DONALD Trump has said the last of Daesh’s territory in Syria will be freed by US-backed forces as soon as possible.
The US president spoke as he left the White House yesterday and displayed maps of Daesh-held territory in Iraq and Syria on the day he was elected and as of yesterday morning.
The most recent map shows what Trump says is a “tiny spot which will be gone by tonight”.
He said when he was elected, Syria was “a mess” and awash with Daesh fighters.
US-backed fighters battling to retake the last Daesh outpost in eastern Syria seized most of the last pocket of land on Tuesday.
Trump has previously announced the defeat of the group, but sleeper cells of fighters remain in Syria.
The president said the US will keep 400 troops in Syria indefinitely.
MOZAMBIQUE has begun three days of national mourning for more than 200 victims of Cyclone Idai, one of the most destructive storms southern Africa has experienced in decades.
In neighbouring Zimbabwe, the death toll rose to more than 100 and officials there said some 350 people may have died.
Torrential rains were expected to continue into Thursday and floodwaters were still rising, according to aid groups trying to get food, water and clothing to desperate survivors.
It will be days before Mozambique’s inundated plains drain towards the Indian Ocean and even longer before the full scale of the devastation is known.
People have been clinging to trees and huddling on rooftops since the cyclone roared in over the weekend, and aid groups are desperately trying to rescue as many as they can.
The United Nations humanitarian office said the town of Buzi, with some 200,000 people, was at risk of becoming at least partially submerged.
“Flood waters are predicted to rise significantly in the coming days and 350,000 people are at risk,” the UN office said.
A BUS driver in northern Italy abducted 51 children and their chaperones, ordering the children’s hands to be bound and threatening them with death, before setting the vehicle on fire when he was stopped by a Carabinieri blockade.
Officers broke the glass in the back door of the bus and got all the passengers to safety without serious injury before the flames destroyed the vehicle.
As he was apprehended, the driver said he was protesting over migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, commander Luca De Marchis said.
De Marchis said the driver, an Italian citizen of Senegalese origin in his forties, threatened the passengers, telling them that “no-one would survive”.
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