Arab world

    Authorities in Ireland are investigating reports that a former Catholic altar boy has died in an Islamic State suicide mission. The group's Amaq news agency has reported that 49-year-old Terence Kelly died after driving an armoured truck packed with explosives into Shia militia southwest of the Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday. The city is under siege from Iraq forces, Shia militias, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and other groups backed by US-led coalition airstrikes who launched a campaign to retake the city from Islamic State last month. A statement released by the group said: "Brother martyr Abu Osama Irelandi, may Allah accept his soul, attacked a group of animals from the Shia militia in the village of Ghzayel al Kabir." One picture released by the group shows Mr Kelly dres...

    It has been confirmed that the Islamic State killed 232 people near Mosul on Wednesday. Those killed included civilians as well as former Iraqi forces who refused to comply with orders. A UN spokesperson has said that the IS has abducted nearly 8,000 families or "tens of thousands" of people from around around the city. The civilians are understood to have been brought into Mosul and used as human shields nearby to military installations. Earlier in the week UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville spoke about information his officials were receiving which described IS "deliberately using civilians as human shields, forcing them to move to sites where ISIL (another name for IS) fighters are based, or preventing them from leaving other places for strategic reasons". Islami...

    A groom in Saudi Arabia filed for divorce two hours after he married his bride when she shared wedding pictures on Snapchat. The husband abruptly ended the marriage after the wife broke an agreement not to upload pictures from the ceremony, local media reported. The quick divorce sparked a huge row between the families of the bride and groom with relatives arguing the deal was unfair. The bride’s brother told Saudi daily Okaz: There was a prenuptial agreement between my sister and her fiancé that she would not use social-media applications such as Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter to post or send her pictures. It was included in the marriage contract and became binding. Regretfully, my sister did not honour the pledge and used Snapchat to share pictures from the wedding cerem...

    US soldiers at a base near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have donned protective masks against toxic fumes from a sulphur plant set alight in fighting with so called Islamic State. They took the precaution after the wind blew smoke from the fire towards Qayyarah air field. In Baghdad, Turkish attempts to join the offensive against IS were rebuffed. Meanwhile, advancing Iraqi forces entered the town of Qaraqosh, 32km (20 miles) south of Mosul, the IS capital. Qaraqosh, Iraq's largest Christian town before the war, is said to be largely empty but IS has laid landmines on the approaches to Mosul. The militants have been attacking with suicide bombers elsewhere, driving vehicles laden with explosives at high speed towards government lines. Media captionThousands of people ha...

    A Saudi prince was executed in Riyadh on Tuesday after a court found him guilty of shooting dead a fellow Saudi, official media reported, in a rare example of a ruling family member subjected to the death penalty. Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabir had pleaded guilty to shooting Adel al-Mohaimeed after a brawl, the ministry of interior said in a statement on state news agency SPA. It did not say how the prince was killed. Most people executed in the kingdom are beheaded with a sword. Members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are only rarely known to have been executed. One of the most prominent cases was Faisal bin Musaid al Saud, who assassinated his uncle, King Faisal, in 1975. The family is estimated to number several thousand. While members receive monthly stipends, and the ...

    Kuwait's Cabinet resigned and its parliament was dissolved Sunday over a "lack of cooperation" among the tiny, oil-rich country's branches of government, setting the stage for early elections. Parliaments typically don't serve out their full terms in the stalwart U.S. ally, but lawmakers elected in Kuwait's last election in 2013 largely sided with the government as they served in the wake of Arab Spring protests and the rise of the Islamic State group. The drop in global oil prices has squeezed this major OPEC member to the point of cutting back on the country's many subsidies, stirring dissent. Kuwait's state-run television station and its news agency announced the Cabinet resignation and the parliament dissolving on Sunday afternoon, just a few hours after government off...

    Saddam Hussein had a secret torture chamber in central New York city where prisoners were tortured and killed, it has been reported. From the outside, the Mission of Iraq is a grand townhouse in a wealthy party of the city near Central Park. But according to former officials, he hid a dark secret during the days of the brutal dictator. At the time, it was immune from American law as sovereign Iraqi territory. One former worker told how prisoners were taken down to the basement where there was a windowless room behind steel-reinforced doors. Inside they would be subjected to bloodthirsty abuse. Rubber hoses, planks of wood and pliers were involved, it is claimed. "The doors were reinforced in a way that nobody could break in or out. "You didn’t need to soundproof it,” one o...

    The ancient capital of Morocco holds a precious literary secret. Tucked away in Fez's old medina quarter, one of humanity's most important buildings is currently undergoing a rigorous restoration. The al-Qarawiyyin library is thought to be the oldest in the world and will open its doors to the public for the first time next year. Founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, daughter of a wealthy Tunisian merchant, the library, along with the mosque and the university that share its name, formed the cultural heart of the ancient capital. All these centuries later, a woman is once again influencing its legacy. Aziza Chaouni, a Fez native based in Toronto, is the architect supervising its restoration. "We knew where it was more or less, but could not enter. It was this big, mysterious ...

    Saudi Arabia on Thursday warned of "disastrous consequences" from a United States law allowing 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom, in a major spike in tension between the longstanding allies. The warning came after the U.S. Congress voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to override President Barack Obama's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) on relations between states. JASTA allows attack survivors and relatives of terrorism victims to pursue cases against foreign governments in U.S. federal court and to demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for attacks on U.S. soil. A Saudi foreign ministry source on Thursday called on the U.S. Congress "to take the necessary measures to counter the disastrous and dangerous cons...

    The system is the 'most significant impediment' to women's rights in Saudi Arabia, HRW tells IBTimes UK. A Saudi woman has delivered a petition to the government calling for an end to the Gulf kingdom's male guardianship system. The petition has been signed by more than 14,000 Saudi women. Women face severe restrictions in the ultra-conservative nation where – despite being adults – they must obtain permission from a male guardian to travel abroad, marry and even be released from prison. They can also be required to provide approval to work and or access health care, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). On Sunday (25 September), people sent telegrams to King Salman to abolish the male guardianship system – something which Saudi Arabia pledged to do in 2009 and 2013. The ...