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Dozens of Taliban insurgents attacked a police post in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, killing at least 17 policemen, police said on Saturday.
With US forces no longer providing air support for their Afghan allies, Taliban fighters are attacking government positions in large numbers this year with the aim of taking and holding territory in remote parts of the country.
Myanmar’s armed ethnic Kokang group declared a unilateral cease-fire with Myanmar forces on Thursday in a bid to end four months of hostilities with the national army along the Chinese border to bring stability to the region and prevent the clashes from disrupting general elections scheduled for later this year, an official with the group said.
“We have declared that we will not launch an offensive because people have been suffering over four months because of the war,” Tun Myat Linn, spokesman for the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Kokang army, told RFA’s Myanmar Service.
Boko Haram extremists have burned down six northeast Nigerian villages and killed 37 people near the insurgents’ Sambisa Forest stronghold, a survivor said Friday.
Ahmed Ajimi, a fighter in the anti-Boko Haram Nigerian Vigilante Group, said many victims of Wednesday night’s attacks were farmers who had recently returned home after soldiers earlier this year forced the extremists out of the area where they had declared an Islamic caliphate.
Al-Qaida-linked militants in eastern Libya declared a holy war on a local Islamic State affiliate Wednesday after one of their senior leaders was shot dead by masked gunmen, setting off clashes between the rival jihadist groups that left 11 people dead on both sides.
The clashes erupted after gunmen opened fire on Nasr Akr, an al-Qaida-inspired militant once jailed in the UK on terrorism charges. The 55-year-old veteran jihadist, who fought in Afghanistan, was killed along with his aide.
Dozens of suspected Islamist militants attacked a Malian police base near the southern border with Ivory Coast on Wednesday, security sources said, the most southerly point in the west African country where the insurgents have struck.
Most attacks have previously been in the vast desert north, which has been in turmoil for three years, and this rare foray by the militants into the southern tip of Mali could rattle investors with mining interests in the south.