Category: 2. Middle East

Uzbekistan are heading to next year’s World Cup for the first time in the country’s history, a feat that caps years of progress in a part of the world not known for its footballing prowess.

The Central Asian nation qualified for football’s premier international tournament on Thursday thanks to a 0-0 draw with the United Arab Emirates — enough to seal the achievement with one game to spare.

“I cannot convey my feelings. I am very, very happy — for the first time in 34 years the Uzbekistan…

For the first time in his short life, Imad Dib, orphaned by the Gaza war, was preparing to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha without his parents.

“Dad would buy us a sheep, but now we are alone,” the 11-year-old said.

Before the war, he said, “I loved Eid so much, I was excited for it each year, to be able to celebrate and wear new clothes,” he said of the Eid tradition, looking weary in his patched-up shoes.

Every day, the boy returns to the ashes and charred tarp, which are all…

A CNN investigation found that Israeli troops opened fire on crowds of Palestinians near an aid distribution site in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, leaving dozens of casualties, Anadolu reports.

Citing more than a dozen witnesses, CNN said Israeli troops shot at crowds in volleys of gunfire that occurred sporadically.

Dozens were shot dead in Gaza after Israeli forces opened fire on multiple occasions on Palestinians seeking aid brought in by the Gaza…

The first direct Saudi flight landed in Syria on Thursday after a 12-year suspension, local media said, Anadolu reports.

According to the Syrian state news agency SANA, the Saudi Flynas airliner arrived at Damascus International Airport from Riyadh after years of interruption.

In April, a delegation from Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation conducted a routine tour of the airport before resuming flights with Syria.

In 2012, most airlines stopped…

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets under a heavy police presence for Jerusalem’s annual Pride march Thursday, a decade after the murder of a teenager by a Jewish extremist during the same event.

The fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Shira Banki on July 30 that year, in an attack that also wounded six others, prompted police to step up their surveillance of Pride festivities in Jerusalem in the years that followed.

Thursday’s march snaked through central Jerusalem, with participants carrying…

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli attacks killed at least 37 people on Thursday, as a US-backed aid group reported it had resumed operations after a one-day hiatus.

The Israeli military has recently stepped up its campaign in Gaza in what it says is a renewed push to defeat Hamas, whose October 2023 attack sparked the war.

But Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva rejected the term “war” to describe the conflict in the devastated Palestinian territory, accusing Israel instead of…