| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK TWITTER FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
Syrian opposition forces have withdrawn from the strategic town of Khan Sheikhoun, deep in the last rebel-held province.
Government forces, backed by Russia, closed in on the town in recent weeks, five years after rebels took over.
China on Monday criticized recent attacks by an alliance of ethnic armed groups on police and military outposts in northern Myanmar’s Shan State, saying the actions derail the country’s peace process and create instability in the region.
At a press conference in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said China “strongly condemned” the attacks carried by the Northern Alliance (NA), an alliance of the ethnic armed groups the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Arakan Army (AA) and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).
The suicide bomber stood in the middle of the dancing, clapping crowd as hundreds of Afghan children and adults celebrated a wedding in a joyous release from Kabul’s strain of war.
Then, in a flash, he detonated his explosives-filled vest, killing dozens — and Afghanistan grieved again.
Government and Russian airstrikes pounded the southern edge of a rebel stronghold in Syria’s northwest on Saturday, killing at least seven members of one family, activists and a war monitor reported.
The intense airstrikes were coupled with fierce ground clashes as the government, backed by Russia, pushed ahead with a months-old offensive seeking to chip away at territory on the periphery of the rebel enclave.
Israeli war jets struck early on Saturday facilities of militant groups in the Gaza Strip in response to earlier rockets attack from the coastal enclave into southern Israel, security sources and local media said.
The sources and the Gaza-based local media said that Israeli war jets struck a military facility that belongs to Islamic Hamas movement in eastern Gaza, and another one in central Gaza Strip.