Sunday, January 5, 2014
The Iraqi army shelled the western city of Falluja with mortar bombs overnight to try to wrest back control from militants, killing at least eight people, tribal leaders and officials said on Saturday, according to Reuters.
Al-Qaeda-linked fighters took control of the Iraqi city of Fallujah following a bloody battle with security forces in which more than 100 people were killed. The insurgents have announced the creation of an Islamic state in Fallujah, AFP reported.
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Saturday, January 4, 2014
Fighters of al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant carry their weapons during a parade at the Syrian town of Tel Abyad. (REUTERS)
Deadly clashes were reported Friday in northern Syria between Sunni Islamist jihadists linked to al-Qaeda and insurgents in other alliances, punctuating a growing schism within the armed Syrian opposition over the power exerted by its religiously radicalized members, many of them from other countries.
Antigovernment activists in the Aleppo area said that fighting had broken out near the Idlib Province town of Atareb, west of Aleppo, pitting members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a powerful al-Qaeda affiliate that includes foreign fighters, against an array of seven homegrown Syrian rebel groups. The rebels call themselves the Mujahedeen Army, and they resent what they see as the affiliate’s hijacking of their struggle, now nearly three years old, to depose President Bashar al-Assad.
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Thursday, January 2, 2014
Reports from Iraq say armed groups have seized parts of the western cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
Fighting erupted in Anbar Province on December 30 after security forces tore down a protest camp near Ramadi, inflaming simmering tensions between local Sunni Arabs and the Shi’ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
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Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Lebanese troops have arrested the leader of the Al-Qaeda-linked group that claimed a double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut in November, the defense minister told AFP Wednesday.
Majid al-Majid, the “emir” of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, “was arrested by the intelligence services of the Lebanese army in Beirut,” Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn said, without specifying when the arrest took place.
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Tuesday, December 31, 2013
South Sudan’s government and rebels sent delegates to peace talks in Ethiopia on Tuesday, officials said, but ethnic fighting raged on in the world’s youngest nation and both sides battled for control of a state capital.
Militias loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar fought their way on Tuesday morning into the centre of Bor, the main town in the vast, underdeveloped Jonglei state and the site of an ethnic massacre in 1991, witnesses said.
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