Iran said on Sunday it was trying to analyse the black boxes of a Ukrainian airliner that its military shot down this month, denying a report that a decision had been taken to send the voice and flight data recorders to Ukraine, reported Reuters. Canada, which had 57 citizens on...

Countries struggled at an international peace summit for Libya struggled on Sunday to draw eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar back into diplomacy, days after he quit talks and more than half of Libya’s oil output was shut in areas he controls, reported Reuters. Haftar, whose forces are bearing down...

Around 27,000 civilians have fled their homes falling inside the Idlib de-escalation zone in Syria over the last three days due to attacks of regime and its allies. The attacks of Bashar al-Assad regime, Russia and Iran-backed terrorist groups in residential areas east and south of Aleppo province continue to displace...

All of Anadolu Agency staffers, who were detained by Egyptian police earlier this week, were released, said the agency head on Sunday. “All our staff members, detained in Egypt on January 14 have been released,” Anadolu Agency Director General Senol Kazanci said. On Tuesday evening, Egyptian police raided the Cairo office...

Inviting Libyan renegade General Khalifa Haftar to Greece and stressing the Greek agenda in the Mediterranean are both “futile efforts” to derail the push for peace in Libya, said Turkey’s foreign minister on Saturday. “The Greek-Greek Cypriot duo extorts the rights of neighboring countries with their maximalist claims in...

Israel’s military announced on Sunday the start of construction of an underground network of sensors along the Lebanese frontier to detect any cross-border tunnel building, reported Reuters. The project is getting under way a year after the Israeli military said it had destroyed a series of infiltration tunnels dug by the...

The bodies of the 11 Ukrainian citizens who died when a passenger plane was accidentally shot down by Iran this month were brought back to Ukraine on Sunday in a solemn ceremony at Kiev airport, reported Reuters. All 176 on board the Ukraine International Airlines flight from Tehran to...

US soldiers present in regions under YPG group’s control in Syria, on Saturday stopped Russian soldiers who wanted to reach oil fields, according to a report by Anadolu Agency. Dispute between the US and Russia about the Rumeylan oil field in northeast Hasakah is ongoing. According to information Anadolu...

Yemen’s president told the military on Sunday it needs to be on high alert and ready for battle following an attack on Saturday by Iran-aligned Houthis on a military training camp in the city of Marib. The attack “confirms without doubt that the Houthis have no desire for peace”,...

Iran will review its cooperation with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog should it face “unjust” measures, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani said, after EU powers last week triggered a dispute mechanism under Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal, reported Reuters. The move by France, Britain and Germany amounts to formally accusing...

A group that has previously shut down Libya’s largest oilfield is threatening to do so again as international powers gather in Berlin for a summit on Libya, potentially taking nearly all the country’s oil output offline. According to a Reuters report, the group Fezzan Anger, named for Libya’s southwestern Fezzan desert...

Lebanese rescuers treated more than 300 people for injuries during hours of clashes between security forces and protesters that rocked central Beirut on Saturday night, reported Reuters. It was the highest toll in some of the most intense violence since largely peaceful protests erupted across the country in October....

Qatar Airways, Emirates and several other Gulf airlines still fly in Iraqi and Iranian airspace and to cities in both countries, even as other international carriers have rerouted planes since the United States and Iran traded military strikes, reports Reuters. Executives and analysts said carriers in the Gulf, a major transit stop...

The United Nations envoy to Libya said on Saturday he hoped but “could not predict” whether eastern oil ports shut ahead of a Berlin summit aimed at reaching a truce in Libya would be reopened soon, reported Reuters. Oil export terminals across eastern and central Libya were shut on Friday by...

The death toll Sunday reached 70 after Houthi rebels launched an air strike on a government-held military camp in Yemen’s Marib city, according to military sources. An armed unmanned aerial vehicle was used in the attack, according to military sources from the government. The assault left a large number...

Iran is sending to Ukraine the black boxes of the Ukrainian passenger plane that its military accidentally shot down this month, Iran’s Tasnim news agency and Reuters reported on Saturday. The Iranian authorities are also prepared for experts from France, Canada and the United States to examine the data...

Somali insurgents linked to al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a car bombing on Saturday that wounded at least 15 people in Afgoye, northwest of the capital Mogadishu. Police said the injured included Turkish contractors as well as Somali nationals. Anadolu Agency reported at least four Turkish employees of a...

Yemen’s warring sides opened a new front in their five-year conflict on Saturday – a battle over old and new banknotes that threatens to create two economies in the same state, reports Reuters. As of midnight, the Houthi movement which controls the capital Sanaa outlawed the use and possession...

Thousands of Jordanians took to the streets of Amman on Friday, demonstrating against the gas deal signed between Jordan and Israel, Quds Press reported. Quds Press reported that demonstrators called for ousting the government, and holding the officials accountable for signing the “shameful” deal. Prominent national, youth and Islamic...

Head of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) delegation to the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum in Cairo, Mohammed Mustafa, denied that the PA is to import natural gas from Israel, news agencies reported on Friday. Mustafa announced, according to news agency Wafa, that the news reports about this were “not precise”....

A number of pictures leaked to mass media show the grave effects of the severe torture of Palestinian prisoner, Walid Hanatsha, inside an Israeli prison, Shehab News Agency reported on Friday. The pictures demonstrated the effects of torture on different parts of the prisoner’s body, including his neck, thighs...

Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on Friday met his Canadian counterpart, François-Philippe Champagne, to discuss the issue of the Ukrainian plane crash in Iran last week. According to Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the Canadian foreign minister had requested to meet with the Iranian official. The meeting took place in...

Back in my mid-twenties, I went off to Palestine to become a solidarity activist. I volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – a group which used to take part in non-violent Palestinian protests in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. All told, I spent the best part...

Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz has issued an order to release the sheikh of the Otaibah tribe, Faisal Bin Sultan Bin Humaid, who has been detained for months. Mohammad Bin Sultan, brother of Sheikh Faisal, announced on Twitter that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman accepted his mediation to...

Spokesman for the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces, Abdul-Karim Khalaf, revealed the mechanism for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq, pointing out that the US has not yet set a date for the withdrawal of its forces. Khalaf announced in statements on Friday, that the Iraqi government...

European Union high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Joseph Burrell, revealed that he does not exclude the possibility of forming a European military mission to implement the task of monitoring the ceasefire in Libya. “If there is a ceasefire in Libya, then the EU...

The Libyan Foreign Ministry called for the need to invite both Qatar and Tunisia to the Berlin Conference, to be held on Sunday. This came in a letter sent by the Foreign Ministry of the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord to the German embassy in Tripoli, Anadolu Agency reported,...

The EastMed pipeline project will fail to be a feasible plan in terms of its cost and construction process, according to Italy’s foreign minister, Anadolu Agency reports. “It is obvious that the EastMed pipeline project, proposed by Greece, will not be an option in the medium- and long-term compared to other...

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described on Friday that the Iranian attacks on the US airbases in Iraq were “a slap in the face” for the US, international news agencies reported. In the Friday khutbah, Khamenei’s first since 2012, he announced that Iran’s ability to respond to US...

Money transfers by expatriate workers in Kuwait on an annual basis in 2019, remained the same as in 2018. Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas quoted sources that are well-informed on the balance of payments for the State of Kuwait, stating that the value of workers’ money transfers in the country is...

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has called on Europe to support its work in Libya, where it is providing military support to the internationally-recognised government, if it wants to end the conflict there, Reuters reports. Erdogan made his remarks in a column published on the Politico website on Saturday, ahead of a...

The final draft of the agreement to be discussed at the Berlin Conference, which will be held this Sunday, is almost ready according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, which expressed regret over the parties of the conflict’s refusal to meet with one another. Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, announced...

A Greek opposition party leader has likened Libya’s renegade commander Khalifa Haftar to former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a convicted war criminal. This came after Haftar visited Athens on Friday and met with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias. “Athens today hosted Libyan warlord...

Iran’s supreme leader threw his support behind the elite Revolutionary Guards in a rare sermon on Friday after their belated admission that they had accidentally downed an airliner triggered days of street protests, Reuters reports. In his first Friday prayers sermon for eight years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also told worshippers chanting...

United States officials believe Saudi Arabia’s government “almost certainly” helps its citizens escape justice by fleeing the country once they are accused of serious offenses, The Oregonian newspaper reported Friday, Anadolu Agency reports. It said it obtained a newly declassified document from the FBI that said Riyadh’s assistance to suspects was...

US President Donald Trump said Friday that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “should be very careful” about what he says, Anadolu Agency reports. “The so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ of Iran, who has not been so Supreme lately, had some nasty things to say about the United States and Europe. Their...

Turkey deported four terrorists of Germany nationality to their country, the Turkish Interior Ministry announced on Friday, Anadolu Agency reports. The terrorists were deported as part of Turkey’s ramped-up efforts to repatriate foreign terrorist fighters, the ministry said in a statement. Turkey continues to deport foreign terrorist fighters, it added. The...

Germany is set to host a major peace conference on Libya that will seek a stronger commitment from regional actors for a cease-fire in the war-torn country to pave the way for a political solution, Anadolu Agency reports. Chancellor Angela Merkel invited leaders from Turkey, Russia, the US, China, France, the...

Britain expanded the scope of its asset-freezing measures against Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah on Thursday to cover the entire organisation as well as its military wing, Reuters reports. The finance ministry move follows Britain’s decision last year to classify the whole group a terrorist organisation due to its destabilising influence in...

United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet called on Friday for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Syria’s opposition-held Idlib province, saying the latest ceasefire attempt had yet again failed to protect civilians, Reuters reports. Turkey, which for years has backed Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad, agreed a truce...

The US announced on Friday it is sanctioning a top military official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps over alleged involvement in the violent suppression of popular protests, Anadolu Agency reports. Brian Hook, the State Department’s top official for Iran, told reporters the department has imposed visa sanctions on Brigadier General Hassan Shavapour...

Saudi Arabia has paid the US roughly $500 million in compensation for the costs associated with stationing American forces in the Kingdom, according to a report, Andolu Agency reports. The payment was made in December, an anonymous US official told CNN. If true, it stands in stark contract to US...

Canada will give $25,000 to each of the families of the 57 victims of Flight PS752 that was shot down inadvertently by Iran, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced at a press conference Friday, Anadolu Agency reports. As he spoke, Canada’s Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif...

A school that was in the middle of construction in the town of Yatta located in the south Hebron hills of the occupied West Bank has been destroyed by Israeli soldiers, reported the official Palestinian news agency Wafa. The foundations of what would have been an elementary school was...

READ: Families want compensation for downed Ukrainian plane...

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has warned that the Middle East cannot afford a direct military conflict – specifically between Saudi Arabia and Iran – and that such a situation “would be disastrous for Pakistan.” In an interview with the German newspaper Deutsche Welle yesterday, Khan stressed the neutrality...

The Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv hosted a party yesterday for its citizens serving in the Israeli army. It was organised by Ambassador Deborah Lyons, who told The Jerusalem Post that she wanted to show the appreciation and care felt by the embassy for the “lone soldiers” who left...

Although the Palestinian-Israeli conflict takes place within a relatively small geographic region, it receives great political and media attention, due to the involvement of many international parties and even major countries in the conflict. This is a result of sensitivity in the Arab world and the Middle East region,...

A group of bishops from across Europe and North America have voiced their deep concerns over Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The group, who visit the region every year to promote dialogue and peace, described at length the grim situation following their return from the occupied territory. “Every year we...

Tel Aviv District Court is allowing a closed-door hearing of the case challenging an Israeli spyware firm, NSO Group, following the ministry’s legal team appeal that it should be held in secret, on national security grounds. Amnesty International has filed a case against the notorious tech company, which calls...