Sporadic shelling and shooting, which each side has blamed on the other, had ensured a steadily mounting death toll despite the ceasefire called as part of a peace plan worked out in Minsk, Belarus, in February. More than 6,500 people have been killed since a separatist rebellion erupted there in April 2014.
Satellite images have confirmed the destruction of the Temple of Bel, which was one of the best preserved Roman-era sites in the Syrian city of Palmyra, a United Nations agency said, after activists said the hardline Islamic State group had targeted it. A comparison of before and after images shows the damage to the temple at the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Geneva-based United Nations Institute for Training and Research
By Karin Strohecker and Marton Dunai VIENNA/BUDAPEST (Reuters) – A train carrying hundreds of migrants headed to Vienna on Monday after being held for hours at Austria’s border with Hungary amid a security clampdown on trafficking gangs and efforts to apply fraying European rules intended to manage the flow of refugees. Austrian Railways had cited “overcrowding” on the train and a police spokesman in Vienna said Austria wanted to check
By Richard Balmforth and Natalia Zinets KIEV (Reuters) – A national guardsman was killed and nearly 90 others protecting Ukraine’s parliament were wounded by grenades hurled from a crowd of nationalist protesters on Monday as lawmakers backed reforms to give more autonomy to rebel-held areas. The violence, which Interior Minister Arsen Avakov blamed on the main nationalist party, and division in the pro-Western camp in parliament suggested President Petro Poroshenko
By Aukkarapon Niyomyat and Panarat Thepgumpanat BANGKOK (Reuters) – Police probing Thailand’s deadliest bombing issued arrest warrants on Monday for two suspects after a second weekend raid on a suburban apartment block uncovered possible bomb-making materials. Police were looking for a 26-year-old Thai woman and a foreign man in his 40s after expanding their search to a property in the city’s Min Buri district.
China will open a high-speed rail line to the North Korean border on Tuesday, state news agency Xinhua said, the latest effort to boost economic ties despite tension between the countries. The line, under construction since 2010, will run 207 km (127 miles) from Shenyang to the border city of Dandong, which faces North Korea across the Yalu River, and will shorten the train journey from 3 1/2 hours to
Myanmar, which will hold its first democratic national poll in more than two decades on Nov. 8, has seen a flowering of anti-Muslim hate speech since the military gave up full power and opened up politics and the economy in 2011. President Thein Sein signed the Monogamy Bill after it was passed by parliament on August 21, Zaw Htay, a senior official at the president’s office, told Reuters. The president
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday the U.S.-led coalition’s campaign against Islamic State was not doing as well as had been hoped in Syria and parts of Iraq. Harper also said Canada, one of the nations helping Iraq to fight the group also known as ISIS, would need “a long and sustained strategy” with its international partners against Islamic State, which controls large parts of northern and western
Europe’s refugee and migrant crisis has escalated over the summer, leaving the continent divided over how to deal with a flood of people led by Syrians fleeing war in their homeland. A record surge in numbers, and the opening up of new routes over the Balkans in addition to the Mediterranean sea route, have prompted the EU to call a special meeting on the issue in two weeks. The situation
A group of intrepid Syrian migrants have found a new, albeit long, way into Europe — through Russia and into Norway’s Arctic, some of them cycling across the border. While thousands of refugees fleeing the war-torn country are risking their lives by boarding overloaded boats to cross the Mediterranean, others have chosen to fly to Moscow before travelling north to Norway, according to Hans Mollebakken, the police chief in the