Killing of Syrian Captagon kingpin turns up the heat on drug smugglers of the Middle East

DUBAI/AMMAN: Just days after Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, warned in an interview with CNN that his country is “not taking the threat of drug smuggling lightly” and is ready “to do what it takes to counter that threat,” Merhi Al-Ramthan, a reputed Syrian drug kingpin, was killed when airstrikes targeted his house in the village of Shuab in the Sweida governorate.


42 percent of workforce in UAE aviation sector are women, conference told

DUBAI: About 27,000 women now work in the UAE’s aviation sector, a figure that represents 42 percent of the workforce, the Emirates News Agency reported on Wednesday

Mervat Sultan, president of the Middle East Chapter of Women in Aviation, said the number of women working in the industry is increasing because of active and constructive engagement with women interested in a career in the field.



UN chief condemns civilian deaths in Gaza, urges restraint by all

UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned civilian deaths in Gaza as “unacceptable” and appealed for it to “stop immediately” and for all parties to exercise maximum restraint, Deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Wednesday.
“Israel must abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the proportional use of force and taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects in the conduct of military operations,” Haq said.


Turkiye-Syria rapprochement dialogue hosted by Moscow

MOSCOW: Russia’s foreign minister on Wednesday hosted his counterparts from Turkiye, Syria and Iran for talks that marked the highest-level contact between Ankara and Damascus since the start of the Syrian civil war over a decade ago.

In his opening speech, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed hope that the meeting would pave the way to drafting a road map for normalizing Turkish-Syrian relations. 



Policeman killed in Damascus car bombing

DAMASCUS: A Syrian policeman was killed and four others wounded on Wednesday in a car bomb attack on a Damascus police station that was claimed by Daesh.

The Syrian Interior Ministry said a vehicle exploded at the Barzeh police station in the north of the capital, killing a lieutenant colonel and wounding four others.

“Investigations are ongoing to discover the circumstances of the incident,” it added in a statement, posting images of a mangled, burnt-out vehicle.