WORLD HEADLINES
By Dominic Evans and Parisa Hafezi BEIRUT/ANKARA (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters have seized villages close to the city of Aleppo from rival insurgents, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite a Russian air-and-sea campaign that Moscow says has targeted the militant group. The Russian defense ministry said air strikes on rebel positions in northern Syria had killed 300 anti-Assad insurgents in nearly 70 sorties over the last day. The
By Dominic Evans and Parisa Hafezi BEIRUT/ANKARA (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters have seized villages close to the city of Aleppo from rival insurgents, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite a Russian air-and-sea campaign that Moscow says has targeted the militant group. The Russian defense ministry said air strikes on rebel positions in northern Syria had killed 300 anti-Assad insurgents in nearly 70 sorties over the last day. The
Russia’s air force hit 60 Islamic State targets in Syria over the past 24 hours and killed around 300 militants, the Defense Ministry said on Friday, in Moscow’s most intense raids yet since it first launched strikes on Syria 10 days ago. The increased pace of attacks was aimed at preventing militants from re-grouping and dispersing in populated areas, the ministry said. The ministry said in a statement that air
By Sylvia Westall and Tom Perry BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian troops and allied militia backed by a fresh wave of Russian air strikes and cruise missiles fired from warships attacked rebel forces on Thursday as the government extended a major offensive to recapture territory in the west of the country. Rebel advances in western Syria earlier this year had threatened the coastal region vital to President Bashar al-Assad’s control of
By Robin Emmott, Sabine Siebold and Phil Stewart BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Turkey appealed to its NATO allies on Thursday to shore up missile defenses in the country aimed at shooting down Syrian rockets, as Germany said again that it will withdraw its Patriot batteries and the United States was set to do the same. NATO is now waiting for other nations to plug those gaps. Days after Russian jets violated
The United States is considering sailing warships close to China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea to signal it does not recognize Chinese territorial claims over the area, a U.S. defense official said on Thursday. The Financial Times newspaper cited a senior U.S. official as saying U.S. ships would sail within 12-nautical-mile zones, that China claims as territory around islands it has built in the Spratly chain, within the
By Alastair Macdonald LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – European Union governments agreed on Thursday to step up deportations of illegal immigrants and discussed creating an border guard force among measures to cope with a surge in refugees from Syria’s civil war. In the evening, they will be joined by EU foreign ministers and delegations from Balkan states, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon for talks on stemming migrant flows that have plunged the bloc
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Twenty seven people were killed in Iraq on Thursday when mortars landed in the provincial capital of Baquba, police and medics said. It was not clear who fired the mortars at the northern town. Iraq is facing a multitude of security challenges, including ultra-hardline Sunni Islamic State militants who control a third of the country and have fueled sectarian tensions. (Reporting by Baghdad bureau; Writing by Michael
By Sylvia Westall and Dominic Evans BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian troops and militia backed by Russian jets mounted what appeared to be their first major coordinated assaults on Syrian insurgents on Wednesday and Moscow said its warships fired a barrage of missiles at them from the Caspian Sea, a sign of its new military reach. The combined assault hit towns close to the main north-south highway that runs through major
By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO on Tuesday rejected Moscow’s explanation that its warplanes violated the air space of alliance member Turkey at the weekend by mistake and said Russia was sending more ground troops to Syria and building up its naval presence. With Russia extending its air strikes to include the ancient city of Palmyra, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was losing patience with Russian violations of
