Category: 2. Middle East

JERUSALEM: The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned on Sunday an Israeli decision to recognize more than a dozen new settlements in the occupied West Bank, upgrading existing neighborhoods to independent settlement status.

The decision by Israel’s security cabinet was a show of “disregard for international legitimacy and its resolutions,” said a statement from the Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry.

The West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967,…

DEIR AL-BALAH: Israeli strikes across the southern Gaza Strip killed at least 26 Palestinians overnight into Sunday, including a Hamas political leader and several women and children. The military sent ground troops into part of the southern city of Rafah as thousands of Palestinians heeded new evacuation orders.

Gaza’s…

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement called on its Islamist rivals Hamas on Saturday to relinquish power in order to safeguard the “existence” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“Hamas must show compassion for Gaza, its children, women and men,” Fatah spokesman Monther al-Hayek said in a message sent to AFP from Gaza.

He called on Hamas to “step aside from governing and fully recognise that the battle ahead will lead to the end of Palestinians’ existence” if it remains in power…

Sudan’s military said Saturday it seized several key buildings in central Khartoum from paramilitary control after army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan promised “full liberation” following the recapture of the presidential palace.

Army spokesman Nabil Abdallah said the military was “continuing to pressure” the Rapid Support Forces throughout the city centre, giving a list of buildings recaptured including the Central Bank, state intelligence headquarters and the Sudan National Museum.

Despite its…

Israel launched a new wave of strikes on Lebanon in response to a rocket attack from across the border on Saturday, as militant group Hezbollah denied responsibility for the launch.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered “a second wave of strikes against dozens of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon”, the defence ministry said, in the largest escalation since a November 27 ceasefire.

It said the strikes were “a response to rocket fire towards Israel and a…

Israel launched air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon on Saturday after intercepting cross-border rocket fire, with Lebanese state media reporting a woman was killed.

The Israeli army said three rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, setting off air raid sirens in the region for the first time since a November ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned the country risked being dragged into a “new war” after months…

When he arrived in the town of Masaoudiyeh in northern Lebanon earlier this month, fleeing massacres on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, Dhulfiqar Ali had escaped death not once but twice.

He is among thousands of Syrians who have fled across the border after armed groups descended on the Syrian coastal heartland of ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority and killed hundreds of civilians, mostly Alawites.

“They didn’t even speak Arabic… they knew only: ‘Alawites, pigs, kill them’,”…

ANKARA — Demonstrators across Turkey defied protest bans on Friday night, with hundreds of thousands rallying at Istanbul City Hall and thousands more taking to the streets elsewhere to protest the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

Imamoglu, a popular opposition figure and potential presidential contender against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was detained on Wednesday on terrorism and corruption charges. His arrest has sparked protests in dozens of provinces, with supporters…