GAZA CITY: Investigators said on Sunday that last week’s massive apartment fire in the Gaza Strip was ignited accidentally by a man using gasoline in a party trick, but did not explain how they reached that conclusion. 

The blaze killed 22 members of the same family and there were no survivors who could have described the events.

The fire had erupted on Thursday in the third-floor apartment of the Abu Raya family home in the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. 

Officials initially said 21 people were killed. 

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.