Some 1,800 Latin American former soldiers are being trained somewhere in the desert of United Arab Emirates as part of an operation set up by Blackwater Worldwide.

The United Arab Emirates has deployed about 450 Colombian mercenaries to Yemen to fight with the Saudi-led coalition that is attempting to put under control the Houthis, according to a four-page New York Times report published late Wednesday.

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Turkish fighter jets shot down a military plane close to the border with Syria on Tuesday after it violated Turkey’s airspace, the military said.

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that one of its jets, a Sukhoi SU-24, had crashed in Syria but said it had been downed “presumably as a result of shelling from the ground,” according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

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Syrian army has recaptured several towns from the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, following intense battles in the central part of the country.

The UK-based so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday that Syrian forces liberated the strategic Maheen and Hawareen towns in the southeastern countryside of the central Homs Province.

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The Kurdish-Arab alliance of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have reported new gains in the south and south-eastern suburbs of Hasakah, northeast Syria, at the expense of the extremist group of Islamic State (ISIS), local activists reported on Saturday.

The joint forces had announced an extended military campaign to liberate the entire province Hasakah three weeks ago. Since then, the SDF has recaptured large areas across the province amid an unprecedented decline by ISIS.

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More than 600 militants were killed by Russian cruise missiles in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Friday.

“The terrorist gangs suffer major losses. Over 600 militants were killed as a result of a cruise missile strikes on one of the targets near Deir ez-Zor,” Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin.

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