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Syrian regime’s troops entered a strategic town in the country’s last rebel stronghold on Feb. 6 after fierce clashes with opposition fighters.
The push by Bashar Assad’s forces into towns and villages in the northwestern Idlib province has caused the displacement of more than a half-million people in just over two months, compounding a humanitarian disaster in the region packed with internally displaced people.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that US forces have killed Qassim al-Rimi, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), in an operation inside Yemen.
Al-Rimi claimed responsibility for last year’s deadly shooting at US Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida, where a Saudi aviation trainee killed three US sailors.
Two members of the New People’s Army (NPA) voluntarily surrendered to the military troops on Wednesday, citing reasons of lack of mass-based support and resources from their organization.
Lt. Col. Reandrew Rubio, acting commanding officer of Army’s 91st Infantry “Sinagtala” Battalion (91IB), said the two insurgents who surrendered to his troops at the boundary of Aurora and Nueva Ecija provinces, belonged to the Komiteng Larangang Guerrilla (KLG) Sierra Madre.
The Yemeni army killed 15 Houthi militants during clashes in Al-Jawf province, state news agency SPA reported on Wednesday.
“The national army foiled an attack carried out by the militia in Al-Jaroub front of Al-Matoon district which resulted to the death of 15 militants and wounds in others,” a military source said.
The U.N. envoy to Libya said Tuesday there was a “genuine will to start negotiating” between rival military factions as they planned to meet for the first time for talks in Geneva aimed at securing a lasting cease-fire.
However, Ghassan Salame told reporters that an arms embargo was being violated by both sides and that new mercenaries and arms were still arriving “by air and by sea” in Libya, where forces loyal to eastern-based putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar have been trying to take the capital, Tripoli, from the U.N.-recognized government for the past 10 months.