Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari announced Saturday that the extremist Islamist group Boko Haram had been driven from its final stronghold in the Sambisa Forest on the border with Cameroon. But that is unlikely to end the violence. “I am delighted at, and most proud of the gallant troops of...
Mustafa Sello strode up to the soldiers loitering by the green buses near southern Aleppo’s Ramousseh crossing, where they waited to evacuate the last residents out of the city’s eastern districts. “Please, sir, do you know where I can find my mother? An officer told me she would be here,” Sello...
Multiple car bombs tore through an east Mosul suburb Thursday morning, killing 15 civilians and eight police officers, Iraqi officials said. The victims were at a market and a police garage in the town of Gogjali, which Iraqi forces seized from Islamic State militants in early November as part...
The German capital was rattled again Tuesday when senior police officials admitted they had arrested the wrong man in their investigation into an apparent terrorist attack that killed 12 people at an outdoor Christmas market the day before. The Islamic State group took responsibility for the attack,...
By the time Iraqi forces recaptured this sprawling airfield once known as “Key West” from Islamic State last summer, the militants had ruined everything: The Olympic-size pool, the track, the PX store, dining hall, even the runways, plowed under and rendered unusable. But it was a significantly...
In a significant break with past policy, U.S.-led forces in Iraq have started arming and training hundreds of fighters belonging to Shiite militias historically known for having ties to Iran. The sectarian militias are being trained for the operation to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul. While Mosul’s...
It’s a driving school like no other, with myriad obstacles and moving hazards that also happen to be alive. There are the bicycle boys, wobbling along, finding their balance in the same vacant stretch of red dirt where drivers learn to shift and motorcyclists learn to ride. Balls sail at multiple...
A white helicopter circling above the central Plaza of Liberty signaled that the long-awaited moment was imminent. Onlookers who had been waiting for hours were lined three and four deep along the narrow streets, straining for a glimpse at this historic cortege. They hoisted children on their shoulders....
In a narrow dirt lane where children scamper and play, Garba Buzu’s rubber sandals slap the ground as he walks. His black prayer beads dangle and swing in his right hand. His shoulders are bent, and his body rolls like a ship with every pace along the alleys of this northern Nigerian city. He wears...
Mexico’s beloved grande dame of death, a stylishly attired skeleton named La Catrina, her grinning skull topped with trademark hat, has company in the market stands here: Hollywood extraterrestrials, Batman and other superheroes, along with sundry witches and monsters. “Ratas baratas! Diez pesos!”...
On the final day before authorities begin to dismantle the Calais refugee camp known as “the Jungle,” dozens of young people headed to a small sanctuary amid the chaos: a graffiti-fronted, one-room cafe — made of plywood and a tarpaulin roof — that has become a regular fixture in their otherwise...
To grasp the size of Arroyo Restaurant, a beloved Mexico City institution since the 1940s, consider first the tortillas. On a busy Sunday, the restaurant’s army of cooks may prepare as many as 15,000 of them, served steaming in insulated fabric pouches. How else would droves of hungry customers...
Europe’s most wanted man was shot dead in Milan by a routine police patrol on Friday, four days after he allegedly drove a truck into a Christmas fair in Berlin, killing 12 and wounding dozens. Police said Anis Amri had traveled by train from Chambery, France, on Thursday night to Turin, Italy...
Hijackers who claimed to be armed with grenades took control of a domestic flight in Libya on Friday, threatening to blow up the plane and forcing the pilot to land in Malta with 118 people aboard, officials said. The passengers and crew were eventually released and the hijackers surrendered peacefully,...
Israel’s high court gave the government a 45-day extension Thursday to evacuate a Jewish outpost in the West Bank after settlers there pledged to leave peacefully. The decision came days before a Dec. 25 deadline to demolish Amona, which the court ruled two years ago was built illegally on privately...
Fingerprints matching a fugitive Tunisian refugee were found Thursday inside the truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market this week, killing 12 people. The discovery has left investigators all but certain that the suspect, who remains at large and is “armed and dangerous,” was behind the...
After so much suffering, Aleppo is officially back under Syrian government control. Syrian state TV announced Thursday that the evacuation of the city’s formerly rebel-controlled areas was complete, with the departure of the last opposition fighters and civilians from former strongholds in Aleppo’s...
Pope Francis on Thursday accused Vatican officials of “malicious resistance” to his reform of the Holy See’s sluggish and opaque bureaucracy, saying lay men and women should be appointed to leadership positions, if they are more qualified than clerics. In a blistering address, Francis warned Vatican...
Juan Artega said he had the money to buy Christmas toys for his 5-year-old daughter. The problem was that the bank would allow him to take out only the equivalent of $4 a day. On Thursday, for the third straight day, the construction worker spent his lunch hour in east Caracas in line at an ATM....
Jesus Rodriguez Ernesto Ortiz leaned against his bike Wednesday and peered through a chain-link fence at the wreckage of the San Pablito fireworks market. In this community, the sale of fireworks touches nearly every family, and so too did the explosion Tuesday afternoon that left the market a...
German police launched a European-wide manhunt Wednesday for a Tunisian man suspected of deliberately driving a truck into a crowd of Christmas revelers in the center of Berlin, killing 12, in the country’s worst terror attack in decades. The federal prosecutor’s office identified the suspect as...
Civil liberties campaigners scored a huge victory on Wednesday when Europe’s highest court ruled that Britain’s sweeping surveillance powers are illegal. The country is on the verge of adopting what critics say is the most extensive surveillance law to be adopted in the Western world. The Investigatory...
The death toll in a series of explosions at a fireworks market outside Mexico City has risen to 32, an official said Wednesday, as authorities worked to identify badly burned bodies and determine the cause of the tragedy. Sixty others were injured in the chain-reaction blasts, which occurred midafternoon...
American singer-songwriter James Taylor canceled an upcoming concert in Manila to protest Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, a campaign of extrajudicial slaughter that has claimed more than 6,000 lives. Taylor, a Grammy winner known for songs including “Fire and Rain” and “You’ve...
The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things. The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential...
A thunderous series of explosions tore through an open-air fireworks market outside Mexico City on Tuesday, leaving at least 29 dead and 72 injured, many seriously, authorities said. The initial blast occurred at 2:30 p.m., when the market was filled with shoppers looking for fireworks for the...