Syrian rebel infighting urged to come to halt
BEIRUT – The head of an al-Qaida-linked group in Syria reached out to rival rebel groups who have been engaged in a bloody battle with his fighters this month, calling for an end to infighting and instead unite against the government and its allies.
Rebel-on-rebel infighting between the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as well as an array of ultraconservative and more moderate rebel factions has killed more than 1,000 people across opposition-held northern Syria since it began in early January. The clashes are the most serious among the opponents of President Bashar Assad in Syria’s nearly three-year civil war.
In a new 16-minute audio message posted online Sunday, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi accused the other rebel brigades of stabbing his group in the back.
Taliban bombing kills 20 troops in Pakistan
BANNU, Pakistan – A Taliban bombing inside an army compound in northwest Pakistan killed at least 20 troops Sunday, officials and militants said, in one of the deadliest attacks in Pakistan’s volatile frontier.
The blast targeted a vehicle in a convoy leaving a military base in Bannu headed west to the North Waziristan tribal area, police official Inyat Ali Khan said. Pakistan’s military said the blast wounded 30 troops.
The Taliban claimed credit for the attack and called it a suicide bombing. Military officials said the blast came from an explosive planted in the vehicle, hired by the paramilitary Frontier Corps.
Ukraine protests turn into fiery street battles
KIEV, Ukraine – Anti-government protests in Ukraine’s capital escalated into fiery street battles with police Sunday as thousands of demonstrators hurled rocks and firebombs to set police vehicles ablaze. Dozens of officers and protesters were injured.
Police responded with stun grenades, tear gas and water cannons but were outnumbered by the protesters. Many of the riot police held their shields over their heads to protect themselves from the projectiles thrown by demonstrators on the other side of a cordon of buses.
The violence was a sharp escalation of Ukraine’s two-month political crisis, which has brought round-the-clock protest gatherings, but had been largely peaceful.
Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko tried to persuade demonstrators to stop their unrest but failed and was sprayed by a fire extinguisher in the process.
Egyptian under fire for anti-U.S. comments
CAIRO – A former Egyptian lawmaker who threatened on a popular TV show that Americans would be “slaughtered in their homes” if an attempt is made on the life of the country’s military chief recanted on Sunday, saying his comments were misconstrued.
The Jan. 13 comments by Mostafa Bakry, a well-known journalist with close ties to the military, created a buzz on social media this past week but drew no comment from the nation’s military-backed government. Bakry based his comments about killing Americans on what he called a conspiracy led by the United States to assassinate military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
“There is a plan, which the security apparatus knows about very well, to assassinate el-Sissi, and it involves both internal and external players,” Bakry told Imad Adeeb, host of the talk show “Quietly!”
Associated Press
