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Syrian activists say rebels have launched an offensive to capture government-held neighborhoods in the southern city of Daraa.
Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in Daraa, says the offensive is led by the Southern Front, a coalition of several dozen moderate rebel groups.
Turkey has scrambled fighter jets to the Syrian border after one soldier was killed and two wounded in cross-border clashes which appeared to signal the first armed confrontation between the country’s forces and the terror group Islamic State.
Turkey’s military said in a statement that a border unit came under fire at 1.30pm by five Isis militants using a rocket launcher and Kalashnikov rifles. The armed forces said the unit seized the weapons and fired on the attackers, killing one and destroying three Isis vehicles.
A Somali military official says African Union and Somali troops have seized one of the last major towns held by the al-Shabab Islamic extremist rebels in southwestern Somalia.
Maj. Abdullahi Mohamed said Wednesday the militants withdrew from the town as troops moved into Bardhere, an agricultural center.
Communist guerrillas attacked a dozen mostly rural army outposts, including in two provinces where officials have declared that the insurgents have been considerably weakened, the military said Tuesday.
New People’s Army guerrillas fired on 11 army outposts and a police station on Monday in the northeastern provinces of Albay, Camarines Norte and Sorsogon, sparking a clash that killed one of the insurgents, regional military spokesman Maj. Angelo Guzman said.
In two districts of Syria’s Hasaka city, Kurdish fighters and regime forces rest before returning to battle the Islamic State group, a shared enemy being fought jointly for the first time.
Although the two forces are fighting in different parts of the northeastern city, where control is divided between the Kurds and the government, both are necessary to defeat the jihadists.