In brief: After mishaps, unmanned cargo ship headed to International Space Station

MOSCOW – A Russian rocket successfully launched an unmanned cargo ship today to the International Space Station, whose crew is anxiously awaiting it after the successive failures of two previous supply missions.

A Soyuz-U rocket blasted off as scheduled from Russia-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, placing the Progress M-28M cargo ship into a designated orbit.

The previous Progress launch in April ended in failure, and on Sunday a U.S. supply mission failed too when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket broke apart shortly after liftoff. The success of today’s launch is essential for the station program, which has relied on Russian spacecraft for ferrying crews after the grounding of the U.S. shuttle fleet.

Airstrike in Syria kills Islamic State leader

WASHINGTON – A coalition airstrike in Syria has killed a senior Islamic State leader, who has been responsible for moving fighters and weapons from Libya to Syria, the Pentagon said Thursday.

A senior U.S. official said Tariq bin Tahar al-’Awni al-Harzi, a Tunisian, and another fighter with him were killed by a U.S. drone strike and that there were no reports of any civilian casualties in the operation.

According to Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, al-Harzi was killed June 16 in Shaddadi. He said al-Harzi coordinated the use of suicide bombing attacks in Iraq, and helped with the movement of foreign fighters back and forth across the Syria-Iraq border.

Stepped-up attacks target Sinai militants

CAIRO – Egyptian warplanes launched new airstrikes and troops went house-to-house Thursday in the troubled Sinai Peninsula, a day after Islamic State-linked militants set off the area’s bloodiest fighting in decades in an unprecedented, coordinated attack.

The combat, described as “war” by the media and officials, heightened tensions across Egypt as it marks today’s second anniversary of the military’s overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, a move that fanned an insurgency in north Sinai that has grown stronger.

It also follows the dramatic assassination this week of the country’s chief prosecutor in a car bombing in Cairo, prompting general-turned-politician President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to press for even harsher anti-terrorism laws targeting Islamic militants.

Air raids at dawn Thursday killed 23 extremists just south of Rafah, a key Sinai border town near the Gaza Strip, Sinai security officials said. They added that the army was searching for militants in the town of Sheikh Zuweid, where a string of army checkpoints were attacked a day earlier.