Middle East & North Africa

TRIPOLI, Aug 30 (NNN-Xinhua) — The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) stressed the need for an inclusive return to the political process in the country.

“Libya is witnessing a dramatic turn of events that underlines the urgent need to return to a full and inclusive political process that will meet the aspirations of the Libyan people for representative government, dignity, and peace,” the UN body said in a statement.

It urged calm, the application of the rule of law and the preservation of the rights of all citizens to peacefully express their views.

BAGHDAD, Aug 30 (NNN-NINA) – A Katyusha rocket on Saturday evening, landed inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, in Iraq’s capital Baghdad, causing no human casualties, the Iraqi military said.

The rocket was fired from an area near the Qanat al-Jaish waterway, or Army Canal, in eastern Baghdad, and landed on an empty house in the Green Zone, where the U.S. embassy and some of the main Iraqi government offices are located, the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command said, in a brief statement.

DAMASCUS, Aug 30 (NNN-SANA) – A total of 48 Syrian soldiers and pro-government fighters have been killed over the past week, during battle with the Daesh group in eastern Syria, a war monitor said.

The Daesh militants carried out attacks, bombings and shelling against government forces in the desert region of the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In addition, 50 pro-government fighters went missing in the desert, while combing areas for Daesh militants, added the Observatory.

30 Aug 2020; MEMO: The death toll from this month’s Beirut port blast has risen to 190 with more than 6,500 injured and three people missing, Lebanon’s caretaker government said in a report dated Sunday, Reuters reports.

Lebanese authorities are probing what caused highly explosive material stored unsafely for years to detonate in a mushroom cloud, wrecking swathes of the city and fuelling anger at a political class already blamed for the country’s economic meltdown.

30 Aug 2020; MEMO: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) today issued a decree abolishing a 1972 law regarding the boycott of Israel, following a deal to normalise relations between the two countries, Anadolu Agency reports.

29 Aug 2020; MEMO: An explosives-laden drone fired by Yemen’s Houthis toward Saudi Arabia was intercepted, the Saudi-led coalition said yesterday, Anadolu Agency reports.

Coalition spokesman Col. Turki al-Maliki said the missile was fired toward Najran in southern Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi SPA news agency.

He said Houthis continue to violate human rights by deliberately targeting civilian settlements with explosives-laden drones.

30 Aug 2020; MEMO: A Katyusha rocket landed in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, causing damage to an empty building and no casualties, Iraqi police sources said on Saturday, Reuters reports.

Sirens blasted from the U.S. embassy inside the zone, which houses government buildings and foreign missions, and helicopters were hovering above, the sources said.

It was the second such attack this week after three rockets landed in the Green Zone on Thursday, also causing no casualties.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel hopes to hold a signing ceremony in Washington for its normalisation deal with the United Arab Emirates by mid-September, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet said on Sunday.

The date for such an event could be decided by senior aides to Netanyahu and to U.S. President Donald Trump when those officials fly to Abu Dhabi on Monday for talks, Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis told public broadcaster Kan.

KHARTOUM, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Sudan on Saturday called for raising the negotiation on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) from the ministerial level to the level of head of state.

"The negotiation must be raised from the level ministers to the level of presidents of the three countries through the African Union in order to provide political support for the negotiations," Sudanese Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Yasir Abbas said at a press conference in the capital Khartoum.

RAMALLAH, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of Palestinian patients were injured as a result of the Israeli army firing tear gas inside a governmental hospital in Hebron city, Palestinian sources said Sunday.

Tariq Barbarawy, director of Hebron governmental hospital, told Xinhua that the Israeli army fired tear gas towards one of the internal medicine department's rooms, which has many patients infected with the novel coronavirus.

Barbarawy added that the tear gas was widespread inside the hospital departments, which suffocated the medical staff and dozens of patients.