At least seven police personnel were killed and 24 others injured as a powerful bomb went off near their vehicle in Sariab Mill area of Quetta, like reported by paktribune.com.

A police truck carrying 35 personnel was targeted by the huge bomb. The blast was so powerful that the truck was left badly mangled. According to eyewitnesses, a white car parked on the roadside exploded as the truck carrying around 30 Rapid Response Force (RRF) personnel passed by. Following the bombing, the vehicle caught fire. The blast caused damage to several other vehicles as well as a rickshaw parked nearby.

Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Abdul Razzaq Cheema said an investigation is underway to determine whether the blast was a suicide bombing or whether the explosives-laden vehicle was detonated remotely when the police truck was passing by, adding that the death toll could increase.

The 35-strong contingent of elite policemen had been recently assigned patrol of various sensitive areas and were on their way to work on the Quetta-Sibi road when the explosion took place, Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfraz Bugti said.

Bugti told AFP that a car rammed the police vehicle before catching fire, adding it was ‘apparently a suicide attack’. “Police were targeted in this attack,” Bugti said.

DIG Cheema confirmed the death toll, saying that 24 people were wounded, several critically.The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack.

Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri, while speaking to reporters, said the bomb contained 80 kilograms of explosive material.

Following the attack, an emergency was imposed in hospitals in Quetta. Some of the injured were admitted to Civil Hospital Quetta, while the rest were being treated at the Combined Military Hospital.

A forensic team and the Bomb Disposal Squad had reached the site of the attack to investigate the nature of the blast, Bugti said, adding that a forensic team from Lahore would arrive in Quetta on Thursday to aid in the probe.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi strongly condemned the terrorist attack and directed for best medical treatment of the injured.

Taliban’s coordinated attack on Jaghato district of central Maidan Wardak province, was strongly retaliated and repulsed by the brave Afghan police forces, an official said according to afghanistantimes.af.

Police Spokesman, Naqibulla Amini told Pajhwok Afghan News the insurgents initially detonated a car bomb and then launched an offensive on the district centre at midnight.

Amini addded the attack was repulsed after a five hours fierce clash, during which the militants suffered heavy casualties, he said, adding two Afghan soldiers were also lost their precious lives.

He added at least 30 rebels were killed in retaliatory action by security forces. But the number of casualties was not so far confirmed by Taliban.

On the other hand, Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Taliban have destroyed a tank and inflicted casualties on several security personnel in Syedabad district.

A malaysian former university lecturer who went on to become one of Southeast Asia’s most wanted militants looks set to become head the Islamic-State inspired Maute rebel group in the Philippines following the deaths of its two top leaders in early Monday morning.

According to Malaysian daily The Star, Dr Mahmud Ahmad, is a highly regarded individual among the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), an affiliate of IS, and is within the ranks of leader Isnilon Hapilon and Omarkhayam Maute who were killed in a military raid.

Sources told the paper that Dr Mahmud is a weapons expert with wide knowledge in the IS brand of militant jihad. He also gained the respect of the ASG after fleeing the Philippines in 2014.

“You could say he is a sort of decorated veteran among the IS and ASG ranks,” a source was quoted as saying.

Another source said Dr Mahmud managed to unite ASG, the Maute Group led by Khayyam Romato, Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and Ansarul Khilafah Philippines under umbrella banner of the IS.

“It is very alarming that this one individual is the glue tying these different factions together,” the source said.

Other experts and officials told Reuters the battlefield deaths of the two leaders in Southern Philippines could thrust Mahmud Ahmad, who trained at an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan as the militant group’s new regional “emir”.

Intelligence officials describe Malaysian Mahmud Ahmad as a financier and “recruiter, who helped put together the coalition of pro-Islamic State (IS) fighters that stormed Marawi City in May.

Isnilon, Islamic State’s anointed “emir” in Southeast Asia, and Omarkhayam, one of two Middle East-educated brothers at the helm of the militant alliance, were killed in a raid on a building in Marawi and their bodies recovered on Monday, Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said.

Philippine authorities said they were still searching for Mahmud.

“Based on our information, there is still one personality, Dr. Mahmud of Malaysia, and he is still in the main battle area with some Indonesians and Malaysians,” military chief, Gen. Eduardo Ano, said on Monday. “But their attitude is now different, they are no longer as aggressive as before.” He did not elaborate.

Ano urged the 30 militants remaining in a shrinking combat zone to surrender and free hostages as troops stepped up their fight.

Abdullah Maute, the alliance’s military commander, was reported killed in August, though no body was found.

Intelligence officials in Malaysia believe Mahmud left Marawi months ago.

Malaysia’s police counter-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay told Reuters in July that Mahmud “managed to sneak out from Marawi city to another safe place with his followers”.

The 39-year-old Mahmud, who holds a doctorate in religious studies and was a university lecturer in Kuala Lumpur, was Hapilon’s second-in-command in the IS’s Southeast Asia “caliphate”, according to a July report by Indonesia-based Institute of Policy Analysis and Conflict (IPAC).

Recruitment and financing

Sitting in the inner circle of the Marawi command centre, Mahmud controlled recruitment and financing, the IPAC report said.

He was the contact for foreigners wanting to join the fight in the Philippines or with IS in the Middle East, it said.

“It wasn’t just Indonesians and Malaysians contacting Dr. Mahmud … he was also the contact for Bangladeshis in Malaysia who wanted to join the fighting in Mindanao,” IPAC’s director Sidney Jones told Reuters.

Rohan Gunaratna, an analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, described Mahmud as “the most important IS leader in Southeast Asia”.

Ahmad El-Muhammady, a lecturer at the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) and a counter-terrorism advisor to the police, said Mahmud often solicited funds for IS operations.

“He’s always the one asking people “does anyone have any money they’d like to donate?”, and he will usually reply when followers in the region ask him about the situation in the Philippines,” Ahmad said.

‘Just Disappeared’

Mahmud grew up in Batu Caves, a crowded Kuala Lumpur suburb, famous for a Hindu temple housed in a large complex of caverns. Mahmud’s wife and three children were last known to be living there, although Reuters could not locate them.

Before leaving Malaysia in 2014, Mahmud taught young Muslim students at a tahfiz, a school to memorise the Koran, in Nakhoda, a village near Batu Caves, residents said. “When he (Mahmud) started the school, he did stay there for the first one or two years, but then he just disappeared,” said 50-year-old Zainon Mat Arshad, a Nakhoda resident who went to the mosque where Mahmud prayed.

“When he was at the tahfiz school, he kept mostly to himself and if he had come over to pray on Friday, I don’t think anyone would have recognised him,” said Zainon. “He didn’t mingle with the local community.”

Security experts say Mahmud studied at Pakistan’s Islamabad Islamic University in the late 1990s before going to Afghanistan where he learned to make improvised explosive devices at an al Qaeda camp.

In 2000, he returned to Malaysia to get a doctorate, which earned him a post as a lecturer in the Islamic Studies faculty at the University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.

Former students described Mahmud as a quiet person who kept to himself.

“He wasn’t the kind of lecturer who hung out at cafes with his students as some others did,” said one former student, who declined to be identified.

Wrote Jihad Book

The few signs of his militant beliefs were discovered later, including a book he wrote on jihad under his nom de guerre, Abu Handzalah, said Ahmad, the IIUM lecturer.

He was put on Malaysia’s most-wanted list in April 2014 after leaving the country with several others, including his aide, a Malaysian bomb maker named Mohammad Najib Husen, to work with the Abu Sayyaf group, notorious for violent kidnappings and beheadings in the southern Philippines, Ahmad said.

Mahmud received funding for the Marawi operation directly from IS headquarters, through the group’s Southeast Asian unit led by Syrian-based Indonesian militant Bahrumsyah, the IPAC report said.

In a video released by the Philippines army in June, Mahmud is seen alongside Hapilon as well as Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute – the pair of brothers who orchestrated the Marawi siege.

A suicide car bomber and gunmen attacked a provincial Afghan police headquarters on Tuesday, killing at least six people and wounding 30, officials said according to reuters.com.

At least two attackers were also killed by security forces, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which the ministry said targeted a police training centre attached to the headquarters in Gardez, the capital of Paktia province.

The wounded were taken to hospital, deputy public health director Hedayatullah Hameedi said. Both civilians and security forces were among the casualties, he said.

“At the moment the area is sealed by the Crisis Response Unit and efforts are ongoing to eliminate the terrorists,” the statement said.

A new wave of deadly clash has erupted among the Taliban and ISIS militants days after the leader of the Taliban group Mullah Hebatullah Akhundzada called for a ceasefire between the two groups, believing that the motive of the two are the same in the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan, like reported by khaama.com.

The provincial government media office in Nangarhar in a statement said the latest clashes erupted in Wazir Tankai area of Khogyani district in the past 24 hours.

The statement further added that six ISIS militants and three Taliban insurgents were killed in the latest clashes.

At least three Taliban insurgents were also wounded during the clashes, the provincial government added.

In the meantime, the Nangarhar government said the loyalists of the ISIS terrorist group also killed four civilians in a separate attack in this province.

The anti-government armed militant groups including the Taliban and ISIS loyalists have not commented regarding the recent incidents so far.

This comes as the leader of the Taliban earlier called on his commanders and leaders to reach to a ceasefire with the ISIS militants in Afghanistan and refrain from further infighting with the group.

A clash broke out between Daesh fighters and security force members after the insurgents attacked police check posts on Saturday night.

At least eight Daesh militants were killed in a clash with security forces late Saturday night in Kunar province, the Ministry of Interior said on Monday like reported by tolonews.com.

According to a statement issued by the MoI the clash took place after a number of Daesh militants attacked several police check posts in Shage village of Sayedabad capital of Kunar province.

Four other Daesh militants were wounded in the clash, MoI said.

Two police soldiers were also wounded in the clash, the statement added.

No further details were provided.

Antiterror officials say 671 Indonesians joined Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, with an unknown number set to return home with extreme ideas and tactics

With the final Islamic State (IS) stronghold of Raqqa, Syria on the brink of falling, counterterrorism officials are still in the dark over how many, if any, Indonesian fighters have survived the caliphate’s collapse and are headed back to light a fire under a percolating terrorist movement at home, like reported by atimes.com.

In the most detailed breakdown yet, the Detachment 88 anti-terrorist unit noted recently that 97 of the 671 Indonesians who are documented to have gone to Syria and Iraq since 2014 have so far died in the conflict.

At least 70% of the total were women and children identified through deportations, including 17 non-combatants who escaped from Raqqa last June and were eventually handed over to Indonesian officials by Kurdish forces on the Syria-Iraq border.

“Our mission it to make sure that no foreign fighters who joined [IS] from a foreign country and came to Syria, they will die in Syria,” America’s top envoy to the anti-IS coalition, Brett McGurk, said recently. “If they are in Raqqa, they’re going to die in Raqqa.”

About 100 IS fighters have surrendered over the past few days, leaving an estimated 300-400 still holding out in the battered town, many of them foreigners who are likely to fight to the death rather than face justice for war crimes.

It is not clear how many Southeast Asians fall into that category, but Indonesian Abu Walid, Malaysian Rafi Udin and Filipino Mohammad Reza Kiram were all in a June 21, 2016 video where they were shown beheading three Syrian prisoners.

An associate of IS leader Bachrumsyah, Walid’s whereabouts are a mystery, but his fluency in Arabic and contacts in Saudi Arabia likely means he would try to head elsewhere in the Middle East or to the Philippines, where he also has had a long association.

Another Indonesian militant was killed not long after he was filmed in a late 2014 video taking part in the beheading of a long line of prisoners; the same video showed the execution of Peter Kassig, an American humanitarian worker.

Kurdish troops claim to have “completely” surrounded Raqqa in June, but in recent weeks hundreds of so-called IS defectors are reported to have slipped away and massed along the heavily-patrolled border with Turkey after paying up to US$2,000 each to escape the crumbling caliphate’s capital.

Some are thought to have evaded capture and entered Turkey. “It only takes five to return, you don’t need 100,” says Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), who admits there is no clear view of how many Indonesian fighters remain in Syria. “It depends on their ability to pay.”

Nothing has been heard of Bahrun Naim, 34, the reputed leader of IS Southeast Asia, since last December. There were rumors several months ago the former computer technician had been confined to an IS prison in Raqqa over an internal conflict, but they were never confirmed.

Jones believes Bachrumsyah, has a higher position in IS Central than Naim. Several statements were issued on his behalf in July and August, months after he was mistakenly reported to have died in a suicide attack in Syria. The car-bomber turned out to be an Uzbek fighter using the same nom de plume.

The main concern of anti-terrorist officials may not be survivors from Iraq and Syria, but the handful of militants who manage to escape from the western Mindanao town of Marawi, where Philippine government forces have finally got the upper hand in the nearly five-month siege.

According to Detachment 88, at least three dozen Indonesians joined the fight in Marawi, of which six are known to have been killed and six returned to Indonesia, along with an unknown number of other deportees who failed to link up with the IS holdouts.

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have recently initiated sea and air patrols in the Sulu Sea to intercept returning militants and to protect commercial shipping from seaborne Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) gunmen operating out of the southern island of Basilan.

It is part of a 15-point Plan of Action aimed at preventing IS-linked groups from expanding their influence across the often-lawless Sulu Sea, which has been a conduit in the past for Indonesian militants seeking refuge in Mindanao.

Indonesian courts continue to deal harshly with terrorists. The East Jakarta District Court recently sentenced an IS sympathizer to life imprisonment for carrying out an attack on an East Kalimantan church last November, which killed a toddler and wounded three other children.

But the House of Representatives, preoccupied with trying to draw the teeth of the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK), is dragging its feet over a long-delayed revision to the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law to give enforcement agencies better tools to deal with homegrown militants.

Among other things, the revised law will allow authorities to target anyone who acts as a recruiter or who otherwise cooperates with a militant group, and to use electronic eavesdropping, intelligence reports and financial transactions as evidence in the trial of extremist suspects.

More controversially, the legislation also includes an extended, post-arrest 510-day detention period and a provision under which Indonesians who have joined a militant training camp or participated in terrorist acts in a foreign country will be stripped of their citizenship.

The government initiated the revision after IS-affiliated militants launched a bomb and gun attack in the heart of Jakarta in January 2016 that left eight people dead, including all four assailants, and 23 wounded.

Jakarta-based security firm Concord Consulting has documented 13 incidents of militant violence since then, most of them lone wolf attacks and not on the scale of the bombing campaign during the early 2000s that put Indonesia firmly on the global terrorism map.

“Historically, jihadists in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia have demonstrated an ability to adapt to changing regional and global circumstances and incorporate new strategies, at the same time remaining firmly rooted to their extremist view of the world,” Concord said in a recent summary.

The two foremost leaders of an ISIS-inspired coalition that invaded the southern Philippine city of Marawi have been killed after almost five months of fighting, the county’s secretary of defense confirmed Monday, according to time.com.

Isnilon Hapilon, the designated emir of ISIS in the Philippines, and Omar Maute, a figurehead of a local Islamist insurgent group, launched an attack on the Muslim majority city on May 23. More than 1000 people, including over 800 militants, were killed in fighting since according to the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Rumors of Hapilon and Maute’s death have periodically circulated in the past but on Monday Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana confirmed the latest reports to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Soon after, the Philippine Department of National Defense issued a statement confirming the deaths and indicating that the termination of hostilities was imminent.

Joseph Franco, a Singapore-based security expert tells TIME that the loss of Hapilon — a charismatic leader with religious credentials and military experience — is a major blow for ISIS in the Philippines. He added that a number of other militants are already clamoring to be named the next emir.

The duration of the siege should alarm Philippine officials and is symptomatic of the local proliferation of weapons, Franco says, but it is unlikely the Marawi model will be replicated elsewhere. “Marawi was the perfect storm. The built environment and the presence of armed caches were there even before ISIS existed. So while aspects of Marawi may be applied to other cities, you would not have a five-month long siege happening in other cities,” he says.

Recent photographs show a devastated city. Many of its buildings have been husked by shelling, and its streets are a tangle of rubble and mortar. Hundreds and thousands of people have been displaced as a result of the fighting.

Several militants affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group, including some foreigners were killed in the latest counter-terrorism in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, like reported by khaama.com.

The provincial police commandment of Nangarhar in a statement said the operations were conducted in Haska Mina district, jointly by the Afghan national defense and security forces.

The statement further added that the militants were targeted in Gagar and Payeen areas of the district, leaving six of them dead and two others wounded.

The operations were conducted with the support of the Air Power, the police commandment said, adding that two foreigners were among those killed.

No further details were given regarding the identities of the foreign insurgents and it is yet not clear to which county they belong to.

However, the majority of the foreign fighters of the terror group are comprised of the Pakistani nationals who have travelled mainly from Orakzai Agency.

In the meantime, the police commandment of Nangarhar said the local residents and security personnel have not suffered any casualties in the operations.

According to the police commandment, the operations against the terrorist groups were launched several days ago and are being taken forward by the Afghan army, commandos, national police, border police, and local police forces along with the intelligence operatives.

The anti-government armed militant groups have not commented regarding the report so far.

At least 15 Taliban rebels have been killed in two air strikes by the United States military in Afghanistan’s southeastern Paktia province, said officials.

According to district police chief, Col. Kamin Shinwari, US forces raided a Taliban base in Bokra area of Syed Karam district in Paktia. He confirmed that 11 rebels were killed and two others wounded in the attack. Weapons and ammunition belonging to rebels were also destroyed as a result of the strike, he added.

Separately, US forces carried out airstrike in Wach Ghrak area of Ahmadabad district in Paktia, said police spokesman Sardar Wali Tabasom. He claimed that four insurgents were killed and three others wounded in the strike. Afghan Ministry of Interior in Kabul also confirmed that 15 “militants” had been killed in Syed Karam and Ahmadabad districts.

Taliban rebels have not commented on the incident. The air strikes came weeks after US President Donald Trump announced his new strategy for Afghanistan that involves maintaining troops in the war-torn country