Middle East & North Africa

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel’s top rabbis prayed for U.S. President Donald Trump to recover from COVID-19 on Monday, invoking his name in a Jewish holiday ceremony at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

Support for Trump, who recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. Embassy to the city, is strong among Israelis, who mark the Jewish high holidays this year while under a second coronavirus lockdown.

TEHRAN, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- Iran does not care who will take the office in Washington in the upcoming U.S. presidential election in November, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday.

What matters is "Washington should reverse its hostile policies against Tehran," Khatibzadeh told Tasnim news agency.

"The UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the JCPOA)", should be honored by the United States, Khatibzadeh was quoted as saying.

SANAA, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- A UN plane brought Yemeni civilian patients to the Houthi militia-held capital Sanaa in Yemen on Sunday after they were airlifted earlier this year to Jordan to undergo treatment for critical illness.

The "UN flight carrying civilian Yemenis and their companions just landed in Sanaa," the World Health Organization (WHO) tweeted.

"Thanks to the UN medical airbridge, the patients received treatment in Jordan for different chronic conditions for which they could not be treated inside Yemen," WHO said, without specifying how many had returned.

04 Oct 2020; MEMO: The Yemeni Physicians and Pharmacists Syndicate announced on Friday that 63 doctors have died of COVID-19 in the country, Yemen Shabab reported.

This came in a statement regarding Dr Ali Abu-Zalat, of Egyptian origin, who died on Wednesday after contracting COVID-19 in Hadhramaut.

04 Oct 2020; MEMO: Turkey rejected “superficial” demands for a ceasefire on Saturday in the South Caucasus, where it backs Azerbaijan, after a week of fierce fighting with ethnic Armenian forces in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, reports Reuters.

04 Oct 2020; MEMO: Schools, libraries, mosques and other public institutions in Tehran were closed for a week on Saturday as part of measures to stem a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases, Reuters reported citing authorities in the Iranian capital as saying.

04 Oct 2020; MEMO: Israeli occupation forces raided the house of a senior Hamas leader in the West Bank city of Beitonya, Hassan Yousef, 65, on Friday at dawn and arrested him, Palestinian security sources reported.

The security sources disclosed that a large number of Israeli occupation forces raided the city and broke into the house of Yousef, before arresting and sending him to Ofer Prison.

04 Oct 2020; MEMO: An Israeli newspaper has reported that Sudan and Oman have postponed normalising ties with Israel until after the US elections, Rai Al-Youm reported on Friday.

Reporting Israeli newspaper Maariv, Rai Al-Youm disclosed that the two Arab countries would not offer their “precious gifts” to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the US elections.

RAMALLAH, Oct 4 (NNN-WAFA) – A senior Palestinian official said, Israel is implementing its plan of annexing large parts of the West Bank by intensifying settlement’s expansion.

“Israel’s plan to build 5,400 new units is an actual implementation of the rejected annexation plan, and Israel haven’t stopped the annexation plan as it had claimed before,” said Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of Palestine Liberation Organisation Executive Committee, during his interview with official Voice of Palestine radio.

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait’s new Emir Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah met on Sunday with senior U.S. and Iranian officials who separately paid respects over the death of the Gulf Arab state’s former ruler.

Sheikh Nawaf assumed power after the death last Tuesday of his brother Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad. The late emir balanced his nation’s ties between larger neighbours Saudi Arabia and Iran and kept a strong relationship with the United States, which led a coalition that ended Iraq’s 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait.