IN BRIEF (Page 11)

Pakistan

Tribal region airstrikes kill 48

Pakistan's military said it has killed 48 suspected militants in airstrikes in two tribal regions near Afghanistan. The military said army helicopters attacked militant hideouts on Tuesday in the Khyber and North Waziristan tribal regions. The Pakistani army has been fighting militants in North Waziristan since June 15, when it launched a major operation there to eliminate local and foreign insurgents accused of orchestrating attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Afghanistan

Taliban fight near capital

As many as 700 heavily armed Taliban insurgents are battling Afghan security forces in Logar, a key province near the capital, Kabul, local officials said on Tuesday, in a test of the Afghan military's strength as foreign forces pull out of the country. Casualties have not been determined so far. Militants this summer have mounted increasingly intensive assaults across several provinces, often involving hundreds of fighters, as the country braces to stand on it own feet militarily for the first time in nearly 13 years.

United Nations

Emergency aid set for Iraqis

The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday it was launching a major aid operation to get supplies to more than 500,000 people displaced by fighting in northern Iraq. A four-day airlift of tents and other goods will begin on Wednesday to Arbil, Iraq, from Aqaba in Jordan, followed by road convoys from Turkey and Jordan and sea shipments from Dubai via Iran over the next 10 days, said UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards.

Lebanon

New spike in IS membership

More than 6,000 new fighters joined Islamic State in Syria last month in the militant group's fastest expansion to date, a body monitoring the war said on Tuesday. Islamic State, previously estimated to number about 15,000, has seized control of large areas of Syria and Iraq. Just over 1000 of the new recruits are foreign and the rest Syrian, said Rami Abdelrahman, founder of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The organization said it gathered data from all sides of the Syrian conflict.

Turkey

25 more police detained

Turkey's state-run news agency said 25 more police officers had been detained across Turkey as authorities press ahead with a crackdown on officers suspected of illegally wiretapping Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials. The Anadolu Agency said the officers were detained in raids carried out in 13 provinces on Tuesday. Since July, dozens of officers have been jailed pending trial over illegal wiretaps.

Reuters - AP

(China Daily 08/20/2014 page11)