KIRKUK, Iraq: At least one civilian was killed and eight other people were injured Saturday during rival protests in the multi-ethnic Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a local official said, amid days of brewing tensions.
The identity and the circumstances surrounding the death were not immediately clear, the director of the local health authority Ziad Khalaf told AFP, adding that those injured had been hit by bullets, stones or glass.
He said a member of the security forces was among the injured.

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s prime minister on Saturday inaugurated construction work on what is slated to become the first railway line connecting the country to neighboring Iran, a major political and economic partner.

NAIROBI, Kenya: Child soldiers are being recruited by both sides in Sudan’s ongoing civil war, a cruel practice that threatens to destroy the fabric of the country.

Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, is now a war zone where child soldiers are actors in a nightmarish script. Recent clashes between the Rapid Support Forces and El-Shajara Armored Corps have exposed the horrors Sudanese children must endure, with witnesses reporting instances of child soldiers fighting on both sides.

BEIRUT: Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in Beirut on Friday that Lebanon’s presidential election is an internal matter and that Tehran rejects foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs.

He added that Lebanon’s leaders possess the wisdom and competence to elect a president.

Amir-Abdollahian was speaking at a press conference with his Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib, and he urged external support for dialogue among Lebanese factions to elect a president.

RABAT: Morocco has begun an investigation into the death of a French-Moroccan after he and another Moroccan on jet skis were shot dead by the Algerian coast guard, media reports said on Friday.
The French Foreign Ministry in Paris reported only one death without providing the circumstances, saying another of its citizens had been jailed in “an incident involving several of our nationals.”
In Morocco, the prosecutor’s office began investigating the death of one of the young men “after the discovery of his body on the beach at Saidia,” the Al-Omk website reported.