Yemeni security officials say more than 30 people have been killed in clashes between Shiite Houthi rebels and tribal fighters backed by Al-Qaeda militants in the embattled town of Radda south of the capital Sanaa.

The officials said the two sides traded heavy artillery fire that lasted until early Tuesday, killing several civilians and damaging houses and cars. The indiscriminate shelling has forced dozens of families to flee the town.

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The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for two bombings on Shiite pilgrims that left 23 people dead in Baghdad a day earlier, as violence continued on Monday.

In a statement posted online late Sunday, the group said the car bomb attacks happened despite the tight security measures amid the Shiites’ “biggest infidel event.”

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Twenty Yemeni soldiers and three suspected al Qaeda militants died in clashes on Saturday in the town of Jabal Ras in Yemen’s western province of Hodeidah, local officials and residents said.

Saturday’s clashes broke out when suspected al Qaeda militants staged an attack.

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Islamist militants affiliated to Al Qaeda seized the last remaining stronghold of Western-backed rebels in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib yesterday after days of fighting, rebels and a monitoring group said.

Backed by other hardline Islamist groups, the Nusra Front are waging a major military campaign against the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front led by Jamal Maarouf, a key figure in the armed opposition to President Bashar Al Assad, after accusing him of being corrupt and working for the West against them.

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Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces are continuing their advance towards Iraq’s Mosul province, capturing at least 60 Iraqi villages last month, an Iraqi commander has said.

At least 300 ISIL militants were killed and scores of ISIL vehicles captured in clashes between the pershmerga and ISIL militants, according to Colonel Z. Sheikh Vasani, a peshmerga commander on the Mahmur front.

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