DUBAI: Iran will give a “calculated and decisive” response to the killing of its top nuclear scientist, said a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, while a hard-line newspaper suggested Tehran’s revenge should include striking the Israeli city of Haifa.
“Undoubtedly, Iran will give a calculated and decisive answer to the criminals who took Martyr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh from the Iranian nation,” Kamal Kharrazi, who is also head of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, said in a statement.
Fakhrizadeh, long suspected by Western and Israeli government of masterminding a secret nuclear weapons program, was ambushed on a highway near Tehran on Friday and gunned down in his car.
Iran’s clerical and military rulers have blamed the Islamic Republic’s longtime enemy, Israel, for the killing. Iran has in the past accused Israel of killing several Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has declined to comment on the killing. An Israeli Cabinet minister, Tzachi Hanegbi, said on Saturday he did not know who carried it out.
Iranian hard-line media called on Sunday for a tough revenge. The hard-line Kayhan daily, whose editor in chief is appointed by Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for an attack on the Israeli port city of Haifa, if an Israeli role in Fakhrizadeh’s killing is proven.

“The attack should be carried out in such a way that in addition to destroying the facilities, it should also cause heavy human casualties,” wrote Saadollah Zarei in an opinion piece.
However, Iran’s rulers are aware of daunting military and political difficulties of attacking Israel. Such an attack would also complicate any effort by US President-elect Joe Biden to revive detente with Tehran after he takes office on Jan. 20.
Tensions have been high between Tehran and Washington since 2018, when President Donald Trump exited Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers and reimposed sanctions that have hit Iran’s economy hard. In retaliation, Tehran has gradually breached the deal’s curbs on its nuclear program.
Biden has said he will return the US to the deal if Iran resumes compliance. Iran has always denied pursuing nuclear weapons.

LONDON: The UAE condemned the killing of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and called on all parties to exercise self-restraint on Sunday, Emirates News Agency reported. 

“The state of instability our region is currently going through, and the security challenges it faces, drives us all to work toward averting acts that could lead to escalation and eventually threaten the stability of the entire region,” the news agency quoted the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation as saying. 

“Given the current situation in the region, the UAE calls upon all parties to exercise maximum degrees of self restraint to avoid dragging the region into new levels of instability,” the ministry added.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in an ambush near Tehran on Friday.

He has been described by Western and Israeli intelligence services for years as the leader of a covert atomic bomb programme halted in 2003, which Israel and the United States accuse Tehran of trying to restore in secret.

RIYADH: Yemen’s human rights ministry on Sunday condemned in the strongest terms the Iranian-backed Houthi attack, which killed 11 civilians, including five children and three women, and wounded six others, all of them in critical condition.
The “massacre” struck the village of Al-Qaza in Al-Durayhimi district, south of Hodeidah, the Yemeni News Agency (Saba) said, adding that “the terrorist Houthi militia bombed the homes of (these) citizens in the village.”
The ministry said: “These crimes come in light of suspicious silence from the international community, which is satisfied with only expressions of condemnation and regret without standing in front of the crimes committed by the Houthi militia against civilians.”
The ministry also stressed that this massacre should not go unpunished, as it comes within a continuous approach through which the Houthi militia “punishes the regions that reject its sectarian ideology based on killing, forced displacement and the spread of sectarianism and racism.”

DUBAI: The UAE on Sunday recorded one death and 1,251 new coronavirus cases.

The Ministry of Health and Prevention said that the total number of cases since the pandemic began had reached 167,753, with the death toll now at 570.

The ministry added that 736 people had recovered over the previous 24 hours, bringing the total number of recoveries to 154,185.

On Saturday, Abu Dhabi Ports said that it would store and distribute 70 million coronavirus vaccines to continue to play “a vital role in the global fight against COVID-19, using its enhanced logistics capabilities.”

As part of #Abu Dhabi-led #HopeConsortium @AbuDhabiPorts is playing a vital role in the global fight against COVID-19, using its enhanced logistics capabilities to store and distribute more than 70m COVID-19 vaccines as part of its commitment to the immunisation drive. pic.twitter.com/m0UHvw6kbk

— مكتب أبوظبي الإعلامي (@admediaoffice) November 28, 2020

The vaccines will be stored at Khalifa Industrial Zone (KIZAD), a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Ports, and is part of the Hope Consortium initiative launched by Abu Dhabi last month that “aims to serve as a logistics platform to coordinate and facilitate the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine around the world.”

Jamal Mohammed Alkaabi, undersecretary of Abu Dhabi’a Department of Health, said that the emirates “continues to play a vital role within the global effort to discover a vaccine for COVID-19. And as part of those efforts, we are providing logistical capabilities that will position the UAE as a distinguished local, regional, and global distribution hub.”

Meanwhile, Robert Sutton, head of Logistics Cluster, Abu Dhabi Ports, said: “Abu Dhabi Ports’ ability in expanding capacity to receive and store clinical, pharmaceutical and life science materials at moderate and extreme temperature ranges is a testament to our commitment to offer world-class logistics solutions.

“Our Department of Health-licensed facility fully integrates the movement of cargo with state-of-the-art temperature, humidity, and refrigeration-controlled technology. Abu Dhabi Ports, through our highly advanced infrastructure and multimodal connectivity, is ready and able to meet the challenges of distributing sensitive pharmaceuticals quickly across the supply chain,” he said.

Elsewhere, Kuwait recorded 231 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, bringing the total to 142,426. The death toll reached 878 after three new fatalities were registered.

تعلن #وزارة_الصحة⁩ عن تأكيد إصابة 231 حالة جديدة، وتسجيل 524 حالة شفاء، و 3 حالات وفاة جديدة بـ ⁧#فيروس_كورونا_المستجدّ⁩ COVID-19 ، ليصبح إجمالي عدد الحالات 142,426 حالة pic.twitter.com/1oIYVRIks2

— وزارة الصحة – الكويت (@KUWAIT_MOH) November 29, 2020

Oman’s Health Ministry said that its total number of cases had reached 123,484 and the death toll was 1,418.

#Statement No. 233
November 29. 2020 pic.twitter.com/VxsXVopvMS

— وزارة الصحة – عُمان (@OmaniMOH) November 29, 2020

In Bahrain, zero deaths was reported, keeping the toll to 341, while 142 new infected cases were confirmed.

Out of 9845 COVID-19 tests carried out on 29 November 2020, 142 new cases have been detected among 59 expatriate workers, 78 new cases are contacts of active cases, and 5 are travel related. There were 192 recoveries from #COVID19, increasing total recoveries to 84977 pic.twitter.com/M07HwGC8wW

— وزارة الصحة | مملكة البحرين (@MOH_Bahrain) November 29, 2020

TANGIER: More than 120 Libyan deputies pledged Saturday in Morocco to “end the divisions” that undermine their country, starting by convening the elected parliament as soon as they return home.
The House of Representatives has not met for two years, and Libya has been wracked by violence and chaos since the toppling and killing of dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
Two rival administrations have been vying for control of the country — the Government of National Accord and an eastern administration backed by part of the elected parliament.
The latter is deeply divided, with sessions taking place in parallel in the east and west.
At the end of five days of talks in Tangier, Morocco, 123 of the parliament’s 180 members pledged on Saturday to put an end to “hate speech” and “divisions” that undermine Libyan institutions.
They vowed to hold “parliamentary elections and to complete the transition as soon as possible,” and that all members of the House of Representatives would meet in session “as soon as they return” to Libya.
The session will take place in Ghadames, a desert oasis near Libya’s borders with both Algeria and Tunisia.
Ghadames is considered to be far from the centers of power.
“Having 123 deputies at the same table is in itself a success,” Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said.
“Libya needs a House of Representatives that plays its role… The next meeting in Libya will have a great impact on political dialogue,” he said.
The talks come at a time of increasing moves to break the deadlock in the country, which has Africa’s biggest oil reserves.
In mid-November, a UN-sponsored political dialogue forum in Tunis agreed to hold elections on December 24, 2021, but not on who will lead the transition.