The United Nations mission in Afghanistan confirmed Friday that at least 10 people were killed in a suicide bombing near the Foreign Ministry earlier this week.
On Wednesday a bomber blew himself up near the ministry in central Kabul, in an attack claimed by the local chapter of the Daesh terrorist group.
“We are continuing to look into the incident,” it said.
Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities, who have often tried to play down attacks challenging their regime, have said five people were killed in the attack.
The Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 brought an end to a two-decade war against U.S.-led forces, leading to a significant reduction in violence, but security has begun to deteriorate in recent months.
At least five Chinese nationals were wounded last month when gunmen stormed a hotel popular with Chinese business people in Kabul.
That raid was claimed by Daesh, as was an attack on Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul in December that Islamabad denounced as an “assassination attempt” against its ambassador.
Two Russian embassy staff members were killed in a suicide bombing outside their mission in September in another attack claimed by Daesh.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated the largest library complex in Istanbul on Friday, saying that it would serve as a cultural center for book lovers.
“The Rami Barracks, which we have renovated as a library, has an important place in our country’s history in the past 200 years,” the president said at the inauguration ceremony.
Dating back to the middle of the eighth century, the Rami Barracks is revived as the Rami Library after restoration, renovation and rebuilding works that lasted for around four years. The project for converting the Rami Barracks, which was registered as “cultural property” in 1972, into a national public library was announced by President Erdoğan in June 2018 during a fast-breaking dinner in the capital Ankara.
The Rami Library, which will be the largest library in Istanbul with a history of more than 250 years, has been designed as a large campus with individual and group reading halls, activity areas, workshop spaces and a disability center prepared for people with disabilities. It will also serve as a space for seminars, exhibitions and conversations.
The campus is set to appeal to everyone from children to young people, from university students to academicians, and will serve readers and researchers around the clock, with the library set to be open 24/7.
It is already possible to see the new look of the former barracks from the air, which have been transformed into a library.
Student Muhammet Talha Solgun, who said he plans on coming to the Rami Library with friends, noted, “My school is right across from the library.”
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According to the information obtained from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Rami Barracks were built in the period of Sultan Mustafa III (1757-1774) and renovated and expanded by Sultan Mahmud II between 1828 and 1829. The Barracks were used as Sultan Abdülmecid’s military headquarters during the Crimean War and gained their last form during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II.
They continued to serve the army during the first years of the republic and ended its military function in the 1960s. Later on, the building, which was transferred to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) in the 1980s, was used as a parking lot, football and sports field, and food warehouse.
As of 2021, data published by Turkish Statistical Institute (Turkstat) shows the number of libraries operating in Türkiye increased by 1.7% compared to 2020 and reached 34,555, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported. This number kept increasing over time since Turkstat’s report for 2017 revealed the country had around 29,000 libraries across the nation at the time.
In addition to the Presidential Library, which covers 125,000 square meters (1.35 million square feet) and has a seating capacity of approximately 5,500 people, some 612 university libraries, 1,252 public and 32,690 other libraries affiliated with formal and nonformal education institutions operate throughout the country.
Iranian activist Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has been sentenced to five years over “propaganda” and acts against national security, her lawyer told AFP on Monday.
Hashemi was arrested in the capital Tehran on September 27 for encouraging residents to demonstrate amid nationwide protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death.
“My client, Ms Hashemi, was sentenced to five years in prison by the preliminary court,” her lawyer Neda Shams said, adding she plans to appeal the verdict.
The 60-year-old former lawmaker and women’s rights activist was charged with “collusion against national security, propaganda against the Islamic republic and disturbing public order by participating in illegal gatherings”, the lawyer said.
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“The decision, which is not final, was communicated to me on Wednesday, and we will appeal it within the time frame allowed by law,” added Shams.
Hashemi has faced similar charges before, and in 2012 was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison for “propaganda against the Islamic republic”.
Last October, judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi said without elaborating she had been sentenced in March “to 15 months in prison and two years of additional punishment including the prohibition of activities on the internet”.
Hashemi’s late father, president between 1989 and 1997 who died in 2017, was considered a moderate and advocated improved ties with the West.
Iranian authorities say hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed and thousands arrested in connection with the protests, which they generally describe as “riots”.
Four people have been executed, and the judiciary has said 13 others have been sentenced to death over the unrest. Six of these defendants have been granted retrials.
Iran on Saturday executed two men for killing a paramilitary force member during unprecedented protests sparked by the death in custody of a young woman.
The latest hangings double the number of executions to four over the nationwide protests, which escalated since mid-September into calls for an end to Iran’s clerical regime.
Two men were put to death in December, sparking global outrage and new Western sanctions against Iran.
Judicial news agency Mizan Online reported, “Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, the main perpetrators of the crime that led to the martyrdom of Ruhollah Ajamian, were hanged this morning.”
Prosecutors said the 27-year-old militiaman was stripped naked and killed by a group of mourners who had been paying tribute to a slain protester, Hadis Najafi.
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The executions come in defiance of a campaign by international rights groups for the lives of the two men to be spared. Karami’s father had also begged the judiciary not to kill his son.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR), said both men “were subjected to torture, sentenced after sham trials… without the minimum standards for due process.”
Like other activists, he called for stronger international action after the latest executions.
On Twitter, Amiry-Moghaddam specifically urged “new and stronger sanctions against individuals and entities.”
Authorities have arrested thousands of people in the wave of demonstrations that began with the September death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22.
The Iranian Kurdish woman had been arrested by morality police for allegedly breaching the regime’s strict dress code for women.
– Fear for others – Ajamian belonged to the Basij paramilitary force linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
He died in Karaj, west of Tehran, on November 3 after being attacked with “knives, stones, fists, kicks” and dragged along a street, a judiciary spokesman said at the time.
The court of first instance had sentenced Karami and Hosseini to death in early December, Mizan said.
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On Tuesday the Supreme Court upheld the sentence.
Karami’s parents had in December issued a video pleading with the judiciary to spare his life.
“I respectfully ask the judiciary, I beg you please, I ask you… to remove the death penalty from my son’s case,” said Mashallah Karami, describing his son as a former national karate team member.
Karami’s father told Iranian media that a family lawyer had not been able to access his son’s case file.
Mohamad Aghasi, whom the family wanted to handle the case, wrote on Twitter that Karami had not been allowed to have a final meeting with his family and had foregone food and water in protest.
IHR gave Karami’s age as 22. Hossein was 39, according to another Norway-based rights group, Hengaw.
They were among 14 people courts have sentenced to death over the unrest, according to an AFP count based on official information.
Four have now been executed, two others have had their sentences confirmed by the Supreme Court, six are awaiting new trials and two others can appeal.
Dozens of other protesters face charges punishable by death, IHR said in late December.
British actor of Iranian origin Nazanin Boniadi, an ambassador for Amnesty International in the United Kingdom, said on Twitter that the “political cost of Iran executions” must increase.
Foreign nations must withdraw their ambassadors from Iran and call for a moratorium on executions and state violence against peaceful dissent, New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said.
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“We are mourning as a nation,” prominent US-based dissident Masih Alinejad said in a Twitter post. “Help us save others.”
– ‘Even more hardliners’ – Nearly four months into the authorities’ crackdown on the unrest triggered by Amini’s death, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday appointed a new police chief.
General Ahmad-Reza Radan took over from Hossein Ashtari, said a statement posted on the leader’s official website.
Khamenei ordered the police to “improve its capabilities”.
Iran expert Mehrzad Boroujerdi said before the announcement there had been “rumours that Khamenei has severely criticised the performance of Hossein Ashtari”.
Boroujerdi, vice provost and dean of Missouri S&T’s College of Arts, Sciences, and Education, told AFP on Wednesday that he expected people like Ashtari to be replaced by “even more hardliners to maintain a tight grip of the security forces”.
The latest executions were the first linked to the demonstrations in almost a month.
Iranian officials describe the protests as “riots” and accuse hostile foreign powers and opposition groups of stoking the unrest.
On December 12 Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, was hanged publicly from a crane after his conviction for killing two members of the security forces, Mizan reported.
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Rahnavard’s execution came four days after Mohsen Shekari, also 23, was put to death in connection with the wounding of a security forces member
The number of cruise passengers arriving in Türkiye exceeded the 1 million mark in 2022, a senior official said Thursday, marking the crucial industry’s complete rebound from the fallout of the pandemic.
Some 991 cruise ships docked at Turkish ports throughout last year, increasing more than 12 times compared to just 78 that arrived in 2021, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoğlu said in a statement.
The number of cruise passengers reached more than 1 million, Karaismailoğlu said, increasing 22 times versus 45,362 who arrived in the previous year.
The minister stressed that more cruise ships docked at Turkish ports in October alone than in the entire year 2021. He added that 206,484 passengers were brought in by 155 cruise ships in October – the month when the year’s highest number of passengers came onboard.
The minister said that Kuşadası on the country’s Western shores hosted the most cruise ships at 464 and 493,834 passengers last year. Some 143 ships docked at Istanbul’s Galataport – chosen as the port of the year that hosted about 220,082 passengers.
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Galataport is set to inject a shot in the arm of the crucial tourism industry that has been plagued by the coronavirus pandemic and is expected to energize cruise travel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.
The port has a goal of welcoming 25 million visitors per year, including 1.5 million cruise passengers.
Southwestern Bodrum Port ranked third with 98 ships and 95,462 cruise passengers. Karaismailoğlu highlighted that the northern Black Sea provinces of Sinop, Amasra and Trabzon also saw a significant rebound in cruise tourism.
Noting that the ports of Amasra and Ünye on the Black Sea hosted cruise ships for the first time, Karaismailoğlu said: “In 2022, a total of 7,906 passengers arrived in Sinop with 14 cruise ships.”
Some eight ships also docked at Amasra Port, with a total of 4,905 passengers, the minister informed.
“We will continue to invest in the development of cruise tourism,” Karaismailoğlu added.
Azerbaijan has appealed to the International Court of Justice to stop its neighbor Armenia from planting land mines in the Karabakh territory it once occupied and hand over information about the location of existing mines, booby traps and other explosives, according to a statement from the U.N. body Thursday.
Azerbaijan said “new evidence” had emerged that Armenia deliberately continued to lay land mines in “civilian zones in which displaced Azerbaijanis are slated to return” in its request for provisional measures in a case that has lasted years.
The court said Azerbaijan had asked it to order Armenia to take all necessary steps for the safe demining of towns and to “immediately cease to plant or to support the planting of land mines and booby traps.”
Karabakh is a source of a decadeslong conflict between the South Caucasus neighbors. The territory is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but was illegally occupied by Armenia for three decades until 2020.
Baku and Yerevan fought two wars over the territory in the 1990s and again in the autumn of 2020 when six weeks of particularly intense clashes claimed over 6,500 lives before a Russian-brokered truce ended the hostilities.
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Under the 2020 deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory, and Russia stationed a force of 2,000 peacekeepers in the region to oversee a fragile truce.
Baku has since been leading a reconstruction push in the region where dozens of Azerbaijani cultural and religious monuments, mosques and homes had been destroyed by Armenia. President Ilham Aliyev previously revealed that clearing the mines planted by Armenia, nearing 1 million according to preliminary estimates, would take nearly 30 years and would cost $25 billion.
The request by Azerbaijan is part of tit-for-tat cases filed at the World Court in 2021, where both Armenia and Azerbaijan have claimed the other country had violated the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which both states are signatories.
In emergency measures, the World Court in that year ordered both countries to prevent the incitement of racial hatred against each other’s nationals and to not do anything to aggravate the dispute while the court considered the case.
It was not clear if the court would hear the request for new provisional measures.
The World Court in The Hague, formally known as the International Court of Justice, is the U.N. court for resolving disputes between countries.
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At the end of 2022, tensions flared up again between the rival nations, this time involving the blockade of the Lachin Corridor in Karabakh where since mid-December, a group of Azerbaijani activists has been protesting illegal mining that has been causing environmental damage in the region. The protests erupted after representatives of Azerbaijan attempting to visit the areas where mineral resources are being illegally exploited were barred access to the area.
Yerevan has been accusing Azerbaijan of creating a “humanitarian catastrophe” by purposefully blocking the only road linking Armenia to the region, which houses thousands of Armenians. It also slammed the Russian peacekeeping contingent for “failing to fulfill its purpose of clearing the corridor.”
Baku has consistently rejected Yerevan’s accusations, with Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov stressing that obstacles to the use of the road are created by people who introduced themselves as “the leaders of local Armenians” and claims that the protests on the Lachin road posed the threat of a humanitarian crisis to the local Armenian population are baseless.
“Movement of citizens, vehicles and goods along the road remains unchanged. Furthermore, there are no obstructions to the supply of goods for the use of local residents or the necessary medical services,” his office informed.
According to the trilateral memorandum of January 2021, Armenia must remove its forces from liberated lands in Karabakh where Baku says Yerevan is “abusing the Lachin road for military provocations and obstructing the opening of all transport communications” in the region.
Kremlin, as a longtime mediator, also expressed concern over the situation in the disputed corridor, urging the sides to “strictly comply with all the provisions of the Statement of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia dated Nov. 9, 2020.”
Noting that “provocations” against Russian peacekeepers were “unacceptable” and would “harm” the process of Azerbaijani-Armenian normalization, Moscow assured it would continue taking “consistent steps to resolve the situation.”
The Israeli army killed two Palestinians in a West Bank raid on Monday as it demolished the homes of two Palestinians accused of killing an Israeli soldier, Palestinian officials said.
Clouds of smoke engulfed the small village as two houses were levelled with explosives shortly after sunrise on Monday.
The army later said “a violent riot was instigated” when troops entered the village.
“Rioters burned tyres, shot live fire and hurled rocks, Molotov cocktails and explosive devices at the forces, who responded with riot dispersal means and live fire,” the statement said. “Hits were identified,” it added.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that 18 others were arrested by the Israeli army in overnight raids across the West Bank.
After he was killed, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades — the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’ Fatah party — claimed responsibility.
Ahmed Abed, 23, and Abdul Rahman Subhi Abed, 22, whose family homes were demolished Monday, were also killed in the September clashes in which Falah died.
– New government – Israel regularly destroys the homes of individuals it blames for attacks on Israelis.
But Israel says the practice is effective in deterring some Palestinians from carrying out attacks.
The two deaths are the first in the West Bank for 2023.
According to United Nations data, 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since the 2002-2005 uprising, known as the Second Intifada, with at least 150 Palestinians and 26 Israelis killed across Israel and the West Bank, including Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
The new government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most right-wing in Israel’s history, has sparked fears of a military escalation in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.
Two of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners, sworn in on Thursday with the rest of the new government, will take charge of critical powers in relation to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Russia criticized “public attacks” on its peacekeepers deployed around Karabakh as unacceptable, a day after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian criticized the troops.
Azerbaijani civilian environmental activists have blockaded the only road between Armenia and the predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave since Dec. 12. Karabakh officials say food, medicine and fuel are running short.
On Thursday, Armenian news site Hetq quoted Pashinian as accusing the Russian peacekeeping force of “becoming a silent witness to the depopulation of Nagorno-Karabakh,” having failed to reopen the road.
Pashinian said that if the Russian troops were unable to ensure stability and security in Karabakh, they should make way for a United Nations peacekeeping mission.
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Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said: “We consider any public attacks and provocations against our peacekeepers as unacceptable and deliberate actions that cause tangible harm to the process of Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization.”
Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but parts of its inhabitants are now predominantly ethnic Armenians. The region was occupied by Armenia in a war in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, resulting in ethnic Azerbaijanis being driven out of the region.
In 2020, Azerbaijan liberated its territory in and around the enclave after a second war that ended in a Russian-brokered cease-fire. Russian peacekeepers deployed along the Lachin corridor, the only road route between Armenia and Karabakh.
An Israeli prosecutor has charged two soldiers for attempting to bomb a Palestinian home in the occupied West Bank, in a rare indictment over an offense against Palestinians.
Prosecutors charged the two soldiers with making an explosive device, aggravated intentional assault, intentional harm to property and impeaching the investigation, the Israeli army announced late Thursday. The court ordered the soldiers to remain in detention until a hearing next month. They were arrested on Nov. 28.
The indictment said the two defendants acted out of revenge for the abduction of the body of an Israeli schoolboy in the flashpoint West Bank city of Jenin on Nov. 22.
The seizure of the boy’s body spread alarm among Israel’s Druze community. As anger rose, videos circulated on social media of Druze men threatening to take revenge against Palestinians.
Amid the standoff over Fero’s body, the two defendants – reportedly Druze soldiers – conspired with another soldier to assemble an explosive device, the military said on Thursday. The soldiers identified a Palestinian home near the West Bank city of Bethlehem as their target and lobbed stones at it. A few days later, they threw the explosive into the crowded house “with the intent of starting a fire in the home,” the military added.
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The military said the attack caused no casualties. It said it opened an investigation into the incident following a complaint from the Palestinian homeowner.
The military said it would issue an indictment against the third soldier in the coming days. The three soldiers were not named. The military did not comment on the penalties they could face.
Such a swift military prosecution is highly unusual and underscored the seriousness of the case. Rights groups long have alleged that Israeli military investigations into the killings of Palestinians reflect a pattern of impunity. Earlier this month, Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip over the last five years have been indicted in less than 1% of the 1,260 complaints against them.
Critics have repeatedly accused Israeli forces of using excessive firepower in the West Bank as violence in the occupied territory reaches its highest level in years. The Israeli military has conducted near-daily raids into Palestinian cities and towns, killing more than 150 Palestinians. The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions have also been killed.
Meanwhile, Palestinian attacks using knives, bombs and shootings have killed 29 Israelis in 2022, both soldiers and civilians, Israel’s Foreign Ministry reported.
Most of the Palestinians were killed during Israeli military raids and fighting in the northern West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus. On Friday, the Israeli military said it entered Nablus to arrest Ahmed Massari, a wanted 19-year-old Palestinian militant from the Lion’s Den group, a new militant group led by young fighters from the city.
Palestinians shot at Israeli soldiers and hurled stones and explosive devices at Israeli vehicles, and the Israeli military unleashed tear gas and live fire. The streets were ablaze with gunfire and burning tires.
The Palestinian Health Ministry later reported that eight Palestinians were wounded by flying shrapnel from bullets
Azerbaijan’s foreign minister said that his country does not obstruct traffic in the Lachin corridor, which connects Armenia to Karabakh.
In a phone talk with his Estonian counterpart Urmas Reinsalu, Bayramov pointed out that Azerbaijan put forward a number of initiatives to restore relations with Armenia, including proposals for a peace agreement, but the process was hampered by Armenia.
As examples of “gross violations” of the Nov. 10, 2020, trilateral statement that ended the latest conflict between two former Soviet republics, he cited the presence of Armenian armed units on Azerbaijan’s territory, illegal entry of citizens of third states into the territory of Azerbaijan through the Lachin road that is intended only for humanitarian purposes, and mine threats from Armenia.
He also informed his counterpart about the illegal exploitation of natural resources of Azerbaijan, which lasted for about 30 years of occupation and intensified in recent years, noting Azerbaijani civil society protests against it in the Lachin corridor.
“Minister Jeyhun Bayramov informed that the claims of Armenian residents about the ‘blockade’ of the Lachin road as a result of the closure of the Azerbaijani side, and the creation of a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in the region are completely unfounded, and vehicles use the road freely,” the statement said.
He added that obstacles to the use of the road are created by people who introduced themselves as “the leaders of local Armenians.”
The sides also exchanged views on other regional and bilateral issues of mutual interest.
The two former Soviet states of Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a 44-day war in the fall of 2020 over Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.
The war, which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal, saw Azerbaijan liberate several cities and over 300 settlements and villages that had been occupied by Armenia for almost 30 years.
Russia expresses concern over Lachin The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday expressed concern over the situation in the Lachin corridor.
The Russian side, in particular the leadership of the Russian Peacekeeping Contingent, continues to take consistent steps to resolve this situation, spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a written statement published on the ministry’s website.
Zakharova criticized “provocations” against Russian peacekeepers, saying Moscow considers attacks against them as “unacceptable and deliberate actions that cause tangible harm to the process of Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization.”
“We call on Baku and Yerevan to strictly comply with all the provisions of the Statement of the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia dated Nov. 9, 2020.
“We note that the Lachin corridor should be used only for the purposes indicated in this document. We hope that the parties will come to agreements concerning the development of ore deposits in the region,” she stressed.
Azerbaijani nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at the Lachin corridor have been protesting the “illegal exploitation of natural resources” and other illegal activities by Armenia, but they have not “closed” or blocked the corridor, according to Azerbaijan.
Israel’s military says it has filed “severe indictments” against two soldiers who threw an improvised explosive at a Palestinian house in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for the kidnapping of the body of an Israeli teenager last month.
Palestinian fighters had (Watch Video Here) seized the body of an Israeli Druze high schooler from a hospital in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin where he had been taken after a car accident. The body was later returned. The Druze are an Arab religious minority in Israel whose members are conscripted into the armed forces.
“The defendants and an additional soldier assembled an improvised explosive and threw it into a crowded house,” the military said on Thursday. “The act was committed with the intent of starting a fire in the home as a form of revenge for the kidnapping of the body of a young Israeli in Jenin.”
No one in the house was wounded, according to residents.
The third soldier will also be indicted in the coming days, the military said. (Watch Video Here)
The trial and conviction of Israeli soldiers for crimes committed against Palestinians is a rare occurrence as Israeli soldiers very seldom face prosecution.
According to the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, data for the 2019-20 period showed that only 2 percent of complaints filed by Palestinians against Israeli forces for abuse lead to prosecutions.
On the opposite end, almost all of the cases and trials of Palestinians in Israeli military courts – 99.74 percent – end in a conviction. (Watch Video Here)
There has been an intensification of violence in the West Bank since March, with the United Nations labelling 2022 as the deadliest year for Palestinians in the territory since 2006.
Israel intensified the military raids it has long conducted in the West Bank, leading to dozens of killings and hundreds of arrests, after a series of attacks by Palestinians.
Israel also regularly withholds the bodies of Palestinians who die in Israeli prisons, with the intention of using them as bargaining chips during negotiations (Watch Video Here) with armed groups. Palestinians held protests earlier this week in the West Bank calling for the bodies of loved ones to be released.
After a stint in opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu will return to power in Israel on Thursday, leading what analysts describe as the most right-wing government in the country’s history.
Senior security and law enforcement officials have already voiced concern over its direction, as have Palestinians. (Watch Video Here)
“It becomes for Netanyahu’s partners a dream government,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute think-tank, told AFP.
“And one side’s dream is the other side’s nightmare,” he said, adding: “This government is expected to take the country in a completely new trajectory.”
Netanyahu, 73, who is fighting corruption allegations in court, already (Watch Video Here) served as prime minister longer than anyone in Israeli history, including a record 12-year tenure from 2009 to 2021 and a three-year period in the late 90s.
He was ousted from power in the spring of 2021 by a motley coalition of leftists, centrists and Arab parties headed by Naftali Bennett and former TV news anchor Yair Lapid.
It didn’t take him long to come back.
Netanyahu will present his new government to the Israeli parliament for a ratification vote at 11:00 am (0900 GMT). (Watch Video Here)
Following the election on November 1, Netanyahu entered into negotiations with ultra-Orthodox and extreme-right parties, among them Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism formation and Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party.
Both have a history of inflammatory remarks about the Palestinians.
They will now take charge respectively of Israeli settlement policy in the West (Watch Video Here) Bank, and of the Israeli police, which also operate in the territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
‘Thirst for power’ Even before the government was sworn in, the majority parties passed laws that would allow Aryeh Deri, a key ally from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, to serve as a minister despite a previous guilty plea to tax offences.
They also voted to expand powers of the national security minister, a portfolio set to be handed to Ben Gvir who will have authority over the police.
The assignment comes despite Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s warning against the “politicisation of law enforcement”. (Watch Video Here)
On Monday, in a phone call to Netanyahu, armed forces chief Aviv Kochavi expressed his concerns regarding the creation of a second ministerial post in the defence ministry for Smotrich, who will oversee management of civilian affairs in the West Bank.
Israel’s ally the United States has also spoken out.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Washington would oppose settlement expansion as well as any bid to annex the West Bank.
But in a statement of policy priorities released Wednesday, Netanyahu’s Likud party said the government will pursue settlement (Watch Video Here) expansion.
About 475,000 Jewish settlers — among them Smotrich and Ben Gvir — live there now in settlements considered illegal under international law.
Analysts said Netanyahu offered the extreme-right vast concessions in the hope he might obtain judicial immunity or cancellation of his corruption trial. He is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, allegations he denies.
Denis Charbit, professor (Watch Video Here) of political science at Israel’s Open University, told AFP the government “is the addition of Netanyahu’s political weakness, linked to his age and his trial, and the fact that you have a new political family of the revolutionary right that we had never seen with this strength in Israel”.
Smotrich and Ben Gvir “have a very strong thirst for power” and their priority remains the expansion of West Bank settlements, Charbit said.
‘Explosion’ Ben Gvir has repeatedly visited Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam. It is also Judaism’s holiest, known as the Temple Mount. (Watch Video Here)
Under a historical status quo, non-Muslims can visit the sanctuary but may not pray there. Palestinians would see a visit by a serving Israeli minister as a provocation.
“If Ben Gvir, as minister, goes to Al-Aqsa it will be a big red line and it will lead to an explosion,” Basem Naim, a senior official with the Islamist movement Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip, told AFP.
Israel and Hamas fought a war in May 202l. This year, other Gaza militants and Israel exchanged rocket and missile fire (Watch Video Here) for three days in August.
In the West Bank, violence has surged this year and many are afraid of more unrest.
“I think that if the government acts in an irresponsible way, it could cause a security escalation,” outgoing Defence Minister Benny Gantz said on Tuesday, expressing fear over the “extremist direction” of the incoming administration. (Watch Video Here)
Kneeling in front of a turbanned judge in a tiny room at the Ghazni Court of Appeal in eastern Afghanistan, an old man sentenced to death for murder pleads for his life.
The 75-year-old admits to having shot dead a relative — out of revenge, he (Watch Video Here) says, because of rumours he had sexual relations with his daughter-in-law.
Under eye-for-eye sharia punishments, officially ordered by the Taliban’s supreme leader for the first time last month, he faces public execution — with the sentence to be carried out by a relative of his victim.
“We have made peace between the families,” the old man pleads.
“I have witnesses who can prove that we have agreed on compensation.” (Watch Video Here)
AFP had rare access to a court in Ghazni to see how sharia justice is being administered since the Taliban returned to power in August last year.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent building a new judicial system after the Taliban were overthrown in 2001 — a combination of Islamic and secular law, with qualified prosecutors, defence lawyers and judges.
Many women were recruited into the system, overseeing cases involving hardcore Taliban militants as well as bringing more gender balance to family courts.
All that has been scrapped by the Taliban, with trials, sentences and punishments now overseen by all-male clerics. (Watch Video Here)
Islamic law, or sharia, acts as a code of living for Muslims worldwide, offering guidance on issues such as modesty, finance and crime. However, interpretations vary according to local custom, culture and religious school of thought.
Taliban scholars in Afghanistan have employed one of the most extreme interpretations of the code, including capital and corporal punishments little used by most modern Muslim states.
The difference between the system of the former government and today “is as big as the earth and the sky”, says Mohiuddin (Watch Video Here) Umari, head of the Ghazni court, between sips of tea.
‘God guides us’ Officials in Ghazni have shunned the use of its formal Western-style courtroom, and proceedings instead take place in a small side room, with participants sitting on a carpeted floor.
The cramped room, heated by an old wood stove, has a bunk bed in a corner, on which religious books and a Kalashnikov rifle are placed.
The young judge, Mohammad Mobin, listens impassively before asking a few questions. (Watch Video Here)
He then orders another hearing in a few days — giving the old man time to gather witnesses who can testify that the families have agreed to what he says.
“If he proves his claim, then the judgement can be revised,” Mobin says.
If not, “it is certain that the qisas (an eye-for-an-eye) enshrined in the sharia will apply”. (Watch Video Here)
Mobin, surrounded by thin, hand-written files held together by string, has been at the appeals court since the Taliban’s return in August 2021.
He says around a dozen death sentences have been handed down in Ghazni province since then, but none has been carried out — partly because of the appeals process.
“It is very difficult to make such a decision and we are very careful,” the 34-year-old tells AFP. (Watch Video Here)
“But if we have certain evidence, then God guides us and tells us not to have sympathy for these people.”
If the old man’s appeal fails, the case goes to the Supreme Court in Kabul, and finally to supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who validates all capital sentences.
That was the case earlier this month in the western city of Farah when the Taliban carried out their first public execution since returning to power — an act widely (Watch Video Here) condemned by rights groups and foreign governments and organisations.
‘Showing transparency’ Ghazni court head Umari insists the sharia system is much better than the one it replaced, even while conceding that officials need more experience.
Afghanistan was ranked 177th out of 180 of the most corrupt states in 2021 by the NGO Transparency International and its courts were notorious for graft, with cases held up for years.
“The Islamic Emirate is showing transparency,” says Umari, using the Taliban’s designation for Afghanistan. (Watch Video Here)
Many Afghans say they prefer their chances in sharia courts with civil cases, arguing they are less prone to the corruption that bedevilled the system under the previous Western-backed government.
However, jurists argue that criminal cases are more prone to a miscarriage under the new system.
“Some cases, if decided quickly, are better,” says a now-unemployed prosecutor, who asked not to be identified for fear of (Watch Video Here) retribution.
“But in most cases, speed leads to hasty decisions.”
Umari insists all verdicts are thoroughly reviewed, adding “if a judge has made a mistake we investigate”.
But the old man in Ghazni who was sentenced to death says he had no lawyer, and his appeal lasted less than 15 minutes.
“The court should not have sentenced me to death,” he says. (Watch Video Here)
“I have been in prison for more than eight months. They (the family) have agreed to spare me,” he adds, clasping a string of prayer beads in his handcuffed hands.
Eight members of the Syrian National Army were killed in clashes with regime troops that raged Monday in the country’s northwest, the opposition group Faylaq al-Sham said.
The group said six fighters were killed and three more wounded in an offensive launched by Syrian regime forces backed by the PKK’s Syrian wing, the (Watch Video Here) YPG on Sunday night.
It later said two more fighters had been killed in the clashes in the Afrin region near the Turkish border, bringing the death toll to eight.
Faylaq al-Sham is an alliance of pro-Turkey opposition groups considered close to the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. (Watch Video Here)
An Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent said that the fighting died down early Monday evening.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a vast network of sources, said the regime troops and YPG took control of two Faylaq al-Sham positions in intense fighting involving heavy weapons. (Watch Video Here)
Exchanges of fire occur regularly between Syrian regime forces and pro-Turkish opposition fighters who control part of the border.
Faylaq al-Sham has taken part in Turkish offensives launched since 2016 in northern Syria, mainly against the YPG.
Monday’s fighting was unrelated to recent Turkish threats to launch a ground offensive in northern Syria; several sources told AFP. (Watch Video Here)
Christian Aid and ActionAid on Monday became the latest foreign aid groups to suspend operations in Afghanistan after the country’s Taliban rulers ordered all NGOs to stop women staff from working.
Announcements by the two groups take to six the number of bodies who have paused their operations in the country. (Watch Video Here)
Christian Aid was “rapidly seeking clarity… and urging the authorities to reverse the ban”, head of global programmes Ray Hasan said in a statement.
“Whilst we do this, we are unfortunately pausing the work of our programmes,” he added.
ActionAid said that if women were banned from working with the group it would “prevent us from reaching out to half of the population that are already reeling from hunger”.
“ActionAid has made the difficult decision to temporarily halt most of its programmes in Afghanistan until a clearer picture emerges,” it said in a statement. (Watch Video Here)
Afghan men stand in queues to receive food aid from a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Kabul on December 25, 2022. – Several foreign aid groups announced on December 25 they were suspending their operations in Afghanistan after the country’s Taliban rulers ordered all NGOs to stop women staff from working. (Photo by – / AFP)
On Sunday Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE all announced they were putting their operations on hold. (Watch Video Here)
The International Rescue Committee, which provides emergency response in health, education and other areas and employs 3,000 women across Afghanistan, also said it was suspending services.
“Millions of people in Afghanistan are on the verge of starvation,” Christian Aid’s Hasan said on Monday.
“Reports that families are so desperate they have been forced to sell their children to buy food are utterly heartbreaking,” he said, adding that a ban on women aid workers would “only curtail our ability to help the growing number of people in need”. (Watch Video Here)
The ban is the latest blow against women’s rights in Afghanistan since the Taliban reclaimed power last year.
Less than a week ago, the hardline Islamists also barred women from attending universities, prompting global outrage and protests in some Afghan cities. (Watch Video Here)
The anti-government protests which began on September 17 in Iran have reached a hundred days as protesters vowed not to back down despite the government clampdown on them.
CNN reports the demonstrations which had claimed more than 500 lives including 69 children are the longest-running anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution has shaken the regime. (Watch Video Here)
The unrest began when a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini died in police custody on September 16 having been arrested and detained for breaching women’s hijab dress code.
Recently, two protesters were executed by hanging and at least 26 others face the same fate, after what Amnesty International calls “sham trials.”
Some Iranian celebrities have taken irrevocable steps to support protests, leading to their arrest or exile, as Taraneh Alidoosti, a well-known Iranian actress, is being held in the notorious Evin prison for condemning the execution of a young protester. (Watch Video Here)
Previously, she published a photo of herself without a mandatory headscarf, holding a sign with the protesters’ slogan.
Another prominent Iranian actress who has left the country, Pegah Ahangarani, told BBC Persian: “Both sides have been radicalised, the regime in its crackdown and people in the film industry in their response.
“Iran cannot go back to pre-Mahsa Amini era,” Ahangarani said. (Watch Video Here)
Hamid Farrokhnezhad, another well-known Iranian actor, moved to the US earlier this month and immediately called Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a “dictator”, comparing him to Franco, Stalin and Mussolini.
Ali Karimi, one of Iran’s most celebrated former footballers living in Dubai, also supported the protests. He said Iranian intelligence agents threatened to kill him, eventually leading him to move to the US.
Iran’s Generation Z has been at the forefront of these protests, defying strict religious rules and setting new trends such as burning headscarves. (Watch Video Here)
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers ordered all national and international NGOs to stop their women employees from working after “serious complaints” about their dress code, the Ministry of Economy told AFP on Saturday. (Watch Video Here)
The order threatened to suspend the operating licences of NGOs that failed to implement the directive.
The latest restriction comes less than a week after the Taliban authorities banned women from attending universities, prompting global outrage and protests in some Afghan cities. (Watch Video Here)
While the Taliban had promised a softer form of rule when they returned to power in August last year, they have instead imposed harsh restrictions on women — effectively squeezing them out of public life.
“There have been serious complaints regarding the non-observance of the Islamic hijab and other rules and regulations pertaining to the work of females in national and international organisations,” said a notification sent to all NGOs, a copy of which was obtained by AFP and confirmed by a spokesman for the economy ministry. (Watch Video Here)
“The ministry of economy… instructs all organisations to stop females working until further notice,” the notification said.
“In case of negligence of the above directive, the license of the organisation which has been issued by this ministry will be cancelled,” it added.
Two international NGOs confirmed that they had received the notification.
“We are suspending all our activities from Sunday,” a top official at an international NGO involved in humanitarian work told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“We will soon have a meeting of top officials of all NGOs to decide how to handle this issue.” (Watch Video Here)
Dozens of national and international NGOs continue to work in several sectors across remote areas of Afghanistan, and many of their employees are women.
‘Deplorable’ Order
Another official working at an international NGO involved in food distribution said the ban was a “big blow to women staff”. (Watch Video Here)
“We have women staff largely to address humanitarian aid concerns of Afghan women,” the official said. (Watch Video Here)
“How do we address their concerns now?”
Rights group Amnesty International tweeted that the ban was a “deplorable attempt to erase women from the political, social and economic spaces” in Afghanistan. (Watch Video Here)
The order is the latest assault on women’s rights in the country.
On Tuesday, the authorities banned all women from attending universities, triggering condemnation from the United States, the United Nations and several Muslim nations. (Watch Video Here)
The Group of Seven industrialised democracies said the prohibition may amount to “a crime against humanity”.
That ban was announced less than three months after thousands of women were allowed to sit university entrance exams. (Watch Video Here)
In response to the order, around 400 male students on Saturday boycotted an exam in the southern city of Kandahar — the de facto power centre of the Taliban — a rare protest staged by men. (Watch Video Here)
The students’ walkout was dispersed by Taliban forces who fired into the air, a lecturer at Mirwais Neeka University where the protest happened told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Taliban had already barred teenage girls from secondary school, and women have been pushed out of many government jobs, prevented from travelling without a male relative and ordered to cover up outside of the home, ideally with a burqa. (Watch Video Here)
They are also not allowed to enter parks or gardens.
The Taliban have also resumed public floggings of men and women in recent weeks, widening their implementation of an extreme interpretation of Islamic law
A small group of Afghan women staged a defiant protest in Kabul on Thursday against a Taliban order banning them from universities, an activist said, adding that some were arrested.
In the latest move to restrict human rights in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s minister for higher education on Tuesday ordered all public and private universities to bar women from attending.
But“They expelled women from universities. Oh, the respected people, support, support. Rights for everyone or no one!” chanted the protesters as they rallied in a Kabul neighbourhood, footage obtained by AFP showed.
A protester at the rally told AFP “some of the girls” had been arrested by women police officers. Two were released, but several remained in custody, she added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Around two dozen women dressed in hijabs, some wearing masks, could be seen raising their hands and chanting slogans as they marched through the streets.
Women-led protests have become increasingly rare in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over the country last August, after the detention of core activists at the start of the year.
Participants risk arrest, violence and social stigma for taking part.
The women had initially planned to gather in front of Kabul University, the country’s biggest and most prestigious educational institution, but changed locations after the authorities deployed a large number of security personnel there.
Tuesday’s late-night announcement triggered international outrage, with the United States, the United Nations and several Muslim nations denouncing it.
The ban caused disbelief, coming less than three months after thousands were allowed to sit for university entrance exams.
“Afghan girls are a dead people… they are crying blood,” said Wahida Wahid Durani, a journalism student at the University of Herat, who was not at the protest.
“They are using all their force against us. I’m afraid that soon they will announce that women are not allowed to breathe.”
Since seizing power, the Taliban have imposed many restrictions on women.
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Most teenage girls are barred from secondary school, women have been pushed out of many government jobs, prevented from travelling without a male relative and ordered to cover up outside of the home, ideally with a burqa.
They are also not allowed to enter parks or gardens.
The Taliban have returned to public floggings of men and women in recent weeks, widening their implementation of an extreme interpretation of Islamic law.
The Supreme Court said that 44 people – including six women – were flogged in Badakshan and Uruzgan provinces on Thursday after being found guilty of various offences
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Carlo Ancelotti’s team successfully added to their four cups from 2014 to 2018, and their triumph meant European teams have won the past 10 editions of the tournament.
The Taliban’s treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan may amount to “a crime against humanity”, G7 foreign ministers said Thursday, demanding the ban on women attending university be reversed.
“Taliban policies designed to erase women from public life will have consequences for how our countries engage with the Taliban,” the ministers of the club of rich nations said in a statement, after holding virtual talks.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who promised a softer rule when they returned to power last year, have drawn global outrage with their announcement this week banning women from higher education.
The hardline Islamists had already barred girls from attending secondary schools in March.
Both decisions should be reversed “without delay”, the G7 ministers said.
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“Gender persecution may amount to a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute, to which Afghanistan is a state party,” they said, in a reference to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“The G7 members stand with all Afghans in their demand to exercise their human rights consistent with Afghanistan’s obligations under international law,” they added.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, whose country holds the G7 rotating presidency, called the university ban another step “towards the Stone Age”.
“Women and girls in Afghanistan aren’t just not allowed in universities anymore, they aren’t allowed in parks, they aren’t allowed to step outside the door unveiled, they aren’t allowed to learn,” she told a Berlin press conference.
“The Taliban are taking away everything that makes a life for women and girls in Afghanistan. And living is more than just surviving,” she said.
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This was disclosed by the Police Public Relations Officer, Bauchi State Command, Ahmed Wakil, a Superintendent of Police, in a terse Whatsapp message on Sunday.
Iranian authorities announced that they have started reviewing the decades-old mandatory headscarf law, as it struggles to suppress more than two months of protests linked to the dress code.
Protests have swept Iran since the Sept. 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish descent arrested by the morality police for allegedly flouting the Shariah-based law.
Demonstrators have burned their head coverings and shouted anti-government slogans. Since Amini’s death, a growing number of women have not been observing the headscarf policy, particularly in Tehran’s fashionable north.
“Both parliament and the judiciary are working (on the issue)” of whether the law needs any changes, Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said.
Quoted by the ISNA news agency, he did not specify what could be modified in the law by the two bodies, which are largely in the hands of conservatives.
The review team met on Wednesday with parliament’s cultural commission “and will see the results in a week or two,” the attorney general said.
President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday said Iran’s republican and Islamic foundations were constitutionally entrenched.
“But there are methods of implementing the constitution that can be flexible,” he said in televised comments.
The headscarf became obligatory for all women in Iran in April 1983, four years after the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed monarchy.
It remains a highly sensitive issue in a country where conservatives insist it should be compulsory, while reformists want to leave it up to individual choice.
After the law became mandatory, with changing clothing norms it became commonplace to see women in tight jeans and loose, colorful headscarves.
But in July this year Raisi, an ultra-conservative, called for the mobilization of “all state institutions to enforce the headscarf law.”
Many women continued to bend the rules, however.
In September, Iran’s main reformist party called for the mandatory headscarf law to be rescinded.
The Union of Islamic Iran People Party, formed by relatives of former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, on Saturday demanded the authorities “prepare the legal elements paving the way for the cancellation of the mandatory hijab law.”
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The opposition group is also calling for the Islamic republic to “officially announce the end of the activities of the morality police” and “allow peaceful demonstrations,” it said in a statement.
Iran accuses its sworn enemy the United States and its allies, including Britain, Israel and Kurdish groups based outside the country, of fomenting the street protests which the government calls “riots.”
A general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps this week, for the first time, said more than 300 people have lost their lives in the unrest since Amini’s death.
Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, on Saturday said the number of people killed during the protests “exceeds 200.”
Cited by state news agency IRNA, it said the figure included security officers, civilians and “separatists” as well as “rioters.”
Oslo-based nongovernmental organization Iran Human Rights on Tuesday said at least 448 people had been “killed by security forces in the ongoing nationwide protests.”
U.N. rights chief Volker Turk said last week that 14,000 people, including children, had been arrested in the protest crackdown.
The campaign of arrests has snared sportspeople, celebrities and journalists.
Among the latest figures to be arrested was film star Mitra Hajjar, who was detained at her home on Saturday, according to the reformist newspaper Shargh.
The Supreme National Security Council said that in addition to the human toll, the violence had caused damage valued at trillions of rials (millions of dollars).
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The police said the 250kg bomb was discovered on Tuesday by a contractor working on the third crossing over the River Yare and exploded as workers attempted to diffuse it
The Free Syrian Army had no clue that a militant killed in an operation in Syria’s southern Jassem village back in mid-October was the leader of the Daesh terrorist group, an activist said.
Syrian opposition activists and state media apparently did not know that the man killed was Daesh leader Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and identified him as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi.
Conducted by opposition fighters allied with Syrian regime troops, the operation lasted two days and started on Oct. 14, the day after a bombing on a bus in a suburb of the capital Damascus. That attack killed 18 Syrian soldiers and wounded at least 27 others.
Syrian state media at the time reported that authorities received information that Daesh members have hideouts in the northern neighborhoods of Jassem, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Damascus. Syrian troops were joined by former opposition forces who had reconciled with the government in 2018 and were allowed to stay and keep their weapons in the southern province of Daraa, and together they began an operation against the suspected militant hideouts, state news agency SANA said.
Amid the intensity of the fighting, an Iraqi Daesh commander known as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, made his family escape from the house where he was staying and once they were out and he was totally surrounded, the Iraqi citizen detonated an explosive belt he was wearing, killing himself, according to Rami Abdurrahman who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor.
In a nearby house, opposition forces surrounded and blew up the hideout of two other Daesh militants, a Lebanese and a Syrian, killing both of them, Abdurrahman said.
According to Syria’s state news agency SANA, three opposition forces were killed and seven others were wounded in the battle in Jassem that lasted from the late hours of Oct. 14 until the next day. During the fighting, Syrian troops imposed a curfew on the village, SANA said.
The operation did not get much attention outside Syria at the time, but on Wednesday, a Daesh spokesperson released an audio saying that the group’s leader al-Qurayshi was killed in battle recently without giving further details.
“We were taken by surprise that the man killed was the leader of Daesh,” said Ahmed al-Masalmeh. He is an opposition activist from Daraa who now lives in Jordan but remains in contact with opposition forces back home. He added that the information they had at the time was that the man killed was Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi who was believed to be the Daesh commander in southern Syria.
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Al-Masalmeh said the opposition in southern Syria had reliable information that a senior Daesh commander was based in the country’s south after another commander was killed in the summer in the region.
Hours after Daesh made the announcement, the U.S. military said al-Qurayshi was killed in mid-October adding that the operation was conducted by the Syrian opposition in Daraa.
The latest killing shows that the three Deash leaders, who were all Iraqis, were killed in Syria in recent years outside the areas the militant group once purported to rule. Two were killed by the U.S. military in Syria’s opposition-held northwestern province of Idlib while the third was killed in southern Syria far from the former domains of the so-called caliphate.
Little had been known about al-Qurayshi, who took over the group’s leadership following the death of his predecessor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, in a U.S. raid in February in northwest Syria.
The group’s founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hunted down by the Americans in a raid in Idlib in October 2019.
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The scarcity of the redesigned Naira notes had crippled activities in the country with Nigerians daily keeping vigil at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) posts to cash money for their daily…
The footage of the raid carried out by the military opposition in Syria’s southern Daraa province, in which Daesh terror group’s leader Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was allegedly killed, was released on Thursday.
The footage shows moments of the raid with heavy weapons on the house where the Daesh leader was allegedly located.
On Oct.15, the military opposition in Syria announced they killed a group of Daesh members in Daraa.
The opposition group, when contacted by Anadolu Agency (AA), said that they carried out an operation at three different locations in Daraa on Oct. 14-15 and they eliminated about 30 Daesh terrorists.
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On Wednesday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said that a former Daesh leader was killed in Syria’s Daraa province last month.
Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed in mid-October during a Free Syrian Army operation, the command said.
“CENTCOM and our partners remain focused on the enduring defeat of ISIS,” spokesperson Col. Joe Buccino said in a statement, using an alternate acronym for Daesh.
The Daesh terror group earlier confirmed the death of its leader in an audio statement. The death is the second of a Daesh leader following a February U.S. raid in northwestern Syria that led to the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the predecessor of the man killed last month
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Scarcity of fuel as well as naira crunch has continued to inflict unprecedented hardship on Nigerians since the announcement of the naira redesign policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria…
Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government on Saturday reiterated its support for public flogging after the punishment’s reintroduction sparked an international outcry.
The de facto Afghan authorities condemned a recent statement by the United Nations Human Rights Office and some Western diplomats made regarding mass public floggings.
In a statement, the Taliban government’s chief spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said that calling the Islamic Penal Code of flogging “inhumane and cruel act” is a disrespect to Islam and a violation of international principles.
“Countries and organizations should not allow people to make irresponsible and provocative statements on their behalf about the blessed religion of Islam,” Mujahid added.
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Since returning to power last year, the Taliban have started the gradual resumption of their strict interpretation of Islam. The group has also curtailed human rights and imposed restrictions on women such as blocking teenage girls from getting an education.
On Wednesday, the Taliban punished 14 convicts with flogging in a sports stadium in the country’s province of Logar while hundreds of people were in attendance.
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At least four Palestinians were reported killed in clashes with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Two brothers were killed by Israeli fire in Kafr Ein, near Ramallah, while a third man died of bullet wounds to the head fired by Israeli troops in Beit Ummar, near the flashpoint city of Hebron, the ministry said.
The health ministry identified the dead brothers as Jawad Abdulrahman Rimawi, 22, and Dhafer Abdul Rahman Rimawi, 21.
In the meanwhile, the Palestinian official news agency Wafa named the dead man from the Beit Ummar area as Mufid Mahmud Khalil, 44.
The man was seriously wounded in the head by Israeli troops while dozens of others were wounded in al-Khalil city, according to Palestinian officials.
The Palestinian Red Crescent previously said the medical teams intervened in 22 people injured in the conflict and that nine of the wounded were hit by live bullets, five by plastic bullets, and eight people were affected by tear gas.
Eyewitnesses told Anadolu Agency that clashes erupted between Israeli soldiers that raided the town and dozens of Palestinians who tried to prevent them stones, adding that the Israeli army fired live and rubber bullets, and tear gas at the Palestinian youth.
Israeli medics and the army, however, said Israeli troops shot dead three Palestinians and an alleged car-ramming attacker.
The army confirmed its troops had fired on “rioters” who attacked soldiers in two separate clashes in the West Bank overnight.
The 20-year-old woman soldier was “moderately injured and evacuated to a hospital for medical treatment” following the suspected car-ramming north of Jerusalem, the army said.
Jerusalem’s Shaare Tzedek hospital confirmed the alleged attacker had been killed.
The West Bank has suffered spiraling violence this year, with near-daily Israeli army raids leading to scores of deaths – of Palestinian fighters and also civilians – while Jewish settlers have been increasingly targeted by at times deadly Palestinian violence.
Commenting on the Beit Ummar clash, the Israeli army said it had opened fire on “rioters” who “hurled rocks and improvised explosive devices at the soldiers” after two vehicles got stuck during an “operation patrol” in the area.
The Israeli army said “a violent riot was instigated by a number of suspects,” during “routine” overnight activity in the Kafr Ein area.
“The suspects hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails toward the soldiers, who responded with riot dispersal means and live fire,” an army statement said, adding that the military was “aware” of reports of two fatalities.
“The incident is under review,” the army said.
Palestinian Authority civil affairs minister Hussein al Sheikh described the killing of the two brothers as an “execution in cold blood.”
Near the West Bank settlement of Migron, the army reported “a ramming attack”.
The Magen David Adom emergency response agency said its staff treated “a 20-year-old female injured in a car-ramming terror attack,” and took her to Shaare Tzedek hospital.
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Boiling point On Monday, the United Nations envoy for Middle East peace, Tor Wennesland, warned the situation in the West Bank was “reaching a boiling point”.
“High levels of violence in the occupied West Bank and Israel in recent months, including attacks against Israeli and Palestinian civilians, increased use of arms and settler-related violence, have caused grave human suffering,” he told the Security Council.
This week, the army announced it had made more than 3,000 arrests this year as part of Operation Break the Wave, a campaign it launched following a series of deadly attacks against Israeli civilians.
The U.N. says more than 125 Palestinians have been killed across the West Bank this year.
Israel has occupied the territory since the Six-Day War of 1967. An estimated 475,000 Jewish settlers now live in the territory, alongside some 2.9 million Palestinians, in communities considered illegal under international law.
Tuesday’s violence came as veteran hawk Benjamin Netanyahu continued negotiations to form what could be the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, following a general election earlier this month.
On Friday, Netanyahu signed an agreement with lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir that promised the far-right firebrand the new post of national security minister, with responsibility for the border police in the West Bank.
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Regardless of who the terrorists collude with, Türkiye is determined to continue its strategy to root out terrorism at its source, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday at the launching ceremony of the third MILGEM Ada-class corvette built for Pakistan by Türkiye at the Istanbul Shipyard.
“No matter who terrorists collude with, Türkiye will always hold them accountable for every drop of blood they shed,” Erdoğan said at the ceremony. “No one can teach lessons to Türkiye, which is the only NATO ally that fought Daesh hand to hand and was victorious,” he continued, referring to the cross-border anti-terror operations in northern areas of Iraq and Syria, near the Turkish border.
During the event, Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif jointly inaugurated the third of four MILGEM corvette ships manufactured by Türkiye for the Pakistan Navy. The MILGEM (National Ship) marine platform project is a Turkish warship program that aims to develop multipurpose corvettes and frigates that can be deployed in a range of missions.
Erdoğan said Pakistan has always been highly respected by the Turkish people and that the ship-building projects are among the important pillars of bilateral cooperation with Pakistan in the field of the defense industry.
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Early on Sunday, Türkiye launched Operation Claw-Sword, a cross-border aerial campaign against the terror group YPG/PKK, which has illegal hideouts across the Iraqi and Syrian borders where they plan and sometimes execute attacks on Turkish soil.
Turkish officials underscored that the operation is in line with international law and the nation’s right of self-defense under United Nations resolutions.
In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union – has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children and infants. The YPG is the terror group’s Syrian offshoot.
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