All Stories Archive

Hamas yesterday accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) security services of stepping up its campaign of arresting and summoning the Islamic movement's members in the occupied West Bank. In a statement, Hamas said that the PA security services arrested three of its members in the last 24 hours and summoned...

Leader of the Houthi rebels Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi hailed on Tuesday his movement's seizure of large parts of the Yemeni capital after four days of fighting last week. Rassd News Network quoted Al-Houthi as saying that the battle that led to his supporters' control over Sanaa was a "successful revolution...

Russia's Foreign Ministry criticised the airstrikes led by the US in cooperation with other countries that targeted the Islamic State (ISIS) organisation in Syria. According to the Anadolu news agency, a statement issued by the ministry described the airstrikes as "a violation of international law" and urged the international...

Spokesperson of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas Musheer Al-Masri said on Tuesday evening that his movement's commitment to the truce is based on how much the Israeli occupation is committed to implementing all of what was agreed upon during the indirect talks in Cairo. According to Anadolu news agency,...

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Tuesday that, "Israel does not negotiate with others, but dictates to them," Anadolu news agency reported. Erekat was speaking to journalists while accompanying Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly in New York. Commenting on Israel's killing of...

A member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Samira Halaykah, confirmed that the assassination of two members of Al-Qassam Brigades carried out by the Israeli army on Tuesday in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank was in coordination with the Palestinian Authority's (PA) security forces, Al-Resalah news...

The Syrian government stated on Tuesday that it was made aware in advance of the air strikes against Islamic State sites on its soil, and that it had received a message from US Secretary of State John Kerry, delivered by the Iraqi Foreign Minister, stating that the US and...

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the leader of the Strong Egypt Party, recently said that the alleged international organisational structure behind the Muslim Brotherhood was nothing more than an "illusion created by the Egyptian media". Aboul Fotouh accused the Egyptian media of trying to foster the idea that the Muslim...

A spokesperson for the High Commissioner for Refugees at the UN, Melissa Fleming, revealed that "Turkey received 138,000 refugees in three days, which is equivalent to what was received by Europe throughout the past three years," Anadolu news agency reported. During a press conference held in the Swiss city...

Five Iraqi soldiers survived a following an Islamic State (ISIS) suicide mission on their army base, the soldiers said a further 300 to 500 military personnel were missing and thought to be dead, kidnapped or in hiding following the attack in the Anbar province, the Washington Post said. The...

Airstrikes being launched by a US led coalition against Islamic State (ISIS) targets are "illegal", Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said. In an interview on American TV in New York City, where he will attend the 69th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Rouhani said the US...

It wasn't a shock when Ayman Nasser, the coordinator of the legal unit of the prisoner rights group Addameer was arrested by Israeli forces in the early hours of Thursday. This was his third arrest, the second that has occurred during his time with the organisation. For those working...

At the Labour party conference in Manchester, the party's leader Ed Miliband confirmed his support for a UN Security Council resolution regarding military strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria. Following US led airstrikes against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria overnight; Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to...

The rapid progress of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the villages surrounding the Ain Al-Arab (Kobani) region, located in the north-eastern province of Aleppo, has been striking. During the past few days, the Islamic State gained control over more than 100 villages, after they were controlled by the Kurdish...

Before his address at the UN General Assembly in New York, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gave a short speech at the Cooper Union, a university in downtown Manhattan, at an event sponsored by Churches for Middle East Peace. While some of the pre-event fury was led by pro-Israel...

Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard yesterday called for "taking new steps, including changes to our trade relations with Israel" in order to force it to make concessions in its talks with the Palestinians. Danish newspaper Jyllands- Posten reported Lidegaard calling for "imposing Danish and European sanctions on Israel", noting...

Despite Sunday's peace agreement in Yemen, the Houthi group still refuses to withdraw from sites they had previously controlled. Militants affiliated to the Houthis have stormed the home of activist and Nobel Peace prize winner Tawakkol Karman, as well as two homes owned by an advisor to the Yemeni...

An Islamic State (ISIS) affiliate group yesterday claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of a Frenchman in an area to the east of Algiers, calling on the French President Francois Hollande to halt his country's military campaign against the radical organisation in Iraq. The Jund Al-Khilafah (Caliphate Soldiers) group said...

Egypt's military backed President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi has said that reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) would not be carried out unless the group recognises the June 30 revolution and all consequent political, legal and constitutional arrangements. Chief Editor of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shorouk Emad El-Din Hussein reported a...

Palestinians in Gaza are to encounter further imperialist interference during the already compromised reconstruction process of the enclave. Following his discourse at the UN Security Council in which Israelis were erroneously declared "civilians" on an equal level with Palestinians, UN envoy Robert Serry has now announced the plan to...

Nowadays, America is intensifying its efforts for what it calls combatting terrorism. It is working very hard to establish an international coalition consisting mainly of Arab countries to combat terrorism, especially the Islamic State organisation (ISIS). It is apparent that America is speaking against terrorism extensively and is making...

Egypt says the war on the Islamic State (ISIS) must be extended to include the Muslim Brotherhood in the region, a diplomatic source told Al-Mesryoon website. According to the diplomat, Egypt has refused to join the US-led anti-ISIS alliance because of the complex political and economic situation in the...

The Egyptian prosecutor general has referred the General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood and 104 others for criminal investigations on charges of planning to occupy the Town Hall of the Ismailia governorate, the prosecutor's office said in a statement yesterday. The charges state that the Muslim Brotherhood planned to...

It is only natural for the Arab governments to support and even participate in the international alliance to face the Islamic State (ISIS). The issue for these governments is not a fear of the organisation itself, but because the war on ISIS will give them the chance to eliminate...

The King of Bahrain, King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, received British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and Chief of Defence Staff General Sir Nick Houghton on Monday at the Safriya Palace in the capital of Manama, Anadolu news agency reported. The news agency cited Bahraini reports that the king discussed...

As militia groups continue fighting over what is left of fragmented Libya, life in the country's capital Tripoli struggles on, "There is this constant uneasiness here," Khadija, a young former political science student, tells Middle East Monitor over Skype from the coastal city. The Libyan capital has seen weeks...

Turkey warned the international community that the former Iraq government's exclusion of Sunni's would lead to problems in the region, said Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu Monday evening in an interview broadcast by private channels, NTV and Star. Davutoglu stressed that neither Assad in Syria, nor former Iraqi Prime...

The Special Criminal Court in Riyadh yesterday sentenced three Saudis to death and 20 others to prison terms ranging from five to 25 years over charges of joining an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell in the kingdom, the Anadolu news agency reported. The same court also sentenced four Saudis to death...

UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) yesterday held a general debate on the "Human Rights Situation in Palestine and other Occupied Arab Territories". United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Flavia Pansieri introduced a report prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) into alleged...

The Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas said on Monday that lifting the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip is the only way to regain quiet for Israelis living in settlements along the Gaza periphery. This was the message from Hamas to Israeli settlers living around the Gaza Strip, who have...

The United States announced yesterday that it refuses to link talks over Iran's nuclear program with efforts to form an international alliance to fight the Islamic State (ISIS), the Anadolu news agency reported. Reuters quoted senior Iranian officials as saying that Tehran is ready to help the West in...

Artillery shelling in the Libyan city of Gharyan has resulted in the death of 180 members of the pro-Haftar militias and wounded 12 others, Russia Today (RT) sources said. RT said that a military source spoke on condition of anonymity in the city of Gharyan in the north-west of...

The Constitutional Committee in the Israeli Knesset approved on Monday a law that will prevent exchanging Palestinian prisoners for captured Israelis. Palestinian newspaper Al-Resalah reported that, "The Knesset unanimously approved a resolution aiming at restricting the chances of ending the life prison terms imposed on prisoners convicted of...

It is neither worthwhile nor sufficient for the Palestinian resistance to celebrate its great show of resistance during the war on Gaza and its success in preventing the success of Zionist schemes and Israeli aggressions on Gaza. On the contrary, it must consider the value of its military operations...

The Shia militia of Liwa Abu Al-Fadl Al-Abbas, formed during the conflict in Syria, has reportedly announced its rejection of US military intervention to fight the Islamic State in Iraq, arguing that the US is using this as a pretext to reoccupy Iraq. A spokesperson for the Abbas Brigade,...

Along one of the roads in the city of Ariha in the north of the occupied West Bank, merchants Khaldoun and Hassan regularly receive 30 tons of dates produced in the neighbouring Israeli agricultural settlements, in preparation for their transfer to one of the packaging factories built on the...

Sources that are following closely the situation of the Lebanese military officers who were kidnapped by the Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front in Syria have revealed that the Lebanese government is going to request for the Turkish side to take control over the negotiations with these organisations after the...

The Palestinian foreign ministry has strongly condemned the Israeli war on Palestinian water in the occupied West Bank, saying it is part of a series of actions leading to undermining the Palestinian existence in Area C, which is under full Israeli control. In a statement, the ministry said: "In...

I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that the Sanaa agreement signed between the state and the Houthis is considered one of the most important political documents in the modern history of Yemen. The agreement restructures the Yemeni political arrangement as a whole, moving the Houthis from the margin...

A judicial source said that one of the police officers who was killed today following the explosion which took place near the foreign ministry in Cairo was a witnesses in the case of the storming of the prisons that involves the ousted President Mohamed Morsi and 130 other defendants....

The crisis of hiring a lawyer to represent the ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi continued in today's session in the case of the prisons escape, in which the former leader and 130 others are being charged. The defendants are standing trial for their involvement in storming prisons during the...

Head of Hamas' Political Bureau Khalid Meshaal yesterday welcomed the call made by the Global Union for Muslim Scholars to continue the resistance until the liberation of Palestine. The union made the call during an event celebrating the "resistance's victory" held in Doha yesterday evening. Meshaal said his movement...

Iran has become the principal player in the Middle East region and that the United States should acknowledge the country's capabilities should it want to resolve the region's problems, the military advisor of the Iranian Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei Brig. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi said. Safavi added that Iran's...

A group of army officers attempted to assassinate Egypt's President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi by targeting an airplane carrying him to the United States with a missile, former intelligence officer Omar Afifi confirmed yesterday via his Facebook page. Afifi refuted the military spokesman's claims that the plane that accompanied Al-Sisi's...

It is not at all true that the conspiracy against the Syrian revolution and people began two or more years after the outbreak of the revolution, when the extremist groups joined the revolution and derailed it, making the world view the revolution as terrorism rather than a popular uprising....

One hundred days have passed since the leader of the bloody military coup, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, became president of Egypt- this is not counting the time he was ruling Egypt from behind the scenes for about a year after the elected president Mohamed Morsi was deposed. What has he...

Two British human rights workers have finally made it back to the UK following their unexpected stay with the Qatari security services. They were arrested while investigating abuses against migrant workers in the wealthy Emirate. After the usual protestations from Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the men's own Norwegian...

The emergence and success of Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq has been portrayed as arising from a vacuum stooped in Islamic ideology. An ideology purported to be the anti-thesis of everything liberal, pluralist and inclusive. Thus the killing of minorities, the beheading of journalist James Foley and the sexual...

No ransom was paid to release the Turkish hostages held by Islamic State (ISIS) militants, the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday. At a press conference held in Ankara, Erdogan said the release of hostages was a result of "diplomatic and political negotiations". He described their release as...

The Yemeni president yesterday signed a peace agreement with the Houthis in Sanaa, in the presence of a UN envoy. The Yemeni government and the Houthis agreed to: Form a technocratic government within 30 days Reducing fuel prices Form an economic committee within a week of forming the government...