WORLD HEADLINES
The church in South Carolina where a white gunman murdered nine African Americans, held Sunday its first service since the massacre, an emotional gathering celebrating the lives of those slain. Hundreds of congregants, some tearful, packed the Emanuel African American Episcopal Church for a service led by visiting clergy because the congregation’s pastor was among those killed by a white supremacist said to have been trying to ignite a race
Islamic State group said it was behind a car bomb that exploded in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Saturday near the Qiba al-Mahdi mosque, killing two people and wounding six others, witnesses and a security source told Reuters. The group said in a statement published on militant Twitter accounts that the attack was targeting the Houthi militia, whose fighters have used the mosque, located in the old city of Sanaa. On
U.S. and coalition forces targeted the Islamic State on Friday with 16 air strikes in Iraq and six in Syria, the U.S. military said in a statement on Saturday. In Iraq, one strike hit a checkpoint for the Islamic State and also destroyed a storage container near Al Qaim, according to the statement. Striking a checkpoint is intended “to reduce their ability to restrict the movement of, and extort from,
By Paul Ingrassia ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – It was two minutes before midnight when Russian President Vladimir Putin finally entered the meeting room in the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, more than three hours late, to be interviewed by a dozen exhausted journalists. “We won in a free fight and we are going to host the World Cup,” he declared, slapping away suggestions that Russia cheated with scandal-plagued FIFA to
By Amy Sawitta Lefevre BANGKOK (Reuters) – One of Thailand’s leading hospitals, known for treating medical tourists, said on Friday it had received the country’s first case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), as authorities said it had taken nearly four days to confirm the illness. Thailand said on Thursday a 75-year-old businessman from Oman, who had traveled to Bangkok for medical treatment for a heart condition, had tested positive
By Mohammed Ghobari and Tom Miles SANAA/GENEVA (Reuters) – Saudi-led warplanes bombed elite Republican Guard forces allied with the dominant Houthi faction in Yemen’s conflict on Friday, residents said, and U.N.-sponsored ceasefire talks broke off without a deal to end nearly three months of fighting. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, intervened militarily out of concern for what it sees as a growing Iranian sway in the Arabian Peninsula,
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi, Sylvia Westall and Tom Perry AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian insurgents say they have begun a campaign to capture full control of the divided city of Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city before it become a main battleground in its four-year-old civil war. Neither side has been able to control Syria’s main commercial hub, 50 km from Turkey, since battle erupted there in 2012, turning its UNESCO-listed historic center
By Warren Strobel WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Terrorist attacks worldwide surged by more than a third and fatalities soared by 81 percent in 2014, a year that also saw Islamic State eclipse al Qaeda as the leading jihadist militant group, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. In its annual report on terrorism, the department also charts an unprecedented flow of foreign fighters to Syria, often lured by Islamic State’s use
By Michael Holden BRADFORD, England (Reuters) – Zahoor Ahmed shakes his head in disbelief as he surveys the back of a terraced house belonging to the family of the three Dawood sisters, believed to have traveled to Syria to join Islamic State militants and brought their nine children with them. “Why would you go to Syria? The case came to light just two days after reports that Talha Asmal, a
By Tarek Amara TUNIS (Reuters) – Ten members of Tunisia’s diplomatic staff kidnapped in Libya a week ago have been freed and returned to Tunis on Friday, and the Tunisian government has shut down its consular operations in Tripoli. Armed groups in Libya have repeatedly kidnapped diplomats and foreign nationals to pressure their governments to free Libyan militants held in jails overseas. Libya’s two rival governments – one internationally recognized
