Daily News Channel
On March 17, Ibrahim Shareef, the head of the anti-government activist movement Waad, was snatched from his home at gunpoint by what his family describes as Bahraini security forces. Thrown into a waiting sport utility vehicle, he was driven off into the night.
Mahmood Al Yousif is so influential in Bahrain that he’s widely known as the “Blogfather.” Neither publicly pro- or anti-government, the moderator of the popular blog “Mahmood’s Den” is the rare public figure who actively discourages the Sunni-Shia tension that has plagued the tiny Gulf Kingdom for decades. But on Tuesday morning, Al Yousif apparently was dealt the same fate meted out to many prominent activist
One person was killed and 14 others injured when a bus carrying dozens of Dutch students, their teachers or monitors flipped over north of Barcelona early Monday, authorities said. A man carrying explosives blew himself up Sunday as participants headed to a conference between Shia and Sunni groups in southeastern Iran, killing at least 42, state-run Press TV reported.
A man wearing an explosives-laden belt blew himself up during a conference between Shia and Sunni groups in southwestern Iran on Sunday, killing or wounding at least 60 people, local media said.
Iraq dreams of what is called sustainable peace — a qualified condition that allows life to go on with an acceptable level of tumult. And so, with a measure of bravado, the government recently announced the imminent removal of most of the concrete blast walls that separate warring neighborhoods and protect citizens traveling on main and secondary roads. As it tries to put the bad days of Sunni vs
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered his government to take down concrete blast walls that line Baghdad’s streets and surround whole neighborhoods, the Iraqi military announced Thursday. “The concrete walls will be taken off from the main roads and side streets in all Baghdad areas, with no exceptions and within 40 days,” a statement from Iraqi military’s Baghdad Operations Command read.
One leading conservative ayatullah declared, during Friday prayers at Tehran University, that people protesting Iran’s election are waging war on God. Ayatullah Ahmad Khatami demanded that those calling for demonstrations be “ruthlessly and savagely” punished
Lebanon goes to the polls on Sunday with the main choices a Hezbollah-backed alliance or the U.S-backed coalition to lead their government. U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, Egypt, on Wednesday came at a critical time for Lebanon as it sits amid a power struggle between a weakened pro-Western government and a stronger pro-Syrian Hezbollah political bloc that has gained political momentum in recent years.
Sunni parliamentarian Salim al-Jubouri took Muqtada al-Sadr’s recent appearance in Turkey as a good sign. Sadr surfaced in Ankara ostensibly to discuss the situation in Iraq with top Turkish leaders, including President President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is a predominantly Sunni country, Jubouri noted, and maybe the militant Shi’ite warlord was making a show of nascent sectarian reconciliation.
Abu Zaid, a Shi’ite in the Mahdi Army militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, says he is simply waiting for word on whether to fight again. With a series of bombing attacks against Shi’ites leaving at least 150 people dead in recent days, many Iraqis have wondered whether the Mahdi Army will continue to stand down or renew death squad killings as they did when sectarian violence raged out of control for more than a year beginning in 2006.