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Russian President Vladimir Putin, the State Council Chairman, Crimean Parliament Chairman Volodymyr Konstantynov, Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksionov and the city of Sevastopol executive Alexei Chaly have signed an agreement on the inclusion of Crimea, including Sevastopol, into Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree recognising Crimea as a sovereign state, paving the way for it to be absorbed into Russia.
The decree said it had taken into account Sunday’s referendum in Crimea, in which officials said 97% of voters backed breaking away from Ukraine.
French air strikes in northern Mali have killed Islamist militant Oumar Ould Hamaha, a jihadist with a $3 million U.S. government bounty on his head, Malian military sources said on Friday.
Hamaha, known as ‘Red Beard’ because of his henna-dyed whiskers, became a leading figure in the Islamist coalition that seized control of northern Mali in April 2012 after drifting among armed Muslim groups in the Sahara over the last decade.
Syrian forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, are in full control of Yabroud after clearing out rebels holed up in the strategic Syrian town for months, Syrian state media and opposition activists have reported.
Capturing Yabroud, the last major rebel bastion near the Lebanese border north of Damascus, will help President Bashar al-Assad secure the land route linking his Mediterranean coastal stronghold with the capital Damascus, and choke off a cross-border rebel supply line from Lebanon.
People in Crimea prepare to cast their ballots on whether the region should secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
Authorities in the Crimean city of Sevastopol have finished preparations for the Sunday referendum on the status of the Republic of Crimea. The city has more than 160 polling stations.
Ukrainian military have pressed back Russian assault from the township Strilkove, Kherson Region, reads a statement made by the press service of the Defence Ministry of Ukraine.
“Today, on March 15, 2014, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine suppressed an attempt of penetration into the territory of Kherson Region from the Arabat Spit by servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. They were rebuffed immediately. For the purpose of instant response to the provocation the Ukrainian party raised air force of the Army Component of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and also an airmobile battalion force,” it said.
Government forces backed by UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have begun attacking Rwandan Hutu rebels based in the eastern border region, UN and Congolese officials say.
Hutu rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have been involved in nearly two decades of regional conflict, which spilled into eastern Congo after neighbouring Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.