News/Middle East

Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) soldiers march during the 29th anniversary celebrations in Juba yesterday. South Sudan will soon acquire anti-aircraft missiles to defend its territory against air attacks it says are frequently carried out by ...

TEHRAN: Iran hardened its tone against a plan to unite Bahrain with Saudi Arabia, calling on its people to protest tomorrow against what it described as a US plot to annex the tiny Gulf archipelago. The Islamic Propagation Coordination Council, whic...

tripoli: Seven people were killed and more than 20 others wounded as gunmen yesterday raided the oasis town of Ghadames on the border with Algeria, Libya’s government spokesman said. “There were clashes in the city of Ghadames,” Nasser Al Mana...

RAMALLAH: A new Palestinian government in the West Bank featuring 11 new faces was sworn in yesterday at a ceremony in Ramallah, in a move which angered the Hamas government in Gaza. Ministers, including returning prime minister Salam Fayyad, took th...

CAIRO: Foreign observers of Egypt’s first real leadership contest will be unable to say whether the process is free and fair because their movements are being restricted by election authorities, one of the groups supposed to be monitoring the vote ...

CAIRO: A candidate in Egypt’s first post-revolt presidential election pulled out of the race yesterday to support former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, state media reported.Mohammed Fawzi Eissa, a lawyer for several ministers from ousted president H...

  Baghdad: Victims’ families and witnesses yesterday accused Iraqi Vice President Tareq Al Hashemi of masterminding killings at the opening of his trial in absentia on charges he says are politically-motivated. Hashemi, one of the country’s to...

TEHRAN/manama: Iran warned yesterday that Riyadh’s plans to form a union with Manama would deepen the crisis in Bahrain, a day after Saudi Arabia told Tehran to keep out of its relations with the tiny Gulf kingdom. “Any kind of foreign intervent...

riyadh: Saudi Arabia’s Labour Ministry has started taking practical steps towards scrapping the sponsorship system, Al Eqtisadiah daily reported on Monday, citing deputy labour minister Ahmed Al Humaidan. Under Saudi law, foreign workers have a Sa...

JUBA: Heavy rains coming soon in Sudan and South Sudan will add to the woes of civilians after a border conflict and civil war forced thousands to flee their homes, aid agencies warned yesterday. “We’re on the path from crisis to catastrophe,” ...

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia yesterday launched a tender process to build a new metro system in the capital of Riyadh in an effort to ease congestion on the city’s gridlocked roads. The Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA) invited international consortia t...

BEIRUT: At least 46 people were killed in violence across Syria yesterday, including 20 gunned down by regime forces while attending the funeral of a man killed the previous day, a monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ...

RAMALLAH: Standing up to Israel through non-violent resistance can produce encouraging results, Palestinians said yesterday, after a prisoner hunger strike produced some Israeli concessions. The deal under which some 1,600 Palestinian prisoners agre...

DUBAI: Iran has hanged a man it said was an agent for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad whom it convicted of killing one of its nuclear scientists in 2010, Iranian state media reported yesterday. Tehran has accused Israel and the United States of as...

CAIRO: The face of Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister beams down from huge billboards on major highways promising “Egypt for everyone”, but Ahmed Shafiq is polarising voters ahead of next week’s presidential poll. For some, his government e...

ALGIERS: Algeria yesterday declared its ruling party for the past 50 years the victor in a parliamentary election, going against the tide of the “Arab Spring” which has transformed its neighbours. The governing elite in Algeria, which supplies a...

DUBAI: Bahraini police fired tear gas and birdshot during overnight clashes with protesters demanding the release of jailed opposition activists, wounding several demonstrators, witnesses said yesterday. The clashes broke out in Shia villages around...

BEIRUT: Syrian forces foiled an attempted suicide car bombing with 1,200kg (2,640 pounds) of explosives in the northern city of Aleppo yesterday, state television said, a day after two bombs in the capital Damascus killed at least 55 people. The wou...

GAZA: Hundreds of Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli jails said yesterday they would shun vitamin supplements and prison clinics in an escalation of their mass protest against detention conditions. “We swear we will not retreat. We are poten...

  RIYADH: The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia yesterday sacked one of his advisers, an outspoken critic of the sexes mingling outside the home, something banned in the kingdom. The state news agency SPA...

KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti judicial tribunal investigating graft allegations has cleared the former prime minister Sheikh Nasser Al Mohammad Al Sabah of any wrongdoing in a series of financial transactions made abroad, the law firm representing him said yeste...

DAMASCUS: A hand here, a leg there, part of a crushed face, the scene in central Damascus is apocalyptic, as emergency workers fill nylon bags with what is left of dozens of people killed by two suicide bombers. Moving among them, dazed, people surv...

KHARTOUM: Neither the United Nations nor the African Union can impose its will on Sudan, President Omar Hassan Al Bashir said yesterday, after fresh fighting along the border with South Sudan. “We will implement what we want and, what we do not wa...

DUBAI: Bahraini opposition activists said they blocked roads with burning tyres yesterday to demand the release of women prisoners, many of them locked up during more than a year of protests against the island kingdom’s rulers. Bahrain’s interio...

ALGIERS: Algeria yesterday held its first polls since the Arab Spring amid deep voter disaffection, with the ruling party confident of victory and its Islamist allies hoping for a strong showing. As it does for every vote, state television launched ...

DUBAI: Caught out by last year’s Arab Spring uprisings, the region’s media are still coming to terms with their new-found freedom from the strong-arm tactics of now toppled dictators, participants in a Dubai conference say. “Turmoil, chaos, ch...

CAIRO: Egypt’s military rulers appointed four new cabinet ministers yesterday in a mini-reshuffle that fell far short of the demands of the Islamist-dominated parliament for a change of government. Islamists have been clamouring for a new premier ...

JERUSALEM: Israel’s prison service has offered to ease restrictions on Palestinian prisoners in a bid to end a mass hunger strike that has left several detainees close to death, sources said yesterday. Just under 1,600 Palestinian prisoners are cu...

ABU DHABI: Amnesty International has said that two Emirati Islamists detained in an undisclosed location in the United Arab Emirates could be at risk of “torture or other ill-treatment”, and called for their immediate release if they are only hel...

KUWAIT CITY: A controversial Kuwaiti MP was yesterday barred from entering parliament for two weeks for spitting on a colleague inside the chamber amid allegations he was drunk. MPs unanimously agreed to apply the internal charter on Mohammad Al Juw...