SYDNEY: Thousands of Australians rallied behind the Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday, condemning the brutal Israeli aggression on the occupied territory, killing about 2,000 Palestinians, including women and children. Speakers urged the international community to free Gaza from the Israeli blockade

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Imran Khan has called on thousands of protesters rallying in Islamabad to launch a civil disobedience movement against the government, as a leading religious scholar said that only a “revolution” would bring about change. “There is only one way to get rid of this government,

Palestinian Prime Minister Dr. Rami Hamdallah is a technocrat, leading a government of nonpartisan technocrats. He enjoys the confidence of President Mahmoud Abbas and all Palestinian factions. With Gaza in ruins following the devastating Israeli attacks, all eyes are on him for reconstruction and f

LAGOS: Nigeria has trained 800 volunteers to help fight the deadly Ebola epidemic that has already claimed four lives in Africa’s most populous country, a regional governor spokesman said Saturday. Authorities in the country’s largest city of Lagos last week appealed for volunteers to make up for

PESHAWAR – At least 16 people have been killed and more than 80 others injured in rain-related incidents and hailstorms in various parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's capital city as roofs and walls of building collapsed due to heavy rain.   Speaking to journalists at the Lady Reading Hospi

ISLAMABAD: Supporters of the Pakistani government and opposition protesters clashed during the second day of a march to Islamabad aimed at forcing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign. The clashes raised tensions ahead of the protesters’ arrival in Islamabad, which has been on a virtual lockdown

KARACHI: Tens of thousands of Pakistanis joined opposition leader Imran Khan Thursday as he traveled from Lahore to the capital to oust Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif over fraud allegations in an election 15 months ago. Khan’s supporters waved red-and-green party flags and danced to music in open tr

JERUSALEM: Israel and Palestinians in Gaza were holding their fire Thursday after a new truce got off to a shaky start with overnight Palestinian rocket fire followed by Israeli airstrikes. Late on Wednesday, negotiators in Cairo brokered an 11th-hour extension to an existing truce, with the warrin

GAZA CITY: A foreign journalist was among five people killed in northern Gaza as Palestinian experts were dismantling an Israeli missile, medics and officials said. Emergency services spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said five people had been killed and several more seriously wounded. “A number of ex

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia has said that the actions of the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, cannot be equated with Israel’s mass killings. Addressing a press conference after chairing an extraordinary meeting of the foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah on Tues

CAIRO: A temporary Israel-Hamas truce held for a second day Tuesday as marathon, indirect negotiations on a lasting cease-fire and a long-term solution for the battered Gaza Strip resumed in Cairo. A similar, three-day truce collapsed on Friday when Hamas resumed rocket fire on Israel after the s

GENEVA: The UN has named three experts to an international commission of inquiry into possible human rights violations and war crimes committed by both sides during Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip. William Schabas, a Canadian professor of international law, will head the panel whose o

DOHA: A lasting truce must lead to the lifting by Israel of its blockade of the Gaza Strip, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal told AFP in Doha. The 72-hour cease-fire Hamas reached with Israel on Sunday “is one of the ways or tactics to ensure successful negotiations or to facilitate the delivery of human

BAGHDAD: Islamic State insurgents who seized Iraq’s biggest dam in an offensive that has caused international consternation have brought in engineers for repairs, witnesses said on Saturday, as nervous Kurds stocked up on arms to defend their enclave nearby. The fighters have captured wide swathe

GAZA CITY: Cradling his baby daughter, Saeed Masri took flight Friday from renewed Israeli bombardment of Gaza with little faith that even a UN facility can protect his family. Three hours after a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas ended, a missile hit the roof of a building opposite t

Geneva: The World Health Organisation on Friday declared the killer Ebola epidemic ravaging parts of west Africa an international health emergency and appealed for global aid to help afflicted countries. The decision came after a rare, two-day closed-door session of the UN health body’s emergen

MADRID: Overwhelmed west African nations called states of emergency on Thursday as the death toll from a fast-spreading Ebola epidemic neared 1,000 and an elderly Spanish missionary was evacuated for treatment at home. In Liberia, where the dead lay in the streets, lawmakers gathered to ratify a

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey: Thousands of Iraqis, most of them ethnic minority Yazidis, have fled to the Turkish border to escape an advance by Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq, Turkish officials said on Thursday. Around 150 Yazidis were placed in state residences in Turkey’s southeastern Sirnak pr