Category: 2. Middle East

Tribal and clan representatives in Syria’s southern province of Suwayda announced Saturday they have withdrawn armed elements from the city in compliance with a ceasefire agreement, Anadolu reports.

“Following consultations with all members of Suwayda’s clans and tribes, we have decided to adhere to the ceasefire, prioritize reason and restraint, and allow the state’s authorized institutions the space to carry out their responsibilities in restoring…

DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Residents reported calm in the Syrian city of Sweida on Sunday after the Islamist-led government declared that Bedouin fighters had withdrawn from the predominantly Druze city and the United States stepped up calls for an end to fighting.

There was no sound of gunfire on Sunday morning, according to a resident speaking from the city outskirts, while a Druze source in the region said there was calm in most areas.

Kenan Azzam, a dentist, described the situation on Sunday…

NICOSIA (Reuters) -Greek and Turkish Cypriots on Sunday marked the 51st anniversary of Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus, an event that split the island and continues to shape geopolitics in the region.

Air raid sirens wailed across the southern Greek Cypriot populated parts of Cyprus at 0530 local time (0230 GMT), the hour Turkish troops landed on the northern coast in a military intervention triggered by a brief Greece-inspired coup.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was due to attend…

From his monitoring station on a remote hill in the occupied West Bank, water operator Subhil Olayan keeps watch over a lifeline for Palestinians, the Ein Samiyah spring.

So when Israeli settlers recently attacked the system of wells, pumps and pipelines he oversees, he knew the stakes.

“There is no life without water, of course”, he said, following the attack which temporarily cut off the water supply to nearby villages.

The spring, which feeds the pumping station, is the main or backup water…

Dozens of Syrians from minority communities rallied on Saturday in London and Paris, calling for action to protect the Druze in their Sweida heartland, where sectarian violence has killed hundreds.

In central London, around 80 protesters chanted “God protect Druze” and “Stop supporting Jolani”, referring to Syrian interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa’s nom de guerre, which he had abandoned after his Islamist group seized Damascus late last year.

Demonstrators in the British capital held up placards…

Sudan’s Prime Minister Kamil Idris on Saturday pledged to rebuild Khartoum on his first visit to the capital, ravaged by more than two years of war, since assuming office in May.

Touring the city’s destroyed airport, bridges and water stations, the new premier outlined mass repair projects in anticipation of the return of at least some of the millions who have fled the violence.

“Khartoum will return as a proud national capital,” Idris said, according to Sudan’s state news agency.

The war…

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) -U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called on Saturday for the perpetrators of an attack on a Palestinian church in the occupied West Bank blamed on Israeli settlers to be prosecuted, calling it an “act of terror”.

Huckabee said he had visited the Christian town of Taybeh, where clerics said Israeli settlers had started a fire near a cemetery and a 5th-century church on July 8.

“It is an act of terror, and it is a crime,” Huckabee said in a statement,…

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called reports of aid seekers in the Gaza Strip being killed while waiting for food and water “completely indefensible,” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported Saturday, Anadolu reports.

“And I certainly have said to, for example, (Israeli) President (Isaac) Herzog, who I’ve known for a long period of time, that Israel is losing support by its own actions, and that some of its actions are…

LONDON (Reuters) -Fifty-five people were arrested at a rally for the banned Palestine Action group outside Britain’s parliament on Saturday, London’s Metropolitan Police said.

The crowd in Parliament Square had been waving placards supporting the group that was banned this month under anti-terrorism legislation, the force said in a post on X.

People from the rally, some wearing black and white Palestinian scarves, were taken away in police vans.

British lawmakers proscribed the group earlier…

Smoke rose from burning houses in south Syria’s Sweida on Saturday and an Arab tribal fighter vowed to “slaughter” residents as deadly clashes with Druze fighters persisted.

Just hours earlier, Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa had announced an immediate ceasefire, but Bedouins and tribal fighters who are allied with the Syrian authorities pushed on in the west of the Druze-majority city.

“Go forward, tribes!” said fighter Abu Jassem, addressing fellow combatants in the area, where the…