A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 767 jet made an emergency landing in the kingdom’s Muslim holy city Medina on Sunday, injuring 29 people, the airline and aviation authority said. The Saudia aircraft was travelling from Iran’s second city of Mashhad…
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Middle-East News and Press Releases
A bomb exploded in central Kabul on Saturday evening in a district housing several embassies and NATO’s military headquarters, but no casualties were immediately reported, officials said. The apparent insurgent strike was the second of the day in Afghanistan…
Iraq has lost Fallujah to Al-Qaeda-linked fighters, a senior security official said Saturday, putting militants back in control of the city in Anbar province where American forces repeatedly battled insurgents. And fighting in Anbar killed 65 people…
The five Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staffers seized by an unknown group in northern Syria this week are Belgian, Danish, Peruvian, Swedish and Swiss nationals, the humanitarian organisation said Saturday. “We can confirm that our personnel who have…
Hundreds of Lebanese took to the streets of the northern city of Tripoli on Saturday to protest the torching of a decades-old library owned by a Greek Orthodox priest. The demonstrators held up banners that read “Tripoli, peaceful town” and “This is…
A newly formed Syrian rebel alliance has declared war on the powerful Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and joined other opposition groups in battling the extremists. “We, the Army of the Mujahideen, pledge to defend ourselves…
Six Taliban suicide attackers launched an assault on a joint Afghan-NATO base in the east of Afghanistan on Saturday, killing one NATO soldier during a prolonged firefight, officials said. One attacker in an explosives-packed vehicle blew himself up…
An Al-Qaeda-linked Saudi suspect detained in Lebanon is being held in a military hospital because “he is in poor health”, a medical official told AFP Friday. Another official familiar with the investigation said the interrogation of Majid al-Majid “…
Al-Qaeda-linked militants advanced Friday into new areas of one major Iraqi city and held part of another, after days of violence sparked by the removal of an anti-government protest camp. Parts of Ramadi and Fallujah, west of Baghdad, have been held…
Israeli former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s health was in “slow, gradual” decline on Friday, according to the hospital where he has been in a comatose state for eight years. “Tests show a slow, gradual deterioration in the functioning of his vital…
2 January 2014 – The United Nations today called on all parties in Lebanon to show restraint following the second…
31 December 2013 – The top United Nations humanitarian official today expressed concern about the deteriorating situation in the Syrian…
Al-Qaeda-linked militants were on Thursday in control of more than half of the Iraqi city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi, a security official and witnesses said. “Half of Fallujah is in the hands of ISIL (the Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and…
Violence in Iraq surged in 2013 to its worst level in five years, fuelled by widespread discontent among the Sunni Arab minority and Syria’s civil war, figures released Wednesday showed. Bombs tore through markets, cafes, football fields and mosques…
Israel released early Tuesday 26 Palestinian prisoners, a Palestinian official told AFP, in accordance with commitments made to revive US-brokered peace talks. “Two vans carrying (18) prisoners left Ofer prison and were headed to Ramallah” in the West…
29 December 2013 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged maximum restraint by all sides after Sunday’s rocket attack on Israel from…
The families of Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks appealed Monday against the imminent release of long-serving Palestinian prisoners as part of US-brokered peace talks, media reported. The Supreme Court has always rejected such appeals. Israeli…
28 December 2013 – The deadline set for the removal of the most critical chemical weapons material from Syria for…
Saudi Arabia’s religious police has warned against celebrating the New Year’s Eve in the ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom, the local Okaz daily said on Sunday. The Commission of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, known unofficially as…
The Israeli military fired a barrage of shells into southern Lebanon in retaliation after two Katyusha-style rockets crashed into an open field on Sunday, officials and reports said. The attacks struck uninhabited areas of both Israel and Lebanon without…