Arab world

    Over 250 African migrants were feared drowned in the Mediterranean Thursday after a charity’s rescue boat found five corpses close to two sinking rubber dinghies off Libya. The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said it was ‘deeply alarmed’ after the Golfo Azzuro, a boat operated by Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, reported the recovery of the bodies close to the drifting, partially-submerged dinghies, 15 miles off the Libyan coast. We don’t think there can be any other explanation than that these dinghies would have been full of people, Proactiva spokeswoman Laura Lanuza told AFP. It seems clear that they sunk. She added that the inflatables, of a kind usually used by people traffickers, would typically have been carrying 120-140 migrants each. In over a year we have never seen ...

    The suit filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan, is being handled by Kreindler & Kreindler in New York City, an aviation law firm that has been working with the families for the last 16 years. The claim seeks unspecified monetary damages. This lawsuit demonstrates ... the families are never going to give up until we establish that Saudi Arabia is accountable, said lawyer Jim Kreindler. The suit, which will be heard by U.S. District Judge George Daniels, alleges Saudi Arabia supported al-Qaeda in four ways, Kreindler told USA TODAY.  Lucy Smith, 6, and her brother Ryan, 2, of New Jersey look at the name of their uncle, Port Authority Police Officer Chris Amoroso, who was killed in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade… The suit names sev...

    Men and women are segregated in the majority of public spaces in Saudi Arabia, with the Muslim kingdom's religious police ensuring the rules are enforced. Unlawful mixing between sexes leads to the arrest of the violators and criminal charges, political scientist Elham Manea writes for Deutche Welle. Saudi Arabia's human rights record, especially with regards to protecting women, has often been called into question. Most recently women in Saudi Arabia claim to have been temporarily banned from entering a branch of Starbucks in the capital Riyadh. A sign was placed in the window of the coffee shop saying: Please no entry for ladies only send your driver to order thank you, after a wall designed to segregate men and women was reportedly removed during renovations. A customer...

    Security officials in Britain are urgently preparing for hundreds of UK nationals who went to fight for Islamic State to return, following an expected defeat of the group in Iraq and Syria. The jihadi group’s strongholds in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, northern Syria, are expected to fall by the summer. An exodus of foreign fighters from the area is thought already to have occurred. Security officials say they are particularly concerned by the prospect of very young children, including some who were born under IS rule in either Syria or Iraq, going to the UK with their parents. One government source said: “It is possible they are going to return indoctrinated, deeply dangerous and damaged. The only analogous experience we have is handling children caught up in extreme religious...

    A man and his fiancée were arrested late January in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for unlawful sex. The mother of Emlyn Culverwell‚ 29‚ of South Africa‚ was begging for her son’s release as well as his fiancée‚ 27-year-old Iryna Nohai from Ukraine. The couple was arrested in an Abu Dhabi hospital when doctors unveiled that Nohai was pregnant after she had been complaining about severe stomach cramps, BBC News reported Wednesday. Because they were unmarried, they were reported to the authorities and arrested on the spot. The couple had violated the United Arab Emirates’ morality laws, which mandated that sex outside marriage is a punishable crime. Culverwell and his fiancée, who met in the Muslim-majority country, have been in prison since late January. They were taken to ...

    Two suicide bombers attacked a celebration being held the night before a wedding north of Baghdad, killing 26 people, a police officer and a doctor said on Thursday. The bombings in the Al-Hajaj area, north of the city of Tikrit, also wounded 25 people, the sources said. The first blew himself up at 8:30pm (1730 GMT on Wednesday) amid men who were dancing during the celebration, while the second attacked a few minutes later, a police lieutenant colonel said. The bombers detonated explosive belts, the officer said. A doctor at a local hospital confirmed the toll. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State jihadist group carries out frequent suicide bombings targeting both civilians and members of the security forces in Iraq. IS over...

    The number of Islamism-inspired terrorism offences in the UK has nearly doubled in the five years to the end of 2015, according to a new report. The period from 1998 to 2015, studied in a report on Islamist terrorism on British soil, has also seen a surge in the number of women taking part in these crimes with offenders are getting younger and the bulk of the Islamism-inspired threat coming from home-grown terrorism. It was found that 72% of Islamism-related offences (IROs) were carried out by UK nationals or people who held dual British nationality. Report author Hannah Stuart, a fellow at The Henry Jackson Society who commissioned the study, believes it poses particular challenges for the authorities. She said: Our security services will be particularly concerned that th...

    Two Bangladeshis were killed and another injured in a road accident at the Hayil province of Saudi Arabia on local time Wednesday night. The deceased are Abul Khayer, a resident of Raipur upazila in Lakshmipur, and Dulal Hossain, a resident of Sonaimuri upazila in Noakhali. Identity of the injured could not be known yet. It has been known that Dulal Hossain was travelling from Hayil along with two other passengers, while the accident occurred in Dilhan area of Tabuq at about KSA time 10:45pm and left two dead on the spot. However, the reason behind the accident could not be known.

    Teenage militant Alaa abd al-Akeedi’s final letter to his family appears on official Islamic State stationery in Erbil, Iraq, February 26, 2017. Picture taken February 26, 2017. Photo: Reuters ‘My dear family, please forgive me,’ reads the handwritten letter discarded in the dusty halls of an Islamic State training compound in eastern Mosul. ‘Don’t be sad and don’t wear the black clothes (of mourning). I asked to get married and you did not marry me off. So, by God, I will marry the 72 virgins in paradise.’ They were schoolboy Alaa Abd al-Akeedi’s parting words before he set off from the compound to end his life in a suicide bomb attack against Iraqi security forces last year. The letter was written on an Islamic State form marked ‘Soldiers’ Department, Martyrs’ Brigade’ a...

    Turkish-backed Syrian rebels patrol through the town of al-Bab shortly after they captured it from the Islamic State (IS) group. Beirut, Lebanon: A suicide bomber attacked Turkish-backed rebels just outside the Syrian town of Al-Bab Friday, killing 42 people in a major blow just hours after they hailed its capture from the Islamic State group. The bomber blew up a vehicle packed with explosives outside a rebel command centre in the village of Susian, eight kilometres (five miles) northeast of Al-Bab, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The blast devastated the twin command posts and also seriously wounded a large number of fighters, the Britain-based monitoring group said. Most of the dead were fighters. There was no immediate claim for the attack but it bore all...