Middle East & North Africa

ANKARA, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday he did not "recognise LGBT" and vowed to combat "perverse" trends which he said aimed to destroy the institution of family in the country.

Turkey's government, led by Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party, has toughened its stance on LGBTQ freedoms in recent months, particularly while campaigning for this year's elections in May.

Homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey, but hostility to it is widespread, and police crackdowns on Pride parades have become tougher over the years.

DUBAI, Oct 7 (Reuters) - An adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday congratulated Palestinian fighters for launching the biggest attack on Israel in years, the semi-official ISNA news site reported.

"We congratulate the Palestinian fighters," it quoted Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying. "We will stand by the Palestinian fighters until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem."

In a surprise assault, Palestinian group Hamas crossed into several Israeli towns on Saturday with a heavy barrage of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.

TEHRAN Oct 7 (Reuters) - Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, told fellow Arab countries on Saturday that Israel cannot provide them with any protection despite recent diplomatic rapprochements.

Hamas launched the biggest attack on Israelin years on Saturday, killing dozens of people and taking hostages in a surprise assault that combined gunmen crossing into Israel with a barrage of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.

TEHRAN, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- A top Iranian military commander vowed that those who carried out and supported the deadly drone attack on a military academy in Syria's central province of Homs would be avenged "heavily," Iran's official news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.

RAMALLAH, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that the Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves against the "Israeli violations."

During an emergency leadership meeting held in Ramallah, Abbas instructed the concerned Palestinian authorities to provide everything necessary "to strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinians in the face of crimes committed by the Israeli occupation and settler gangs," Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Hamas militants fired thousands of rockets and sent dozens of fighters into Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip in an unprecedented surprise early morning attack during a major Jewish holiday Saturday, killing dozens and stunning the country. Israel said it is now at war with Hamas and launched airstrikes in Gaza, vowing to inflict an “unprecedented price.”

06 October 2023; MEMO: An international human rights organisation warned, on Thursday, of a “sharp increase” in violence by Israeli settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories “under the political cover of the government Israel”, Anadolu Agency reports.

08 October 2023; MEMO: Turkiye will host the third international gathering aimed at building support for the Global Peace Summit that Ukraine plans to hold later this year, Bloomberg reports.

According to the report, the meeting is tentatively scheduled for later in October in Istanbul and will follow similar gatherings in Denmark in June and in Saudi Arabia in August, the news outlet said.

06 October 2023; MEMO: The United States, on Thursday, shot down an armed Turkish drone that was operating near its troops in Syria, US officials said, the first time Washington has brought down an aircraft of NATO ally, Turkiye, Reuters reports.

A Turkish Defence Ministry official said the drone shot down by the US-led coalition did not belong to the Turkish armed forces but did not say whose property it was.

06 October 2023; MEMO: The Pope is said to be “furious” over the wave of anti-Christian hate crimes carried out by Israeli settlers, the spokesman of the Council of Heads of Catholic Churches in Jerusalem, Wadie Abu Nasser, has said.