Thousands of Kachin civilians living in villages in Township, the center of Burma’s lucrative jade industry, have been forced to flee as Burmese government troops mount an intensifying offensive against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in the area.

Fresh clashes that began on Monday have driven people from more than 20 villages to take shelter in 23 churches, monasteries and relief centers in the town of Hpakant, sources said. Local residents estimate the number of refugees at around 6,000, although police officials could not confirm that figure.

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Somali military officials told media Monday afternoon that the city was captured by the allied forces after al-Shabaab retreated.

“The district of Merca is in the control of Somali and AMISOM forces and there was no resistance when our forces entered the city,” said General Abdikarim Yusuf Adan.

According to local residents, before the al-Shabaab agents fled the city they had killed four people, it is unclear why they were killed.

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A Syrian military helicopter went down in a ball of fire Monday after it was apparently hit during fighting between government forces and rebels in the capital Damascus, activists said.

A video posted on the Internet showed the chopper engulfed in flames and spinning out of control shortly before it hit the ground amid bursts of gunfire near a mosque. Rebels shout “Allahu Akbar!” or God is great, as the helicopter goes down. The authenticity of the video could not be independently verified.

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Syrian opposition activists accused President Bashar al-Assad’s forces on Sunday of committing a massacre of scores of people in a town close to the capital that the army had just retaken from rebels.

More than 200 bodies were found in houses and basements around Daraya, a working-class Sunni Muslim town to the southwest of Damascus, according to activists who said most had been killed “execution-style” by troops on house-to-house raids.

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Pakistani security forces today have killed eight militants during fights in southern part of Orakzai Agency (north-west Pakistan) during which there have been also destroyed two hideouts.

Military sources said it in Islamabad.

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The Sudanese army has denied claims by rebels in the country’s western region of Darfur that they killed 11 soldiers in an ambush on Monday.

The official spokesman of the army known as SAF, Al-Sawarmi Khalid Saad, said on Wednesday that no clashes occurred with Darfur rebels during the month of Ramadan and Eid holiday.

Al-Sawarmi was reacting to a news report in which the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Movement of Mani Arkoi Minnawi (SLM-MM) said it killed 11 army soldiers in an ambush on Monday.

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Turkish troops have killed 16 Kurdish fighters during an operation in southeastern Turkey in response to a bomb attack on a military convoy that killed five soldiers, according to the local governor’s office.

The clashes, which occurred on Wednesday and Thursday, are part of a growing cycle of violence in the remote, mountainous province of Hakkari bordering Iraq and Iran - a development which Turkish officials and analysts are linking to the deepening conflict in Syria.

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