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Fighters loyal to Islamic State have seized substantial territory in Afghanistan for the first time, witnesses and officials said, wresting areas in the east from rival Taliban insurgents in a new threat to stability.
Witnesses who fled fighting in Nangarhar province told Reuters that hundreds of insurgents pledging allegiance to Islamic State pushed out the Taliban, scorching opium poppy fields that help to fund the Taliban’s campaign to overthrow the Afghan government.
South Sudanese government on Monday said they repulsed attack by rebels on Farajalla town, about 36km from the state capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal, Wau, but opposition forces said they were in full control of the area after flushing out government troops.
The commissioner of Wau county, Elia Kamilio Dimo, said South Sudanese army, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), had on Monday morning repulsed an attack attempted on their position in Wau county of Farajalla Payam by rebel forces allied to former vice president, Riek Machar.
Yemen’s Ansarullah fighters and allied army units launched missile attacks on three Saudi military bases on the southwestern border province early on Monday.
Such attacks are launched in retaliation for Saudi Arabia’s merciless airstrikes, according to Yemeni forces.
Five civilians and three soldiers were killed in an attack by rebels on a Congolese army camp near Beni in the restive east of the country.
An AFP photographer saw the bodies of the victims as well as those of eight alleged guerilla fighters killed by the army after the raid on Friday at May-Moya in North Kivu province.
Pakistani air strikes on Sunday killed 23 militants including foreigners in the country’s restive tribal regions near the Afghan border, the military said, part of a massive ongoing operation against the Taliban.
The strikes took place in areas close to the border with Afghanistan in Khyber and North Waziristan tribal districts.
“(A) huge ammunition dump was also blown up during the strikes in Khyber,” the military said in a statement, without giving the identity of those killed or who they fought for.
Suspected extremist fighters attacked a town in western Mali near the border with neighbouring Mauritania before dawn on Saturday, leaving up to 11 people dead, including three soldiers and eight attackers, an army nurse said.
A senior army officer said military intelligence and initial witness accounts indicated the attackers were Islamist fighters mainly from the Peuhl ethnic group.
Kurdish forces have driven out Islamic State (IS) fighters who had infiltrated the Kurdish border town of Kobani in Syrian Kurdistan, but clashes continued outside the town, activists and the official Syrian news agency said Saturday. The civilian death toll — already well over 100 — was expected to rise as the search for bodies continued.
“Kobani has been completely cleared of IS and Kurdish forces are now combing the town looking for fighters who may have gone into hiding,” activist Mustafa Bali, told AP by telephone from Kobani.