The Philippine military said Wednesday that its troops have killed at least 16 Muslim rebels aligned with the Islamic State group in a series of clashes over the last week that have displaced thousands of villagers in a southern province.

The heaviest fighting began March 17 and lasted four days in Maguindanao province’s Datu Saudi Ampatuan town, regional military spokesman Lt. Col. John Paul Baldomar said. He said troops killed 14 militants, from both the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and the Dawlah Islamiyah groups, and wounded another 25.

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Nine security personnel were killed after an Afghan military helicopter was downed, likely by militia forces, in eastern Afghanistan early Thursday, signaling a drastic rift between the Afghan government and the regional forces supposedly under its control.

The fighting occurred in Wardak, a mountainous province that borders Kabul in the country’s east. There, militia forces led by Abdul Ghani Alipur, a local warlord with a spotty rights record, have been engaged in a tense, sometimes violent, standoff with government troops since January.

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The Kachin Independence Army (KIA), one of the most powerful ethnic rebel groups in Myanmar, has launched a series of attacks on military bases, amid the nationwide protests or civil disobedience against the military regime.

The KIA, which had trained several batches of India’s Northeast militants in the 1980s-90s, also established links with the Indian intelligence agency, RAW, in the past.

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A powerful car bomb near a police station on Friday night killed at least seven people and wounded more than 50 others in Afghanistan’s western Herat province, officials said.

Herat Governor Sayed Abdul Wahid Qatali said several women and children were among the dead.

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Four communist New People’s Army (NPA) rebels in Sultan Kudarat province yielded to the military on Wednesday afternoon, an official said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Juvymax Uy, the Army’s 6th Infantry Division commander, said the four NPA fighters turned over firearms and ammunition to the Army’s 6th Infantry Battalion in Isulan, Sultan Kudarat.

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