Middle East & North Africa

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — Israeli troops on Wednesday entered a major Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank in a rare, daytime arrest operation, triggering fighting that killed at least 10 Palestinians and wounded scores of others.

The raid, which reduced a building to rubble and left a series of shops riddled with bullets, was one of the bloodiest battles in nearly a year of fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Two men, ages 72 and 61, were among the dead, and 102 people were wounded, Palestinian officials said.

20 Feb 2023; MEMO: Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, will not attend the Raisina Dialogue in India, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Monday, criticising a video posted by the conference organisers showing protests in the Islamic Republic, Reuters reports.

21 Feb 2023; MEMO: Turkiye will start the construction of houses in quake-hit areas in March, the country's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in the wake of two major earthquakes that jolted southern Turkiye on 6 February, Anadolu News Agency reports.

21 Feb 2023; MEMO: Hamas yesterday condemned the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s decision to withdraw a bill planned to be proposed to the UN Security Council against illegal Israeli settlement.

21 Feb 2023; MEMO: Israel's parliament, the Knesset, approved earlier today the first phase of the Netanyahu government's plan to weaken the powers of the judiciary. In a first reading, 63 MKs voted in favour and 47 voted against.

22 Feb 2023; MEMO: A Turkish newspaper has estimated that the reconstruction cost covering the ten provinces devastated by the recent earthquakes will be $45 billion. According to ekonomim, hundreds of thousands of residential and commercial buildings will have to be demolished and infrastructure such as roads and water, electricity and sewage networks will have to be repaired or replaced.

21 Feb 2023; MEMO: A group of Egyptian human rights organisations are demanding that the government stop forcible disappearances and that authorities carry out independent investigations into perpetrators.

Between 2013 and January 2023 the Stop Enforced Disappearance Campaign documented that over 3,600 people were forcibly disappeared.

21 Feb 2023; MEMO: An Israeli team who had gone to Turkiye to help with search and rescue efforts after the 6 February deadly earthquakes returned centuries-old Jewish scrolls they had taken from the country.

According to the Turkish Haber7 website, the Israeli search and rescue team, known as ZAKA, had secretly taken the historical scrolls of the Book of Esther from Antakya Synagogue, which was damaged in the earthquake.

21 Feb 2023; MEMO: Havva Tuncay was living in a tent set up in the centre of the Turkish city of Antakya, when another earthquake hit on Monday night. She had been having trouble sleeping after the first shocks left Havva and her children homeless two weeks ago, Reuters reports.

"I cannot sleep at night. Is the same thing going to happen, are we going to experience another earthquake? We are very scared. I haven't slept for a week," she told Reuters outside her tent.

21 Feb 2023; MEMO: The African Union is organising a national reconciliation conference for Libya, AU Commission Chief, Moussa Faki Mahamat, told AFP.

According to a report published by AFP, the meeting will be chaired by the African Union's point man on Libya, Republic of Congo President, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Faki said.