 | Wars in the World |
Daily News on Wars in the World and on New States
| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK X FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
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.
In what could be the first extension of the Washington-led air war against terrorists in Syria and Iraq, the US today killed seven leading members of Libya’s Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Al-Sharia in an airstrike on a farm outside Ajdabiya.
One of the victims of the raid, which happened at 2am this morning, was the Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, former leader of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) who was accused of organising the January 2013 attack on Algeria’s desert Im-Amenas gas processing plant, in which 39 hostages and an Algerian guard died.
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.
The breakaway region of Somaliland has put its troops based in the disputed region of Sool on high alert, raising new tensions, Horseed Media reports.
Somaliland officials provided equipment, medical and food supplies to the troops stationed near Gambara district, the main base of its forces in Sool region.
The Somaliland Chief of army Ismael Shaqale visited the troops to deliver the supplies on late hours of Saturday.
The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia has announced that it has begun advancing towards an Islamic State-held town at the Turkish border on Saturday, penetrating deeper into the jihadists’ stronghold of Raqqa province in a campaign backed by U.S.-led air strikes.
A militia spokesman told the press that the YPG and smaller Syrian Arab rebel groups fighting alongside it had begun the move towards Tel Abyad after they encircled the Islamic State-held town of Suluk 20 km (12 miles) to the southeast.
Pakistan s military says airstrikes have killed 20 suspected militants in a troubled northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border.
A statement Saturday said the strikes killed insurgents in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan.
More Shiite militiamen arrived in Iraq’s Anbar province on Friday hoping to recapture the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah from the Islamic State militant group.
But the Iranian-backed fighters have warned Washington against sending extra resources saying coalition assistance only hurts their efforts to tackle the jihadists.