Arab world

    An Irish man who was shot dead on the holiday island of Majorca could have been killed by mistake, reports claim. Police in Costa De La Calma are probing the possibility he was gunned down by mistake after being confused for a Dublin criminal because of his likeness to him, a Palma-based newspaper has claimed today. There was no official comment from the Guardia Civil, which is heading the murder probe. The man, believed to be in his 30s, was gunned down outside an empty supermarket in Costa de la Calma around 15 miles from the capital Palma just after 9pm last night. Police are said to be hunting up to three assailants. Attempts to revive the victim, said to be aged around 30 with a tattoo on his back, failed. The shooting was initially believed to be a revenge killing co...

    A photograph of a little boy, who sits dazed and bloody in the back of an ambulance after apparently surviving an airstrike in Aleppo, has highlighted the desperation of the Syrian civil war and the struggle for control of the city. The child is reported to be five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, one of five children injured late on Wednesday by a military strike on the city of 300,000 – the site of the most decisive battle in the civil war. The image of him sitting in an ambulance, covered head to toe with dust and so disoriented as to seem barely aware of an open wound on his forehead, has been shared thousands of times on social media. The startling image is a screenshot from a video shot and circulated by the Aleppo Media Center from inside the Syrian province. The anti-gover...

    Russian Tupolev-22 bombers were deployed to a military air base in Iran as part of the first operational collaboration between the two countries. Russia and Iran both hope that having the bombers closer to Syria will increase the effectiveness of the missions. Media outlets in Russia reported this morning (Tuesday) that the Russian Air Force deployed Tupolev-22 bombers to Iran. According to the Russian news agency TASS, the aircraft have already taken off from the Iranian city of Hamadan in order to carry out missions against ISIS and the rebel forces in Syria. Initially, the reports from Russia did not specify how many aircraft were sent to Iran and official conformation about the reports was not granted. Only after the first mission was complete, the Russian Defense Mini...

    A Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter comforts a civilian who was evacuated with others by the SDF from an Islamic State-controlled neighbourhood of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, August 12, 2016. The SDF has said Islamic State was using civilians as human shields. A woman embraces a Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter after she was evacuated with others by the SDF from an Islamic State-controlled neighbourhood of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, August 12, 2016. The SDF has said Islamic State was using civilians as human shields. Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced today, Aug. 12, that they had liberated the city’s last ISIL-held neighborhoods, reports the BBC. Reuters photographer Rodi Said has captured emotional photos of Manbij re...

    US has more work to do to prepare an air base in northern Iraq before Mosul takeover can happen. The number of Isis combatants in Iraq and Syria has been decimated by military campaigns, leaving as few as 15,000 to fight, according to a senior US commander. Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland said the total was difficult to accurately measure, but the estimated number of Isis fighters in the war-stricken countries is now between 15,000 and 20,000. Mr MacFarland claimed 45,000 enemy fighters are no longer on the front line after US backed operations. The new figure of Isis fighters has shrunk from earlier approximations of between 19,000 and 25,000. The US commander said the quality was of the fighters in combat was decreasing. Forces with US support in Iraq and Syria were a...

    One of the three schoolgirls from Bethnal Green who fled to Syria to live in the so-called Islamic State has died in an air strike, it has been reported. Kadiza Sultana, 17, is thought to have died in a Russian air strike in Raqqa, IS’ de facto capital, earlier this year. Sultana and her friends Shamima Begum and Amira Abase were the subject of huge press attention when they fled Britain, via Turkey, to join IS, in February 2015. Their families made public appeals for information after the girls flew from Gatwick to Turkey and caught a bus to the border, before being smuggled into Syria. Sultana is believed to have died in May when the building she was staying in was bombed. ITV News reported Sultana has become disillusioned with life under IS and was planning to escape an...

    Russian forces are due to suspend military action in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo shortly to allow in desperately needed humanitarian aid. It is not clear if Syrian rebel groups will also cease fire during the daily three-hour window. But UN officials say that is too short to take in enough to help the large numbers of people in need. Intense fighting has been continuing in Aleppo between rebels and Russian-backed Syrian government forces. There are also reports of a toxic gas attack on a rebel-held area. Medical staff say four people died and many other were injured. The gas is thought to have been chlorine dropped in a barrel bomb. Earlier the last doctors in the rebel-held east of the city appealed to US President Barack Obama to come to the aid of the 250,000 civ...

    A fire ripped through a maternity ward at a Baghdad hospital overnight, killing 12 newborn babies, government officials said Wednesday, a deadly blaze that was likely caused by faulty electrical wiring. By morning, grief-stricken fathers searched for their missing newborns in vain while angry relatives gathered outside the Yarmouk hospital in western Baghdad blamed the government for the tragedy. The hospital director, Saad Hatem Ahmed, said the blaze broke out late on Tuesday night and that the initial investigation indicated it was an electrical fire. Ahmed said 29 female patients and eight babies were moved from the ward where the fire broke out and transferred to another hospital. Baghdad authorities initially sealed off the hospital but later allowed some media into t...

    Iranian news outlets reported that the government executed a former nuclear scientist who was arrested five years ago. The scientist was charged and convicted of spying for the US. The Iranian government admitted that Shahram Amiri, a former scientist in the country’s nuclear program, was executed after being convicted of spying for the US, according to Iranian news outlets. Amiri was arrested about five years ago after he returned to Iran from the US. According to several news reports, the Iranian Supreme Court confirmed Amiri’s sentence. The nuclear scientist’s mother said that her son’s body has rope marks around the neck, indicating that he was executed by hanging. Amiri first disappeared in 2009 immediately after he left Iran to complete the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. Acco...

    Dubai airport, the world’s busiest in terms of international passengers, was shut down yesterday following an accident involving a landing Emirates plane, it said, reports AFP from Dubai. “All operations (arrivals and departures) at (Dubai International) DXB have been suspended until further notice following the incident involving flight EK521,” Dubai Airports said on Twitter. The plane with 275 people on board was involved in an accident on landing yesterday at Dubai airport but all the passengers were evacuated safely, the government said. Footage on social media showed smoke billowing from the aircraft. The cause of the accident was not immediately clear. An Emirates plane coming from India has been involved in an accident on landing at Dubai International, the gove...