Middle East & North Africa

25 Feb 2020; MEMO: The Syrian news agency, SANA, claimed on Sunday that the Turkish army had arrested dozens of rebels as they fled from the fighting in Idlib and headed for Turkey. The arrests were made in the area of Ras Al-Ein to the north west of Al-Hasaka.

SANA is believed to be the only media outlet which reported the news. It explained that the Turks closed the border ahead of the rebels before arresting them.

25 Feb 2020; MEMO: Syrian regime’s leadership has threatened to respond to any breach on the Syrian airspace, local media reported yesterday.

“The Syrian forces would respond to any infiltration of the country’s airspace and would treat it as external military aggression,” official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) quoted a military source as saying.

DAMASCUS, Feb 24 (NNN-SANA) – The Syrian air defences intercepted a number of Israeli missiles, over the capital Damascus, on Sunday night (last night), state TV reported.

Several explosions were heard reverberating across the capital, in what appeared to be a fresh Israeli missile attack, targeting military sites in Syria.

Most of the missiles were intercepted before reaching their targets, said the official report. It added, the missiles were fired from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

JERUSALEM, Feb 24 (NNN-XINHUA) – Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is facing the battle of his life, with crucial national elections to take place on Mar 2, and a corruption trial to be opened only two weeks later.

Last July, Netanyahu became the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history, surpassing David Ben-Gurion.

JERUSALEM, Feb 24 (NNN-WAFA) – Israeli military said, it carried out airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Sunday night, hours after Islamic Jihad fired barrages of rockets towards southern Israel.

A military spokesperson said, the strikes targeted Islamic Jihad sites.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

At least 23 rockets were fired on Sunday, with Islamic Jihad saying, the fire was a retaliation for the killing of a senior member of the Islamist group.

BENGHAZI (Libya), Feb 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Forces loyal to Libyan eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar said they had killed 16 Turkish soldiers in recent weeks, a day after Turkey acknowledged it had lost several “martyrs” in combat in the north African country.

Khalid al-Mahjoub, a spokesman for Haftar’s self-styled Libya National Army (LNA), said the Turks were killed in the port city of Misrata, in battles in Tripoli and in the town of al-Falah south of the capital.

CAIRO, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Egypt welcomed the formation of a transitional unity government in South Sudan, hoping it would lead to comprehensive peace in the country, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The statement expressed "Egypt's hope that this step would generate the necessary push to implement all the items of the revitalized peace agreement to achieve permanent and comprehensive peace in South Sudan."

TRIPOLI, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Libya's UN-backed Interior Minister Fathi Bashaga on Sunday said that armed groups obstruct and extort security services in the capital Tripoli.

"Militias in Tripoli attack institutions and obstruct the government, using their powers being part of security agencies. They do not answer to the law or the instructions of the Attorney General," Bashaga told a press conference in the capital Tripoli.

This is an act that can be described as "organized crime," and those who commit this crime will be pursued, the minister said.

TEHRAN, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday issued an order to form a national headquarters to cope with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the country, state TV reported.

The Health Ministry was ordered to form a national headquarters to organize sessions and employ the potentials of the ministry to help contain the disease.

Since Iran announced the first cases of the coronavirus in the country on Wednesday, 43 Iranians have been confirmed infected by the virus, eight of whom have died.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s interior ministry said Sunday that voter turnout in last week’s parliamentary elections stood at 42.57%, the lowest in decades, in a possible sign of widespread dissatisfaction with Iran’s clerical rulers and the state of the economy amid intense pressure from the United States.

In comparison, turnout was nearly 62% in the 2016 elections. Turnout has consistently been above 50% since the country’s Islamic Revolution some four decades ago.