BEIRUT: Every Hajj season, Rafic Hariri International Airport is the only corridor for Lebanese, Palestinian refugees in the country and Syrians who want to perform pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Those who were issued their Hajj visas were informed three months ago. According to a diplomatic source in the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Lebanon, “the…
STUTTGART: Nobel laureate Nadia Murad on Saturday urged Iraq’s Yazidi minority to return to their ancestral heartland of Sinjar, five years after militants launched a brutal assault on their community there. Murad was one of thousands of women and girls from the ancient faith abducted by Daesh as they overran swathes of Iraq in 2014.Speaking…
ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday laid the foundation stone for the first new church in Turkey since it became a modern republic in 1923.The church in the Istanbul suburb of Yesilkoy will serve the 17,000-strong Syriac Christian community, which is also paying for the new building.“It is the Turkish republic’s duty to meet…
Al-Qaeda gunmen killed 19 soldiers in an attack on an army base in southern Yemen Friday, security officials said, a day after deadly assaults by militants and an extremist bomber.The gunmen stormed Al-Mahfad base in Abyan province and remained inside for several hours before military reinforcements came, three security officials told AFP, adding that the…
TUNIS: Presidential hopefuls in Tunisia began registering their candidacies on Friday for snap September polls called after the death of 92-year-old leader Beji Caid Essebsi.Eight would-be candidates, including media magnate Nabil Karoui, submitted their papers to the North African country’s electoral commission.Prime Minister Youssef Chahed has not yet officially registered, although his party said on…
SANAA: Daesh’s affiliate in Yemen has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a police station in the southern city of Aden the previous day.That attack killed 11 people and involved suicide bombers using a car, a bus and motorcycles laden with explosives that targeted a police station in the city's Omar al-Mokhtar neighborhood during…
TIKRIT/SULAIMANIYA, Iraq: At least seven members of Iraq’s security forces were killed and 16 wounded overnight in two separate attacks by Daesh militants, police said on Thursday.Three members of the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and two policemen were killed in an attack in the Sayed Gharib area north of Salahuddin province’s Dujail district, 50…
Two separate attacks in Aden on Thursday killed and wounded dozens, security sources reported. Dozens of police, including a senior commander, were killed or wounded in an attack on a military camp west of government-held second city Aden. “The blast occurred behind the stand where the ceremony was taking place at Al Jalaa military camp…
Two separate attacks in Aden - one claimed by the Houths - killed and wounded dozens on Thursday, security sources reported. A Reuters witness saw nine bodies on the ground after an explosion hit a military camp belonging to the Yemeni Security Belt forces backed by the United Arab Emirates, which is a member of the…
BEIRUT: Christians and Muslims gathered for a spiritual summit in Lebanon on Tuesday amid concerns about a growing sectarian divide in the country’s politics. The crisis escalated after two aides to Minister of the Displaced Saleh Al-Gharib were killed on June 30 in Mount Lebanon. Al-Gharib is a member of the predominantly Druze-supported Lebanese Democratic Party,…
LONDON: The owner of the British tanker seized by Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz said Tuesday they are increasingly concerned about the crew’s welfare. The Stena Impero was captured on July 19 with 23 people on board as it passed through the waterway under the watch of a British warship. The ship was impounded…
BEIRUT: Christians and Muslims gathered for a spiritual summit in Lebanon on Tuesday amid concerns about a growing sectarian divide in the country’s politics. The crisis escalated after two aides to Minister of the Displaced Saleh Al-Gharib were killed on June 30 in Mount Lebanon. Al-Gharib is a member of the predominantly Druze-supported Lebanese Democratic Party,…
CAIRO: Nearly a third of Egyptians live below the poverty line, up from 27.8 percent in 2015, Egypt's flagship state-owned newspaper Al Ahram reported on Tuesday, citing official figures. "The poverty rate has reached 32.5% across the republic for 2017-2018," the daily quoted the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics as saying in a…
DUBAI: The head of Sudan’s ruling interim military council stressed the need to reach an agreement to avoid further turmoil in the country, a day after four high school students were shot dead in demonstrations.Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan said that he has authorized the negotiating delegation to reach an agreement as delaying the transition would…
TEHRAN, Iran: Taha Shakouri keeps finding remote corners to play in at a Tehran children’s charity hospital, unaware that his doctors are running out of chemo medicine needed to treat the eight-year-old boy’s liver cancer.With Iran’s economy in free-fall after the US pullout from the nuclear deal and escalated sanctions on Tehran, prices of imported…
LONDON: A British warship dispatched to the Gulf to escort UK-flagged ships amid heightened tensions with Iran has arrived in the region, the defense ministry said.HMS Duncan was sent to help accompany vessels through the Strait of Hormuz after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker there earlier this month, in what London called an act of…
LONDON: A British warship dispatched to the Gulf to escort UK-flagged ships amid heightened tensions with Iran has arrived in the region, the defense ministry said.HMS Duncan was sent to help accompany vessels through the Strait of Hormuz after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker there earlier this month, in what London called an act of…
QALANDIA CROSSING, West Bank: It’s just after 6 a.m. and a Palestinian man’s face is momentarily bathed in crimson light, not by the sun rising over the mountains of Jordan, but by a facial recognition scanner at an Israeli checkpoint near Jerusalem.The Israeli military has installed the face scanners as part a multimillion dollar upgrade…
TEHRAN: Iran on Sunday slammed as “provocative” a British proposal for a European-led naval mission to escort tankers in the Gulf, amid soaring tensions over the seizure of ships.“We heard that they intend to send a European fleet to the Arabian Gulf which naturally carries a hostile message, is provocative and will increase tensions,” government…
DUBAI: Yemen’s army announced their advances in Taiz and the Houthi stronghold of Saada, after defeating the Iranian-backed militia. The army made gains on several mountains in Taiz - Yemen’s third largest city – against the Houthi militia sieged parts of the city since 2015. A military source told Yemen’s national military website “September Net,”…
