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Officials and residents say militants with the Islamic State extremist group have seized two small towns in northern Iraq after driving out Kurdish security forces.
Mosul governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, who fled to the largely autonomous Kurdish region when the Islamic State group and allied Sunni militants seized Iraq’s second largest city in June, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the towns of Zumar and Sinjar fell after fierce clashes that erupted the day before.
Tribesmen have risen up against the extremist Islamic State group in eastern Syria, forcing it from three villages after heavy clashes that left more than a dozen people dead, activists said Saturday.
It was the first sign of local resistance to the extremist group since its fighters captured large parts of the oil-rich eastern province of Deir el-Zour in recent weeks.
Israel and Islamist militant group Hamas have agreed to a 72-hour cease-fire in their conflict in the Gaza Strip starting on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday.
The Prime Minister’s Office announced that Israel will observe the cease-fire. The IDF said that work to destroy terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip would continue despite the truce.
The Syrian troops on Saturday recaptured a key natural gas field after intense battles with the militant group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) in the eastern part of Syria’s central Homs province, the Syrian army’s general command said in a statement.
The Syrian army, backed by the pro-government National Defense Forces, succeeded on Saturday in taking back the al-Shaer gas field after a “precise and qualitative” operation, during which the government troops eliminated large numbers of armed ” terrorists,” affiliated with the IS, said the statement.
IDF announces resumption of attacks on terror targets in Gaza from the sea, land and air, after rockets are fired from coastal enclave; rocket lands in open area of metropolitan Tel Aviv; Iron Dome intercepts several rockets.
Israel resumed its Gaza offensive on Sunday morning after Hamas rockets broke a humanitarian cease-fire that Israel had agreed to extend.