 | Wars in the World |
Daily News on Wars in the World and on New States
| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK X FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
The Turkish military dispatched additional troops to the Syrian border after car bombs killed at least 40 people in the Reyhanli district of Hatay on Saturday.
The Cihan news agency said the military began deploying huge number of air and ground military reinforcements to Reyhanli on the Syrian border after the blasts.
Kurdish rebels reaffirmed on Tuesday that they will start withdrawing guerrilla fighters from Turkey to bases in northern Iraq this week.
The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, declared a cease-fire in March and promised to gradually pull fighters out of Turkey as part of peace talks aimed at ending a nearly three-decade-old conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. The group has been fighting Turkey for autonomy for Kurds in southeastern Turkey.
A French force of 1,000 soldiers has begun a sweep of a river valley thought to be a logistics base for armed Islamists near the Malian city of Gao, an AFP journalist accompanying the mission said.
Operation Gustav, one of France’s largest actions since its intervention against insurgents in January, will involve dozens of tanks, helicopters, drones and aircraft, said General Bernard Barrera, commander of the French land forces in Mali.
Jailed leader of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Ocalan called on PKK forces for a cease-fire and withdrawal from Turkey, in a long-awaited, historic announcement during celebrations of Nevruz, a spring festival, in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on Thursday.
“Our fight has been against all kinds of pressure, violence and oppression… A door is now opening on a democratic process after a period of armed struggle. Guns should fall silent and politics should come to the foreground. The stage has been reached where our armed forces should withdraw beyond the borders… It is not the end, it is the start of a new era,” Ocalan said in a statement read by Kurdish politicians at Nevruz celebrations attended by a quarter of a million people in Diyarbakır’s Nevruz Park.
Five militants have been killed in a special operation on the border between two Russian North Caucasus republics, Chechnya and Ingushetia, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said on Saturday.
Special forces of the Russian Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service blocked a gang of 15 gunmen in the mountains and five of them were killed in an attempt to break through the police cordon firing machine guns and grenade launchers, the committee said in a statement.