Iraqi government forces have launched an offensive in the beleaguered western province of Anbar, and managed to liberate a region there from the grip of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

Major General Ismail al-Mahlawi, the head of the Anbar Operations Command, told Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network on Tuesday that Iraqi forces established full control over Jazirah Hit region, which lies north of the city of Hit and about 140 kilometers (85 miles) west of the capital Baghdad, after Daesh members did not resist and fled away from the area.

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Taliban fighters have captured a police station in Lashkargah, the capital of southern Helmand province, a reliable source said on Monday.

One security official, who wished to go unnamed, told Pajhwok Afghan News the Taliban captured the post before noon in the limits of the 2nd police district. He said some policemen were likely killed and wound.

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Police shot dead eight militants in Chechnya in southern Russia around midnight on Saturday after the men, traveling in two cars, opened fire when asked to stop at a checkpoint, the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday.

Moscow has fought two wars with separatists in Chechnya since the 1991 Soviet collapse and still faces a low-level insurgency in the mainly Muslim region in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus area.

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A Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a funeral hall packed with thousands of mourners in Yemen’s capital Saturday, killing over 140 people and wounding more than 525 in one of the deadliest single attacks of the country’s civil war, a U.N. official said.

Saudi Arabia announced early Sunday it would launch an investigation into “reports about the regrettable and painful bombing” in Sanaa, without immediately acknowledging that its coalition battling rebels in Yemen is the only force with air power in the conflict.

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Fighters of the Syrian Islamist rebel group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham cheer on a pickup truck after a Russian helicopter was shot down in the north of Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, Syria, August 1, 2016. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah/File Photo

Syrian opposition activists are reporting intense clashes in the northwestern province of Idlib between two of Syria’s most powerful insurgent groups.

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