Middle East & North Africa

DAMASCUS, Aug 24 (NNN-Xinhua) — The Syrian army on Friday fully secured the entire northern countryside of the central province of Hama for the first time since 2012, the state media reported.

After capturing the strategic town of Khan Shaykhun in the southern countryside of Idlib province in northwestern Syria, the Syrian army succeeded to fully secure several adjacent towns in the northern countryside of Hama, the official SANA news agency reported.

ISTANBUL, Aug 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Moscow on Tuesday (Aug 27) for a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the presidency said in a statement, days after a Turkish convoy was hit by an air strike in Syria.

The surprise visit comes as the forces of President Bashar al-Assad made advances into the last rebel stronghold of Idlib in Syria’s northwest and upped the stakes with Turkey in its months-long offensive backed by Russia.

JERUSALEM, Aug 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A 17-year-old Israeli girl has been killed in a bomb attack near a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military says.

Rina Shnerb had been hiking with her brother Dvir and her father Eitan near a natural spring outside Dolev when an improvised explosive device blew up.

Dvir and Eitan were seriously wounded by the blast and were evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “harsh terrorist attack”.

TEHRAN, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Friday that his talks with the French President Emmanuel Macron to salvage the international nuclear deal were "constructive," Press TV reported.

"France has offered proposals to Iran about ways to implement the Iranian nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and steps that the sides are required to take" to save the deal, Zarif said after his talks with the French president in Paris on Friday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian-flagged oil tanker pursued by the U.S. amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington changed its listed destination to a port in Turkey early Saturday after Greece said it wouldn’t risk its relations with America by aiding it.

The crew of the Adrian Darya 1, formerly known as the Grace 1, updated its listed destination in its Automatic Identification System to Mersin, Turkey, a port city in the country’s south and home to an oil terminal.

23 Aug 2019; MEMO: The residents of a Bedouin Palestinian village in southern Israel have petitioned the Supreme Court in a bid to prevent construction on the community’s Muslim cemetery, reported Haaretz.

The construction in question is a planned large water storage tank to be built by the Mekorot national water company.

23 Aug 2019; MEMO: Israeli TV channel KAN reported on Thursday that the occupation authorities have transferred two billion shekels (around $560 million) of withheld taxes to the Palestinian Authority, which will help to cover its budget deficit. The channel cited PA officials in its report.

23 Aug 2019; MEMO: The number of Palestinians displaced by Israeli occupation authorities in the first seven months of 2019 has now exceeded the total number of people displaced in all of 2018.

23 Aug 2019; MEMO: A member of Israel’s parliament has claimed that dead people “participate” in the country’s elections in what amounts to ballot box fraud.

Oded Forer MK, of the Yisrael Beiteinu bloc in the Knesset, said on Wednesday that he is going to ask the election committee to place cameras in the polling stations in Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) neighbourhoods. Ballot box fraud among Haredi Jews is a “fact,” he claimed.

Washington, Aug 23 (AFP/PTI) Israel has carried out at least one strike against a weapons depot in Iraq, The New York Times reported Thursday.

There have been a series of blasts in Iraq over the past month at training camps and arms depots used by the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary forces, which are mainly composed of pro-Iranian militias.