Iraq is building a concrete wall along part of its border with Syria to stop ISIS fighters from infiltrating, a military source said Sunday. In the first section, a wall of about “a dozen kilometres, 3.5 metres high, was built in Nineveh province”, in the Sinjar area of north-west Iraq, …

A Ukrainian mayor who was abducted by Russian forces was released after a mass protest by the town’s residents, reports say. Russian forces entered the northern Ukrainian city of Slavutych, near the Chernobyl power plant, on Saturday and seized a hospital, and took the mayor Yuri Fomichov hostage, Ukrainian officials …

With its aspirations for a quick victory dashed by a stiff Ukrainian resistance, Russia has increasingly focused on grinding down Ukraine’s military in the east in the hope of forcing Kyiv into surrendering part of the country’s territory to possibly end the war. The bulk of the Ukrainian army is …