Middle East & North Africa

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian general who replaced the leader killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad vowed Sunday to take revenge as Tehran abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying.

Esmail Ghaani’s threat comes as the blowback over the U.S. killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani mounted Sunday with Iraq’s parliament calling for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

CAIRO, January 4. /TASS/: Additional army and police units have been sent to Baghdad’s so-called "green zone" which came under rocket fire on Saturday evening, the Al-Arabiya TV channel informed citing Iraqi security sources. 

According to recent reports, two Katyusha rockets fell near the US embassy in the heavily fortified "green zone" where foreign diplomatic missions and government bodies are located. There has been no information regarding casualties. All roads to the embassy have been blocked in the wake of the attack.

TASS, January 5: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif slammed US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as "an arrogant clown masquerading as a diplomat" on Saturday in response to Pompeo’s statement that Iraqis were allegedly celebrating the death of Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani.

Pompeo wrote on his Twitter account earlier that the Iraqis were "dancing in the street for freedom, thankful that General Soleimani is no more." He also posted a video of people carrying Iraqi flags, running and screaming

CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia condemns “the recent Turkish escalation in Libya” and the Turkish parliament’s approval of a troop deployment to Libya, and considers it a violation of U.N. Security Council decisions, the foreign ministry said in a statement on the state news agency SPA.

Tripoli (Reuters) - At least 30 people were killed and 33 others wounded in an attack on a military academy in the Libyan capital late on Saturday, the health ministry of the Tripoli-based government said in a statement on Sunday.

Tripoli, controlled by the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), is facing an offensive by military commander Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) that began in April.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran condemned Donald Trump on Sunday as a “terrorist in a suit” after the U.S. president threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites hard if Tehran attacks Americans or U.S. assets in retaliation for the killing of military commander Qassem Soleimani.

As the two countries assailed each other in a war of words, the European Union, Britain and Oman urged the parties to seek to de-escalate the crisis.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Gulf stocks fell sharply in late afternoon trade on Sunday, with Kuwaiti and Saudi stocks leading losses.

Shares of oil giant Aramco (2222.SE), which listed last month in a record initial public offering (IPO), fell 1.7% to hit the lowest level since it started trading on Dec 11.

Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Tehran’s overseas military operations was killed on Friday in a U.S. drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport.

The killing is seen by Tehran as an act of war that risks regional conflagration.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - In an apparent slip of the tongue on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Israel as a nuclear power before correcting himself with a bashful nod and an embarrassed smile.

Israel is widely believed to have an atomic arsenal but has never confirmed or denied that it has nuclear weapons, maintaining a so-called policy of ambiguity on the issue for decades.

Netanyahu stumbled at the weekly cabinet meeting while reading in Hebrew prepared remarks on a deal with Greece and Cyprus on a subsea gas pipeline.

Tehran, Jan 5, IRNA -- Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Major General Hossein Salami on Saturday described Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani as architect of US strategic defeats over the past decades, saying that his assassination marks the end of the US presence in the region.

Vowing severe revenge for Soleimani assassination, he said that the IRGC will certainly take a painful and regrettable revenge from America, but its timing and scale are not known.

05 Jan 2019; MEMO: The father of captive Mais Abu-Ghosh, a student of Birzeit University and from Qalandiya refugee camp, north of occupied Jerusalem, divulged that his daughter was subjected to harsh investigation and torture at Al-Maskubiya Investigation Centre, since her arrest on 29 A