Middle East & North Africa

Saudi Arabia is emerging as the largest and most profitable cinema market in Western Asia over four years after the Kingdom's ban on cinemas was lifted, with its market volume in revenues projected to amount to $100 million by 2024.

After being awarded this week with the Emerging Market Spotlight award at CinemaCon 2022 in Las Vegas, Saudi Arabia is increasingly being recognised as a major destination for cinema production and box office sales.

25 April 2022; MEMO: More than 170 civilians were killed in renewed tribal clashes in Sudan's western Darfur province, according to a local aid group on Monday, and Anadolu News Agency reports.

Adam Rigal, a spokesman for the General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur, said nine people were killed when the violence first erupted on Friday in West Darfur's Kreinik village amid a shortage of humanitarian aid and medicines.

25 April 2022; MEMO: Turkiye is reportedly set to provide financial aid for Syrians who voluntarily return to their country, as the Turkish government continues to search for solutions to the presence of millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, a decade on.

According to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, Ankara has plans to provide transportation, shelter, and humanitarian aid to any Syrian refugees who voluntarily accept to settle in 'safe zones' that Turkiye has cleared of Kurdish militant groups in northern Syria in recent years.

26 April 2022; MEMO: Tunisia is facing a "stifling political crisis" that represents an "imminent, and grave danger" unprecedented in the country's modern history, President Kais Saied's former chief of staff warned yesterday.

Nadia Akacha, nicknamed the Iron Woman, the second Governor of Carthage surprised everyone on 24 January when she submitted her resignation citing "fundamental differences in viewpoints related to the higher interest of the nation".

25 April 2022; MEMO: A rocket launched from Lebanon on Monday struck harmlessly in Israel, which responded with artillery fire, in an apparent spill-over of Palestinian-Israeli confrontations at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, Reuters reports.

Flare-ups along the Israeli-Lebanese border are rare and Israel's chief military spokesman, Brigadier-General Ran Kochav, estimated that Palestinian groups in Lebanon fired the rocket, which he said hit open ground in northern Israel.

25 April 2022; MEMO: Jordan's King Abdullah agreed with US President Joe Biden on the need to prevent a repeat of recent confrontations in Jerusalem's Muslim holy sites that sparked concerns of wider conflict, state media said, and Reuters reports.

In a phone call on Monday, Abdullah was quoted as saying the cornerstone of peace was a comprehensive Arab Israeli settlement based on a two-state solution whereby a Palestinian State would emerge alongside Israel.

25 April 2022; MEMO: The Israeli Magistrate's Court in Jerusalem today decided today to continue to freeze the eviction of the Palestinian Salem family from their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem.

According to Wafa news agency, the court decided to continue the freeze order after accepting an appeal by the family against the intended eviction by Israeli settler groups.

BEIRUT, Apr 25 (NNN-NNA) – The Lebanese army, yesterday, rescued 45 people and recovered eight bodies, after a migrant boat sunk in the waters off the northern city of Tripoli.

The Lebanese army said at a press conference that, high waves submerged the overloaded boat, which carried more than 50 people.

Some of the rescued people were treated on the ground, while others were transferred to nearby hospitals, to receive emergency medical care.

Search operations began Saturday night, shortly after the boat, leaving the coastal town of Qalamoun, in the sea.

BAGHDAD, Apr 25 (NNN-ANADOLU) – Four Katyusha rockets landed near a Turkish military base, in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh yesterday without causing casualties, a local official said.

The rockets, fired by unknown militants in the evening, targeted the Bashiqa base, housing Turkish forces in the Zlikan area, some 400 km north of Baghdad, Mohammed Amin Gharib, mayor of the Zlikan area, said.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

BEIRUT, Apr 25 (NNN-NNA) – The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), yesterday called for continuous international support for Lebanon and the refugees and migrants hosted in the country, according to a joint press release.

The appeal by the two UN agencies came, a day after a boat reportedly carrying 84 people capsized, off the coast of Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli, killing at least six, including a 40-day-old baby, according to the press release.