Middle East & North Africa

ANKARA (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence met President Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey on Thursday on a mission to persuade him to halt an offensive against Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria, but Turkish officials said the action would continue regardless.

The assault has created a new humanitarian crisis in Syria with 200,000 civilians taking flight, a security alert over thousands of Islamic State fighters abandoned in Kurdish jails, and a political maelstrom at home for President Donald Trump.

Riyadh, Oct 17; AFP/GANASHAKTI: Thirty-five foreigners were killed and four others injured when a bus collided with another heavy vehicle near the Muslim holy city of Medina, Saudi state media said on Thursday.

The accident on Wednesday evening involved a collision between "a private chartered bus... with a heavy vehicle" near the western city, a spokesman for Medina police said, according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

AMMAN, Oct 17 (NNN-PETRA) – Jordan, on Wednesday, denied Israeli media reports that, Jordan had agreed to renew an agreement which leases part of the kingdom’s lands to Israel.

Jordanian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Sufian Qudah, said, Jordan did not agree to renew or extend this agreement with Israel, according to a foreign ministry statement.

Last year’s decision to terminate the deal was final, Qudah added.

In Oct, 2018, Jordan officially informed Israel of its decision not to renew an agreement that leases part of its lands to Israel.

17 Oct 2019; MEMO: After a lawyer, his wife and his brother were arrested from a café in Damanhour, a city in Lower Egypt, his mother and two sisters were also arrested after enquiring about his whereabouts.

According to a Facebook post written by Major General Helmi Hamdoun, which has now been removed, his son and lawyer Mohamed Helmi Hamdoun was with his wife Asmaa Daabes and brother Ahmed in a café in Damanhour when security forces stormed the café and arrested all three of them.

17 Oct 2019; MEMO: Yemen’s Nobel Peace Laureate activist Tawakkol Karman has said her country has almost succeeded in forcing out what she called the “Emirati occupation”, and it remains determined to do the same with Saudi Arabia.

The solution to the country’s crisis, she explained, lies in “getting rid of the Saudi tutelage” and “expelling it” from the country.

17 Oct 2019; MEMO: Israeli occupation forces yesterday arrested Sheikh Ismail Nawahda, a preacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque, at the Qalandia checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reported.

Another 22 Palestinians were also detained yesterday from across the occupied West Bank, the news agency added.

Sheikh Nawahda was taken in for investigation at one of the Israeli police stations in West Jerusalem.

17 Oct 2019; MEMO: Member of Iranian Parliament’s National Security Commission Abolfazl Hassan Beigi accused the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia of targeting his country’s oil tanker in the Red Sea, local news agencies reported.

17 Oct 2019; MEMO: Israel has called on the United States to maintain a military base in south-eastern Syria for strategic and geopolitical reasons, Israeli TV channel Kan reported yesterday.

17 Oct 2019; MEMO: Israel yesterday released the governor of Jerusalem Adnan Ghaith and the Fatah part’s Secretary-General Shadi Mutwar after arresting and detaining them for several hours.

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey (AP) — Syrian forces on Wednesday night rolled into the strategic border town of Kobani, blocking one path for the Turkish military to establish a “safe zone” free of Syrian Kurdish fighters along the frontier as part of its week-old offensive.