The crisis that aid workers were trying to avoid has become a reality in the past week. Aid workers from Turkey and more countries were working to build safe shelters for displaced Syrians in the Idlib province, one of the only safe areas left in Syria. This single province has become home to displaced people trying to flee to Turkey… Read more »
ISTANBUL/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkish-backed Syrian rebels shot down a government helicopter west of Aleppo in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region, where violence and displacement has spiked in recent weeks, Turkish and Syrian state media said on Friday. A rebel military source and eyewitnesses told Reuters Russian jets had been targeting areas in the countryside west of Aleppo earlier on Friday, but… Read more »
ALGIERS (Reuters) – Thousands of Algerians marched on Friday, a year since the start of weekly protests calling for a complete overhaul of the ruling elite, an end to corruption and the army’s withdrawal from politics. “We will not stop,” chanted a crowd in the center of the capital Algiers, despite a large police presence. Over the past year the… Read more »
AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) – Families fleeing air strikes and advancing troops in Syria’s Idlib province are sleeping rough in streets and olive groves, and burning toxic bundles of rubbish to stay warm in the biting winter weather, aid workers say. Hundreds of thousands of people have been uprooted by a Syrian government assault which has corralled ever growing numbers of people… Read more »
Kirkuk, Iraq – (Reuters) – A rocket hit a base in northern Iraq that hosts U.S. forces on Thursday but caused no casualties, Iraqi security sources said. The base, known as K1 near the city of Kirkuk, is where a U.S. civilian contractor was killed in December in a similar attack, blamed by Washington on Iran-backed militias. A Reuters witness… Read more »
President Trump’s new Middle East Peace Plan is not going to create peace like it is supposed to, according to officials. The United States is continuing to support Israel and officials are expecting Palestinians to experience more trouble than they already are. The main points of the plan include drawing different borders, recognizing Palestine, and setting up different security measures…. Read more »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – When Palestinian leaders learned that the release of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan was imminent, they swiftly announced a “day of rage” – a gritty, oft-used call for resistance against Israel. But few demonstrators actually took to the streets despite Palestinians’ broad rejection of Trump’s proposal, a gap between rhetoric and delivery that exposes the… Read more »
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s leading Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on Friday condemned the use of force to disperse protest camps across the country, as security forces stepped up a crackdown against demonstrators. Protesters across Iraq are seeking the removal of what they see as a corrupt ruling elite and an end to foreign interference in Iraqi politics, especially… Read more »
GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees voiced concern on Friday that the U.S. administration’s Middle East peace plan will spark further violence and said it had contingency measures in place to boost protection and assistance in the occupied territories. Christian Saunders, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), asked about the… Read more »
CAIRO (Reuters) – Sitting in her sister’s apartment on a noisy Cairo street, Rania Sayed one day hopes to leave a city that is becoming more congested as Egypt’s population ticks up to 100 million, a milestone it will pass next month. Like many others, she wants to move to one of the new satellite settlements being built for a… Read more »