Archive for category: News

Speaking on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Iranian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Gholam-Hossein Dehqani has called for an end to the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territories.

The Islamic republic holds the rotating presidency of NAM.

“NAM condemns the Israeli blockade, which constitutes a gross and systematic collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” Dehqani said.

The Iranian diplomat made the remarks on Tuesday at a UN Security Council session on the situation in the Middle East.

He said that, following Israel’s recent war on the Gaza Strip, the situation in the coastal enclave has worsened as the entire territory is in ruins, thousands of people remain homeless, food insecurity is rampant and injured civilians continue to die due to the lack of life-saving medical treatments and basic medicines.

“In this… international year of solidarity with the Palestinian people, … NAM reiterates its call for intensifying international efforts to actively advance the peaceful, just and lasting solution [to the Palestinian issue] based on the long-standing parameters rooted in the relevant UN resolutions and major initiatives undertaken in the past decade,” the Iranian envoy said.

Israel maintains occupation over Palestinian territories, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem). The Gaza Strip has also been blockaded by Israel since June 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.

Dehqani also said that the root causes of the terror threats posed by terrorist groups, including the ISIL, lie in Israel’s ongoing occupation policies in the Middle East region.

Israel launched its latest war on Gaza on July 8. The nearly two-month war on Gaza killed over 2,130 Palestinians, including around 570 children, and left some 11,000 injured. Tens of Israelis were also killed in the war.

AR/HJL/HRB

Egyptian officials have banned a famous activist of the 2011 uprising from leaving the country as she was trying to go to Thailand’s capital, Bangkok.

Officials at Cairo International Airport said they stopped Asmaa Mahfouz on Tuesday following a request from the prosecutor general’s office, adding that her name was on a list of people barred from leaving the country.

Mahfouz was told to go back home after being briefly detained by immigration officials.

She was a leading figure of the uprising that put an end to the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 and led to the election of Mohammed Morsi, who was subsequently ousted.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, was toppled in July 2013 in a military coup led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was at that time the army commander and is the country’s current president.

The Egyptian government has been cracking down on any opposition since President Mohammed Morsi was ousted, and Sisi is accused of leading the suppression of Morsi supporters, as hundreds of them have been killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces over the last year.

Rights groups say the army’s crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has led to the death of over 1,400 people and the arrest of 22,000 others, including some 200 people who have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

The UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly expressed concern over the Egyptian security forces’ heavy-handed crackdown and the killing of anti-government protesters.

MSM/BB/HRB

Iraqi soldiers have pushed the ISIL Takfiri militants out of a strategic town near the capital Baghdad, Press TV reports.

The strategic town of al-Sab, which is situated to the west of Baghdad and also borders Baghdad Intentional Airport, is now fully under the control of the Iraqi army.

The army set up checkpoints at the city’s entrance after flushing out the terrorists with the help of volunteer forces. 

“When we first entered the area of Sab there were militants in it. After flushing militants out, we informed residents that we are here to protect them from the ISIL. They cooperated with us. Before we got here, militants used the area to launch mortar shells and commit acts of violence,” Commander Faisal Tamer Faisal told the Press TV correspondent in Abu Gharib. 

The army’s latest success is highly significant as the ISIL militants had plans to target Baghdad International Airport from the city.

Member of the Badr Movement, Abou Shaima al-Shoumari, told the correspondent, “We are now north of Abu Gharib. We have three tasks to work on: protect the area and the airport and flush out the sleeping cells related to militant in this area. We also intervene in the battle when needed since we are only 40 kilometers (25 miles) away from Fallujah.” 

The Iraqi army has been fighting the terrorist group for nearly six months now. The troops have pledged to gain more ground in the coming weeks.

The ISIL terrorists currently control large swathes of territory across Syria and Iraq. They have been committing heinous crimes in the captured areas, including mass executions and beheading of people.

SRK/MHB/AS

Israel refuses to fully live up to the pledges it has taken under a ceasefire deal that ended its recent war on the Gaza Strip, Press TV reports.

Under the agreement, Tel Aviv pledged to allow efforts for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip that it badly damaged during 50 days of bombardment in the summer.

The miserable situation in Gaza continues due to the Israeli blockade. The siege is compounded by what some people call the Egyptian blockade, namely the closure most of the time of the Rafah crossing — the only crossing that bypasses Israel.

In line with the deal, Tel Aviv was supposed to extend the fishing limit for the Palestinian fishermen gradually to at least nine nautical miles.

So far it has only raised the limit to six nautical miles. But even fishermen, who come close to five nautical miles, get shot at and their boats get damaged or they themselves are arrested. 

The Israeli regime also forbids Palestinians to farm their lands in the so-called buffer zone, along the eastern perimeter of the Gaza Strip, which makes up to 25 percent of Gaza’s most arable land.

The war killed about 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and left more than 11,000 others injured. Over 100,000 of Gazans also still remain homeless as a result of the war.

The latest Israeli war ended on August 26 by an Egyptian-brokered truce, which took effect after Cairo negotiations. The deal stipulates the ease of Israel’s seven-year-old blockade as well as the provision of a guarantee that Palestinian demands will be met.

Meanwhile, Palestinian factions are preparing for a fresh round of talks with the Israelis within a week.

HN/MHB/AS

Muslim clerics have gathered from all around the globe in the Lebanese capital Beirut to form a unified resistance front in the face of threats posed by the Israeli regime in the region, Press TV reports.

Religious scholars from every corner of the Islamic world, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Senegal, Malaysia, and Tunisia, gathered for the one-day event on Tuesday to found the International Union of Resistance.

“This is an advance step in extending more support to the resistance, which is facing Israel, the US and the Takfiris all at once. Although the focus is always on librating Palestine and al-Quds, this union brings together the biggest number of clerics in the Muslim world,” one of the clerics participating at the event told the Press TV correspondent in Beirut.

Another cleric said, “Meeting in the capital of resistance, Beirut, our brothers here have agreed that we are in a critical phase and there are two ideologies which can never meet: that of surrender and that of resistance. And through this union we seek to establish a new phase to put our hands together and put issues on the right path.”

The meeting was chaired by Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, the secretary general of the World Assembly for Rapprochement Among Islamic Sects.

SRK/MHB/AS