Elite units raid IS hideout and kill 11 militants
Baluchistan: Pakistan’s counter-terrorism units raided a hideout of the so-called Islamic State group in the south-western Baluchistan province, setting off a shootout that killed 11 militants.
The units, acting on intelligence, carried out the raid before dawn yesterday in the district of Mastung, where IS militants had recently killed two police officers.
Police said suicide belts, hand grenades and assault rifles were confiscated in the raid.
The counter-terrorism police is a special branch of the police that fights militant groups.
Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan province, where IS has claimed several attacks in recent years.
Warsaw: Doctors at Poland’s main children’s hospital were carrying out a liver transplant on a six-year-old Afghan boy who ate highly poisonous mushrooms with his family.
However, his five-yearold brother is in a coma and doctors at the Centre for Children’s Health Institute were carrying out tests to establish if he is brain dead.
The boys and their older sister, recently evacuated from Afghanistan at the UK’S request, were admitted to hospital last week.
The family picked and ate highly poisonous death cap mushrooms in the forest near the centre where they were accommodated in Podkowa Lesna, near Warsaw.
Their 17-year-old sister is in a stable condition at the hospital, as are other family members.
The father had worked for the UK in Afghanistan.
A bomb-laden drone targeted an airport in south-western Saudi Arabia, wounding eight people and damaging a civilian plane, state TV reported.
It is the latest assault on the kingdom amid its grinding war in Yemen.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, the second such strike on Abha airport in the last 24 hours. The earlier attack caused no casualties.
The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iranbacked Shiite rebels in Yemen did not elaborate on the latest attack or give details about casualties, beyond saying its forces had “intercepted” the explosive drone.
Istanbul: Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken by telephone with the United Arab Emirates’ de-facto leader, Abu Dhabi crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed, in a sign of easing tensions between the countries.
The two leaders discussed their countries’ relations and regional issues, according to a statement from the Turkish presidency.
The UAE’S state-run news agency said the leaders “reviewed the prospects of reinforcing the relations between the two nations in a way that serves their common interests and their two peoples”.
The call came two weeks after Mr Erdogan hosted a top UAE security official and discussed investment in Turkey.
UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s trip was the highest-level public visit by an Emirati official to Turkey in years.
The two countries have seen their ties affected by regional tensions, including the conflict in Libya, where the UAE and Turkey have backed opposing sides in recent years.