Shiite militias join push for Mosul

Shiite militias join push for Mosul

IRBIL, IRAQ

Thousands of fighters flocked to join Iraq’s state-sanctioned, Iran-backed Shiite militias Sunday, advancing to cut off Islamic State extremists holed up near Mosul in northern Iraq while bombers killed at least 17 people in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad.

Militia spokesmen said that 5,000 fighters had joined their push to encircle from the west the country’s second-largest city of Mosul, the IS militants’ last bastion in Iraq.

The Iraqi military said including army units, militarized police, special forces and Kurdish fighters would bring the total number of anti-IS forces in the offensive to more than 40,000.

Syrian rebels keep up offensive on Aleppo

beirut

Syrian insurgents Sunday kept up their shelling of government-controlled areas of Aleppo, killing at least seven people, including three children, state TV reported, and pushing their way with car bombs and tanks into new territory in the western part of the city. The Syrian government claimed the opposition fighters used toxic gas.

The attacks raised the death toll in the three-day old offensive to at least 41 civilians, including 16 children, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group that has a network of activists in rebel and government controlled areas in Syria. The Observatory said hundreds of mortars were lobbed.

3 space-station crew members return

MOSCOW

Three International Space Station crew members returned to Earth on Sunday after four months in space.

American Kathleen Rubins, Takuya Onishi of Japan and Anatoly Ivanishin of Russia landed safely in the Kazakhstan steppes, the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos said. All aspects of the descent from orbit, as well as the landing, passed “normally,” the statement said.

A new mission to the space station is planned Nov. 19, with an American, a Russian and a Frenchman.

Jury selection begins in death of motorist

CHARLESTON, S.C.

A jury being chosen this week in Charleston will have to decide whether a white former police officer is guilty of murder in the shooting of an unarmed black motorist that shocked the nation after a bystander released cellphone video of the confrontation.

Michael Slager’s attorney contends there was more to the incident than what appeared on the widely seen video clip showing Walter Scott’s shooting, including a fight between the pair and a tussle over the officer’s Taser.

Chris Stewart, an attorney for the Scott family, sees the Slager case as a blueprint for others involving police and minorities.

17 hurt in collision with church van, SUV

STOKESDALE, N.C.

A van carrying a Virginia church group crashed into an SUV that crossed into its lane on a North Carolina highway early Sunday, sending 17 people to hospitals, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol said.

The injured ranged in age from 1 month to 90 years old, and two had to be flown by emergency helicopter for hospital treatment, troopers said. There were no fatalities as of Sunday afternoon.

Fifteen of those hurt were aboard a rented van carrying members of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation from Martinsville, Va., to Salisbury, N.C., troopers said. The SUV’s driver, Diadra Rachel Shaffer, was charged with driving while impaired, careless and reckless driving, misdemeanor child abuse and other charges, troopers said.

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