linked fighters have clashed again, just days after a leader of the FSA was shot dead at a checkpoint after a row between fighters from the two groups.
Activists told Al Jazeera that the FSA and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Saturday fought for control of a strategic checkpoint in Aleppo city’s Bustan al-Qasr district, a strategic gateway between rebel and government controlled territory.
Seven Unamid peacekeepers have been killed and 17 “military and police personnel” injured in an ambush by “a large unidentified group”.
An Unamid statement to Radio Dabanga on Saturday confirms that “the incident, which began at 9am, occurred approximately 25 kilometres west of the Mission’s Khor Abeche team site”.
Streams of refugees have crossed the border into western Uganda’s Bundibugyo district since the attack on Thursday.
United Nations refugee agency official Karen Ringuette said that as of late Friday, more than 30,000 had entered Uganda, updating a previous tally of at least 23,000.