Middle East & North Africa

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said its fighters shot down an Israeli drone Monday that was flying near the border and over southern Lebanon.

The group gave no further details about the type of drone that it claimed was downed near the village of Zibqine just north of the border with Israel.

An Israeli military spokesman said in a tweet that a drone crashed in Lebanon as an Israeli force was performing routine activities. The spokesman, Avichay Adraee, added in Arabic that there were no concerns of information being leaked.

25 June 2023; MEMO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has conferred Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the country's highest state honour, the "Order of the Nile" today.  Modi who is on the second and final day of his official visit to the country arrived in Cairo where he was received by his Egyptian counterpart Mostafa Madbouly.

25 June 2023; MEMO: Morocco said it had thwarted more than 25,000 attempts by irregular migrants to cross the Mediterranean into Europe this year, Anadolu reports.

"Moroccan authorities intercepted 25,519 irregular migration attempts and rescued 3,150 migrants in the first five months of 2023," the Interior Ministry said in a statement cited by state news agency MAP.

According to the ministry, a total of 70,781 illegal migration attempts were foiled in 2022.

26 June 2023; MEMO: Armed clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) escalated yesterday in the southern area of the country's capital city of Khartoum, Anadolu Agency reported.

Eyewitnesses told the news wire that neighbourhoods in southern Khartoum witnessed violent clashes with light and heavy weapons yesterday morning.

26 June 2023; MEMO: The US administration has requested the provision of $1.45 billion in annual aid to Jordan for fiscal year 2024, in line with the Memorandum of Understanding on Strategic Partnership concluded in September 2022.

26 June 2023; MEMO: Over half a million Palestinians living in Israel are denied permission to build houses on their land, while 100,000 demolition and eviction orders have been issued to them in recent years, according to a special report compiled by Safa news agency.

26 June 2023; MEMO: Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid MK warned on Sunday that Israel's ruling coalition will cause the economy to deteriorate and society to collapse. He issued his warning on Facebook.

26 June 2023; MEMO: Hundreds of Tunisians yesterday participated in two demonstrations in the southern city of Sfax against the presence of irregular migrants in the city, Anadolu reported.

The participants raised banners that read "Sfax is not a transit area" and "irregular immigration is a threat to the Republic" and others calling for "the imposition of visas on travellers coming from sub-Saharan countries".

26 June 2023; MEMO: Saudi Arabia has launched development projects worth 1.2 billion Saudi riyals ($320 million) in Yemen's Hadramout region, a Yemeni official announced yesterday, Anadolu news agency reported.

The Undersecretary of the Yemeni Ministry of Information, Muhammad Gezan, said: "The Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen has launched a package of development and vital projects and programs in Hadramout, with a value exceeding 1.2 billion Saudi riyals ($320 million)."

26 June 2023; MEMO: Ministers of the far-right ruling coalition in Israel frankly supported settler terrorism against the Palestinians in West Bank villages, Israeli media reported on Sunday. The disclosure came after hundreds of extremist Jewish settlers set fire to cars, homes, farms and other properties in several Palestinian villages across the occupied West Bank.