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Howitzer artillery shelling is being used on civilian territory surrounding the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) headquarters of Laiza, claim rebel sources.
Government army artillery battalions 364 and 370 under Artillery Operational Command have reportedly been firing 105 mm howitzers against KIA bases in northern Burma since last week.
Ethiopia’s government is in peace talks with the Ogaden National Liberation Front, an outlawed ethnic-Somali rebel group, Communications Minister Bereket Simon said.
“It’s a very positive step and we will pursue negotiations up to the last and try to bring all concerned in that area to the constitutional framework,” Bereket said in a phone interview from the capital, Addis Ababa, today.
Principles to end the 28-year conflict in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali regional state were agreed during initial talks on Sept. 6 and Sept. 7 in Nairobi, the rebel group said in an e-mailed statement today.
Said al-Shihri, described as the second-in-command of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has been killed in an operation in southern Yemen, government officials say.
Al-Shihri was reportedly killed with six others in the Hadramawt area.
Some reports say Yemeni troops were involved, others that it was an air strike, possibly a US drone attack.
Al-Shihri, a Saudi national, was released by the US from detention in Guantanamo Bay in 2007.
Syrian troops bombarded a central neighbourhood of Aleppo on Sunday after a day of fierce clashes with rebels who tried to take the regime-controlled district, a watchdog said.
“The bombardment of Bustan al-Basha has stopped but could start up again any time,” a resident told AFP.
At least 44 people have been killed in a wave of attacks across Iraq, including soldiers at an army post and police recruits waiting in line to apply for jobs, officials said.
Insurgents killed at least 44 people in a wave of attacks against Iraqi security forces on Sunday, gunning down soldiers at an army post and bombing police recruits waiting in line to apply for jobs, officials said.
Sunday’s violence, which struck at least 11 cities and also wounded nearly 240 people, highlighted militant attempts to sow havoc in the country and undermine the government.
Clashes erupted between Sudan’s army and rebels in the western Darfur region and in a southern state, killing dozens of people including civilians, the sides said on Friday, the latest violence in the country’s borderlands.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is battling an alliance of rebel groups operating in Darfur and two states bordering its neighbor South Sudan.
Sudan accuses South Sudan of supporting the rebels, while Juba says Khartoum funds militias in South Sudan. Diplomats say that both allegations are credible.
Iran is intensifying its support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad by sending 150 senior Revolutionary Guards commanders to Syria to help repel opposition attempts to overthrow the government.
Western intelligence officials say that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has personally sanctioned the dispatch of the experienced officers to ensure that the Assad regime, Iran’s most important regional ally, survives the threat to its survival.