Middle East & North Africa

SANAA, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's Houthi rebels said that they fired a rocket towards a government military training camp in neighboring province of Marib on Sunday evening, the Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported.

"The rocket targeted the operation room in Tadawin camp in northern Marib, killing at least eight soldiers and injuring seven others," the television quoted a statement from the group's military spokesman Yahya Sarea as saying.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An opinion piece published Sunday by a hard-line Iranian newspaper urged Iran to attack the Israeli port city of Haifa if Israel carried out the killing of the scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program in the early 2000s.

Though the hard-line Kayhan newspaper has long argued for aggressive retaliation for operations targeting Iran, Sunday’s opinion piece went further, suggesting any assault be carried out in a way that destroys facilities and “also causes heavy human casualties.”

RAMALLAH, Nov 29 (NNN-WAFA) – The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), warned against the Israeli government’s plan, to legalise dozens of “illegal settlement outposts” built in the West Bank.

In an official report sent to the press, the PLO’s National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements noted that, Israel aims to seize and control more lands in the West Bank, referring to the remarks of Israeli Minister of Settlement Affairs, Tzachi Hanegbi.

Tehran, Nov 29, IRNA – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a Twitter message in German language urged the international community particularly the European Union to stop double standards and condemn assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Terrorists murdered an excellent Iranian scientist. This cowardice, in which there are serious references to Israel's role, is an expression of the desperate warmongering of the perpetrators, Zarif wrote in his Twitter account on Sunday.

28 Nov 2020; MEMO: Ankara rejected on Friday a "non-binding" resolution by the European Union (EU) parliament to impose sanctions on Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) on the Maras and Cyprus issues, news agencies reported.

"We completely reject the non-binding resolution adopted by the MEPs on our country and the TRNC," Spokesman of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Hami Aksoy announced in a statement.

28 Nov 2020; MEMO: Acting Speaker of the Algerian National Assembly Salah Goudjil, who is the second most powerful man in the country, criticised and questioned the motives behind the United Arab Emirates (UAE)'s decision to open a consulate in the Laayoune area, Western Sahara. Goudjil also raised questions about the link between this move and the Emirates' normalisation plan.

28 Nov 2020; MEMO: Decrying rising Islamophobia in Western countries, the Turkish president said Saturday that insulting people's beliefs has nothing to do with freedom, reports Anadolu Agency. 

"You have been closely following the meanness in France towards the Prophet [Muhammad] under the label of 'freedom of thought'," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a video message to the 23rd annual convention of the Muslim American Society.

28 Nov 2020; MEMO: Turkey on Saturday condemned the killing of Iran's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Anadolu Agency reports.

"We regret that the Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh lost his life as a result of an armed attack in Tehran. We condemn this heinous murder and extend our condolences to the government of Iran and the family of the deceased," said the nation's Foreign Ministry.

28 Nov 2020; MEMO: The Israeli Defence Forces' Manpower Directorate has announced that 11.9 per cent of draft-age Israeli men who were subject to conscription have received mental health exemptions, Israeli newspaper Haaretz has revealed.

KHARTOUM, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Sunday that 147 million U.S. dollars is needed to help Ethiopian refugees in Sudan.

More than 43,000 Ethiopians have fled here amid the ongoing conflict between the Ethiopian federal government and an insurgent Northern Tigray regional government since Nov. 4, said the agency on Friday.

The refugees carried "almost nothing" upon their arrivals, Grandi tweeted Sunday after he visited them in Sudan.