The Libyan army gave the militia of warlord Khalifa Haftar until Saturday to re-open the strategic coastal road linking the country's east and west, Anadolu Agency reported. "We sent a letter to the 5 + 5 Libyan Joint Military Commission giving them until Saturday to open the...

Some Afghan irregular migrants have alleged that they were beaten in custody by Iranian soldiers before being released at the Turkish border, Anadolu Agency reported. Gulab Jemili, an Afghan who illegally entered Turkey's eastern Van province, said he along with others migrated to Iran due to armed conflict in their country....

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is going through a cash flow crisis, said Lynn Hastings, the deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process on Wednesday, Anadolu Agency reported. In her briefing to the UN Security Council, Hastings voiced concern about...

The US sanctioned on Wednesday a slew of Syrian entities, including eight Syrian regime prisons and five senior officials in charge of the facilities, Anadolu Agency reported. The Treasury Department said the prisons "have been sites of human rights abuses against political prisoners and other detainees." "The Assad regime has waged...

A strategic expert has said that renegade General Khalifa Haftar has been assassinating militia leaders in an attempt to obliterate evidence that links him to war crimes committed in the capital, Tripoli, Benghazi and other regions in Libya. In an exclusive statement to Arabi21, military and security expert Adel Abdel Kafi revealed that "regional intelligence...

European arms companies are "instrumental" in mass displacement and fuelling the refugee crisis, according to a report by Transnational Institute (TNI). TNI's report, Smoking Guns, revealed that weapons sold to countries like Saudi Arabia and the US ended up in the hands of Daesh, and points to specific studies...

Saudi Arabia yesterday declared that it has faith in the Tunisian leadership to overcome the current circumstances, while urging the international community to stand by Tunisia. In its second statement on the topic in as many days, the Foreign Ministry said: "The government is following up the course of the...

A British university's affiliations to a Bahraini institution accused of human rights abuses has been highlighted in a parliamentary report following a plea by an 11-year-old boy who insisted that his father, currently on death row, is innocent. According to the Yorkshire Post, a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and...

The Israeli defence and finance ministers will allocate 58 billion shekels ($17.8 billion) towards the defence establishment in 2022, an increase of $2.15 billion. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defence Minister Benny Gantz agreed that the major budget increase would enable the military to...

Israel is set to increase the number of work permits granted to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by some 16,000 in what appears to be an attempt to stabilise the PA and maintain Israel's security. The Palestinian Authority has been plagued by scandals, lack of legitimacy, economic challenges and the spread...

Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati today said that he hoped to form a government in the "near future", Reuters reports. Mikati, a businessman, is the third person to be nominated since Hassan Diab's government resigned after an explosion in Beirut's port area on Aug. 4 last year that killed more than 200 people and flattened large areas...

Speaker of the Tunisian Parliament, Rached Ghannouchi, announced that his Ennahda party is seeking to form a national front to counter the decisions recently taken by Tunisian President Kais Saied. The Associated Press (AP) quoted Ghannouchi as saying in an interview yesterday that his party is working to form a national...

An Israeli woman has donated one of her kidneys to a three-year-old Palestinian boy from the Gaza Strip in an exchange of incredible kindness that saw the boy's father donate one of his kidneys to save a 25-year-old Israeli mother. Turning 50, Idit Harel Segal wanted to mark the...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday accused Israel of carrying out attacks against the Palestinians in Gaza "that violated the laws of war and apparently amount to war crimes" during its 11-day assault in May. The deadly bombardment killed 253 Palestinians, including 66 children, and forced tens of thousands to flee...

Morocco has arrested an Uyghur activist following a warrant issued by China accusing him of terrorism. Concerns are growing that BelgiumUyghur/ will now be extradited to China, which has used the pretext of terrorism, or counterterrorism, to crackdown on Uyghurs in East Turkestan. Since 2017 some one million Uyghurs...

An Egyptian court sentenced three persons to death, including the senior aide of Hisham Al-Ashmawy who was executed last year, after finding them guilty of terrorism charges over their alleged involvement in an Al-Qaeda affiliated militant group. The court referred the sentence to the state's top Islamic scholar, the...

Coming under fire for Ben & Jerry's decision to stop selling ice cream in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, parent company Unilever sought to assuage concerns of several American Jewish groups saying Unilever "does not support" the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Reuters reported. "Unilever rejects completely and repudiates unequivocally any forms...

Tunisia's judiciary has opened an investigation into three political parties, including Ennahda and Heart of Tunisia, on suspicion of receiving foreign funds during the 2019 election campaign, a judicial source told Reuters. The investigation was opened on 14 July, before President Kais Saied used emergency powers to dismiss the prime minister and...

Egypt's Hedaya Malak has won her country's first medal at this year's Olympic Games in Tokyo, in the women's 67kg taekwondo event, earning a bronze after defeating Paige McPherson of the US 17-6. Malak also made history for being the first Egyptian woman to carry the nation's flag at...

Join us for a live conversation with journalist and commentator Sangar Paykhar as we discuss the latest developments in Afghanistan. Paykhar was born in Kabul 1982. During the Afghan civil war of the 1990s, his family were forced to relocate to the Netherlands. He graduated from the School of Governance...

The former prime minister of Qatar, Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani, said he knows that "his phone has been monitored for years". In the wake of the Pegasus spyware revelations, Al Thani said on Twitter that "reports by media outlets and officials in many countries concerning espionage software that have spread...

Moroccan boxer Youness Baalla was disqualified from the Olympics yesterday after he attempted to bite his opponent's ear. The Boxing Task Force, which is in charge of running the Tokyo competition, told Reuters that 22-year-old Baalla was disqualified for unsportsmanlike behaviour after he "very clearly intended to bite the ear/face of his opponent...

Libyan militia leader, Al-Kani, accused of major human rights violations and sanctioned by the United States, was shot dead in Libya's eastern Benghazi province yesterday, AP reported officials saying. According to AP, the officials said Al-Kani was killed along with one of his associates during an exchange of gunfire. The Libyan Al-Mashhad news...

Turkish, Azerbaijani and Pakistani parliament speakers accepted the Baku Declaration in a ceremony held at the Azerbaijani Parliament yesterday, Anadolu reports. Turkish Parliament Speaker Mustafa Sentop and his Pakistani and Azerbaijani counterparts Asad Qaiser and Sahiba Gafarova, signed the declaration following a trilateral meeting. The declaration strengthens cooperation between the three...

A delegation of six Iranians living in the US visited Israel last week to show solidarity and support for the occupation state, the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reported. Members of the delegation travelled to the US decades ago, after being forced to leave their homeland. Some travelled alone and...

The Turkish Foreign Ministry yesterday condemned the European Union's statement on the partial reopening of the Maras region in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), Anadolu news agency reported. "This and similar unrealistic statements, ignoring the Turkish Cypriot people, and reflecting only the views of the Greek Cypriot side,...

Algeria has deported more than 1,200 West African migrants, including Nigerians, to Niger since the reopening of land borders between the two countries on 14 July, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) announced Monday. "On 18 July, an official convoy of 515 Nigerians who had been deported from Algeria...

Another apartment block has collapsed in Egypt after a demolition order was ignored, killing one person and injuring others. The six-storey building was in the Warraq district of the capital Cairo and collapsed yesterday morning despite repeated warnings about unsafe buildings following a series of fatal incidents across the...

Lebanese former prime minister and leader of the Future Movement, Saad Hariri, yesterday proposed that officials have their diplomatic immunity "temporarily suspend" in order to investigate the Beirut port blast which killed more than 200 people in August last year. "Our proposal is to take an extraordinary decision to suspend...

Dismissed Fatah leader Mohammad Dahlan has officially asked local and regional sides to allow him to attend meetings being held by Palestinian factions in Cairo, Lebanon's Al-Akhbar newspaper has revealed. Egypt and the UAE asked Dahlan to find a suitable means for him to be able to join the meetings, the...

The Egyptian government has started implementing the law stipulating the dismissal of Muslim Brotherhood members from public and private positions, Arabi21.com reported on Tuesday. Egypt's Supreme Council for Universities, including Al-Azhar University, has requested lists of names of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates. In a statement, the council confirmed that the...

The Palestinian Authority's Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Fadi Al-Hidmi, yesterday condemned Israel's decision to extend the closure of Palestinian institutions in the occupied city of Jerusalem for another six months, Anadolu news agency reported. Al-Hidmi said in a statement that the decision comes in the context of the ongoing Israeli...

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is expected to postpone the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, a source close to him told an Israeli newspaper on Tuesday, citing Bennett's fear of international uproar. On Monday, the Israeli Supreme Court is scheduled to hold a hearing session to decide whether to evict four...

The Muslim Brotherhood yesterday called on Tunisian President Kais Saied and politicians and factions in the country to start "serious dialogue" to overcome the current crises facing it, Anadolu news agency reported. In a statement posted on the official website of the Muslim Brotherhood two days after Saied fired Prime...

Iranian security forces have arrested members of a network of agents working for Israel and have seized a stash of weapons destined for use in recent protests over the country's water shortages, local media reported yesterday. The announcement came after nearly two weeks of protests over water shortages, mostly...

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has fired a senior aide over his criticism of the PA's murder of Palestinian West Bank activist Nizar Banat, AP revealed on Tuesday. The director of Ramallah's national library Ehab Bseiso wrote in a letter, a copy of which reached AP, stating that...

Palestinian police on Tuesday shut the office of J-Media in Ramallah. The director of the Ramallah office Alaa Al-Rimawi told Safa Press Agency that the police had closed the network's office after: "Prohibiting our staff from accessing it or removing any of their personal belongings." He added that he...

Tunisia is the answer. This is, and has been, what we've been saying and believing all along. Even before writing this article, Tunisia was the answer to all possible and impossible questions. It has been so since Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, declaring the beginning of the Arab...

Ben & Jerry's decision to suspend its operations in the occupied Palestinian West Bank is an event that is proving critical to Palestinian efforts, which ultimately aim at holding Israel accountable for its military occupation, apartheid and war crimes. By responding to the Palestinian call for boycotting apartheid Israel,...

Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati said Tuesday that parliamentarians have agreed on the necessity to accelerate the forming of a new government, reports Anadolu Agency. "I listened, during the consultations, to the parliamentarians' views and their future visions, and there was a consensus on the necessity to accelerate the...

Libya will return to "square one" and the turmoil of 2011 if national elections planned for December are delayed, the speaker of parliament said, with a new rival government likely to set itself up in the east, reports Reuters. The elections are seen in the West as a critical...

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on Tuesday discussed how to ease COVID-19 travel restrictions, which have stranded around 400,000 Pakistani workers back home, foreign ministers of the two countries told reporters, says Reuters. Islamabad took up the issue with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, who is...

A Saudi court sentenced a Sudanese journalist to four years in prison for social media posts critical of the kingdom, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, reports Reuters. Ahmed Ali Abdelkader, a 31-year-old media personality and journalist, was jailed for "insulting the state's institutions and symbols", "negatively speaking about...

A 60-year-old Iranian citizen has been charged in Sweden with suspected war crimes committed in Iran in 1988 when around 5,000 political prisoners were executed on government orders, Stockholm prosecutors said on Tuesday, reports Reuters. The man, whom prosecutors declined to name publicly, has been in custody in Sweden...

Let's stop all the hand wringing and angst over Afghanistan. Now. It's fooling no one. America, Britain and their NATO allies have had 20 years to help put the country back on its feet, deliver human rights, female equality and a democratic government free of corruption. They've failed. Despite...

Saudi Arabia will impose a three-year travel ban on citizens travelling to countries on the kingdom's 'red list' under efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus and its new variants, state news agency SPA said on Tuesday, reports Reuters. It cited an unnamed interior ministry official as saying some...

Article 80 of Tunisia's 2014 Constitution has been cited by President Kais Saied to justify what is being described as a "coup" in the country on Sunday. The text of Article 80 is as follows: The President of the Republic, in the event of an imminent danger threatening the...

A close aide of former US President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to working as a foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates. The 74-year-old billionaire investor was charged last week with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making multiple false statements to the FBI, in a case that is...

"Turkey will not be a border guard or a refugee camp of the EU", officials said after Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's remarks that Turkey is a "more suitable place" for Afghan refugees. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement that Ankara read Kurz's statement with "astonishment". "First of all,...

On Sunday Tunisia's President, Kais Saeid assumed emergency powers to sack the prime minister, suspend parliament and the immunity of parliamentarians, and assume authority of the government. The birthplace of the Arab Spring has made headlines since the weekend as the head of state announced a month-long curfew and...