AFP, Baghdad
Iraqi forces have captured a key airbase from the militant Islamic State group that can serve as a launchpad for retaking the jihadist-held city of Mosul, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Saturday.
The Qayyarah airbase in the Tigris valley 60 kilometres south of Mosul would be “an important base for the liberation of Mosul,” Abadi said in a statement.
Critic of Cambodian govt shot dead in capital
Reuters, Phnom Penh
A critic of the Cambodian government was shot dead in the capital on Sunday at a time of rising political tension between Prime Minister Hun Sen and an opposition hoping to challenge his grip on power in elections as soon as next year.
Kem Ley, 46, the head of a grassroots advocacy group, “Khmer for Khmer”, was shot two times in a store at a gas station in Phnom Penh, police said.
Russia expels two US diplomats
AFP, Moscow
Moscow on Saturday said it had expelled two US diplomats as a retaliatory move after Washington turned out two Russian officials over an attack on a US embassy worker last month.
“After their unfriendly step two employees of the United States embassy had to leave Moscow,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
“They were declared persona non grata for activities incompatible with their diplomatic status.”
Ryabkov accused the two US diplomats of being CIA agents and said that one of them had been involved in a brawl with a policeman in Moscow that sparked the tit-for-tat expulsions. “We hope Washington recognises all the same the perversity of its anti-Russian line. If they decide to move further along the path of escalation it will not remain unanswered,” Ryabkov warned.
