Arab world

    The first ever all-female flight deck crew for Royal Brunei Airlines has operated a plane from Brunei to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. But while it was a milestone for the airline, the pilot crew touched down in country where women are still not allowed to drive a car. To mark Brunei’s National Day on 23 February, which celebrates the country’s independence, Captain Sharifah Czarena Surainy, Senior First Officer Dk Nadiah Pg Khashiem and Senior First Officer Sariana Nordin landed flight BI081 in the Middle Eastern country. The occasion came just over three years after Captain Sharifa Czarena Surainy became the first female captain of a flag carrier in Southeast Asia. She told The Brunei Times in 2012: “Being a pilot, people normally see it as being a male dominant occupation.” “...

    Tens of thousands of documents, containing 22,000 names, addresses, telephone numbers and family contacts of Islamic State jihadis, have been obtained by Sky News. Nationals from at least 51 countries, including the UK, had to give up their most personal information as they joined the terror organisation. Only when the 23-question form was filled in were they inducted into IS. A lot of the names and their new Islamic State names on the registration forms are well known. Abdel Bary, a 26-year-old from London, joined in 2013 after visiting Libya, Egypt and Turkey. He is designated as a fighter but is better known in the UK as a rap artist. His whereabouts are unknown. ScreenGrab Junaid Hussain And IS Document screengrab Another jihadi named in the documents, now dead after b...

    A senior Islamic State commander with a $5m (£3.5m) bounty on his head has been targeted in a coalition airstrike in Syria. Abu Omar al Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen, could have been killed in the aerial attack last Friday , according to US officials. But his death has not yet been confirmed. Known for his red beard, al Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Batirashvili, was the terror group's de facto minister of war and among the most-wanted militants in a US reward programme. He was IS top commander and leader in northern Syria and maintained unique authority in the group with about 1,000 foreign fighters under his command, according to the US Treasury. It said he also oversaw a prison near the group's de facto capital Raqqa where foreign hostages may have bee...

    President Hassan Rouhani's allies are set to take all the seat in the capital. Allies of Iran's reformist president, Hassan Rouhani, have won a landslide victory in Tehran, in the first elections since Iran signed a nuclear deal with world powers. With 90% of the votes counted, the pro-Rouhani List of Hope is set to take all 30 seats in the capital. The leading conservative candidate Gholamali Haddad-Adel is in 31st place. Millions voted on Friday to elect the 290-seat parliament as well as members of the Assembly of Experts. The 88-member assembly appoints Iran's Supreme Leader and might end up choosing a successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 76 and has suffered ill-health. Early results gave former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate Conservative, and Rouhan...

    Hours into a ceasefire brokered by Russia and the US, a car bomb has killed at least two people in Syria, and rebels claim government forces dropped barrel bombs near Damascus. No one has claimed responsibility for the car bomb attack on the government-held town of Salamiyeh in the west of the country so far but Isis has carried out several bombings across the country in recent weeks. The rebel group Jaish al-Islam said government forces dropped two barrel bombs and opened fire on its positions during several violations of a cessation of hostilities agreement in the Eastern Ghouta near Damascus on Saturday. Citing field reports from the group's commanders, Jaish al-Islam spokesman Islam Alloush told Reuters that in one incident government forces trying to advance “were dea...

    Kurdish Special Forces, operating out of the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, have rescued a 16-year-old Swedish girl who was lured by an Islamic State (Isis) fighter to its stronghold of Mosul. Security officials from Iraqi Kurdistan confirmed the teenage girl was successfully rescued from IS (Daesh)'s de-facto capital in Iraq on February 17. "The Swedish national, Marlin Stivani Nivarlain, is 16-years-old from Borås. She was misled by an ISIL member in Sweden to travel to Syria and later to Mosul," the Kurdistan Regional Security Council wrote in statement published on social media. Nivarlain is being cared for in Iraqi Kurdistan and is in the process of being returned home once arrangements are made with the Swedish government, Kurdish authorities said. A spok...

    Nearly 50 people have been killed and dozens injured in twin car bomb attacks in the central Syrian city of Homs. The terror attack comes as Russia and the regime continue an offensive.The powerful double blasts on Sunday sent up a billow of black smoke and scattered debris in Hom's Zahraa neighbourhood, where many of the residents are members of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect. Initial reports from Syrian state television put the number of civilian deaths at 25, but that number quickly rose to at least 46 killed, according to a monitoring group. The death toll is likely to increase due to the large number of injuries.Homs was an early center of the armed rebellion against Assad, but most of the destroyed city has since come under the control of regime troops thro...

    Egyptian courts have been cracking down on dissenters since the coup in 2013. An Egyptian court has sentenced a four-year-old boy to life in prison for committing murder when he was aged just one. Ahmed Mansour Karmi was not in court on Tuesday when he was convicted of four counts of murder, eight of attempted murder, one vandalisation of property and another count of threatening soldiers and police officers - all before his second birthday. Ahmed was one of 115 defendants who were all handed life sentences at the same time at the court in western Cairo for crimes allegedly committed in early 2014. His defence attorney, Faisal al-Sayd, told the Jerusalem Post the child’s name had been added to the list by mistake but the court did not pass Ahmed’s birth certificate on to t...

    Some reacted with anger and confusion, while others looked on approvingly, even offering their congratulations. A 12-year-old girl, in a white wedding dress and veil, stands beside a man who looks like her grandfather. They are getting their wedding pictures taken by the sea. Passers-by question him and the photographer, one accusing the groom of being a “criminal”. The groom replies: “This is none of your business. I got permission from her parents." The bride and groom are actors, hired by the KAFA - “enough” in Arabic - Violence & Exploitation campaign in Lebanon. The video has gathered over 1.7 million views and shines a spotlight on the dire plight of thousands of young girls in Lebanon, Syria and around the world who are forced into marriage with much older men e...

    Children as young as eight are being put on the front line by Islamic State, according to Syrian activists. Footage obtained by Sky News shows how youngsters play mock execution games. In one video, they kneel down and pretend to be shot, while in another a toddler tries to behead a teddy bear. "Those kids are a whole generation that's lost," said activist Sarmad al Jilane. He added: "There are a lot of suicide bombers that Daesh (IS) have orchestrated - as well as brainwashing the children. "They place them in the front line of battles and if they are killed then they are considered to be protecting Daesh lives." The group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) also warns Russian airstrikes are killing civilians and helping Daesh. Sarmad, who is co-founder of RBSS, sa...