The Armed Forces Commander of the Federal Somalia State of Puntland, General Abshir Abdi Jama ‘London’, declares an all-out war on the Republic of Somaliland, calling it a haven for terrorists.

The Commander of what the Somalia federal state calls the Dervishes, General Abshir London, speaking to a motley of ill-clad, clan militias on the outskirts of Boocame, Sool region of Somaliland, jestingly scoffed at internationally demarcated boundaries separating the former British Protectorate from the erstwhile Italian colony of Somalia.

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Russian forces have escalated their attacks on a steel plant in the southern port of Mariupol where the last Ukrainian defenders, many of them wounded, and at least 100 civilians are still holed up, as missiles rained down on the strategically important Black Sea port of Odesa.

Deputy Ukrainian Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on May 10 that more than 1,000 Ukrainian fighters remained in the sprawling Azovstal steel plant, the last pocket of resistance after almost three months of heavy fighting that has leveled the city.

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An Afghan insurgent group led by the son of late anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud claimed Saturday to have seized three northern districts from the extremist group, after announcing a wide military offensive.

The National Resistance Front (NRF), led by Ahmad Massoud, said the action in the Panjshir Valley was its first armed offensive against Taliban forces since they stormed back to power.

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Fighting continues to rage in southern Ukraine. Here, Russian forces hold the port city of Kherson and they claim to control the whole administrative region, of which Kherson is the capital. But in fact they don’t: Ukrainian counterattacks in March brought a small part of that region back under Kyiv’s control. FRANCE 24 reports from the Ukrainian-held part of the Kherson region.

Ukrainian soldiers returned to the scene of a battle they won to find eviedence of looting. “We’re now standing at a former Russian checkpoint, which was destroyed on the 28th of March,” said the Ukrainian army’s Oksana Kozyrenko.

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Islamic State on Sunday claimed responsibility for a deadly attack that killed an officer and 10 Egyptian soldiers in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, the group said on its Telegram channel.

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