10 killed in military attacks in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD -- A U.S. drone fired two missiles at a militant hideout in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least five Taliban fighters, two security officials said.
In a separate operation, the military said Pakistani security forces killed five "terrorists" on the outskirts of Peshawar, where the Pakistani Taliban carried out a school massacre last week, killing 148 people, mainly children.
The attack prompted a large-scale military response in the tribal regions along the Afghan border. Pakistani airstrikes and ground operations in the Khyber region -- where the school attack is believed to have emanated -- have killed about 200 militants.
The drone strike took place in the town of Datta Khel in North Waziristan, where Pakistani troops have been carrying out a major operation against local and foreign militants since June, the officials said.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the men killed in the strike fought under local Pakistani Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur.
Nigeria militants said to slay 50 elderly
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria -- Islamic extremists in northeast Nigeria are turning their guns on elderly people, killing more than 50 last week in a new tactic that has instilled more fear in areas the militants call an Islamic caliphate.
Residents from five villages say people too elderly to flee the Gwoza local government area are being taken to two schools where the militants open fire. The villages are about 80 miles southeast of Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.
"What they are doing now is to assemble the aged people -- both men and women ... and then they just open fire on some of them," said Muhammed Gava, a spokesman for civil-defense groups in the area. More than 50 people had been killed at Government Day Secondary School in Gwoza, he said.
A villager who had fled said more elderly people are being gathered and shot at Uvaghe Central Primary School. The villager spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of endangering his trapped parents.
Kurdish forces close in on Islamic State
BEIRUT -- Kurdish fighters advanced on the Islamic State extremist group Saturday in Iraq and Syria, pushing into the Sinjar mountains and moving toward the Syrian border town of Kobani after heavy clashes, Kurdish officials and an activist group said.
In Syria, Kurdish Democratic Union Party spokesman Nawaf Khalil said Kurdish fighters advanced in six neighborhoods and have besieged the Islamic State-held center east of Kobani. He added that Kurdish fighters captured the Yarmouk school, southeast of Kobani, where eight bodies of Islamic State fighters were found.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the main Syrian Kurdish force known as the People's Protection Units killed 10 Islamic State fighters.
The push in Kobani came a day after the Syrian Kurdish fighters opened a corridor between northeastern Syria and Mount Sinjar in neighboring Iraq. Last week, Iraqi peshmerga fighters were also able to open another corridor to Mount Sinjar.
Iraq's Kurdistan Region Security Council said peshmerga fighters started a new offensive Saturday toward Mount Sinjar and were able to capture Mushrefa.
10,000 arrested in past year, Egypt says
CAIRO -- Egyptian security forces have detained nearly 10,000 suspected militants, rioters and others wanted in violent attacks over the past 12 months in a crackdown, a senior interior ministry official said Saturday, that targets those attempting to curtail Egypt's development.
The comments by Maj. Gen. Abdel-Fattah Osman, an aide to the interior minister for media affairs, to the official news agency MENA are a rare account of the number of people authorities have arrested in a crackdown that has included Islamists, as well as secular critics of the government.
It doesn't account for the total number of people believed to have been put behind bars since the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013. Security officials estimate that more than 20,000 have been arrested since then.
Authorities have since made protesting illegal without previous permits from security officials, leaving thousands of protesters subjected to the law criticized by rights groups and activists.
Osman said security forces have foiled about 400 terrorist attacks since January. He said the security forces also arrested 460 suspected members of terrorist cells, 6,400 rioters, 50 wanted militants and some 2,600 accused of attacking police stations.
A Section on 12/21/2014