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/ 28 October 2007
Turkish soldiers killed 20 Kurdish guerrillas on Sunday in a major military operation against separatist rebels in eastern Turkey, army sources said. The operation involving 8Â 000 troops backed up from the air was launched in the central-eastern province of Tunceli. The sources gave no word on army casualties.
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/ 28 October 2007
Turkey sharpened its threat to invade northern Iraq on Saturday when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared its army ready to attack Kurdish rebels ”when needed”, regardless of international opposition. Erdogan has been under pressure from America, Iraq and other countries to pull back from a move that could further destabilise the region.
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/ 27 October 2007
Turkish military planes scoured the Iraqi border for Kurdish rebel camps on Saturday, army sources said, after diplomatic talks in Ankara to avert a major cross-border operation into northern Iraq failed. Turkish-Iraqi talks collapsed late on Friday after Ankara rejected proposals by the Iraqi defence minister for tackling Kurdish guerrillas based in northern Iraq.
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/ 27 October 2007
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto set off for her ancestral village in southern Pakistan on Saturday, security heavy in the wake of an assassination attempt at a Karachi welcome rally last week that killed 139 people.
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/ 26 October 2007
Israeli troops killed six Palestinian gunmen on Friday in some of the heaviest fighting for weeks in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical and militant sources said. Two Israeli troops were wounded, the army said, as three separate raids were mounted into the territory, backed by air strikes. Seven Palestinian militants and three civilians were wounded, hospital staff said.
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/ 26 October 2007
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has launched an intelligence academy named after him, saying it would produce officers able to counter growing threats from Western powers. Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, is fighting isolation from the West, which accuses him of human rights abuses.
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/ 24 October 2007
The nine South African soldiers killed during a military training exercise at Lohatla base were on Wednesday hailed as heroes and heroines during a memorial service in Kimberley. Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said that the five men and four women had fallen in defence of South Africa’s hard-won democracy.
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/ 24 October 2007
The latest clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have driven 33 000 more people from villages in Nord-Kivu province and a cholera outbreak is suspected, United Nations agencies reported on Wednesday. About 25 000 people have been uprooted in the rugged Rutshuru highlands about 50km north of the provincial capital, Goma.
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/ 24 October 2007
Sri Lankan troops killed 11 Tamil Tiger rebels in a series of clashes in the island’s restive north and one soldier also died, the military said on Wednesday. Troops fought four separate engagements with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fighters in the northern district of Vavuniya late on Tuesday.
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/ 24 October 2007
Australia slapped financial sanctions on Burma’s generals and their families on Wednesday as supporters of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi marked her 12 years in captivity with protests in 12 cities. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the measures would hit 418 people, including leader Senior General Than Shwe.
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/ 23 October 2007
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Tuesday dismissed claims that rebels from the restive Ogaden region had defeated the military and caused one of his top aides to flee. Addressing Parliament in Addis Ababa, Meles played down rebel claims that the army had been humiliated by the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
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/ 22 October 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army said on Monday it had resumed control of an eastern town seized by rebel forces over the weekend and the heavy fighting between the two sides had ended. Forces loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda confirmed the clashes in the eastern Nord-Kivu region were over, and said they were waiting to hear about possible talks.
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/ 21 October 2007
Democratic Republic of Congo’s army on Sunday gave pro-government militia fighters 48 hours to disarm or face military action as thousands more people fled renewed fighting in the eastern province of North Kivu. Explosions and gunfire rang out before dawn in the hills around Rugari, a town of tin-roofed houses near the Rwandan and Ugandan borders.
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/ 21 October 2007
A study by an Israeli psychologist into the violent behaviour of the country’s soldiers is provoking bitter controversy and has awakened urgent questions about the way the army conducts itself in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Nufar Yishai-Karin, a clinical psychologist at the Hebrew University, interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers and heard confessions of frequent brutal assaults against Palestinians.
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/ 19 October 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) army says desertions have weakened rebel forces ahead of a planned offensive against them, but rebel general Laurent Nkunda remains defiant. On Thursday the army put on show what they said were 80 deserters wearing ragtag uniforms from Nkunda’s forces.
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/ 19 October 2007
A suspected suicide bomber killed 133 people on Friday in an attack on former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, as she was driven through Karachi to greet supporters on her return from eight years in exile. Bhutto was unhurt in one of the deadliest attacks in her country’s history.
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/ 18 October 2007
A suspected suicide bomber killed at least 115 people and wounded 100 on Friday in an attack targeting a vehicle carrying former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto through Karachi on her return from eight years in exile. Bhutto was safe and at her home after leaving the truck that had been transporting her.
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/ 18 October 2007
Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto ended eight years of self-exile on Thursday, returning to Karachi where more than 200Â 000 supporters poured on to the streets to welcome her home. ”I am thankful to God, I am very happy that I’m back in my country and I was dreaming of this day,” said Bhutto.
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/ 18 October 2007
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto ended eight years of self-exile on Thursday, making a comeback that could eventually lead to power sharing with President Pervez Musharraf. ”I am thankful to God, I am very happy that I’m back in my country and I was dreaming of this day,” said a sobbing Bhutto.
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/ 18 October 2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto set out on Thursday on a journey home to end eight years of self-exile, under threat of assassination from militants linked to al-Qaeda once she reaches Karachi. For years Bhutto had promised to return to Pakistan to end military dictatorship, yet she is coming back as a potential ally for President Pervez Musharraf.
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/ 17 October 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) army has orders to forcibly disarm soldiers loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda, President Joseph Kabila said on Wednesday, but he declined to say when the offensive would begin. ”The armed forces … have received the green light to begin, or rather to prepare, the forced disarmament of Mr Nkunda,” Kabila said.
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/ 16 October 2007
Chad’s government on Tuesday slapped a state of emergency on three regions in the north and east of the Central African country after clashes between rival ethnic groups. The state of emergency was ordered for 12 days at a special Cabinet meeting, said a senior government official, who added that the aim was to allow the army to search and disarm insurgents.
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/ 16 October 2007
Landmark weekend parliamentary elections in Togo were ”free, fair and open”, observers from the Economic Community of West African States concluded in a report on Tuesday. ”In spite of a few shortfalls, the legislative elections on Sunday were free, fair and open,” stated the 15-nation group.
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/ 16 October 2007
The United Nations made a last appeal on Monday for rebel Congolese soldiers to rejoin the national army. Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila had given renegade General Laurent Nkunda until Monday to send his fighters to army integration centres or see them forcibly disarmed.
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/ 15 October 2007
Lebanon said on Monday it had arrested a gang of foreigners who were plotting attacks on United Nations peacekeepers, four months after six troops were killed in a bombing against a Spanish contingent. ”The Lebanese army’s secret service arrested a network of non-Lebanese terrorists,” the army said.
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/ 15 October 2007
The volatile east of the Democratic Republic of Congo braced for renewed fighting on Sunday after rebels refused to give up arms despite a government ultimatum to disarm or face a fresh offensive. The Congolese government has given forces under renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda until Monday to disarm.
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/ 14 October 2007
The people of Togo go to the polls on Sunday to choose MPs in elections where all the main political parties are represented, including Gilchrist Olympio’s Union of Forces for Change (UFC). After almost two decades of election boycotts, this is the first time that Olympio’s UFC is challenging the ruling Rally of Togolese People.
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/ 12 October 2007
Nine South African soldiers were killed on Friday in a shooting accident involving an anti-aircraft gun during a training exercise at a base in the central Bloemfontein region, the army said. "I can confirm that nine of our people have died and another 15 were injured and taken to various," a South African National Defence Force spokesperson said.
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/ 12 October 2007
Renewed fighting broke out on Friday between the regular army and renegade troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Nord-Kivu province, a local spokesperson with the United Nations mission in DRC said. "Clashes have been reported from Katsiru, a village between Mweso and Kitchanga," Monuc spokesperson Claude Cyrille said.
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/ 12 October 2007
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday paid tribute to Argentina-born revolutionary Che Guevara, who died at the age of 39 in Bolivia forty years ago. More than anything else, Guevara’s was a life dedicated to the genuine independence of all countries, Mbeki said in his weekly online newsletter, ANC Today.
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/ 11 October 2007
Darfur peace talks, aimed at stopping chaotic violence plaguing Sudan’s west, will be a ”moment of truth”, United Nations envoy Jan Eliasson said on Thursday. He urged all of the more than a dozen fractured Darfur rebel factions to attend the talks due to start in Libya on October 27 and said an urgent ceasefire would be the priority.
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/ 11 October 2007
Gunfire rang out Thursday near Mushaki in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Nord-Kivu province, a day after a renegade former general appealed for a truce with the army, the United Nations said. ”Firing is going on this morning 2km or 3km from Mushaki,” Prem Tiwari, local military spokesperson for the UN’s peacekeeping mission in DRC, said.