Category: 2. Middle East

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi backed week-long nationwide strikes by truckers Wednesday as a “loud call” to the authorities, after arriving home from his triumph at the Cannes film festival.

Truck drivers across Iran were striking for a seventh day on Wednesday in a stoppage rare in its length and magnitude, seeking better conditions in a sector crucial for the economy in the Islamic republic.

After starting last week in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, the strike action has spread…

Iran on Wednesday executed a man convicted of spying for Israel, in defiance of pleas from his family and activists for his life to be spared after what they described as an unfair trial.

Pedram Madani, 41, was hanged in Ghezelhesar prison in Karaj outside Tehran after earlier this week being transferred from Evin prison in the capital where he had been held following his arrest in 2019.

He is the second man to be executed by Iran on charges of spying for Israel within two months, amid a surge…

Israeli occupation forces on Tuesday raided several currency exchange shops in the cities of Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus, Qalqilya, and Tubas, Ramallah, Hebron, and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. 

Witnesses indicated that Israeli forces carried out searches and vandalism inside these shops.

Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper claimed the Israeli army raids targeted funds intended to finance attacks against Israelis.

According to the newspaper, during the raids;…

More than 170 people died of cholera in war-torn Sudan in one week, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday, Anadolu agency reported.

A ministry statement said that 2,700 people contracted the disease in just one week, of whom 172 died.

The ministry said 90 per cent of the cholera cases were recorded in Khartoum State, where energy and water supplies were disrupted in recent weeks amid fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

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News Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com

The Government Media Office in Gaza (GMO) said Tuesday the Israeli-backed plan to distribute aid in Gaza’s “buffer zones” has failed miserably, as thousands of hungry Palestinians rushed to an aid distribution site amid chaos. Thousands of Palestinians overran an aid distribution site run by a controversial Israeli and American group; to take food parcels, while Israeli occupation forces fired and wounded a number of them. 

The Israeli army announced that…

The Yemeni Houthi group announced on Tuesday evening that it had carried out 22 military operations against Israel since the beginning of May, describing it as the “most painful” month for Tel Aviv.

A video graphic aired by the Houthi-operated Al-Masirah TV channel described May as “the hottest, most severe, and most painful month for the Israeli enemy,” though it did not provide comparative data from earlier months.

It added that “since the start of…

The UN on Wednesday condemned a US-backed aid system in Gaza after 47 people were injured during a chaotic food distribution that saw shots fired by the Israeli military.

The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid a hunger crisis coupled with intense criticism of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a shadowy group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory.

With the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel entering its 600th day on Wednesday,…

French activists dyed a Paris fountain red Wednesday to symbolise what they called the “bloodbath” of Palestinians in Gaza.

Activists from Oxfam and Amnesty International poured dye into the Fontaine des Innocents in the heart of the French capital, while others held placards saying “Cease fire” and “Gaza: stop the bloodbath”.

“This operation aims to denounce France’s slow response to an absolute humanitarian emergency facing the people of Gaza today,” the activists, which included the French…

Nearly 380 writers from the UK and Ireland, including Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, penned an open letter Wednesday denouncing what they called Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza and urging a ceasefire.

The letter called on “our nations and the peoples of the world to join us in ending our collective silence and inaction in the face of horror,” they wrote in a letter published on the Medium website.

“The use of the words ‘genocide’ or ‘acts of genocide’ to describe what is happening in Gaza is no…