Middle East & North Africa

BEIRUT, Sept 10 (NNN-NNA) – Four people were killed, when a group of gunmen attempted to rob a mobile shop, and exchanged fire with its owners, in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli, last night, Al-Jadeed TV channel reported.

The exchange of fire inside the shop killed one of the gunmen, the shop owner and two of his friends, the report said, adding, the gunmen carrying machine guns and hand grenades had fled the scene.

The Lebanese troops were immediately deployed in the area and started to hunt for the attackers, through surveillance cameras.

DUBAI, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have seized a foreign vessel in the Gulf for allegedly smuggling 757,000 litres of diesel out of the country, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.

The unnamed vessel's seven crew members, who are foreign nationals, have been handed over to legal authorities, IRNA reported without elaborating on the nationalities of the ship or its crew.

RAMALLAH, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- At least 37 Palestinians were injured Friday during clashes with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian medics and eyewitnesses said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said in a statement that among the injured were three shot by live ammunition and nine by rubber bullets, while the others inhaled teargas fired by Israeli soldiers.

ADEN, Yemen, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Two Yemeni soldiers were killed on Saturday in a roadside bomb explosion in the country's southern oil-rich province of Shabwa, a military official told Xinhua.

The incident took place when a roadside bomb went off near a patrol of Shabwa's defense troops of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Ataq, capital of Shabwa Province, the local military source said on condition of anonymity.

The blast partially destroyed the military vehicle, killing two soldiers, and wounding five others aboard, the source said.

TEHRAN, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Iran on Saturday condemned the new U.S. sanctions against its intelligence ministry, which has been accused of launching an alleged cyber attack on Albania.

"This new sanctions label, just like the previous illegal U.S. sanctions against the Intelligence Ministry, will never be able to create the slightest upset in the determination of the security servants of the Iranian people," Nasser Kanaani, spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement.

09 Sep 2022; MEMO: The Moroccan National Action Group for Palestine demanded Thursday to "close the Israeli liaison office in Rabat, and cease normalisation with Israel", following sexual abuse allegations against envoy, David Govrin, Anadolu news agency reported.

09 Sep 2022; MEMO: The US mediator in a long-standing maritime border dispute between Israel and Lebanon said on Friday that the negotiations to resolve the conflict have made "very good progress", Reuters reports.

The two countries are locked in US-mediated negotiations to delineate a shared maritime border that would help determine which oil and gas resources belong to which country, and pave the way for more exploration.

09 Sep 2022; MEMO: Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, will urge Moscow to send goods though an UN-backed Black Sea corridor when he meets Russian President, Vladimir Putin, next week, broadcaster Haberturk said on Friday, seeking to keep Russia engaged in the arrangement, Reuters reports.

09 Sep 2022; MEMO: A new opinion poll released on Friday in Israel found that the country could remain in political deadlock after upcoming elections in November, with none of the major sides poised to gain enough votes to form a government, Anadolu News Agency reports.

09 Sep 2022; MEMO: The leader of Iraq's Sadrist Movement, Muqtada Al-Sadr, stressed yesterday that the return of his Movement's MPs to the House of Representatives is "absolutely forbidden, under any pretext".