PARIS: Activists have expressed alarm that Iran was implementing a major crackdown in a Kurdish-populated town that has seen intense anti-regime protests in the last few days.

Reinforcements of the security forces were sent to the city of Mahabad in western Iran, rights groups said, while images and audio files of heavy gunfire and screams were posted overnight.

CAIRO: Customs at Cairo International Airport have thwarted an attempt to smuggle three ivory statues that are prohibited from being exported or traded.

The statues were seized, preventing their export in a shipment of personal belongings to Lebanon.

Legal measures are underway in accordance with Presidential Decree No. 102 of 1983 to implement Egypt’s accession to the CITES convention and Egyptian Environmental Law No. 4 of 1994, and its amendments.

CAIRO: Eleven people were killed and 27 injured on Sunday when a bus collided with a heavy-duty truck on the Zafarana-Ras Ghareb Road, 40 kilometers north of Ras Ghareb city in the Red Sea Governorate, southeast of Egypt.

The deceased and injured were taken to Ras Gharib Central Hospital. Legal action is being initiated by the families of the victims.

Fifteen ambulances were dispatched to the scene of the accident when the governorate’s operations room received notification of the collision.

A security source said the dead and injured were all Egyptians.

NEW YORK CITY: Granting Palestine full state membership status at the UN would be a “practical” step that could preserve the two-state solution and help reinvigorate the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, according to Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN.

Mansour initiated consultations this year with members of the UN Security Council to push for a resolution to elevate Palestine from its current status as an observer state at the global organization and recognize it as a full member.

CAIRO: Flu-like symptoms have been spreading in Egyptian homes, especially among children resulting from a virus called Respiratory Syncytial Virus, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health.

Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, a spokesperson for the ministry, told Arab News: “The preventive medicine sector recently swabbed a number of children, and the results of the survey showed that 73 percent of them were infected with the virus.”

He added: “People infected with RSV show symptoms of the common cold such as runny nose, headache, high fever, coughing, and severe fatigue.”