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Afghanistan’s Taliban said they launched a spring offensive on Sunday with multiple attacks against Western embassies in the central diplomatic area and at parliament in Kabul, with heavy explosions, rockets and gunfire rattling the city.
The assault, one of the most serious on the capital since U.S.-backed Afghan forces removed the Taliban from power in 2001, highlighted the ability of militants to strike the heavily guarded diplomatic zone even after more than 10 years of war.
Syrian forces on Saturday morning bombed for an hour the city of Homs on the third day of the cease-fire, according to a Syrian NGO. No casualties had been reported in the bombing of two districts there, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In the months before the truce, Homs, the third largest city, was heavily bombed, including its symbol Baba Amr district where the rebels were entrenched and which was taken over by the army on March 1 after a month of destructive shelling. The cease-fire was fragile in the past two days and ended with the deaths of 18 people, mostly civilians.
South Sudan’s Vice President, Riek Machar, said an attempt by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) to retake the disputed town of Heglig (Panthou) was repulsed Friday night.
Machar, who is currently in Bentiu town of Unity state where the fighting takes place, said Saturday that the SAF forces tried to retake Heglig on Friday but were repulsed 30km away, north of Heglig town, and fleeing back northwards.
Sudanese army carried out massive mobilization and deployment and announced that the forces were advancing toward Heglig, vowing to recapture it.
Sudanese warplanes launched their first attack on a major South Sudanese town on Thursday, with five bombs dropped on the capital of the oil-producing Unity border state, Southern officials said.
“They dropped bombs in Bentiu town - apparently they were aiming for a bridge,” South Sudan’s deputy information minister Atem Yaak Atem told AFP.
Al-Shabaab militants have moved north to semi-autonomous Puntland after being pushed out of central Somalia, Puntland President Abdirahman Farole says.
They are there to strengthen ties with al-Qaeda in Yemen, which lies a short distance across the sea, he told the BBC.
Al-Shabaab, hardline Islamists, merged with al-Qaeda in February.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on Tuesday acknowledged that it has lost control of the oil-rich town of Heglig following what it said was an attack by South Sudan’s People Liberation Army (SPLA) and “mercenaries”.
South Sudan government, was the first to speak about the fighting earlier today when it denounced air attacks by Sudan air force targeting a strategic bridge in Abiemnhom which is situated west of Mayom town that is part of the Unity state.
Juba claimed that the bombing injured four civilians including one child.
The Malian army has regrouped in the town of Mopti, a potential new battlefield in the fight against rebels from the north.
Tuareg fighters have operating in the nearby area, which separates southern Mali and their self-declared independent state of Azawad.
The town of 115,000 thousand inhabitants is likely to become the base for any future assault by the Malian army against the rebels.