Middle East & North Africa

13 June 2021; MEMO: The former speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani demanded on Saturday an explanation from an election watchdog on why he was barred from running in next week's presidential vote, reports Reuters.

Last month, the hardline Guardian Council approved just seven hopefuls to stand in Friday's poll and disqualified several prominent candidates, including Larijani and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

13 June 2021; MEMO: About two-thirds of people eligible for inoculation against COVID-19 have now received two doses of the vaccine in Dubai, the tourist and business hub of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) said, reports Reuters.

Dubai is the most populous of the seven emirates that make up the UAE and has one of the world's busiest airports.

13 June 2021; MEMO: Saudi Arabia has restricted the annual Hajj pilgrimage to its own citizens and residents for the second year running in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the state Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Saturday, reports Reuters.

13 June 2021; MEMO: At least 13 people were killed and several wounded in two separate artillery attacks on the northern Syrian town of Afrin on Saturday, local medical sources and Turkey's government said, reports Reuters.

The first attack struck a residential area, while the second hit a hospital shortly afterwards, civil defence sources said. Video footage on social media showed casualties amid the ruins of the Al Shifa hospital.

13 June 2021; MEMO: Only 30% of voters turned out in Algeria's parliamentary elections on Saturday, according to the country's election commission, reports Anadolu Agency.

"Voter turnout in the polls reached 30.2%," Mohamed Chorfi, chairman of the National Independent Election Authority, told state television.

BEIRUT, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Three people were killed and 11 others were seriously injured on Sunday in a traffic accident on the Ablah highway in the Zahle district of the Bekaa governorate in eastern Lebanon, the National News Agency reported.

The accident happened when a truck rammed into an automobile repair shop.

Rescue teams had to use hydraulic cutting tools to free stuck wounded people and transported them to nearby hospitals.

TRIPOLI, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Sunday that more than 1,000 illegal migrants were returned to Libya.

"Record number in returns of refugees and migrants to Libya today. Over 1,000 persons were returned in two operations in Zawiya and three others in Tripoli," the UNHCR tweeted earlier Sunday.

BAGHDAD, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) said Sunday that its commando forces have killed 13 militants of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group across the country so far this month.

Spokesman of CTS Sabah al-Numan told the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) that the commandos, backed by Iraqi aircraft, carried out several security operations in June, killing 13 IS militants and arresting many others, in addition to the destruction of some caves and hideouts.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — President Joe Biden and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan have known each other for years, but their meeting Monday will be their first as heads of state. And it comes at a particularly tense moment for relations between their two countries.

The list of disagreements is unusually long for the two NATO allies: There’s U.S. support for Kurdish fighters in Syria, as well as Turkey’s purchase of a Russian weapons system. And in April, Biden infuriated Ankara by declaring that the Ottoman-era mass killing and deportations of Armenians was “genocide.”

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel is set to swear in a new government on Sunday that will send Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into the opposition after a record 12 years in office and a political crisis that sparked four elections in two years.

Naftali Bennett, the head of a small ultranationalist party, will take over as prime minister. But if he wants to keep the job, he will have to maintain an unwieldy coalition of parties from the political right, left and center.