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The former Polish president Lech Wałęsa, the leader of the Solidarity movement that helped overthrow communism, has been taken to hospital with heart problems.
His son, Jarosław Wałęsa, said on Saturday his father was feeling “unfortunately weak”. The former president was being treated in the heart disease ward of the Gdańsk University clinic, in his home city. On Thursday, the 73-year-old former Solidarity movement leader was booed by government-supporting crowds. Read more HERE.
Militants killed at least 23 soldiers and injured dozens more in a car explosion and gun attack on an Egyptian military checkpoint in the north-eastern Sinai peninsula, officials have said.
Among those killed in the attack on Friday – the deadliest on the country’s military this year – were five officers, including a high-ranking special forces colonel, Ahmed el-Mansi, according to security officials. The assault started when an attacker rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint at a military compound. Read more HERE.
At least 28 prisoners were killed in a brutal prison fight on Thursday in the Mexican Pacific resort of Acapulco, in one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the country’s troubled penal system in recent years.
Acapulco is the biggest city in Guerrero, one of Mexico’s most lawless states and a center of opium poppy production that has been a major concern to US officials. The prison carnage was particularly embarrassing to Mexico as it came the same day John Kelly was visiting Guerrero. Read more HERE
US-backed forces encircling Raqqa expect the fight to oust the remnants of Islamic State from its most symbolic Syrian stronghold to take at least 3 months, despite rapid advances towards the city centre this week.
The advance met with fierce resistance on Wednesday, as Isis fighters used an 18th-century fortified wall as a buffer against Kurdish and Arab fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, who had been claiming neighbourhoods of the city, while steadily closing in from its surrounds. Read more HERE.
US-backed forces encircling Raqqa expect the fight to oust the remnants of Islamic State from its most symbolic Syrian stronghold to take at least 3 months, despite rapid advances towards the city centre this week.
The advance met with fierce resistance on Wednesday, as Isis fighters used an 18th-century fortified wall as a buffer against Kurdish and Arab fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, who had been claiming neighbourhoods of the city, while steadily closing in from its surrounds. Read more HERE.