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Military forces from Somalia’s Somaliland Monday took control of a town under the region of Puntland following a fierce fight.
Residents of Tukaraq town in Sool region said Somaliland and Puntland forces clashed Monday as Somalia’s president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo made his maiden visit to Puntland.
Clashes between the pro-Islamic State (IS) Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and security forces in the southern Philippines since Christmas Eve has killed 25 and trapped 5,000 indigenous people in their villages, according to the Philippines military and a tribal leader.
Military air strikes were launched during the clashes, which were still on-going as of Tuesday (Jan 9), in the municipalities of Datu Hoffer, Datu Unsay and Datu Saudi in the Maguindanao province.
South Sudan’s armed opposition says four government soldiers have been killed in new clashes just outside the capital, Juba.
The opposition says soldiers in two vehicles attacked their position Tuesday morning in Wunu’Lyet, less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Juba.
A resistance group in Myanmar claimed responsibility on Sunday for an ambush of government forces in Rakhine State that left three people wounded, saying it had no choice but to defend the Rohingya from “state-sponsored terrorism.”
In a statement posted on Twitter, Atta Ullah, who identifies himself as commander of the rebel group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, said the attack on Friday morning in Maungdaw had been staged in response to efforts by Myanmar’s security forces to drive the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in a Buddhist-majority country, from the area.
The Turkish army is preparing to unleash an offensive against the Kurdish-controlled Afreen region in northern Syria, pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV reported on Sunday.
The Turkish army has set up field hospitals in a Turkish border area of Kumlu close to Syria’s Idlib province in northwestern Syria as part of the preparation to wage an offensive on Afreen in the countryside of Aleppo province in northern Syria, said the report.