News/Middle East

  Kuwaiti opposition candidate Faisal Al Meslem (centre) celebrates with supporters following his victory in the parliamentary elections in Kuwait City yesterday. KUWAIT:  Kuwait’s Islamist-led opposition took control of the Gulf state’s pa...

  TEHRAN: Iran has its “own threats” to respond to any military attack or sanctions against its oil exports, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said yesterday. “In response to threats of oil embargo and war, we have our own threats whic...

Arbil: The Iraqiya bloc sent a “positive signal” by ending its parliament boycott, and its eventual return to the cabinet depends on how Iraq’s premier responds, the country’s fugitive vice president said. Tareq Al Hashemi, a Sunni, is accus...

ISTANBUL:  A Turkish prosecutor has begun investigating a 2007 pledge by the army to protect secularism, resurrecting a controversy that ultimately gave the Islamist-rooted ruling party the upper hand in its long-running power struggle with the mili...

  RAMALLAH: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal will meet tomorrow in Qatar, Fatah party spokesman Azzam Al Ahmad said yesterday. Abbas and Meshaal “will discuss forming a government and political questions after th...

  Protesters and police throw stones at each other during clashes near the Interior Ministry in Cairo yesterday. CAIRO: A second day of clashes with Egyptian police left two protesters dead in Cairo yesterday as anger against the ruling military...

  Demonstrators hold a vandalised poster of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as they take part in a protest against Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad after Friday prayers in Talbiseh, near Homs, yesterday. UNITED NATIONS: UN Security Coun...

  BEIRUT: The Syrian army is slowly disintegrating as troop morale plummets and more soldiers defect to join rebels fighting a regime crackdown against dissent, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army said yesterday. “The regular army is in a pitif...

  RABAT: Morocco’s Communications Minister Mustapha Khelfi called yesterday for talks and a return to calm after up to 160 people were hurt in clashes between police and youths protesting against high unemployment. The mid-week clashes in the no...

  A Kuwaiti woman casts her vote in the Parliamentary elections at a polling station in Kuwait City yesterday. KUWAIT: Kuwaiti opposition candidates were set to make gains in a snap parliamentary election held yesterday in the Gulf Arab country....

  BEIRUT: Emboldened by a revolt against President Bashar Al Assad, residents coated many streets of the Syrian city of Hama with red paint yesterday to commemorate for the first time a massacre committed 30 years ago by forces loyal to his fathe...

BEIRUT: A Syrian dissident was killed by security forces before his body was thrown off the rooftop of his home in front of his wife and children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday.The Britain-based monitoring group said the inci...

NEW YORK: Activists protested yesterday outside the luxury New York hotel where they believe Yemen’s embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh is staying while seeking medical treatment. The Yemeni leader’s whereabouts have not been confirmed since...

JUBA: The president of South Sudan warned yesterday of renewed conflict with former foes in north Sudan if bitter oil negotiations do not include a deal on other key issues, including the contested Abyei region. “It would not be fair to my people ...

  ALGIERS: Algeria will hold a parliamentary election in the first half of May, the first in the north African country since a wave of popular uprisings in the region, the prime minister announced yesterday. “In line with the law, the elections w...

Port said:  Port Said residents horrified by the football violence that left 74 people dead in their city accused police of incompetence yesterday, some alleging a plot to enflame nationwide unrest. Troops were stationed around the sprawling northe...

  Egyptian protesters evacuate a woman suffering from teargas in Cairo yesterday where Egyptian police fired tear gas at protesters to prevent them from reaching the interior ministry headquarters, amid mounting anger over the previous day’s de...

  Palestinian demonstrators hold signs about the situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails at the Erez checkpoint, during a visit of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday. GAZA CITY: Angry protester...

CAIRO: Seventy-three people were killed and at least 1,000 injured yesterday after a soccer pitch invasion in the Egyptian city of Port Said, a health ministry official said, in an incident that one player described as “a war, not football”. Yest...

  Kuwait’s ant-riot policemen clash with tribesmen outside Al Watan TV, a local television station, in Kuwait City yesterday. KUWAIT CITY: More than 20 people were wounded when Kuwaiti riot police clashed with tribesmen who stormed a local tel...

  TRIPOLI: Rival militias fought a gun battle near office buildings and a five-star hotel in the centre of the Libyan capital yesterday, underscoring how volatile the country still is three months on from Muammar Gaddafi’s death.     A report...

VIENNA: Senior U N nuclear inspectors plan another trip to Iran soon after holding what both sides described as “good” talks about suspicions that the Islamic Republic is seeking the means to develop atomic weapons.     The talks represented ...

  ANKARA: Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed yesterday an American author’s boycott of the country over its treatment and detention of dozens of journalists. “Who cares if you come or not?” said Erdogan in comments dire...

  Anti-government protesters carry coffins during the funeral of two protesters killed in earlier clashes in Homs, yesterday. DAMASCUS: Fresh bloodshed swept Syria yesterday after Western powers and the Arab League demanded immediate UN action t...

JERUSALEM: UN chief Ban Ki-moon yesterday called on Israel to create a “positive dynamic” to help kickstart stalled talks with the Palestinians, as he arrived in Jerusalem to urge a resumption of negotiations. The UN chief is holding a series of...

  BAGHDAD: Iraq is to host an Arab summit on March 29, the first since the Arab Spring that swept away several dictators and brought Islamists to the fore, a senior Arab League official said yesterday. The last time Baghdad hosted a regular summ...

  SANA’A: Al Qaeda militants killed at least two government soldiers when they ambushed a patrol in central Yemen yesterday, local officials said, the latest example of a rising tide of violence three weeks before a presidential election.     ...

  Students of the Faculty of Dentistry in Sana’a University shout slogans during a protest outside a government building in Sana’a, yesterday. They demanded the dismissal of the dean Ghamdan Al Harazi, whom they accuse of corruption.

ADEN/SANA’A: Gunmen riddled the car of Yemen’s information minister with bullets as he left a cabinet meeting in the capital yesterday but he escaped from the assassination attempt unhurt, an aide said.     In southern Yemen, at least 15 Al Q...

MANAMA: Fourteen jailed opposition figures in Bahrain have gone on hunger strike ahead of the February 14 anniversary of a failed pro-democracy uprising, activists said yesterday, and a government official said he favoured releasing some of the men. ...