Macron hopes the reshaped government will signal a fresh start after a torrid few months
Looming rain was one of the main enemies of the operation, threatening to flood the cave complex in mountainous northern Thailand
Top Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministry officials met on Tuesday to review their four-year-old peace process that has stalled since domestic political turmoil erupted in Pakistan last year. It is the first contact India has had with leaders of a new Pakistani civilian government.
Iraqi security forces have detained a man suspected of being the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq after a captured associate led them to him sleeping in a house in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said on Friday. More than eight hours after the Iraqi announcement, the United States military said it still had no confirmation that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian, had been seized.
A man seized by Iraqi forces is not the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a senior United States military official said on Friday, following an announcement by several Iraqi officials that Abu Ayyub al-Masri had been captured. Security sources had already begun to cast doubt on the earlier announcement that Masri, an Egyptian also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, had been captured.
Sudan will decide in two weeks whether to charge five people suspected of murdering a United States diplomat and his driver on January 1. Abdeen al-Tahir, a senior Interior Ministry official, told the Sudanese Media Centre the case would be referred to the Justice Ministry for trial in about 15 days.
Georgia is preparing to invade its breakaway region of Abkhazia, Russia said on Tuesday, days after Moscow warned it would defend its Abkhaz allies if they came under attack. It said Georgia had amassed 1 500 soldiers and police in the upper Kodori Gorge, a pocket of breakaway Abkhazia, which is controlled by Tbilisi.
Guatemala is investigating radio advertisements seeking elite ex-soldiers, who have been known to work for drug cartels, to smuggle goods into Mexico, officials said on Thursday. The ads were broadcast in the lawless northern jungle region of Peten, home to a tough military training centre for Kaibil soldiers, infamous during Guatemala’s civil war as a brutal guerilla-fighting
Spanish, French and American tourists once filled the winding alleys of Sanaa’s old quarter, drawn by Yemen’s 2 500-year-old history and unique architecture. But a spate of attacks on foreigners is driving visitors away and souvenir shop owner Hussain Abdel Moghni says the only tourists who come to Yemen these days are ”adventurers”.
African governments are nervously confronting a mounting wave of often deadly social unrest caused by the soaring cost of food and fuel. Forty people died during price riots in Cameroon in February. There also have been deadly troubles in Côte d’Ivoire and Mauritania and other violent demonstrations in Senegal and Burkina Faso — where a nationwide strike against price rises is to start on Tuesday.
Rescuers on Sunday pushed on with efforts to find more survivors from the rubble of the Angolan police headquarters that collapsed in the capital. The disaster is feared to have claimed seven lives. The national police commissioner said he was optimistic that more people would be found alive.
Conservatives won a majority in Iran’s parliamentary vote, state television said on Sunday, but the new assembly may still give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a tougher time ahead of next year’s presidential election. Western powers embroiled in a deepening stand-off with Tehran over its disputed nuclear plans condemned Friday’s election as unfair.
Two suicide attacks killed at least 31 people and injured more than 200 in Lahore on Tuesday as suspected Islamist militants escalated their campaign of mayhem in Pakistan’s largest cities. The bombs were the latest in a string of attacks against military and police targets in Lahore, the previously peaceful capital of Punjab province.
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/ 28 February 2008
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Thursday to make Hamas militants pay a heavy price for rocket attacks despite United States concerns about civilians in the Gaza Strip. As five more Palestinians were killed, Olmert held talks in Tokyo with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
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/ 17 February 2008
A suicide bomber killed more than 80 people at a picnic spot in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Sunday in the most deadly attack since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, the government said. The attack will add urgency to a debate about how the United States and Afghanistan’s other allies can help stem militant violence and promote stability.
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/ 17 February 2008
At least 60 people were killed by an explosion at a picnic spot near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, witnesses and officials said. The cause of the blast in the western outskirts of Kandahar was not known immediately. Some people were also wounded by the explosion which went off at a location where spectators were watching dogs fight.
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/ 16 February 2008
A suicide car bomb outside a Pakistani election candidate’s office killed 37 people in the violent north-west on Saturday, the last day of campaigning for an election meant to complete a transition to civilian rule. Separately, police in the south of the country said they had foiled another attack planned for polling day on Monday.
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/ 8 February 2008
German authorities have learnt that al-Qaeda is preparing to carry out attacks in Germany, a senior official said in an interview with Die Welt newspaper on Friday. The Secretary of State in the Interior Ministry, August Hanning, said al-Qaeda leaders based in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan have ”decided to carry out attacks in Germany”.
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/ 31 January 2008
A suicide bomber targeted an Afghan army bus in the centre of Kabul on Thursday, causing numerous casualties, officials said. One civilian was killed and four people were wounded, including an army officer, they said. A purported Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said one of the militant group’s suicide bombers was responsible for the blast.
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/ 29 January 2008
A car-bomb attack on a police station killed two people and wounded 23 in a town east of Algiers on Tuesday, the second such bombing in the Opec member in a month. Some residents said the blast in Thenia appeared to be a suicide attack, the tactic used in a twin bombing in the capital on December 11.
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/ 28 January 2008
Heavily armed militants took about 300 children hostage at a school in Pakistan on Monday but freed them after tense negotiations with tribal elders, the Interior Ministry said. Rebels armed with rocket launchers holed up at the school in the North West Frontier Province after a failed attempt to abduct a local official.
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/ 20 January 2008
The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images of the Qur’an being torn up and otherwise desecrated.
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/ 16 January 2008
Britain warned Russia on Wednesday that any attempt to intimidate staff of its cultural arm was ”completely unacceptable” after Russia’s state security service summoned local employees to speak to its officers. Britain’s consulate in St Petersburg said the British Council office in the northern city had been forced to shut temporarily.
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/ 15 January 2008
Pakistani political leaders face a looming threat of attack and must get serious about their security and avoid unnecessary exposure in the run-up to a February general election, the government said on Tuesday. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack as she left an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi on December 27.
The Amazonian rainforest and the Andes mountains could replace the African desert as South America vies to stage the Dakar Rally. Argentina, Brazil and Chile are looking into the possibility of hosting the race later this year and there are also talks about a race through several South American countries and climate zones.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday his government was committed to finding the truth behind the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and he vowed to punish her killers. Bhutto, twice Pakistan’s prime minister, was killed in an attack on December 27 as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi.
A British police team flew into Pakistan on Friday to help probe the killing of Benazir Bhutto after President Pervez Musharraf admitted he was unhappy with his country’s handling of the investigation. The detectives from an elite anti-terrorism team at Scotland Yard flew in amid raging controversy over the assassination of the opposition leader.
A team of police from Britain’s Scotland Yard is expected to arrive in Pakistan on Friday to help probe the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto as the controversy over her death rages on. On Thursday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf admitted he was ”not fully satisfied” with his own country’s handling of the investigation.
Pakistan election officials were Wednesday poised to announce the date of crucial polls, thrown into chaos in the wake of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. A few hours later President Pervez Musharraf is to address the nation for the first time since her slaying at a campaign rally last week.
Pakistan parliamentary elections scheduled for January 8 will be held in February, a senior election commission said on Tuesday. ”Elections will not be delayed beyond February. We expect it to be towards the later part of next month,” the official said. The commission was to make a public announcement later in the day.
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/ 30 December 2007
Pakistan’s political future hung in the balance on Sunday with Benazir Bhutto’s party deciding whether to pull out of planned elections amid an acrimonious dispute over how she was killed. Her husband and top party officials were also expected to name a successor to Bhutto as head of the country’s largest opposition party.
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/ 29 December 2007
Benazir Bhutto’s party challenged official versions of the opposition leader’s assassination and accused the government on Saturday of trying to cover up failures just days before planned elections. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda-linked militants denied being behind the killing of the 54-year-old former prime minister.