Eurasia

The United States expects Turkey to step up in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group now that Turkey has secured the release of 49 hostages held by the militants, Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday.

Some 130,000 Kurdish refugees fleeing Islamic militants have crossed the border from Syria into Turkey in the past four days, Turkey’s deputy prime minister said today as fighting raged close to Turkey’s southern border. The minister, Numan Kurtulmus, warned that Turkey was facing “a refugee wave that can be expressed …

At least 23 suspected militants were killed on Monday in aerial strikes on militants hideouts in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, said military. A statement issued by the media wing of Pakistan military, Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) said that at least 23 militants were killed …

Algerian soldiers have killed a “terrorist chief” during an operation in the Kabylie region some 110km east of the capital, the defence ministry announced on Monday. “As part of the anti-terrorist struggle and acting on information received, an army detachment on Sunday eliminated a terrorist chief responsible for several crimes …

Ukrainian troops and independence-seeking insurgents have started establishing a weapon-free buffer zone to separate the areas they control from each other, a government military spokesman said Monday. “A preparation for the withdrawal of heavy weapons is underway,” Andrei Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told a …

France early Monday said it welcomed the end of the stand-off in Afghanistan over the outcome of the Afghan Presidential election, which has been disputed between two protagonists for several months.

Lieutenant General Rizwan Akhtar was on Monday appointed the new chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in commander-level promotions announced in the country’s powerful Army. The announcement was made on Twitter by Major General Asim Bajwa, director-general of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR).

The Cairo Criminal Court postponed on Saturday ousted president Mohamed Morsi’s espionage trial to 29 September, and called upon General Adel Azab of the Homeland Security department to testify in the coming hearing. The court ordered the medical examination of Khairat El-Shater, deputy of the group’s Supreme Guide, according to …

The United States is set to deliver 10 Apache helicopters to Egypt to support “counterterrorism efforts”, confirmed US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel in a phone call to Egyptian Minister of Defence Sedki Sobhi. Hagel contacted his Egyptian counterpart by telephone on Saturday to confirm the plans to deliver the military …

On the first day of the 2014 Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Syrian anti-Assad group called the “Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)”[1] announced that it would be establishing a caliphate[2], or Islamic State (IS, which also became the organization’s new name), on the territories it controls in …