U.S. forces carried out air strikes (WSJ) against the Kata’ib Hezbollah Shiite militant group in Iraq and Syria in response to a Friday attack that killed a U.S. civilian contractor and wounded four U.S. troops. The Iran-backed militia said the strikes killed at least twenty-five fighters, and one of its former commanders promised a “very tough” response (Reuters) against U.S. forces in Iraq.
 
Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi called the strikes a dangerous escalation, while Iran’s foreign ministry condemned them (Guardian) as terrorist acts. Abdul-Mahdi has remained in office in a caretaker capacity despite resigning as prime minister last month amid an ongoing protest movement that calls for new political leadership not backed by Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this month that there would be a decisive response to any attacks by Tehran or its proxies that harm U.S. forces or their allies.

The militant group’s ruling council has agreed (AP) to a temporary cease-fire, during which a peace deal with Washington could be signed, Taliban officials said. They did not specify when the cease-fire would occur.
 
Pakistan: Islamabad will host (Dawn) a ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in April 2020 that will focus on the situation in Kashmir and India’s new citizenship law, according to state-backed media.

At least five people were killed (Al Jazeera) in the southern Ad-Dhalea Province when a rocket attack struck a parade hosted by a separatist group that opposes Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The bomb detonated at a busy Mogadishu intersection and killed (AP) at least seventy-eight people. Somalia’s president condemned the attack as a “heinous act of terror” and blamed the militant group al-Shabab. U.S. military officials said they killed four al-Shabab militants in retaliatory air strikes.
 
This CFR Backgrounder discusses how al-Shabab threatens Somalia’s security.

The two forces conducted an “all-for-all” prisoner swap (RFE/RL) in which seventy-six people detained by the separatists were freed in exchange for 127 of those detained by Ukranian security forces, Ukranian officials said.
 
In Foreign Affairs, Brian Milakovsky discusses the separatist conflict within Ukraine.
 
Turkey: Widespread operations to arrest (Anadolu) people with suspected links to the self-proclaimed Islamic State are underway across the country. The operation has led to the detainment of least one hundred people so far, security officials said.

Authorities arrested four people (AP) in connection to the recent seizure of $1 billion worth of cocaine. The 5.9-ton seizure marked the largest drug bust in Uruguay’s history.
 
Venezuela: U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani participated in a phone call with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in September 2018, and tried to negotiate Maduro’s exit from power and open Venezuela to foreign business, the Washington Post reports. Giuliani’s efforts contradicted the United States’ official hard-line approach toward Venezuela at the time.

A man entered the home of a rabbi in an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City and stabbed five people (Politico) as they were celebrating Hanukkah. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the attack an act of domestic terrorism. Separately, a shooter killed two people (WSJ) during a Texas church service before congregation members shot and killed him.

For the first time in 2020, UN investigations into Myanmar’s 2017 crackdown on Rohingya Muslims and war crimes committed during Syria’s civil war will be funded (AFP) by the General Assembly budget rather than by member countries’ voluntary contributions.