BEIRUT: The Kingdom rejects attempts to use Islam as a shield for political purposes fueling hatred, extremism, and terrorism, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari said on Monday.

His remarks followed his meeting with Lebanon’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel Latif Derian.

Derian was one of the most prominent figures of national unity in Lebanon and the Kingdom was keen on respecting all Islamic and Christian figures and positions as they were entrusted with the unity, Arabism, and coexistence of Lebanon, he added.

MOSUL: An Iraqi museum is using computer technology and virtual reality headsets to turn back time, so visitors can explore heritage sites destroyed by terrorists and in battles to defeat them.

Daesh captured a third of Iraq in a lightning offensive in 2014, seizing the northern city of Mosul as their stronghold and vandalizing or destroying a swath of cultural sites across the country.

RAMALLAH: Israeli occupation forces on Monday uprooted about 100 olive trees in the Wadi Sa’ir area, east of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, in order to claim the land for military use, according to a local dignitary.

“This is a new crime added to the crimes of the Israeli occupation, and we condemn this new aggression on Palestinian land,” Musa Al-Farroukh, the mayor of the town of Sa’ir, said.

RAMALLAH: Pictures and a video message posted by Palestinian hunger striker Khalil Al-Awawdeh have shocked Palestinian public opinion and the EU, which criticized Israel’s continued detention of him without trial.

Al-Awawdeh’s message came three days before 4,600 Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons began an open hunger strike to protest their poor conditions in detention.

BEIRUT: Satellite imagery showed widespread destruction at a giant military facility in western Syria targeted in a recent Israeli airstrike, and the head of a Syrian opposition war monitor said Sunday the strike targeted a depot housing hundreds of middle-range missiles for Iran-backed fighters.
Syrian state media reported after the Thursday night attack near the cities of Tartus and Hama that two people were wounded and fires were sparked in nearby forests. It added that the missiles were fired from over the Mediterranean and most of them were shot down.