Middle East & North Africa

ISTANBUL; 05 Feb 2019; AA: Turkey will provide around $5 billion in loans for the reconstruction of Iraq, the foreign minister said on Sunday.

“We made the biggest commitment to Iraq,” Mevlut Cavusoglu told a meeting organized by the Beyoglu Municipality in Istanbul.

“We will provide $5 billion credit,” Cavusoglu said, adding Turkish business people will utilize this loan for their projects in Iraq.

AYDIN, 05 Feb 2019; AA: Turkish coast guard units on Sunday rescued 52 irregular migrants, including 25 children, in the western province of Aydin.

The units sprang to action after learning a rubber boat carrying the migrants was stranded in the Aegean Sea due to engine failure.

The migrants included 45 Afghans, six Iranians, and a Gabonese. They were transferred to the provincial migration office.

DIYARBAKIR, 05 Feb 2019; AA: A Bible thought to be 1,200 years old was found in a police operation in southeastern Turkey, the governor’s office said on Tuesday.

An anti-smuggling team on Monday seized the Bible, said to be only 34 pages long, with gold lettering on leather, in the city of Kayapinar, said the southeastern Diyarbakir governorship in a statement.

JERUSALEM; 05 Feb 2019; AA: Israeli forces rounded up 25 Palestinians in overnight raids carried out across the occupied West Bank, according to the Israeli military on Tuesday.

The individuals were arrested for “suspected involvement in popular terrorist activities”, the army said in a statement, without elaborating on the nature of these activities.

ANKARA; 05 Feb 2019; AA: The era of Turkey taking out loans from the IMF is long since gone, said the Turkish president on Tuesday.

"Turkey closed its IMF chapter in May 2013 and, God willing, it will not be re-opened," Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the parliamentary group of his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party.

04 Feb 2019; AFP: Pope Francis and a top Muslim cleric Monday issued a joint call for freedom of belief during the first visit by the head of the Catholic church to the birthplace of Islam -- the Arabian Peninsula.

Francis, who has made outreach to Muslim communities a cornerstone of his papacy, is on an historic three-day visit to the United Arab Emirates.

TEHRAN, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian judiciary chief said on Monday that his country would never accept the "humiliating conditions" in the EU's payment channel for trade with Iran, Tasnim news agency reported.

"After nine months of procrastination and negotiation, Europeans have created a mechanism with limited capacity, not for exchanging money but for food and medicine," said Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani.

Baghdad, Feb 4 (AFP) Iraqi politicians on Monday hit back at Donald Trump after the US president said he plans to keep American forces in the country to spy on Iran.

In an interview with CBS television, Trump reaffirmed his determination to pull the United States out of "endless wars" in Syria and Afghanistan but said American troops would stay on in Iraq, partly "to be looking a little bit at Iran".

04 Feb 2019; AFP: Pope Francis landed in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday for the first ever visit by a pontiff to the Arabian Peninsula -- the birthplace of Islam.

The pope touched down in Abu Dhabi for the 48-hour trip during which he will meet leading Muslim clerics and hold an open-air mass for some 135,000 Catholics.

04 Feb 2019; DW: Israel on Sunday said it had started to build a new barrier along its border with the Gaza Strip, according to the Defense Ministry.

The ministry said in a statement that the above-ground barrier — 65 kilometers long and six meters high — would work in conjunction with an underground wall also under construction, to neutralize the possibility of cross-border tunnels built by Hamas militants.