Corsican separatists, who claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks last year, on Tuesday warned of fresh violence as France’s interior minister toured the crime-prone island.

“We will take up arms again so that France recognizes our national rights,” the Corsican National Liberation Front (FNLC) said in a statement, denouncing Paris for supporting a centralized republic.

But after vowing “zero tolerance” for mafia groups, Interior Minister Manuel Valls said: “We will not let ourselves be browbeaten by threats.”

[Read more…]

According to officials, 6 Taliban militants were killed in a twin air-attack by ISAF choppers on Sunday morning in Zurmat district of Paktia.

A press release by Afghan National Army press office in Gardez says two groups of Taliban militants who were involved in destructive operations came under ISAF air attacks where 6 militants were killed.

The statement added that these militants were also suspected to be members of Haqqani Network.

[Read more…]

Maoist rebels yesterday shot dead a senior paramilitary officer in a fresh gun battle just one week after they killed 24 people, including Congress politicians, in an ambush.

Security forces have been engaged in a long-running and bloody conflict with the outlawed Maoists in central India.

“When a police party was on a combing operation (looking for rebels), Maoists sprayed bullets on them,” police inspector general Ashok Juneja said.

[Read more…]

The Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) rebels said Friday they downed a military helicopter near Abu Kershola where a Sudanese army top commander was on a visit to inspect the recently reclaimed area, but the army denied the rebel claims.

SRF spokesperson Abu El-Gassim Al-Haj said in a statement released today that the military plane had been downed in an attack carried by the SRF artillery forces army positions, adding that all the crew members were killed.

Gibril Adam, spokesman for the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) told Reuters its fighters had attacked a government convoy carrying Sudan’s army chief of staff, Ismat Abdelrahman, just outside Abu Kershola.

[Read more…]

Hundreds of rebels from northern Syria managed to enter the besieged city of Qusair on Friday, activists said, to help opposition forces battling government troops backed by the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said hundreds of fighters from the Tawheed brigade, an Islamist group that is powerful in Aleppo in the north, had entered the town.

The brigade confirmed the report on its Facebook page.

[Read more…]

Myanmar has reached a preliminary ceasefire agreement with ethnic Kachin rebels, the last major armed group to agree to stop fighting after decades of civil war.

Min Zaw Oo, negotiator and director of the EU-funded Myanmar Peace Center, said Kachin and Myanmar government representatives had signed a seven-point plan which included the halting of hostilities.

“I think we have achieved a breakthrough,” he said.

[Read more…]

Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah appears to be shrugging off a 24-hour ultimatum set on Tuesday by a Free Syrian Army (FSA) official to end the group’s involvement in the Syrian conflict.

Syrian elite forces and extra fighters from Hezbollah have been sent to reinforce government troops battling rebels in the strategic border town of Qusair, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

Government fighter jets early Wednesday bombed rebel zones of the town as regime forces readied to launch a major assault, according to the watchdog.

[Read more…]