Europe

    A man stormed into a Zurich mosque on Monday evening and opened fire on people praying, injuring three, Swiss police said. They said they had collected evidence inside the building and would make more details available on Tuesday. They declined to comment on the potential motive. Two of the three men -- aged 30, 35 and 56 -- were seriously injured in the attack shortly after 5:30 p.m. local time (1630 GMT) near the main train station in Switzerland's financial capital, Zurich police said. A third sustained less severe injuries. All three were brought to hospital. The unidentified suspect, a man around 30 years old who according to witnesses was wearing dark clothing and a dark wool cap, fled the mosque, police said. Police said a body was found nearby but would not comment...

    A Pakistani refugee named only as Naved B. has been named as the prime suspect in the Berlin Christmas market tragedy by German media. The 23-year-old arrived in Germany a year ago, Bild reported citing security sources. Police have said at least 12 people died when the huge vehicle smashed into booths outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the centre of the city. The truck is believed to have Polish numberplates. The suspect had been living in Flughfen Tempelhof – an old airport converted into a refugee centre. He was reportedly known as a petty criminal but authorities had not considered him to be a terror suspect. Four young men were also questioned after police stormed the Tempelhof hangar and it is thought that one was arrested. German officials are interrogati...

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the killing of the Russian ambassador to Ankara is designed to spoil Russian Turkish ties. Mr Putin said the killing of Andrey Karlov in the Turkish capital was also intended to derail Moscow's attempts to find, with Iran and Turkey, a solution for the Syria crisis. He said Russian investigators have opened a criminal case into the killing. In televised comments, Mr Putin, speaking at a special meeting in the Kremlin, ordered security at Russian embassies around the world to be stepped up and said he wanted to know who had directed the gunman's hand. He heaped praise on the murdered Russian ambassador, Mr Karlov, who was shot in the back and killed as he gave a speech at an Ankara art gallery, and made clear that Moscow's response ...

    An underground 18-storey city that was discovered over Tukey whether established In 1963. These stunning images show the underground 18-storey city discovered by chance by a man renovating his home. In 1963, a Turkish dad knocked down a wall in his basement, revealing a secret room which led to an underground tunnel that took him to the ancient city of Derinkuyu. Photos of the preserved city document how 20,000 people  including livestock and entire food supplies  could have lived 85m beneath the earth. Thought to have been created during the Byzantine era in 780-1180AD, the network of kitchens, stables, churches, tombs, wells, communal rooms and schools was most likely used as a bunker to protect inhabitants from the Arab–Byzantine wars. During this time, cave-like chapel...

    Twisted Donal Billings sent a chilling warning to police boasting that he would attack the Queen as she settled down to a banquet during a state visit to Ireland. The lone wolf terrorist told officers hours before the plush feast that he had trained mortars on Dublin Castle where the royal party were being entertained. And on the eve of the Queen’s visit, the warped 66-year-old planted a bomb on a bus bound for the city that would have caused horrific bloodshed had it not been intercepted by officers. Billings, who has no known links with dissident groups, was last night starting an eight and a half year sentence for the failed explosives plot and mortar threats. His terrifying haul of weapons and ammunition, which included a Czech-made pistol, pipe and timer, was put on d...

    European Union leaders devoted just twenty minutes to discussing Brexit at a late night meeting in Brussels on Thursday, after Theresa May returned to London. May’s fellow leaders had been set to consider how best to tackle Britain’s departure from the 28-member bloc over a three-course dinner to which the prime minister had not been invited. But after talks about a series of other pressing issues, including the refugee crisis and ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine, dragged on late into the night, the dinner was cancelled in favour of a brief discussion. May cancelled a planned press conference, instead making a few prepared remarks on camera about the Syrian crisis, before being whisked away to fly back to London. The prime minister refused to be drawn on her hopes f...

      Splits were emerging among the 27 EU member states over Brexit negotiating tactics last night, as several smaller member states indicated they wanted the European Commission to begin early trade talks with Britain. The European Commission, led by Jean-Claude Juncker, has been adamant that Britain must finalise a ‘divorce deal’ costing up to 60 billion euros before they will begin talks over the future EU-UK trade relationship. Laying down the ground-rules last week, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said that Europe would take everything step by step, in the right order and that it was legally impossible to do the two deals together. However, senior EU diplomats from some states were last night expressing reservations about the Commission’s hardline approac...

    Two Yazidi women who were brutally gang raped by ISIS and kept as sex slaves have received an award in recognition of their bravery. Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar were among thousands of women and girls abducted, tortured and sexually abused by Islamic State fighters in Iraq in 2014. The Yazidi are a small, religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Islamic State considers them devil-worshippers. Today, the European Parliament held a ceremony a month after it awarded its Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought to Nadia and Lamiya. Islamic State insurgents overran Sinjar in August 2014, systematically killing, capturing and enslaving thousands of Yazidi inhabitants Murad, now aged 23, was held by IS in Mosul but escaped her ...

    Three million EU citizens living in the UK will need to have some form of ID documents following Brexit, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd has told MPs. And in a slap-down for the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, she also said foreign students are likely to remain in the Government's target to cut immigration to the tens of thousands. The Home Secretary's warning that Europeans living in the UK will require documentation came in reply to a question from the senior Labour MP Hilary Benn, who chairs the new Brexit Select Committee of MPs. "There will be a need to have some sort of documentation ... but we are not going to set it out yet," she said. "We are going to do it in a phased approach, to ensure that we use all the technology advantages that we are increasingly able to ha...

    The EU's chief Brexit negotiator has insisted that his team are ready to start divorce talks with the UK, calling for the parties to keep calm and negotiate. Michel Barnier made the reference to the famous British Second World War Two poster Keep Calm and Carry On as he spoke in Brussels on Tuesday morning (6 December). We are entering uncharted waters, he warned. The work will be legally complex, politically sensitive and it will have important consequences for our economies and people on both sides of the [English] Channel. The French politician called for an orderly withdrawal and said he had used the past two months since his appointment to prepare for complex negotiations with the UK. Barnier has so far visited 18 of 28 EU nations ahead of the talks and hopes to compl...