Middle East & North Africa

ISTANBUL, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Turkish prosecutors issued detention warrants Monday for 36 soldiers over their alleged links to a network believed to be behind a coup attempt in 2016.

Police launched simultaneous operations in 32 provinces to catch the suspects upon the order of the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in Balikesir, the state-run Anadolu agency said.

Those targeted in the operations were reportedly soldiers on active duty, retired and dismissed military personnel.

JERUSALEM, March 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Israel this month will hold its fourth election in under two years, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoping goodwill from a world-beating coronavirus vaccination campaign can finally secure him an elusive majority government.

When Israelis last went to the polls a year ago, they delivered a result that had become familiar: neither the right-wing Netanyahu nor his centrist challenger Benny Gantz had enough support to form the necessary 61-seat parliamentary majority.

The world, and Israeli politics, have been upended since then.

TEHRAN, March 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Israel is highly likely to have been behind an attack in the Mediterranean this week that damaged an Iranian container ship, an Iranian investigator said.

Israeli officials did not comment on Friday when asked if Israel was involved in the incident on Wednesday.

The container ship Shahr e Kord was hit by an explosive object which caused a small fire, but no one on board was hurt, Iran reported on Friday. Two maritime security sources said initial indications were that the ship had been intentionally targeted by an unknown source.

DAMASCUS, March 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The overall death toll for Syria’s civil war has reached 388,652 since it began a decade ago this month, a war monitor said on Sunday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the figures includes almost 117,388 civilians, among them more than 22,000 children.

Attacks by the Syrian regime and allied militia forces accounted for the majority of civilian deaths, said the Britain-based monitor which relies on sources inside Syria for its reports.

TUNIS, March 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — At least six people have died and one was injured in an explosion on Saturday of an asphalt tank in an industrial zone in Gabès, in south-eastern Tunisia.

The explosion, “the causes of which are not yet known”, occurred at 9:30 am local (08:30 GMT).

“We made in a first preliminary assessment six dead and one wounded”, Moez Triaa, the spokesperson for civil protection said.

Four people died on the spot and the other two after being transported to a hospital in Gabès.

RAMALLAH, March 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Palestinian Authority and the Arab League condemned the Czech Republic’s opening of a diplomatic office in Jerusalem as a violation of international law.

Prague opened a Jerusalem branch of its Israel embassy, which is located in Tel Aviv, on Thursday.

The inauguration was attended by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, two weeks after Israel sent 5,000 Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses to the Czech Republic under a “vaccine diplomacy” programme that later came under legal scrutiny and was frozen.

DUBAI (Reuters) - The trial of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe at Iran’s Revolutionary court was held on Sunday, her lawyer Hojjat Kermani told Reuters, hoping she would be acquitted from the charge of “propaganda against the system”.

“Her trial was held at branch 15 of the Revolutionary court. Her charge is propaganda against the system,” Kermani said, adding that “Zaghari-Ratcliffe was fine and calm at the court session”.

13 Mar 2021; MEMO: After years of disrupted ties, Turkey and Egypt have restarted diplomatic-level talks, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Anadolu Agency and TRT on Thursday.

14 Mar 2021; MEMO: The editor-in-chief of the pro-Egyptian regime newspaper, Al Watan, has put forward ten conditions that Turkey must meet before Cairo agrees to "resume talks" with Ankara.

13 Mar 2021; MEMO: The US Department of State announced on Thursday that "some progress" had been made towards establishing a ceasefire in Yemen, while calling on the warring parties to commit further to this step.

This came in a statement following the return of the US Special Envoy for Yemen Timothy Linder King from a visit to the region aimed at strengthening the United Nations (UN)-led efforts to end the conflict and address a growing humanitarian disaster in the country.