Islamic World

Tehran, July 09: The governor of Tehran province warned that security forces will “smash” any attempt at protests on Thursday amid calls for the first significant opposition marches since a major crackdown more than a week ago.

Supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have called for new demonstrations in Tehran and several other cities. The calls are a bid to revive street action after police, Revolutionary Guards and Basij militiamen crushed the dramatic mass protests that erupted over Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election.

Baghdad, July 09: Two suicide bombers on Thursday killed at least 34 people and injured 70 in an attack on the home of an anti-terrorism officer in northern Iraq, while three roadside bombs in Baghdad killed seven others, authorities said.

The attacks came one day after car bombs in two Shiite villages near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul killed 16 civilians and injured more than two dozen, in a surge of violence in Iraq’s troubled north following the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from cities to bases outside urban centers at the end of June.

Tehran, July 09: Iran’s state television says US forces have released five Iranian diplomats who were detained in 2006 in northern Iraq on suspicion of aiding Shi’ite Iraqi militants.

The Thursday report cites an announcement by Iran’s embassy in Baghdad, which said the US Army delivered the five diplomats to Iraqi officials.

The detention of the diplomats in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil became a new point of contention between Tehran and Washington.

Washington, July 09: U.S. forces on Thursday released five Iranian officials who were detained in January 2007 in northern Iraq on suspicion of aiding Shiite Iraqi militants, Iranian and Iraqi officials said.

Iranian embassy spokesman Amir Arshadi said the Iranian detainees had been handed over to Iraqi authorities, and that the embassy expected to receive them later in the day. His comments were confirmed by Yassin Majid, media adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

There was no immediate comment from U.S. authorities.

Tehran, July 09: The governor of Tehran province warned that security forces will “smash” any attempt at protests on Thursday amid calls for the first significant opposition marches since a major crackdown more than a week ago.

Supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have called for new demonstrations in Tehran and several other cities. The calls are a bid to revive street action after police, Revolutionary Guards and Basij militiamen crushed the dramatic mass protests that erupted over Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election.

Colombo, July 09: On the instructions of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, relief supplies from Saudi Arabia arrived at Colombo airport on Wednesday for distribution among refugees of the recent fighting in Sri Lanka.

Some 300,000 Sri Lankans have been displaced by the war to recapture rebel-held territories in north and east of the island.

Jeddah, July 09 : Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal has emphasized that the cultural events being organized at the historic Souq Okaz are part of a massive intellectual, cultural and economic project.

Speaking at a press conference at the governorate office in Jeddah on Wednesday, Prince Khaled said Souq Okaz is not in competition with other cultural events in the region. He said cities that hold such events are witnessing a development boom due to the mega projects taking place there.

Jerusalem, July 09: Palestinians Thursday urged greater international pressure on Israel to implement a five-year-old International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling against its controversial West Bank barrier.

Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of the ICJ advisory opinion, which deemed the barrier – part fence, part wall – illegal, because most of it was being built inside the West Bank, rather than on the 1949 armistice line separating the occupied territory from Israel.

Jerusalem, July 09: Israel’s internal security service has been given a de facto veto over the appointment of judges in an unprecedented decision that has the country’s embattled liberals up in arms.

Teuky, July 09: A Turkish cargo ship with 23 crew on board has been seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia.

Istanbul-based Horizon Shipping said pirates in speed boats had surrounded the Horizon I vessel in the Gulf of Aden at about 0530 GMT.

Three attackers managed to board the tanker, which was heading from Saudi Arabia to Jordan, the firm said.

Maritime officials believe pirates in Somalia are now holding 12 ships, with about 200 crew, for ransom.

—-Agencies

Kabul, July 09: Twenty-one civilians and four police officers were killed Thursday in a car bombing in the central Afghan province of Logar, police said. “Twenty-one local civilians, including school students, and four of our police officers were killed in the blast,” said General Mustafa Andarabi, the provincial police chief.

The explosives, which were remotely detonated, were placed in a truck that had apparently been overturned purposely on a road in the village of Sheikhak in Mohammad Agha district.

Jerusalem, July 09: Amid US conflicting signals on an Israeli attack on Iran, a dignitary in Tehran rejects Tel Aviv’s threats as a ‘vain propaganda campaign’.

Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign affairs adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said late Wednesday that any military attack against Iran would be a failure.

The former Iranian foreign minister said Israel’s allies intrinsically know that any military attack on Iran could backfire and upset the balance of the whole region.

Baghdad, July 09: A suicide bomber on Thursday killed at least 34 people and injured 70 near a judge’s house in northern Iraq, and a bomb attack in Baghdad killed six people, authorities said.

The attacks came one day after car bombs in two Shi’ite villages near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul killed 16 civilians and injured more than two dozen, signalling the challenges that face Iraq despite big improvements in security in the past two years.

Kabul, July 09 : A roadside bomb went off Thursday morning in Afghanistan’s Logar Province, killing 19 and leaving 30 injured, a spokesman said.

“A large quantity of explosive material planted by militants in a truck went off this morning while a group of teenage students were passing by in Mohammad Agha district,” said Din Mohammad Darwish, the spokesman of the provincial administration.

Mohammad Agha district in Logar Province is some 50 km south of Afghan capital Kabul.

Kabul, July 09: An Interior Ministry spokesman says the massive blast in central Afghanistan has killed 25 people, including 21 civilians and four policemen.

Zemerai Bashary says the powerful blast also destroyed nearby shops lining the road in the central Logar province.

The provincial police chief, Mustafa Khan, says the blast happened after a truck filled with timber tipped over on the main road connecting Logar province with Kabul to the north.

Kabul, July 09: A deadly roadside bomb explosion has claimed over a dozen lives in Afghanistan’s central Logar province, say local police officials.

Provincial police chief Mustafa Khan said the incident took place on a road on Thursday, resulting in the death of 10 civilians and four police officers, AP reported.

The blast happened hundreds of kilometers away from the southern Helmand province, where the US military is engaged in a massive offensive against Taliban fighters.

Officials could not immediately confirm if the two incidents were related.

——Agencies

Abu Dhabi, July 09: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) capital would host the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), WAM news agency reported.

Mohammed Ahmed Al Bowardi, secretary general of the Abu Dhabi executive council, welcomed IRENA Director General Helene Pelosse and said the UAE would ‘spare no effort to offer all possible assistance and support to ensure the success of the mission of Irena’, the report said.

Baghdad, July 09: Iraq’s government has ordered authorities in Saddam Hussein’s home town to ban schoolchildren from visiting the grave of the former dictator after a video showed a group of schoolgirls singing his praises at the site.

The order from the cabinet was accompanied by other directives aimed at stripping Saddam’s reign of any mystique, calling for some signs and monuments dating to before the 2003 US-led invasion to be dismantled because they “glorified the past regime”.

New York, July 09: The UN refugee agency”s office in Iraq has closed down a makeshift camp that hosted Iranian Kurd refugees in the no-man”s-land situated on the border between Iraq and Jordan since 2005.

The group, composed of 186 refugees, has been temporarily relocated to al-Waleed refugee camp, on Iraq”s border with Syria, UN spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters at the United Nations headquarters here.

Washington, July 09: Iranian political detainees who have been released from prison say they were beaten and subjected to other harsh treatment by Iranian authorities trying to force them into false confessions, Human Rights Watch reported Wednesday.

One 17-year-old ex-detainee described being blindfolded and forced to stand for 48 hours until he signed a blank confession.

The report follows the crackdown on Iranian demonstrators who protested alleged election fraud on June 12 when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reaffirmed.

Tehran, July 09: As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans his second term activities, an Iranian parliamentary commission finishes work on a controversial bill to redistribute energy subsidies among various income groups.

“The parliament’s special commission will pass the subsidy redistribution bill by the end of the week,” the panel’s spokesman, Kazem Delkhosh, said Tuesday.

The move, which comes shortly after the re-election of President Ahmadinejad, will pave the way for Iranian lawmakers to vote on the bill in the near future.

Riyadh, July 09: Saudi Arabia’s National Human Rights Society has successfully intervened to abrogate a marriage contract between an 11-year-old girl and a 40-year-old man, who has six children from the first marriage.

Dr Hussain Al Sharif, director of the branch of the society in Makkah region, said the marriage was declared null and void at a reconciliation meeting between the two parties arranged by the society.

The society’s intervention came following a request made by her siblings. They urged the society to prevent the marriage, forcefully undertaken by their father.

Washington, July 09: The US has denied a report that it has reached a compromise that would allow Israel to continue the construction of settlements that has already begun.

“That report in that Israeli media outlet is inaccurate,” State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said after the Maariv newspaper reported that the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and US envoy George Mitchell had struck such a deal.

“Our bottom line is the same. It has not changed,” Kelly said.

“And that’s that all parties in the region have to honor their obligations,” Kelly added.

Cairo, July 09:It was while Marwa Al Sherbini was in the dock recalling how the accused had insulted her for wearing the hijab after she asked him to let her son sit on a swing last summer, that the very same man strode across the Dresden courtroom and plunged a knife into her 18 times.

Her three-year-old son Mustafa was forced to watch as his mother slumped to the courtroom floor.

Even her husband Elvi Ali Okaz could do nothing as the 28-year-old Russian stock controller who was being sued for insult and abuse took the life of his pregnant wife.

Jerusalem, July 09: Israeli intelligence services are trying to sabotage Iran’s military and nuclear programs through tainted equipment and cyber attacks, a recent report says.

Israeli officials, weary of Iran’s achievements in the nuclear field, have turned to cyber attacks to halt the country’s development, Israeli sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

The appeal of such a method was heightened after officials in Washington made clear that they are not willing to support an attack on key Iranian nuclear facilities.