Official: 4 rescued from Mali hotel; 9 killed in attack
By BABA AHMED Special forces early Saturday rescued four people who hid in a hotel for nearly 24 hours after Islamic extremists stormed the building and launched a shootout that…
Hostage situations
US looking into whether hostage was kept by IS leader
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and KEN DILANIAN U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating the possibility that the Islamic State militant leader killed Friday was the captor of American hostage Kayla Mueller…
American, Italian hostages killed in US drone strike
By JULIE PACE An American and an Italian held hostage by al-Qaida, as well as two Americans working with the terror group, were inadvertently killed by CIA drone strikes early…
Activists say Islamic State releases 19 Syrian Christians
By RYAN LUCAS on Sunday who were among the more than 220 people the militants took captive in northeastern Syria last week, activists and a local leader said. The news…
Kayla Mueller’s boyfriend describes effort to free her
By FELICIA FONSECA Kayla Mueller was in a detention cell in Syria, face to face with her boyfriend who was posing as her husband. Had she told her captors she…
Video purports to show IS militants beheading hostages
By ASHRAF KHALIL AND MAGGIE MICHAEL A video purporting to show the mass beheading of Coptic Christian hostages was released Sunday by militants in Libya affiliated with the Islamic State…
Islamic State hostage’s family hopeful she’s still alive
By FELICIA FONSECA and BRIAN SKOLOFF The parents of a 26-year-old American who Islamic State extremists say was killed in an airstrike in Syria said in a statement addressed to…
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe defends handling of hostage crisis
By MARI YAMAGUCHI and ELAINE KURTENBACH Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe defended his policy toward terrorism, as the flag at his official residence flew at half-staff Monday in a mark…