Two suicide bombers and another blast targeted the headquarters of Yemen’s Shiite rebels in the capital, Sanaa, on Wednesday, killing at least four people and wounding some 60 others, officials said. Earlier Saudi-led airstrikes hit a convoy of civilian vehicles and killed at least 31 people, authorities said.

The Health Ministry said in a statement that the casualty figure from the Sanaa attacks on Wednesday night was “preliminary,” as Muslims around the world prepared for the start of the holy month of Ramadan. Ambulances rushed through the streets in northern and central parts of the capital where the offices of the rebels, known as Houthis, are located.

[Read more…]

Rebel rocket fire killed at least 34 civilians in Aleppo in one of the bloodiest days of the conflict for government-held areas of Syria’s second city, a monitoring group said on Tuesday.

Twelve children were among the dead as Islamist rebel factions pounded western neighbourhoods of the city with more than 300 rockets on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Right said.

Control of the city is divided between rebels in the east, and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the west.

[Read more…]

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said on Monday that it and its allies had taken full control of the town of Tel Abyad on the Turkish border, defeating the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) fighters.

“It’s now under complete control,” YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said after a day of rapid advances in an offensive aided by U.S.-led air strikes. Tel Abyad had been important to ISIS as the nearest border town under its control to its de facto capital Raqqa.

[Read more…]

Leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula AQAP, Nasser Al-Wuhayshi, has been killed in a US drone strike, a Yemeni website reported on Monday.

“We obtained reliable information that Al-Wuhayshi was targeted by the drone in the city of Mukalla in Yemen’s eastern province of Hadramout this past Friday,” the Almasdar website reported.

[Read more…]

Houthi forces and their army allies in Yemen seized the capital of a large desert province on the border with Saudi Arabia, an important victory for the group ahead of peace talks in Geneva on Monday.

The Houthis, the dominant faction in Yemen’s civil war, took control of al-Hazm, capital of the province of al-Jawf, on Sunday residents said, amid Saudi-led coalition air strikes on Houthi positions and heavy fighting with armed tribesmen.

[Read more…]