Islamic State lost 87% of territory seized in 2014: US-led coalition

The Islamic State (IS) group has lost 87% of the territory it controlled in 2014, when it proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria, the US-led coalition said today.

The announcement by the coalition, which has carried out thousands of air strikes against the jihadists and deployed advisers in both countries, came on the day of its third anniversary and as the Kurdish-Arab force, it supports captured IS's one-time bastion of Raqa.

"Our partners have removed ISIS from 87% of territory they once held and liberated over 6.5 million people," coalition spokesperson Ryan Dillon said on social media, using another acronym for IS.

Attacking from bastions it consolidated in Iraq and especially in war-torn Syria, the organisation that eventually re-branded itself "Islamic State" swept through Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland in June 2014 and conquered roughly a third of the country.

In a separate statement, the coalition, formed after former US president Barack Obama sent warplanes to Iraq in a bid to stop the IS genocide of the Yazidi minority, said it had trained close to 120,000 forces in Iraq and more than 12,000 in Syria.
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12 Turkish police officers wounded in bus explosion

A bomb exploded as a bus carrying police was passing by in a southern Turkish city on Tuesday, wounding a dozen officers, officials said.

The blast occurred on a main road in the Mediterranean coastal city of Mersin, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Mersin chief prosecutor told Anadolu that at least 12 officers were wounded in the attack. Three prosecutors were assigned to investigate, he told Anadolu.

Several police officers, ambulances and firefighters were sent to the scene, the agency reported earlier.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has waged a three-decade long insurgency in southeast Turkey, has targeted police in similar attacks in the past. The group is designated as a terror organisation by Turkey and its allies.

Left-wing militants and members of the Islamic State group have also carried out deadly attacks in the country.
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Iranians among 52 dead in Iraq attacks claimed by IS

Gunmen and suicide car bombers today killed at least 52 people including Iranians near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, in an attack claimed by Islamic State group.

The attackers struck at midday, opening fire on a restaurant before getting into a car and blowing themselves up at a nearby security checkpoint, officials said.

Security sources said the attackers were disguised as members of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a mainly Shiite paramilitary alliance which has fought alongside the army and police against the Islamic State jihadist group in northern Iraq.

The toll from the attacks was 52 dead and 91 wounded, said Abdel Hussein al-Jabri, deputy health chief for the mainly Shiite province of Dhiqar of which Nasiriyah is the capital.

Jabri told AFP that many of the wounded were in serious condition.

The area targeted is used by Shiite pilgrims and visitors from neighbouring Iran headed for the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala further north, although Dhiqar has previously been spared the worst of Iraq's violence.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement carried by its Amaq propaganda arm.

It said several suicide bombers had staged the assault on a restaurant and a security checkpoint, killing "dozens of Shiites".
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Suicide blast at mosque kills 20, injures 60 others in Afghanistan's Herat

A suicide bomber and a gunman killed at least 29 people and wounded 63 at a packed Shiite mosque in Afghanistan's main western city of Herat on Tuesday night, the latest attack to highlight the country's deteriorating security situation.

The assault on the Jawadya mosque in Herat, which is close to Afghanistan's border with Iran, came a day after the Islamic State group claimed a deadly attack on the Iraqi embassy in Kabul.

The Herat attack was the latest in a series of assaults on Afghanistan's minority Shiite population.

"The death toll has risen to 29 killed and 63 wounded. Some wounded are in a critical condition so the toll may go up," hospital spokesman Rafeeq Shirzai told AFP.

Herat police spokesman Abdul Ahad Walizada said the assault happened around 8:00 pm (local time) when "a terrorist attack was carried out on a (Shiite) mosque in the third security district of Herat city".

"Based on our initial information two terrorists were involved, one of them wearing a suicide vest who detonated himself while the second one was armed with a rifle. They are both dead," he added.
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