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The United States military has launched dozens of airstrikes against targets in Syria and Iraq in the first retaliation for a drone attack that killed three soldiers at a remote US base in Jordan.
“This afternoon, at my direction, US military forces struck targets at facilities in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack US forces,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
A senior Houthi official has vowed that the Yemeni rebels will continue operations against Israel, as repeated attacks by the Iran-backed group have disrupted international shipping through a key Red Sea waterway.
“The Houthis will not abandon the Palestinian cause, regardless of any US, Israeli, or Western threats,” Houthi politburo member Ali al-Qahoum told Al-Mayadeen, according to Reuters, while warning any hostile move against Yemen would have dire consequences.
Colombia’s government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group resumed peace talks in Mexico City on Monday after a temporary halt caused by a misunderstanding over a mooted ceasefire.
Mexico is one of the guarantor nations for the talks, along with Norway, Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil and Chile. The first round of discussions to end the guerrillas’ part in nearly six decades of war took place in Caracas last November.
Colombia’s government has agreed to a six-month ceasefire with the five largest armed groups operating in the country, President Gustavo Petro announced on New Year’s Eve.
Petro, the country’s first left-wing president, has pledged to end the Andean nation’s internal conflict, which has run for almost six decades killing at least 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.
The Colombian government and the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN), the country’s largest remaining rebel group, launched new peace talks in neighbouring Venezuela aimed at ending nearly 60 years of conflict.
The push for the talks, which resumed on Monday after they were suspended in 2019, came from Colombia’s new first-ever left-wing President Gustavo Petro, who was a former member of the M-19 rebel movement.