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Islamic State militants set fire on Thursday to oil storage tanks in a fresh assault on Libya’s Ras Lanuf terminal and the group threatened further attacks.
The militants drove into the oil storage farm early in the morning and clashed with Petroleum Facilities Guards before retreating and firing from a distance to set four tanks on fire, National Oil Corporation (NOC) spokesman Mohamed al-Harari said.
Clashes between the Ta’ang National Liberation Army/Palaung State Liberation Front (TNLA/PSLF) and the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South (RCSS/SSA-S) continued this morning as both sides accused one another of trespassing into the other’s territory.
Fighting between the two armed groups first broke out last year on November 27, just over one month after the signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) on October 15 between the government and eight of the country’s more than 20 ethnic armed groups. RCSS/SSA-S was among the signatories, but the TNLA was excluded by the government from signing.
The rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM-AW) led by Abdel-Wahid al-Nur said its fighters have inflected heavy losses on the Sudanese army and repulsed a large-scale attack it carried out in Jebel Marra, Central Darfur state but the latter dismissed the claims.
In a statement released Tuesday evening, SLM-AW spokesperson Shihab al-Din Ahmed said their fighters repelled the government offensive which began last Friday, pointing the latter used war-planes, heavy artillery and mortars in the attack.
Taliban gunmen stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 19 people and triggering a heavy gunbattle with police and army troops who rushed to the scene in a town near the city of Peshawar, officials said. Later reports put the death toll at 30.
The brazen assault harked back to a December 2014 Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar that killed more than 150 people, mostly children, and shocked the nation.
A communist rebel was killed while five soldiers were wounded in two separate clashes Monday between the military and the New People’s Army (NPA) in Compostela Valley.
A press release from the military said the first encounter, which lasted for an hour and a half, occured at 10 a.m. at Sitio Mainit, Pagsabangan, New Bataan, and left one rebel dead.