BEIRUT: A US official in Syria on Friday called for an “immediate de-escalation” following days of deadly airstrikes and shelling along the Syria-Turkiye border, saying the actions destabilize the region and undermine the fight against the Daesh group.
Turkiye this week launched a wave of airstrikes on suspected Kurdish rebels hiding in neighboring Syria and Iraq, in retaliation for a deadly Nov. 13 bombing in Istanbul that Ankara blames on the Kurdish groups.

BEIRUT: On Friday, ABAAD launched a campaign to demand the amendment of Chapter Seven of the Lebanese Penal Code, on sexual assault crimes, calling on implementing stricter penalties for such crimes.

ABAAD Resource Center for Gender Equality is a UN ECOSOC-accredited organization that aims to achieve gender equality as an essential condition for sustainable social and economic development in the MENA region.

BAGHDAD: Iran has sent additional units of special forces to fortify its northern border with Iraq and clamp down on what it says is infiltration by Kurdish opposition groups, Iranian state media reported on Friday.
Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, chief of ground forces of the paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guard, said “armored and special forces” units had been deployed to west and north-west provinces to bolster existing border security, the official IRNA news agency reported.

RAMALLAH: Palestinians are deeply concerned that Israeli far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir is to become police minister in a coalition deal with Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party that is set to create the most right-wing government in the country’s history.

Given Ben-Gvir’s ultra-extremist views, more violence and instability are expected in the Palestinian Territories and East Jerusalem.

He was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement against Arabs and backing a group considered by Israel and the US to be a terrorist organization.

ALGIERS: An Algerian court has pronounced death sentences against 48 people convicted of murder for killing a man they accused of setting deadly wildfires in summer 2020.

The murder of Jamal Ben Ismail, a singer who said he had gone to the Kabylie region outside Algiers to help battle wildfires that blazed across Algeria in 2021, shocked the country.