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Boko Haram fighters launched an attack on northeast Nigeria’s largest city Maiduguri on Wednesday but were repelled by Nigerian troops after intense clashes, residents and the army said.
Dozens of militants armed with heavy guns and rocket-propelled grenades stormed the northern outskirts of the city near Giwa military base, shooting and firing explosives indiscriminately, local witnesses told AFP.
Barely hours after the Tuareg-led armed rebel groups said they would approve a preliminary peace deal with the government to end violence in northern Mali, fresh clashes in the region led to the deaths of at least four people on Wednesday. The renewed violence erupted between members of the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) — a coalition of five rebel groups — and pro-government militias near the village of Ikadewan, according to media reports.
The Iraqi military said Wednesday that ISIS’ No. 2 leader has been killed in a coalition airstrike — a claim that the Pentagon said it does not corroborate.
The airstrike struck northern Iraq’s Tal Afar city, killing ISIS deputy Abu Alaa al-Afri and a senior ISIS security figure named Akram Qirbash, also known as the “Judge of Judges,” the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.
A Burundian military officer announced the overthrow of this central African country’s government on Wednesday, saying that President Pierre Nkurunziza had been dismissed for seeking a third term.
The announcement by Maj. Gen. Godefroid Niyombare came after weeks of protests over the president’s decision to run again in elections scheduled for June. After the coup statement was read on the radio, the capital exploded in celebration.
Afghan security forces have managed to liberate a remote district from the grip of Taliban militants as Kabul struggles to counter the surge in the militancy plaguing the country.
In a major military offensive launched on Tuesday, Afghan troops recaptured the Jawand district in the western province of Badghis two days after Taliban militants seized control of the area.
Kurdish forces of Peshmerga thwarted an attack by the Islamic State (IS) terrorists in Shingal, a Peshmerga official said.
The IS militants launched an assault on the Peshmerga forces in the town of Shingal, but the Kurdish forces foiled the attack, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Fars News agency reported.
Despite a ceasefire in Ukraine having been supposed to come into effect nearly three months ago, fierce fighting continues at the hotspots of Pisky near the battle-shattered Donetsk airport and the village of Shyrokyne near the Ukrainian-held port city of Mariupol.
Speaking at a briefing in Kyiv on Monday, the press secretary of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine on the Anti-Terrorist Operation, Colonel Oleksandr Motuzyanik, said that while fighting has decreased in some parts of the combat zone, it continues unabated in two main hotspots.