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Armed Islamists who control northern Mali on Thursday captured a government town in the country’s centre and will push further south, an Ansar Dine official said.
“We are currently in Konna for the jihad. We almost entirely control the town. Afterward we are going to continue” heading south, Abdou Dardar, who was reached by telephone from the capital Bamako, said.
Dardar, whose remarks were translated by an interpreter from Niger, said he was speaking in the name of all the Islamists.
As Burmese government troops seized control of another Kachin Independence Army (KIA) outpost on Wednesday, relief workers said that already overcrowded refugee camps near the group’s headquarters are seeing a fresh influx of civilians fleeing from intensified fighting.
The outpost, at the base of the Hpun Pyan Bum hill, about 7 km west of the KIA stronghold of Laiza, is the second KIA position in the area to fall since the Burmese government army stepped up its offensive late last month.
Pakistani army troops crossed the Line of Control (LoC) on Tuesday killing two soldiers at Sona Gali in Mendhar sector of Rajouri district, 220 km north of winter capital Jammu, Army said.
“Pakistan army troops having taken advantage of thick fog and mist in the forest area, were moving towards our posts when an area domination patrol spotted and engaged the intruders,” Lt. Col Rajesh Kalia, Defence spokesman, Northern Command, said.
He said after half an hour of gunfight, Pakistani soldiers retreated towards their side of LoC.
One Turkish soldier and nine suspected members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) killed in the eastern province of Hakkari, daily Hürriyet has reported.
Two soldiers were wounded during the fighting, reports said.
It the first significant fighting reported between the two sides since Islamist and Tuareg rebels seized control of the north of the country last April.
The Islamists had reportedly tried to make an advance into the government-controlled south.
It is not clear whether there were any casualties.
Burmese government troops have begun a push to seize a Kachin Independence Army (KIA) outpost located just west of the group’s headquarters at Laiza, a day after Laiza itself reportedly came under artillery attack.
The new offensive, which targets a KIA position on a hill called Hpun Pyan Bum, began at noon today, according to Min Htay, a major serving in the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), an ally of the KIA.
Pakistani and Indian troops exchanged gunfire across the disputed Kashmir border early Sunday, leaving one Pakistani soldier dead in a relatively rare fatal confrontation between the two neighbors.
As usual, the rival armies, which have been engaged in a face-off in Kashmir for decades, disagreed about who started the shooting or what happened next.
Pakistan said Indian troops crossed the disputed boundary, known as the Line of Control, into Pakistani-controlled territory, where they attacked a remote outpost and wounded two soldiers, one of whom later died.