Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says victory in the battle for the city of Aleppo will be “a huge step” in bringing the war in Syria to an end. Assad said the full liberation of Aleppo in northwestern Syria would deal a huge blow to the regional and international supporters of militant groups, al-Mayadeen television station said, citing an interview with al-Watan newspaper expected to be published on Thursday.

“It’s true that Aleppo will be a win for us, but let’s be realistic, it won’t mean the end of the war in Syria,” Assad said. “But it will be a huge step towards this end.” The Syrian president said in response to a question about the possibility of a ceasefire in Aleppo that such a possibility was “practically non-existent, of course.” “The Americans in particular are insisting on demanding a truce, because their terrorist agents are now in a difficult situation,” Assad said.

Washington would have no more trump cards to show if Aleppo is liberated, the Syrian president stated. Assad said Aleppo was the “last hope” of militants and their supporters, “after their failure in the battles of Damascus and Homs.” The Syrian president said the militants’ defeat in Aleppo would fully change the course of battle in Syria. “The decision to liberate all of Syria is taken and Aleppo is part of it,” al-Mayadeen quoted the president as saying. Assad also stated that Turkey had done its best to protect the militant stronghold in Aleppo, but it has failed.

The Syrian government has been making advances in militant-held areas in eastern Aleppo, with recent reports saying that the military and its allies have managed to retake two-thirds of the territory that used to be under the control of the militants. The conflict in Syria, which flared up in March 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 people, according to an estimate by UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.

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US President Barack Obama has expressed disappointment over failure to close the notorious prison of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba during his term in office, saying it was a disgrace and a waste of money. “We are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to keep fewer than 60 people in a detention facility in Cuba,” Obama said during his last security speech in the US state of Florida on Tuesday. “That’s not strength … And I will continue to do all that I can to remove this blot on our national honor.”

The US president noted that the prison, which currently holds 59 detainees without pressing charges dishonors America. Obama had pledged during his 2008 presidential campaign to close the military prison, which is located on Cuba’s southeastern coast, before he leaves office in January. However, he has been unable to fulfill his promise in the face of stiff opposition from the US Congress. The Obama administration has transferred most of the detainees to other countries, but there is a small number of detainees who the administration says it would like to keep at a US facility for national security reasons.

A Senate report in December 2014 revealed that the CIA had used a wide array of sexual abuse and other forms of torture as part of its interrogation methods against the prisoners at Guantanamo. About 780 men have passed through the facility since it was opened following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks to hold terrorism suspects.  Washington says the prisoners are terror suspects, but has not pressed charges against most of them in any court.

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The UN has named and referred for punishment 41 of its peacekeepers accused of a slew of “abhorrent” sexual abuse of refugees in the Central African Republic (CAR). The announcement came after a four-month probe into disturbing reports of sexual assaults and exploitation of women and children by the UN peacekeeping mission in the CAR (MINUSCA) in the Kemo prefecture during 2014 and 2015. According to UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, the joint probe by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) and investigators from Burundi and Gabon found 25 of the suspects were from Burundi and 16 others from Gabon.

The world body had shared the report with both member states, including the “names of the identified alleged perpetrators and has requested for appropriate judicial actions to ensure criminal accountability.” The investigation was primarily based on the testimony of victims and witnesses given the lack of medical, forensic or any other physical evidence of alleged incidents that happened at least a year ago.In total, the OIOS interviewed nearly 150 complaints, including those of 25 minors, all of which reported sexual abuse in the town of Dekoa of the prefecture. Some of the female victims acknowledged their abusers through photos and other evidence. “The alleged perpetrators, if allegations against them are substantiated, and, if warranted, their commanding officers will not be accepted again for deployment in peacekeeping operations,” Dujarric said.

All of the alleged perpetrators had been rotated out of the crisis-hit country before the allegations surfaced, he added. “The United Nations condemns, in the strongest terms, all acts of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by peacekeepers or any other UN personnel and will maintain follow up so that perpetrators of these abhorrent acts are brought to justice,” he said.

Last year, UN chief Ban Ki-moon fired the head of MINUSCA mission because of the increasing number of sexual abuse cases. He warned that the UN would throw out the entire peacekeeping unit if the soldiers accused of assaults were not prosecuted.

Under peacekeeping arrangements, the countries providing the troops have jurisdiction over prosecuting such crimes. The CAR plunged into crisis in December 2013, when anti-balaka militia began coordinated attacks against Muslims after the ouster of the government in March that year.

The UN peacekeepers have been patrolling in the crisis-hit country since April 2014 to protect citizens and refugees from violence between warring factions there. In his latest annual report, Ban announced that 69 cases of sexual abuse had been committed by UN peacekeepers last year, half of them in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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More than 1,300 refugees have been rescued and 16 bodies recovered from the Mediterranean Sea over the past three days, the Italian coastguard says. Italy’s coastal service said 285 of the refugees were rescued on Saturday, 791 on Sunday and 231 on Monday, making up 1,307 the total number of refugees saved from the sea. Reports said all the refugees were packed on board nine different vessels, small wooden boats and inflatable dinghies.

Coastguard officials said efforts to resuscitate two women found on a dinghy had failed. “Two women died of hypothermia in spite of the colossal efforts of the team. We are heartbroken, again,” they said. Among those pulled to safety were a number of Syrian families traveling with young children from Libya. Thousands of people have died over the past months crossing the perilous sea route from the Libyan coast to Europe in search of a better life.

The coasts of Libya have become a launch pad for asylum seekers heading for Europe. A large number of them are Sub-Saharan Africans attempting to reach Italy. In response to the widening crisis, the European Union launched Operation Sophia in 2015. The naval mission was meant to reduce the flow of people smuggled across the Mediterranean, and to train the Libyan coastguard to fight smugglers’ boats. Yet, the operation is largely viewed as a failure. At least 4,700 people have been killed this year trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. The figure has already exceeded the toll in the entire 2015, which was more than 3,600.

The International Organization for Migration has recorded a high number of refugee arrivals in Italy from North Africa in 2016. It says 173,000 have reached the Italian shores since the start of this year, nearly 14,000 more than the figure in 2015 and breaking a 170,000 record registered in 2014. The surge in Mediterranean journeys from the south into Italy came after the European Union reached a deal with Turkey in March to curb the arrivals in Greece from the east.

The European Union has been dealing with an excessive influx of refugees in recent years, driven by war, famine, poverty and persecution. The crisis has largely divided the continent over how to deal with the situation. A number of European countries have adopted harsh measures, including toughening border controls, shutting refugees out, and even erecting razor-wire fences. But the problem remains far from resolved.

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US Secretary of State John Kerry says his department’s recommendations have no “value” in the eyes of President-elect Donald Trump, who has been making phone calls to world leaders since his election on November 8, a policy which the State Department considers as controversial. Speaking at the Saban Forum in Washington on Sunday, Kerry said neither Trump nor his transition team had contacted the State Department before speaking to leaders of other countries. “We have not been contacted before any of these conversations. We have not been requested to provide talking points,” Kerry said, in an attempt to distance President Barack Obama’s administration from some of Trump’s phone calls that may anger longtime allies. Trump risked China’s wrath on Friday, when he talked to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, a move that made him the first US president or president-elect to hold a conversation with Taiwan’s leader since severing ties with the territory in 1979.

The Republican president-elect also called Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif an “amazing” leader during a phone conversation on Wednesday, a praise that was looked unfavorably by India, Pakistan’s arch-rival. “I do think there’s a value, obviously, on having at least the recommendations, whether you choose to follow them or not is a different issue, but I think it’s valuable to ask people, who’ve worked the desk and have worked it for a long period of time, their input on what’s the current state, is there some particular issue at the moment,” Kerry said. “I think that’s valuable and I would certainly recommend it, but obviously that hasn’t happened in a few cases.” Unlike Trump, Vice President-elect Mike Pence has been using the State Department’s recommendations regularly, Kerry said.

The outgoing secretary of state noted that he was trying to stay “a thousand miles away from the Trump transition process” and hoped that communications with the team would improve once Trump picked his secretary of state. “I think it’s important for me to be able to brief whoever the final nominee is going to be for secretary of state and I don’t want to come at it with any engagements, with any of the choices they are making publicly,” he added. According to Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway, the New York billionaire was considering at least four candidates for the job. Kerry’s comments underscore Trump’s reluctance to receive advice from the Obama administration.

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Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has denounced a recent US Senate vote on a piece of anti-Iran legislation as a blatant infringement of last year’s nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers, saying the Islamic Republic will give a firm response to the move.

President Rouhani made the remarks in the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) on Sunday as he submitted the government’s proposed budget bill for the next Iranian fiscal year, which begins on March 21, to the legislative body.

The Iranian chief executive further said the Islamic Republic would never violate last July’s nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he described as “a signed and sealed international document.”

Iran “will not tolerate the JCPOA’s violation by any of the P5+1 group of countries,” adding that the US Senate’s vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) for a decade is “in blatant contravention of the JCPOA, and will be followed by Iran’s decisive response.”

The US Senate approved the ISA renewal 99-0 on Thursday after it easily cleared the House of Representatives last month. The sanctions law, which would authorize the US president to impose sanctions on Iran, was first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

The ISA now needs President Barack Obama’s signature to be turned into law. Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia – plus Germany started to implement the JCPOA on January 16.

Under the deal, Iran undertook to put limitations on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related bans imposed against Tehran. Since January, when the JCPOA took effect, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors the deal’s implementation process, has in numerous reports confirmed Iran’s commitment.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in April that Iran had even gone beyond its obligations under the JCPOA. Reacting to the Senate vote on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the ISA’s extension would have no “executive effect” and would merely be a sign of the US government’s unreliability.

Last month, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei warned that Iran would consider the extension of the ISA a breach of the JCPOA and would respond accordingly.

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Rwanda has opened a formal investigation into the alleged role of 20 French officials in the 1994 genocide. The Rwandan government accuses France of complicity in the genocide. The French officials are accused of supporting the Hutu nationalist government, which carried out the mass killing of an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans, mainly from the Tutsi ethnic group. Paris denies the allegation.

“The inquiry, for now, is focused on 20 individuals whom, according to information gathered so far, are required by the prosecution authority to explain or provide clarity on allegations against them,” said Rwanda’s prosecutor general Richard Muhumuza.

He added that the probe would enable prosecutors to decide “whether the concerned individuals should be formally charged or not.” Muhumuza said that he had contacted the French government and that full cooperation was expected.

The Rwandan genocide began following the shooting down of a plane carrying former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994. Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was also killed in the plane crash. They were both ethnic Hutus.

After the crash, Hutus who were in majority, were incited to commit acts of ethnic violence against Tutsis. France’s Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on November 16 that it was “a disgraceful lie” to say that the French army took park in genocide.

Relations between the two countries have gone through ups and downs since the genocide. In 2014, Rwandan President Paul Kagame repeated accusations that French troops were both accomplices and “actors” in the massacre.

In October, Paris re-launched an inquiry into the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane to hear testimony from a former general who accuses Kagame of being behind the attack. The Rwandan government has rejected the claims, saying it is an attempt by France to cover up its role in the genocide.

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UN chief Ban Ki-moon has denounced recent bloodshed in the Central African Republic (CAR) where clashes between members of the former Seleka rebellion killed scores of people. The clashes between rival armed groups from ex-Seleka in Bria northeast of the capital Bangui killed 85 people and displaced nearly 11,000 people, according to the UN.

In a statement on Monday, the UN chief urged the armed groups to “immediately stop the violence and genuinely commit to ongoing efforts to address the root causes of the conflict.” The fighting was said to have broken out between the Popular Front for the Renaissance of the Central African Republic (FPRC) and the Union for Peace in Central Africa (UPC). The two factions have been engaged in sporadic fighting over control of taxes levied on nomadic Fulani herdsman during the current seasonal migration. In March 2013, the Central African Republic plunged into chaos when then-president Francois Bozize was toppled and replaced by Michel Am-Nondokro Djotodia, the first Muslim to hold the presidency in the country.

Djotodia’s opponents then formed “anti-Balaka” vigilante units, drawn from the Christian majority, which began to target Muslims and commit widespread atrocities. The UN Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and the national police are seen conducting a joint operation in the capital Bangui. (Photo by UN) In 2014, some 11,000 peacekeepers were deployed by the UN to the country as part of MINUSCA or the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic. Seleka and anti-Balaka representatives signed a ceasefire agreement later that year but the country has not yet fully emerged from its bloody past.

The UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Central African Republic, Fabrizio Hochschild, said in a statement on Monday that almost half of the country’s population of over four million people is in dire need of humanitarian aid. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), hundreds of people have been killed and many more displaced since a deadly series of clashes broke out in the country in September.

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“Today I mourn the loss of a friend, the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Securing the welfare of the Cuban people and ensuring the independence of his nation shaped much of Fidel Castro’s thinking and many of his actions. Whether one shared his political views or disagreed with them, Fidel Castro was one of Latin America’s most remarkable leaders.

In the course of his long life he overcame countless adversities and rarely chose the easy and comfortable path. I met Fidel Castro many times over the years and came to appreciate his extraordinary intellect, sharp mind, and his ability to engage in constructive dialogue. Farewell Fidel.”

The legendary leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, has died, Cuban state television has announced. He was 90.