U.S. officials say they will sit down with the Taliban “within days” to begin the “first step on a long road” toward ending the 12-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The announcement came as the Taliban opened their first office on June 18 in Doha and announced its willingness to open peace talks with the Afghan government. Negotiations over the opening of the office lasted more than two years.
Some 80 thousand military forces trained by Hizbullah are preparing to launch a ground offensive to recapture Syria’s commercial city of Aleppo, according to a report in the UK-based Sunday Times.
A Hizbullah commander said the fighters belonging to Syria’s National Defense Force (NDF) have been taught “to fight street by street.”
The fighters were also trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the newspaper reported.
Iran will send 4,000 Revolutionary Guard troops to Syria to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, The Independent reported on Sunday.
The decision to send soldiers to Syria was taken last week prior to Friday’s Iranian presidential election which saw cleric Hassan Rohani defeat a number of more conservative candidates.
At least 25 people were killed in troubled southwest Pakistan on Saturday when militants blew up a bus carrying women students and attacked a hospital treating survivors, officials said.
A bomb attack on a bus in Quetta, capital of the restive Baluchistan province, killed 14 women students, and another 11 people died in a blast at a city hospital around 90 minutes later.
