Top militant leader killed in ambush
NEW DELHI — Indian security forces killed two militants, including a top commander, in a gun battle in the Kashmir Valley on Tuesday morning that also left one civilian dead.
The two militants belonged to Lashkar-eTaiba, the Pakistanibased group that has long operated in the valley.
The commander, known as Abu Dujana, and the second militant were hiding out in a house in a village in Pulwama district when the Indian security forces ambushed it, officials said at a news conference in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir State.
Civilians rushed to the scene to protest the presence of the security forces, a frequent response to operations against militants in recent years. Separatist sentiment runs high in the valley, and a high level of militarization has led to disaffection with the Indian state and its tactics against civilians.
Charity ordered to close
PHNOMPENH, Cambodia — An American charity that was featured in a recent CNN report on the sex trade in Cambodia was ordered shut down on Tuesday by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who denounced the network and said President Donald Trump was right to criticize it.
The CNN report, “Life after trafficking: The Cambodian girls sold for sex by their mothers,” was a brief follow-up to a 2013 documentary that relied heavily on the work of the California-based Christian group Agape International Missions, which works to rescue women and children sold into the sex trade.
After the report was broadcast last week, the Cambodian government accused Agape of exaggerating the current extent of sex trafficking in Svay Pak, a village that had been notorious in the 1990s and early 2000s for brothels that sold sex with children. The government announced a police investigation into the charity group’s activities.
Suspects botch escape
MOSCOW— Three suspected gang members were killed in a shootout at a courthouse in a Moscow suburb on Tuesday after overpowering guards and stealing their weaponry, Russia’s top investigative authority said of their botched escape attempt.
Two more suspected members of the group dubbed by the media and police as the GTA Gang, a reference to the “Grand Theft Auto” video game series, were detained as they tried to flee.
Those two were hospitalized with “severe gunshot wounds,” the Investigative Committee said on its website.
The GTA Gang became notorious in 2014 for allegedly using spikes to burst the tires of vehicles traveling in the Moscow region in order to rob the drivers. The gang has been linked to at least 17 murders.
Cabinet to reshuffle
TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced at Tuesday’s Liberal Democratic Party executive members’ meeting that he will reshuffle the Cabinet and party leadership on Thursday. Former Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera is likely to join the new Cabinet, according to sources.