Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syria’s Bashar Assad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met in Damascus for an unprecedented three-way summit on unity against Israel.
Saudi Arabia's attorney general confirmed that prominent journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi died in the country's Istanbul consulate. A statement said that Khashoggi was killed after a fight inside the consulate, and that 18 Saudis are detained pending an investigation. Turkish officials believe Saudi agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi. His body has not been found. "Now the same government that lied to the world, claiming for weeks that it had no knowledge of Khashoggi's fate, expects us to believe he died in a fight," said the Committee to Protect Journalists. "This ridiculous assertion is further evidence of a cover-up. We need an international investigation and relentless pressure on Saudi Arabia from the Trump administration, if we ever hope to get to the truth." (Photo: CPJ)
A Sana’a government official said that Yemen will build a rehabilitation center for transfered Guantánamo Bay detainees. The US has supposedly pledged $11 million for the project.
The US is set to hold talks with European and Arab partners in London to build support for a drive to defeat a perceived growing al-Qaeda threat in Yemen.
A group of Muslim clerics warn they will call for holy war if the US sends troops to Yemen. “Muslim sons are duty bound to carry out jihad and fight the aggressors,” the statement read.
A member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family was found innocent of the torture and rape of an Afghan national in a case that was an international embarrassment for the United Arab Emirates.
The suicide bombing that killed seven CIA operatives and one Jordanian intelligence official in Afghanistan sheds light on secret partnerships the US has forged in its war on al-Qaeda.
Thousands of Coptic Christians clashed with police in southern Egypt during a funeral procession for seven people shot dead as they left a Christmas service hours earlier.
The White House said the US will suspend transfers of Guantánamo Bay detainees to Yemen—while admitting that al-Qaeda uses the existence of the Gitmo prison as a recruiting tool.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama have agreed to fund a special counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen to tackle the rising threat from the country.
The US-led Coalition's ongoing failure to admit to, let alone adequately investigate, the shocking scale of civilian deaths and destruction it caused in Raqqa is a "slap in the face" for survivors trying to rebuild their lives and their city, said Amnesty International a year after the offensive to oust ISIS. In October 2017, following a fierce four-month battle, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—the Coalition's Kurdish-led partners on the ground—announced victory over ISIS, which had used civilians as human shields and committed other war crimes in besieged Raqqa. Winning the battle came at a terrible price—almost 80% of the city was destroyed and many hundreds of civilians lay dead, the majority killed by Coalition bombardment. In a September 2018 letter to Amnesty, the Pentagon made clear it accepts no liability for civilian casualties. The Coalition does not plan to compensate survivors and relatives of those killed in Raqqa, and refuses to provide further information about the circumstances behind strikes that killed and maimed civilians. (Photo: SDF)
Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemen-based radical imam with ties to the suspect in the Fort Hood killings, has been named in the apparent thwarted Christmas Day terrorism attempt.
