global power military news

Supporters of Islamic State have claimed that an American aid worker held hostage by the militant group has been killed in a Jordanian air strike intended to avenge the burning to death of a captured Jordanian pilot.

A statement posted on a website sometimes used by Isis fighters and their supporters said that Kayla Mueller, 26, had been killed by a missile strike during a bombing raid by Jordanian planes on the Syrian city of Raqqa early on Friday.

Mueller was said to have been killed when rockets partially destroyed the building in which she was being held, the statement said, adding that no Isis fighters were killed in the attack.

Several pictures of a damaged building complex were included in the statement which they said showed the aftermath of the air strike, but the claim that Mueller had been killed could not be independently verified.

“The criminal crusader coalition planes targeted sites outside Raqqa city today at noon while people were performing Friday prayers,” the message read.

“The raids continued on the same site for more than an hour. God has disappointed their endeavours and foiled their plot by not hitting any jihadi man thank God.”

BEIJING — China’s President Xi Jinping will travel to the United States this year, his first state visit since taking over the ruling Communist Party in 2012.

No dates have been announced for the planned visit and both sides are still discussing details of the trip, China’s ambassador to Washington told Chinese reporters.

The comments by ambassador Cui Tiankai were reported Monday in the state-run China Daily.

On Friday, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said invitations this year had also been extended to the heads of U.S. allies Japan and South Korea as well as to Indonesia.

The visits are a strategic attempt to increase engagement in Asia — a region where U.S. interests have been increasingly drawn into competing territorial claims and worries about China’s rising military and economic power.

MUWAFFAQ AL-SALTI AIR BASE, Jordan — ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is running scared as a result of an intensified bombing campaign brought on by the murder of a Jordanian pilot, the head of the country's air force said.

"He is frightened by what we did in the last three days," Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Jabour told NBC News on Sunday. "We will not hesitate" to kill al-Baghdadi, he said. "He is going to be on top of our list."

He was a Taliban commander captured by the United States and held at Guantanamo Bay. But he was let go and returned to Afghanistan. Mullah Abdul Rauf went on to become a recruiter for ISIS in Afghanistan.

He was killed in a drone strike Monday, two officials told CNN.

Rauf and five others were killed, four of them Pakistani militants, said Mohammed Jan Rasoulya, the deputy governor of southern Helmand province. A senior Afghan security source confirmed Rauf's death.

The Washington Post, in a headline last month, called him "the shadowy figure recruiting for the Islamic State in Afghanistan."

The New York Times called him the "militant commander at the center of the concerns in Helmand Province" but said some local Taliban figures "dismiss claims" that he had established "a significant new Islamic State cell in Helmand Province."

He was known to many with the name "Khadim" tacked on to the end of his name.

"Until 9/11, the hard-nosed Khadim commanded (Taliban creator) Mullah Omar's elite mobile reserve force, fighting regime opponents all over Afghanistan," Newsweek wrote of Rauf in a 2011 list of list of most-wanted insurgents. "Arrested and sent to Guantanamo soon after the Taliban's collapse, he was released in late 2007, having convinced his jailers that he wanted only to go home and tend his farm. Escaping from house arrest in Kabul, he fled to Pakistan."

Although the United States does not publicize the names of detainees at Guantanamo, a document posted by WikiLeaks showed that the United States recommended Rauf be "transferred to the control of another country for continued detention" as early as 2004.

Russian president Vladimir Putin flies to Cairo for a two-day visit on Monday​, in a move nominally aimed at bolstering bilateral ties with Egypt that also allows both countries to send pointed messages to the U​S.

As Russian and western diplomats struggle to reach a peace deal over the conflict in Ukraine, Putin will spend Monday evening at Cairo’s opera house. In meetings on Tuesday, ​the day before the resumption of Ukraine peace talks, ​Putin is expected to hold discussions about ending the use of the US dollar in bilateral trade between Egypt and Russia. Collaboration between a Russian and Egyptian newspaper is also reported to be scheduled for discussion.

Analysts believe both sides, though interested in forming stronger relations, primarily seek to signal to the international community that their foreign policies are not to be dictated by others. In the middle of negotiations that have left him with few friends, Putin wants to show that he still has allies, said Ben Judah, a chronicler of Putin’s life, and the author of Fragile Empire, a book about Putin’s Russia.

“He’s making a show of highlighting how he’s not isolated,” said Judah, who noted how Putin has visited China and India when previously under pressure. “It’s also a way of undermining the US, since Cairo is piece of America’s imperium.

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday Russia did not plan to wage war on anyone although a world order where one leader tells others what they can do would not suit Moscow.

His comments were the first from Putin since he met French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the crisis in the Ukraine on Friday.

"There clearly is an attempt to restrain our development with different means. There is an attempt to freeze the existing world order ... with one incontestable leader who wants to remain as such thinking he is allowed everything while others are only allowed what he allows and only in his interests," Putin said.

"This world order will never suit Russia…But we are not going to wage war on anyone, we are going to cooperate will all," he said during a meeting with labor unions in the southern city of Sochi.

Kiev and the West accuse Moscow of fomenting pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine and supplying arms and fighters. Moscow denies the accusation.

Putin repeated that Western sanctions imposed on Russia in retaliation over its role in the Ukraine conflict would not work.

"Sanctions – in the end I think they will not bring joy to anyone and they clearly can't be efficient with regards to a country like ours although they are causing a certain damage to us. And we should understand this and increase our sovereignty level including in the economy," Putin said.

(The story was refiled to correct a quote in the third paragraph to change "perturb" to "freeze")

(Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing by Maria Kiselyova; editing by Ralph Boulton and Doina Chiacu) 

Gabon