Wars in the World

Five Turkish soldiers were killed Tuesday in clashes with Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, Turkey’s defense ministry said. Two other soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

The clashes took place during Turkey’s latest cross-border offensive against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which maintains bases in northern Iraq. Turkey launched its latest offensive, named Operation Claw Lock last month in northern Iraq’s Metina, Zap and Avashin-Basyan regions.

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Russia’s siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol stuttered towards its end on Thursday, with hundreds of fighters still holed up in the Azovstal steel works and some 1,700 who have already surrendered facing an uncertain fate.

A full abandonment of the bunkers and tunnels of the bombed-out plant would end the most destructive siege of a war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

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Russia said on Monday that it had agreed to evacuate wounded Ukrainian soldiers from the bunkers below the besieged Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol to a medical facility in the Russian-controlled town of Novoazovsk.

“An agreement has been reached on the removal of the wounded,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

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Russian troops are withdrawing from around Ukraine’s second-largest city after bombarding it for weeks, the Ukrainian military said Saturday, as Kyiv and Moscow’s forces engaged in a grinding battle for the country’s eastern industrial heartland.

Ukraine’s general staff said the Russian forces were pulling back from the northeastern city of Kharkiv and focusing on guarding supply routes, while launching mortar, artillery and airstrikes in the eastern province of Donetsk in order to “deplete Ukrainian forces and destroy fortifications.”

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Finland’s president and prime minister announced their support for joining NATO on Thursday, moving the Nordic nation which shares an 800-mile border with Russia one step closer to membership of the US-led military alliance. The Kremlin has responded by saying the move would be a threat to Russia and warned of possible retaliation.

The statement of support for NATO from President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin had been expected, after the Finnish government recently submitted a report on national security to the country’s parliament which outlined the path to joining the alliance as one of Finland’s options.

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