Middle East & North Africa

BAGHDAD, Feb 23 (NNN-NINA) – An army pilot officer, a paramilitary member, and a doctor were killed yesterday, by gunmen in separate incidents in Iraq, security sources said.

Unidentified armed men shot dead Iraqi Air Force officer, Saad Mohsen Marzouq, who was driving in Fallujah city, some 50 km west of the capital, Baghdad, a local police source said, on condition of anonymity.

TEHRAN, Feb 23 (NNN-IRNA) – The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, yesterday, condemned the “brutal” Israeli attack and killing of Palestinians on the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Nasser Kanaani made the remarks, in a statement published on the Foreign Ministry’s website, reacting to the attack by the Israeli army on Nablus, earlier in the day, in which 10 Palestinians were killed, including an old man and a 14-year-old boy, and at least 102 others injured.

ANTAKYA, Turkey, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Turkey has stepped up plans to house victims of the devastating earthquake which struck its border region with Syria, the interior minister said, as the combined death toll in the two countries crept towards 50,000.

Suleyman Soylu said 313,000 tents had been erected, with 100,000 container homes to be installed in the disaster zone which stretches for hundreds of kilometres inland from the Turkish and Syrian Mediterranean coast.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military said Palestinian militants fired six rockets from the Gaza Strip toward the country’s south early Thursday, hours after an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank triggered a fierce gunbattle in which 11 Palestinians were killed.

The rocket attacks, which were not immediately claimed by Palestinian militant groups, appear to be triggered by the Wednesday morning raid in Nablus.

BEIRUT (AP) — A British court has ruled a London-based company that delivered the explosive ammonium nitrate to Beirut’s port is liable towards the victims of a devastating blast in 2020, Lebanon’s Beirut Bar Association said Thursday.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Ahmed Qureia, a former Palestinian prime minister and one of the architects of interim peace deals with Israel, has died at age 85.

A key player in the 1993 Oslo peace accords, Qureia witnessed the rise of the dream of Palestinian statehood that surged during the negotiations. But he also saw those hopes recede, with the prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drifting further than ever. Domestically, Qureia was riddled with corruption charges that tainted his reputation.

BEIRUT (AP) — The Islamic State group has carried out its deadliest attacks in more than a year, killing dozens of civilians and security officers in the deserts of central Syria, even as people of northern Syria have been digging out of the wreckage from the region’s devastating earthquake.

The bloodshed was a reminder of the persistent threat from IS, whose sleeper cells still terrorize populations nearly four years after the group was defeated in Syria.

22 Feb 2023; MEMO: The Tunisian president has said that undocumented migration from sub-Saharan African countries is aimed at changing the demographic make-up of the country.

"The undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations," President Kais Saied said in a meeting with the National Security Council yesterday.

22 Feb 2023; MEMO: Iran summoned the British interim charge d'affaires on Wednesday to protest London's policy of "baseless" accusations against Tehran, Anadolu News Agency reports.

A Foreign Ministry statement said the UK Envoy, Isabelle Marsh, was summoned to protest the British policy of levelling unfounded accusations against Iran and promoting Iranophobia.

The Ministry demanded "an end to this unfriendly approach adopted by the British government".

22 Feb 2023; MEMO: In Hatay, Turkiye's southernmost province hit hard by the recent quakes, two generous brothers open the doors of their mansion to host quake victims and teams who work for their relief, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Salih Guzel and Emirhan Guzel mobilised all their means to turn their mansion, where their mother also lives, into a soup kitchen to serve people affected by the massive tremors with warm meal prepared by volunteer cooks.