Middle East & North Africa

ANKARA, February 3. /TASS/: Turkey’s F-16 fighter jets and artillery have carried out strikes against 40 targets in Syria’s Idlib in response to the shelling of its troops, which had killed four soldiers, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters at a news conference in Ankara.

"Turkish F-16 jets and howitzers continue to strike targets of the [Assad] regime. About 40 locations began our targets. From 30 to 35 Syrians were neutralized as a result," the Turkish leader stressed. He did not specify whether those were Syrian army soldiers.

3 February 2020; AFP: Furious anti-government youth in Iraq's capital and south on Sunday rejected the nomination of Mohammad Allawi as prime minister, but came up against rival sit-ins by supporters of an influential cleric backing the new premier.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) --- A month after a U.S. missile killed him, Qassem Soleimani looms as large over Iraq’s fractured democracy as he ever did alive.

The death of the Iranian general removed a shrewd guiding hand on the pro-Tehran Shi’ite militias who revered him, setting off a menacing new instability in Iraq’s fragile political arena.

Now the shadowy power structure he helped to build — a state above the state made up of Iraq’s formal institutions — risks colliding ever more bloodily with a powerful youth-led anti-Iranian protest movement.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran will launch a satellite into orbit by the end of this week, a government minister said on Monday, as part of a fledging program that the United States says is a cover for ballistic missile development.

“We are not afraid of failure and we will not lose hope. With your prayers and trust in God, the Zafar satellite by the end of this week ... will be heading toward an orbit of 530 km from Earth,” Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi tweeted.

ISTANBUL, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Turkey has been retaliating against the Syrian forces' attack on its soldiers in the northern Syrian region of Idlib.

"Our artillery and F16 (warplanes) are all operating in the field," Erdogan said in a televised speech.

"We have soldiers martyred, and it is not possible for us to remain silent," he added.

Turkish forces have identified about 40 spots, and around "30 to 35 Syrians on the opposite side have been neutralized" after the attack, Erdogan noted.

ALGIERS, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said Sunday that Algiers and Tunis have "convergent views" on international and regional issues, including the Libyan crisis, the official APS news agency reported.

The president made the remarks during a joint press conference with his visiting Tunisian counterpart Kais Saied.

Tebboune also pledged that his country would deposit 150 million U.S. dollars in Tunisian bank as a loan, in a bid to boost the economy of the neighboring nation.

RAMALLAH, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Palestine on Sunday reiterated its rejection of the U.S. Mideast peace deal, describing it as a "declaration of hostility" against the Palestinian people.

"The plan poses a serious threat to the rules-based international order and the foundations of international law," according to a position paper issued by the Palestine Liberation Organization's Public Diplomacy and Policy Department.

It said that the proposed plan grants Israel "immediate rewards of annexation," leaving Palestinians with no sovereignty at all.

03 Feb 2020; MEMO: Saudi Arabia and Kuwaiti yesterday started preparing for the resumption of production from the Khafji oilfield jointly operated by the two countries.

Kuwait’s Al-Rai quoted local sources as saying that the field’s administration had begun testing oil and gas pipelines and facilities,” adding that the field’s initial output was expected by the “end of February.”

03 Feb 2020; MEMO: Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett yesterday stopped cement entering the besieged Gaza Strip and cancelled entry permits issued to hundreds of Gaza traders, Safa news agency reported.

Reporting the Israeli Hebrew newspaper Maariv, Safa said that Bennett ordered the coordinator of the civil affairs in the occupied territories to carry out his directions immediately.

03 Feb 2020; MEMO: At least four Turkish soldiers were killed and nine others injured in intense shelling by Bashar al-Assad regime forces in northwestern Syria on Monday, the Turkish Defense Ministry said, Anadolu reports.

In a statement, the ministry said the soldiers — who were sent as reinforcements to the region for the purpose of preventing conflicts in Idlib de-escalation zone — were attacked by the regime forces, although their locations were previously coordinated.