Tag: Featured

    Children were among 14 people killed when missiles hit a hospital and school in a rebel-held Syrian town near the Turkish border. Scores more were injured in the strikes on Azaz where tens of thousand of refugees had fled to escape heavy fighting between Syrian troops and opposition militias. Russia has been blamed for the attacks, carried out in support of a government ground offensive. We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital, said medic Juma Rahal. Meanwhile, in a separate raid, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said a hospital supported by the aid group had been "deliberately" targeted in a suspected Russian airstrike. At least nine civilians, including a child, were killed in the attack on Maaret al Numan, about 170 miles north of the capital Da...

    Turkish artillery on Saturday bombarded areas of Aleppo province in northern Syria controlled by Kurdish forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The monitoring group's head, Rami Abdel Rahman, said Turkish shelling struck areas of Aleppo, including Minnigh, recently taken by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia from Islamist rebels. Ankara considers the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG militia to be branches of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. The shelling came shortly after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ankara would, if necessary, take military action against the PYD. A YPG source told AFP that the Turkish shelling targeted the strategic ...

    A teenage girl sent by extremist group Boko Haram to blow up a refugee camp tore off her explosive vest and fled as soon as she was out of sight of her handlers. Her two companions blew themselves up in the Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria, killing at least 58 people. The girl who refused to kill herself and others was later found by local security forces. She is now in custody and has given officials information about other planned bombings, helping them to increase security at the camp. "She said she was scared because she knew she would kill people," Modu Awami, a self-defence fighter who helped question the girl, said. "But she was also frightened of going against the instructions of the men who brought her to the camp." The girl was among thousands held captive...