Middle East & North Africa

TEHRAN, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed on Thursday that Iran will overcome U.S. economic sanctions against the country.

The U.S. revival of sanctions is aimed to make the Iranians surrender to the U.S. will, but "Iran's national economy is stronger than U.S. sanctions," Khamenei said in his address to Basij (volunteer) forces and senior Iranian military officials at the Azadi Stadium in the capital Tehran.

This will be another "slap on the face of the United States," he warned.

ANKARA, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Seven Turkish soldiers were killed, two others injured in a terror attack in the southeastern province of Batman on Thursday.

A road bomb, installed by the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) members, blasted when an armored military vehicle passed by in the rural area of Gercus district, the Batman Governor's Office said in a statement.

Local security forces launched a raid to nab the PKK militia following the attack.

The PKK is seen as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

BEIRUT, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Israeli warplanes violated Lebanon's airspace Thursday above Shebaa farms, while conducting surveillance above Hasbaya, Rashaya Al Wadi and West Bekaa, in south of the country, local media reported.

Another Israeli warplane also acted against Lebanon's airspace in the same areas on Wednesday, said a report by Elnashra, an online independent newspaper.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said earlier this week that Israel has violated Lebanon's airspace, land and sea over 1,500 times in the past eight months.

Turkish police has surrounded the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul following disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, prominent Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, inside. Khashogg is thought to be in the building, Turkish sources have told Middle East Eye.

“Turkish authorities contacted their Saudi counterparts at around 9pm local time (7pm BST) on Tuesday evening, informing them that security forces had surrounded the consulate.”, said a source quoted by the Middle East Eye.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates; 3 Oct 2018; (AP) — President Donald Trump says Saudi Arabia’s king “might not be there for two weeks” without U.S. military support, further increasing his pressure on one of America’s closest Mideast allies over rising oil prices.

MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. It will take three months to train Syrian specialists to use Russian S-300 air defense systems, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday at a Russian Security Council meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin.

"We have finished personnel recruitment and have begun to train them," he said.

So far, Russia has supplied Syria with 49 equipment pieces as part of delivery of the S-300 air defense system, Shoigu said.

DUBAI, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Dubai International Airport has hosted over 8 million passengers in August, the second consecutive month that saw the number of passengers exceed 8 million, said the Dubai government's media office Wednesday.

On average, the busy civil aviation hub recorded an average monthly traffic of 7.5 million passengers. "That's 1.2 million more than its closest rival London Heathrow of 6.29 million," said the report.

MOSCOW, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Russia has delivered to Syria S-300 air defense systems to improve safety of its military personnel deployed in the country, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.

"We have completed the delivery of S-300 systems. This includes 49 pieces of equipment: lighting locators, basic detection systems, control vehicles and four launchers," Shoigu said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of the Russian Security Council, according to a Kremlin transcript.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- The newly-elected Iraqi President Barham Salih on Tuesday named the Shiite independent politician Adel Abdul-Mahdi as prime minister-designate and tasked him with forming the next government, Iraq official television reported.

The state-run Iraqiya channel aired a footage showing that Salih received Mahdi with the presence of the parliament speaker, head of the judicial council and many officials and politicians and officially tasked Mahdi as the prime minister-designate to form the new government.

TEHRAN, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Iran will not sit for talks with the United States over the existing issues as the conditions is not ripe, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying by Press TV on Tuesday.

"I'm not ruling out the prospect of talks (with Washington) provided the necessary conditions for talks, and that is reliability," Zarif said.

"Reliability is that when you sign something you are bound by it. Otherwise, everything will fall apart," he said, adding that "we are waiting for some sense of realism."