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ISIL fighters were retreating from their main bastion in Libya on Thursday, as militiamen allied to a UN-brokered unity government pushed into the central city of Sirte.
Some extremists reportedly shaved off their beards to escape while the pro-government fighters, mostly from the western Libyan city of Misurata, pushed into the city centre in their tanks and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.
Kurdish YPG fighters in northern Syria
Syria’s Kurds on Thursday declared a federal region in areas under their control in the north of the conflict-riven country, but both the government and an opposition coalition rejected the move.
The announcement is likely to anger neighboring Turkey and has complicated peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the five-year civil war.
The songs of protesters calling for an independent state of Biafra are growing louder by the day in southeastern Nigeria. As the volume increases, so do the tensions within the region.
Agitation for the Biafra region to become an independent state has been growing. In the late 1960s, an attempt by the region to secede from Nigeria to form an independent state led to the Nigerian civil war which lasted for 30 months.
More than 45 years ago, Nigeria was nearly divided by a bloody civil war that led to the deaths of over a million people. Now, a revival in secessionist sentiment in southeastern Nigeria, among supporters of the historical state of Biafra, threatens to undermine President Muhammadu Buhari’s vision of a united Nigeria and spill over into regional violence.
Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of southern Nigeria in recent weeks following the arrest of a prominent pro-Biafran activist, who has been accused by Nigerian authorities of hate speech and treason. As well as demanding their colleague’s release, some protesters are calling for the establishment of an independent Biafra once again.
Somaliland, a slim slice of Somali-inhabited territory on the southern shore of the Gulf of Aden, ticks almost all the boxes of statehood. It has its own currency, a reasonably effective bureaucracy and a trained army and police force.
The government, located in the capital city of Hargeisa, maintains a respectable degree of control over its territory: the country is, by and large, peaceful, in stark contrast to Somalia to the south—where bombings and a rampage through a popular hotel in the capital killed at least 14 people at the weekend.