Fighting continues to rage in southern Ukraine. Here, Russian forces hold the port city of Kherson and they claim to control the whole administrative region, of which Kherson is the capital. But in fact they don’t: Ukrainian counterattacks in March brought a small part of that region back under Kyiv’s control. FRANCE 24 reports from the Ukrainian-held part of the Kherson region.

Ukrainian soldiers returned to the scene of a battle they won to find eviedence of looting. “We’re now standing at a former Russian checkpoint, which was destroyed on the 28th of March,” said the Ukrainian army’s Oksana Kozyrenko.

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Islamic State on Sunday claimed responsibility for a deadly attack that killed an officer and 10 Egyptian soldiers in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, the group said on its Telegram channel.

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Complaining that the West is “stuffing Ukraine with weapons,” Russia bombarded railroad stations and other supply-line points across the country.

It comes as the European Union moved to further punish Moscow for the war Wednesday by proposing a ban on oil imports, a crucial source of revenue.

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Thousands of people have fled from the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar and surrounding areas due to clashes between Iraq’s army and the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a Yazidi militia with ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Iraqi military launched an operation to clear the area of YBS forces on Sunday, but heavy fighting continued into Monday, Al Jazeera reported.

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Russia has bombarded Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, as part of its renewed push in the east of the country, while claiming the “draft of a possible treaty” between the two countries is being discussed on a daily basis.

One person was killed and five were injured “as a result of enemy artillery and mortar strikes”, Kharkiv’s regional military administration said on Telegram. Despite the bombardment, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said: “The situation in the Kharkiv region is tough. But our military, our intelligence, have important tactical success.”

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