A senior US official, citing “multiple” rebel commanders, said Iranians were fighting alongside Hezbollah and Syrian government troops in the continuing battle for the border town of Qusair.

In a briefing to reporters the official said: “It is the most visible effort we have seen of Hezbollah to engage directly in the fighting in Syria as a foreign force. We understand there are also Iranians up there. That is what the Free Syrian Army commanders are telling us. I think this is an important thing to note, the direct implication of foreigners fighting on Syrian soil now for the regime.”

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A military commander in eastern Congo says rebels attacked an army position north of Goma, a major provincial capital in the country’s troubled east.

Lt. Col. Mamadou Ndala said Monday that the attackers were from the M23 movement, a Tutsi-led rebellion believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda. Last November, the M23 succeeded in overrunning Goma. It took intense international pressure to halt their advance. M23 fighters have since then been stationed north of the city.

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Israeli soldiers returned fire into Syria on Tuesday in response to shots that reportedly damaged a military vehicle in the third cross-border shooting this week in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.

There were no injuries reported. An Israeli spokesperson said, the shots “most likely were stray bullets, we don’t know if it was intentional.”

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Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says he will alter his country’s security strategy after a wave of attacks killed scores of people across the country on May 20.

Maliki said his government is about to “make changes in the high and middle positions of those responsible for security, and security strategy.”

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The Nigerian military say Boko Haram militants in the north-east of the country are “in disarray” and leaving the country in large numbers as a result of its offensive against them.

In a statement, it said 14 enemy fighters had been killed and 20 apprehended since Saturday.

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Syrian troops celebrate as they take control of the village of Haydariyah, some seven kilometers outside the rebel-held town of Qusair

The Syrian military, backed by Hezbollah, pounded the rebel-held town of Qusair on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“After two days of calm, planes bombed the town of Qusair in the early hours of the morning,” the watchdog’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

At least 13 people, including rebels, were killed in these raids and in artillery and mortar fire by the army.

“It seems that this is preparation for a major operation,” he said.

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The Horn of Africa has been ravaged by war and famine for decades, and now one of Somalia’s regions, hopes to become an independent state.

Somaliland sits on the Gulf of Aden and is officially regarded as an autonomous region of Somalia. The two were, however, separate until 1960. During the civil war in the 1980s, 40,000 people from Somaliland were killed, and nearly half a million fled.

The region then declared independence in 1991. Since then, it has held four peaceful elections.

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