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KABUL — The acting governor of Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province said Sunday that Taliban fighters had been routinely firing “small and heavy” weapons from the grounds of a local hospital before it was apparently hit by a U.S. airstrike over the weekend. In an interview, Hamdullah Danishi said the Doctors Without Borders compound was “a Taliban base” that was being used to plot and carry out attacks across the provincial capital, Kunduz city. “The hospital campus was 100 percent used by the Taliban,” Danishi said. “The hospital has a vast garden, and the Taliban were there. We tolerated their firing...

KABUL – U.S. forces may have mistakenly bombed a hospital in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least 19 people, including three children, in an incident that will likely raise new questions about the scope of American involvement in the country’s 14-year war. In a statement, Doctors Without Borders said an airstrike “partially destroyed” its trauma hospital in Kunduz, where the Afghan military has been trying to drive Taliban fighters from the city. The airstrike killed at least 12 Doctors Without Borders staff members, the group said. Three children were also reportedly killed. At least 37 other people were seriously...

Russia has conducted its first airstrike in Syria, near the city of Homs, a senior U.S. official told CNN Wednesday.

PARIS — In France’s first airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria, warplanes destroyed a training camp, President François Hollande announced on Sunday. At a news conference in New York, where he had arrived for the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Hollande said that the warplanes had attacked the training camp in eastern Syria after it had been identified by French air surveillance with help from the coalition of Western and Middle Eastern states conducting the air campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh. “Our forces reached their objectives: The camp was completely destroyed,” Mr....

The threat of a limited surgical naval or air force bombing of critical nuclear installations--with no ground troops The contention that there are only two options in dealing with the rogue Ayatollahs’ regime—negotiation or military option, which supposedly amounts to war—defies reality. Such a contention is either mistaken or misleading. The threat of a limited surgical naval or air force bombing of critical nuclear installations—with no ground troops - would not amount to a war, would deter the Ayatollahs, possibly moderating their nature, and—if activated - would permanently cripple their pursuit of nuclear capabilities, and could be repeated if necessary...

Reports are circulating that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi might've been seriously injured during an airstrike operation, leading the terror group to choose a former Iraqi physics teacher as his replacement. Hisham al Hashimi, an Iraqi government adviser, told Newsweek earlier this week that al-Baghdadi was wounded back in March, and is unable to carry out his day-to-day duties. He said that Abu Alaa Afri has been selected to stand in as his replacement, and could take over permanently if al-Baghdadi dies. "After Baghdadi's wounding, he [Afri] has begun to head up Daesh [arabic term for ISIS] with the help...

Saudi-led coalition jets have bombed Houthi rebels in Yemen's third city of Taiz, hours after announcing the end of a military campaign against them. The strikes followed the fall of the base outside Taiz of an army unit loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Fighting was also reported in the second city of Aden, Lahj's provincial capital Huta, and the town of Daleh. On Tuesday, Riyadh declared its month-long campaign, which sought to restore the president, had achieved its goals. But it warned that it would continue to take action against the Houthis as needed. The UN says at least...

A Saudi-led coalition will end "Operation Decisive Storm" -- its nearly monthlong airstrike campaign in Yemen -- by the end of Tuesday, and a new undertaking called "Operation Restoring Hope" will begin, Saudi state-run TV reported without immediately elaborating. The aim is to bring back Yemen's "security and stability through establishing a political process," said a statement from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait.

The military chief of Syria's al-Nusra Front militant group has been killed in an air strike, the jihadist group has said on social media. Three other leaders were killed along with Abu Homam al-Shami, it says. Syria's state-run news agency said the army had targeted Nusra leaders as they met in northern Idlib province, the Associated Press reported. Al-Nusra is one of the most powerful groups fighting the army and has long been seen as an affiliate of al-Qaeda. It was involved in a major attack on the Air Force Intelligence headquarters in the embattled city of Aleppo on Wednesday.

An ISIS chemical weapons expert was killed in an airstrike on Saturday near Mosul, Iraq, U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Friday. Abu Malik worked in a chemical weapons production facility under Saddam Hussein before joining al Qaeda in Iraq in 2005, Central Command said. He then joined ISIS, allowing the terrorist group to make use of his experience in chemical weapons capabilities, according to Central Command. "His death is expected to temporarily degrade and disrupt the terrorist network and diminish ISIL's (ISIS') ability to potentially produce and use chemical weapons against innocent people," the statement said. The...

An ISIS chemical weapons expert who used to work for Saddam Hussein was killed last weekend during a coalition airstrike. Abu Malik died Jan. 24 near Mosul, according to a statement released by U.S. Central Command Friday. In the past, Malik had worked at one of Hussein’s chemical weapons facilities. He joined al-Qaeda in 2005, then later became a member of ISIS. According to the statement, his background provided ISIS “with expertise to pursue a chemical weapons capability.” His death should “temporarily degrade and disrupt the terrorist network and diminish ISIL’s ability to potentially produce and use chemical weapons against...

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories are expected to heighten after Israeli aircraft bombed a site in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip on Friday (December 19). The target is believed to have been a Hamas base. According to a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), the attack was in response to a rocket fired from Gaza, which hit an open area in the south of Israel. There are no reports of casualties following either strike. Israel’s attacks are the first since a seven-week war on Gaza ended three months ago. The incident is expected...

A militant of the Islamic State terror group who sold kidnapped Yazidi girls in a slave market in Syria has reportedly been killed along with 34 other ISIS fighters in a U.S.-led airstrike in Mosul in northern Iraq. Mustafa Sulaiman Qarabash, also known as Abu Husam al-Iraqi and who is responsible for selling kidnapped Yazidi girls, is said to have been killed near the al-Faruq mosque in Tal Afar close to the Syrian border, reported Rudaw, a Kurdish media network, attributing it to Kurdish official sources. Husam was among 35 ISIS armed men who were killed, and their base destroyed,...

Jihadi John, the Briton who beheaded two British and two American hostages held by Islamic State terrorists, has been injured in a US-led air strike, according to reports received by the Foreign Office. The masked ‘executioner’ with a London accent is believed to have narrowly escaped death when he attended a summit of the group’s leaders in an Iraqi town close to the Syrian border last Saturday. The meeting was targeted by American and Iraqi jets.

Wars usually end only when the defeated aggressor believes it would be futile to resume the conflict. Lasting peace follows if the loser is then forced to change its political system into something other than what it was. Republican Rome learned that bitter lesson through three conflicts with Carthage before ensuring that there was not going to be a fourth Punic War. Germany fought three aggressive wars before it was finally defeated, occupied and reinvented. America defeated Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, inflicting such damage that they were all unable to continue their resistance. And then, unlike its...

Given that the “moderates” are our allies, you would think this problem could be avoided by coordinating with them on where to attack and where not to. But there’s a hitch: We … don’t trust them enough to rely on the intelligence they give us.You’d trust a group that’s fighting so closely alongside Al Qaeda (a.k.a. the Nusra Front) that bombing the latter means collateral damage for the former, wouldn’t you? Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been no coordination between the U.S. military and its alleged partners on the ground, according...

One of the Islamist “activists” who attacked IDF soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara flotilla in 2010 has reportedly been killed in a US airstrike in Syria, as he was fighting alongside Islamist terrorists. 40-year-old Bulent Alniak was killed in a US airstrike in Idlib, northwestern Syria, on a target identified as belonging to the “Islamic State” terrorist group (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL), according to the Turkish World Bulletin website. According to that report, Alniak was carrying out “aid work” ahead of the upcoming Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. But other sources have suggested a somewhat less peaceful...

Three senior members of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) - including an aide to its leader - were killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq, a senior Iraqi security official told NBC News Thursday. The strike on the ISIS stronghold of Mosul killed Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, an aide to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as an explosives operative and the military leader of nearby Tel Afar, the source said on condition of anonymity. Al Arabiya cited the Iraqi Defense Ministry saying Baghdadi's aide had been killed.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit has uploaded a video which shows how the IDF calls off Gaza airstrikes upon realizing that there are innocent civilians in the area. In this video, showing a planned airstrike from Thursday, the airstrike was cancelled when the pilot realized that children were near his target. During the current escalation, Hamas has openly boasted about the "success" of its strategy of using civilians as human shields, and the IDF has published extensive evidence of the practice. Hamas has been encouraging as many noncombatants as possible to "protect" its positions with their bodies.

Yesterday the Iraqi military launched an air assault into the insurgent-held town of Tikrit. At least three helicopters landed at a stadium in Tikrit University, which is about six miles north of the city. According to Reuters, "the helicopters were shot at as they flew low over the city and landed in a stadium at the city's university." One of the helicopters was said to have been shot down. "One helicopter crash-landed in the stadium. Another left after dropping off troops and a third remained on the ground. Army snipers were positioning themselves on tall buildings in the university complex,"...