 | Wars in the World |
Daily News on Wars in the World and on New States
| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK X FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
Four Papuan independence fighters were killed in an ongoing clash between security forces and a rebel group near the world’s largest gold mine in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua region, police and rebels said Monday.
The clashes, which began Feb. 29 near the Grasberg copper and gold mine in Papua province, earlier killed two security personnel and injured three others.
The monthlong fighting between Myanmar’s military and Arakan Army (AA) to the east of the Kaladan River on the border of Rakhine State’s Kyauktaw and Chin State’s Paletwa has forced nearly 20 villages to be abandoned.
“Our village was reduced to ashes. All the houses were burned down days ago and artillery shells landed on the village monastery yesterday,” the village administrator of Mont Than Pyin, U Kyaw Sein, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday.
Philippine troops have killed at least 14 Muslim militants aligned with the Islamic State group in a weeklong offensive in a southern province that also left four soldiers dead, a regional military commander said Saturday.
Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana said an unspecified number of militants, including gunmen belonging to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, were wounded in clashes in the towns of Ampatuan and Datu Hoffer Ampatuan in Maguindanao province.
Gunmen opened fire on a memorial ceremony Friday in Kabul, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens more in the first major attack in the Afghan capital since the U.S. signed a peace framework with the Taliban late last week. Several prominent politicians, including the country’s chief executive and recent presidential candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, were in the audience but escaped unharmed.
A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of the Interior said the gunmen retreated to a nearby building, where they were killed during an hours-long standoff with security forces.
The U.S. and the Taliban have struck a deal that paves the way for eventual peace in Afghanistan. U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad and the head of the militant Islamist group, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, signed the potentially historic agreement Saturday in Doha, Qatar, where the two sides spent months hashing out its details.
Under the terms of the deal, the U.S. commits to withdrawing all of its military forces and supporting civilian personnel, as well as those of its allies, within 14 months. The drawdown process will begin with the U.S. reducing its troop levels to 8,600 in the first 135 days and pulling its forces from five bases.