All Stories Archive

The Algerian Red Crescent sent on Thursday 75 tons of humanitarian and medical aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Three Algerian military planes, carrying 75 tons of medicine and 50 wheelchairs, left the Boufarik Airport on Thursday, heading to Ismailia in Egypt. Head of Algerian Red Crescent Saida...

The Shura Council of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan condemned on Thursday Jordanian participation in the US-led coalition against ISIL, as well as the announcement that Jordanian forces targeted ISIL in Ar-Raqqa. Jordanian newspaper Assabeel reported a statement from the Muslim Brotherhood calling the Jordanian participation in the coalition...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Abbas' speech at the United Nations General Assembly proved he is not a real partner for peace, while Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said it was full of "lies". Speaking before the UN General Assembly on Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Friday for a no-fly zone and secure area on Syria and stressed the importance of determining who Turkey's partners will be to manage these issues. "A no-fly zone must be declared and this no fly-zone must be secured," Erdogan said as he...

The Iranian Keyhan newspaper, which is owned by the Iranian Guide Ali Khamenei, said that Yemen has entered the phase of historic victory in the wake of the success of the Houthis there and that the general public in Yemen supported this popular revolution, evident from the celebrations held...

Shiia Online website, which is the official website of the religious institution in Iran close to the Iranian government, has commented on recent events in Yemen: "The Houthis' true war has just begun with battles in Sanaa against Islamic currents that are opposed to the Houthis' revolution in Yemen."...

The Tehran city representative in the Iranian parliament, Ali Reza Zakani, who is close to the Iranian supreme guide Ali Khamenei, said: "Three Arab capitals have today ended up in the hands of Iran and belong to the Islamic Iranian revolution". He noted that Sanaa has now become the...

The Middle East has provided successive British governments with their fair share of challenges over the years. The current coalition government has been no different; from Syria to Palestine to Iraq, there have been numerous battles in the region that have been replicated in the House of Commons. As...

The situation in Libya is very difficult and the security situation of grave concern and this constitutes a real threat to the unity of the country in the future, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. The Anadolu news agency reported Ghebreyesus as saying, in a speech during a...

Yemen was the only country affected by the Arab Spring to see a negotiated transfer of power, rather than a prolonged bloody uprising or civil war. However, that does not mean that things have been peaceful since long-time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh was ousted in 2011 following an armed...

Davutoglu announces that the figure has reached 160,335 since Turkey opened the border crossing last Friday. A total of 160,335 Syrian Kurds have fled to Turkey in the last week alone, escaping from ISIL attacks in the northern Syrian town of Kobani, said Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on...

The United States announced on yesterday that it has reduced the number its embassy personnel in Yemen due to "recent political developments and the changing, unpredictable security situation" in the country. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said yesterday: "We are taking these steps out of an abundance of caution,"...

An extraordinary session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine on Israel's summer Gaza offensive has found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and incitement to genocide. The evidence and findings come on the heels of numerous claims of severe breaches of international...

Over three million Syrians have fled their war-torn country in search of a safer life. These refugees include doctors, nurses, engineers and many of the country's key workers. They leave behind not just their homes and their country but millions who have been internally displaced, or who are trying...

The head of the Yemeni National Security Agency, Ali Al-Ahmadi, said on Thursday that gunmen who belong to Houthi group stormed his house, staying inside for four days and "looting its belongings," Anadolu news agency reported. Al-Ahmadi reportedly told the official Yemeni news agency that a group of Houthis...

A coalition of revolutionary forces, which includes professional movements, signatories of the Cairo declaration, the revolutionary council for Egypt's women, and Nasaryon and Kawmyon against the plot movement, to name a few, held a press conference on Thursday afternoon at the headquarters of the Independence party to launch a...

The Moroccan Foreign Exchange Office, the institution in charge of overseeing trade and economic exchanges with foreign countries, said on Thursday that trade between Morocco and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) multiplied by two and a half times over the past ten years, reaching $3.3 billion last year, according...

On Wednesday, Muslim worshippers took their dawn prayers in the streets as the third holiest site in Islam was placed under siege by soldiers. Stray rubber coated steel bullets showered on those who refused to stop worshiping hit three students in their school classrooms. An eleven year old boy...

Hidden away in some dusty corner in government vaults in London there must be a well-thumbed dossier containing secret evidence which kept a Palestinian caged in Britain without charge or trial for more than a decade. Described by successive home secretaries as the most dangerous man in Britain, it...

Today, Friday 26 September, the House of Commons is slated to take yet another vote on yet another war in Iraq. This time, the putative bombing campaign (already started in both Iraq and Syria by the Americans) would target the so-called "Islamic State", the fanatical terrorist organisation which controls...

Turkey has denied claims published in the German newspaper Die Welt that Ankara is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, the country's foreign ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said yesterday. In a statement Bilgic said: "The claims published in Die Welt on 21 September have nothing to do with the truth."...

He was afraid of the protests from the opposition outside the United Nations building, so he changed the date of his speech, giving it a day before schedule, so the world wouldn't see the large crowds of Egyptians living in America who are opposed to his military coup and...

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine's Emergency Session on Israel's Operation Protective Edge held yesterday in Brussels has found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide. The Jury reported: "The cumulative effect of the long-standing regime of collective punishment...

I was recently visited by two American diplomats in Education City in Qatar who are interested in the political transformations in the Arab region. We had a long talk about the issues of religion, state, sectarianism, the Arab Spring, and the Arab-American relations. I tried to explain to my...

Remarks uttered by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US President Barack Obama at the UN General Assembly are of paramount significance to the constant oppression faced by Palestinians. Once again, discourse has been dominated by humanitarian concerns divested of political ramifications, while upholding the duplicitous role of the...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday thanked the American President Barack Obama for heading a UNSC meeting to discuss foreign fighters including the Islamic State (ISIS). Addressing UNSC member states, Ban said: "In the last year, terrorist attacks have killed, maimed and displaced many thousands of civilians – the vast...

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has warned that the ongoing strike by cleaning companies could lead to a serious health disaster in the Strip. Health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra yesterday published on Facebook that the emergency department and all other departments in the European Gaza Hospital had become...

Over 400 asylum seekers, including 100 children, were drowned in international waters on their way to Italy after the boat they were travelling on was rammed on 10 September, 2014 by people-smugglers angry because the migrants refused to transfer to a smaller boat. As a report into the mass...

In a first such meeting since 1979, British Prime Minister David Cameron sought yesterday Iranian cooperation from President Hassan Rouhani against the Islamic State (ISIS), a Downing Street spokesman said. The spokesman said that both leaders agreed that "all states in the region must do more to cut off...

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon has slammed members of the security cabinet over internal disputes during the war on the Gaza Strip, noting that it only reinforced Hamas's position. Speaking to Israeli radio, Ya'alon claimed that Hamas's leadership would have stopped launching its rockets after only two weeks of...

During a press conference on Wednesday, Matthew Lodge, the British ambassador to Kuwait, said that his country bears responsibility for defending Kuwait and its allies against any threat launched by the Islamic State organisation, Anadolu news agency reported. In his first news conference since taking office, the news agency...

A number of Egyptian areas witnessed night demonstrations against the coup yesterday; while a government minister said that the Council of Ministers has yet to discuss the proposals on the laws which govern protesting. Six protests took place in Alexandria overnight, including the areas of: Al-Mandara, Al-Muntazah and Al-Wardian....

Relatives of Palestinian journalists killed during Israel's recent military onslaught on the Gaza Strip on Thursday called on the United Nations to bring Israeli leaders to court. During a protest staged outside the UN's Gaza office, relatives of slain journalists carried banners reading, "Journalism isn't a crime" and "Take...

Turkey is ready to provide $200 million to finance development projects in Tunisia, the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. The announcement came in a meeting, held in New York yesterday evening, between Erdogan and Tunisian President Mohamed Moncef Marzouki to discuss the mechanisms for the development of relations...

There have been "at least 250" politically motivated assassinations carried out in the cities of Benghazi and Derna, east of Libya, in 2014 alone, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. In a statement, the organisation said: "Crimes of assassinations in Benghazi and Derna rise to the level of war crimes...

Palestinian resistance faction Hamas on Wednesday lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for likening it to the militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Iraq and Syria. "Comparing Hamas to the ISIL isn't convincing anyone in the West," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri...

US President Barack Obama told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that "the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable," Al-Reselah Press reported. Obama said that he is not willing to allow this situation to continue, calling for implementing the two-state solution to sort out...

The US and its Arab partners air raids against oil fields controlled by Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Syria yesterday evening, the Pentagon announced. The source confirmed that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates took part in the recent air strikes in Syria. Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm....

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised the UN on Wednesday for legitimising the military coup in Egypt and supporting its perpetrator Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi, Al-Amat Online reported. The democratically elected president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, was overthrown by a military coup, he said, and yet the UN still chose to...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed on Wednesday that the indirect talks currently underway with the Palestinian factions in Cairo are focussed only on security issues and the main aim for Israel is to disarm the resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip. Speaking to Israel Hayom newspaper to mark...

Launching a new funding appeal for the Gaza Strip, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva has declared that the "civilian casualty toll" and "extent of destruction" indicates that "violations of international humanitarian law" took place during Israel's assault. The ICRC described the impact of an...

Two Israeli academics based at Ariel University, located in an illegal West Bank settlement, withdrew from a major London conference after being told to drop their institutional affiliation. According to a report in the Times Higher Education, the scholars proposed papers for the annual conference of the European Association...

France and Britain are considered to be the most prominent European allies of the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and were among the first countries that rushed to declare their willingness to participate in military operations, but Faizullah Yarm Bash reported for Anadolu...

In recent months, relations between Iran and its longstanding enemies in Britain and America have thawed somewhat. Earlier this year, Iran's president Hassan Rouhani and US president Barack Obama had a historic direct phone call. This week, Rouhani met British Prime Minister David Cameron, the first direct meeting between...

The opportunity for candidates to put themselves forward for the presidential elections ended yesterday with dozens of figures from various ideological and political spectrums stepping up to the plate, days after the process of submitting and sorting the lists nominated for parliament was completed. With this, our country has...

A London-based Muslim Brotherhood leader on Wednesday denied reports that his group had received a donation from the British government. Mohamed Soudan, foreign relations chief for the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said his movement did not have any links with a charity coalition known as the Muslim Charities...

Palestinian residents in the buffer zone along the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip suffer the loss of their homes and source of income in every Israeli escalation. Palestinian farmer Mohamed Qudih, 60, and his wife Sabiha, 59, lost their house, which was destroyed by the Israeli occupation during...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Arab Peace Initiative proposed in 2002 as irrelevant and outdated after the dramatic changes in the Middle East, Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post reported on today. When asked about the initiative, he said: "The question is not the Saudi peace initiative. If...

Leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah said that despite his party's hostility towards "terrorist organisations", he rejects the international alliance formed and led by the US against the Islamic State (ISIS) and other organisations. He urged the participating countries to "stop funding and training these terrorist organisations and to...

Algeria will host a dialogue session between rival Libyan parties next month, Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra said. Lamamra expressed his country's willingness to welcome rivals Libyan political parties to the negotiating table, saying that he is "waiting for negotiations to begin in October in Algeria". The minister made the...