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Pakistani troops fought separatist insurgents who set up roadblocks in the restive northwestern region of Balochistan, leaving 18 paramilitary security forces and 23 rebels dead in some of the heaviest clashes in recent years, officials said Saturday.
The military said troops suffered casualties when they engaged the insurgents who erected barricades on a key highway in Kalat, bordering Afghanistan.
The town fell to M23 forces overnight from Thursday to Friday, marking a significant gain for the rebel group in their push toward South Kivu’s capital, Bukavu.
“The M23 rebels are advancing toward Bukavu, that’s their end goal,” said a local leader who preferred anonymity to speak freely to ChimpReports.
The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and allied forces captured the junta’s Tank Battalion 5014 in Bhamo town a few days ago but did not report it due to security concerns.
“We captured the tank battalion two or three days ago but didn’t announce it for fear of airstrikes,” a resistance source said.
At least 773 people have been killed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) largest city of Goma and its vicinity in a week, amid fighting with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who captured the city in a serious escalation of a decade-long conflict, authorities said.
“These figures remain provisional because the rebels asked the population to clean the streets of Goma. There should be mass graves and the Rwandans took care to evacuate theirs,” Congolese government spokesman Patrick Muyaya told a briefing on Saturday in capital Kinshasa, adding that the death toll could be higher.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a ceasefire between Israel’s military and Hamas has begun.
The Israeli government announced the ceasefire with Hamas took effect at 11:15 local time (4:15 am US ET) — around three hours after the originally scheduled time for hostilities to cease.
