At least 20 Kurdish guerilla fighters are dead in an assualt by Turkish army troops backed up by US-made Cobra attack helicopters near the Iraq border, AP reported April 15. Three Turkish soldiers and a village guardsman were also killed… Read morePKK resurgence in Turkish Kurdistan
Lebanon’s Omar Karami has resigned a second time, after Parliament refused to accept his February 28 resignation. This time Najib Mikati, a Sunni perceived as a moderate, has been chosen to succeed him. Mikati hailed the opposition–especially Druze leader Walid… Read moreLebanon back from brink?
Synchronicity? Just days after WW4 REPORT cited a rare news report on persecution of the Yazidis (also rendered Yezidis or Ezidis), an obscure and ancient religious sect in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, the Washington Post actually runs a story… Read moreYazidis in the news
Scores are dead in Yemen, where security forces are battling Islamist forces led by Badruddin Al-Houthi in and around the northwestern town of Saada. A group of opposition parties is calling for the nation’s pariliament to immediately launch an investigation… Read moreCounter-insurgency in Yemen
The April 7 nail-bomb attack on a bazaar jammed with foreign tourists in Cairo left three dead, including a French national and a U.S. citizen. A previously unknown group, the Islamic Brigades of Pride, has claimed responsibility. (Al-Jazeera, April 9)… Read moreTerror re-emerges in Egypt
The opposition is threatening a new wave of protests in Lebanon, with the country still in political deadlock. Parliament has refused to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Omar Karami (which had been a key victory of the protests), and… Read moreLebanon deadlocked, closer to brink
By any objective standard, the wave of deadly gunplay in Saudi Arabia in recent days is an internecine dispute between rival Wahhabi fundamentalist factions—although that is not how it is being portrayed in the media. Today’s claims by Saudi authorities… Read moreInternecine Wahhabi violence in Saudi Arabia
Reads an AFP report that seems to have been picked up exclusively by the Kurdish Media website: A musician from Turkey’s Laz minority group said the country’s public television refused to allow him to perform his songs, claiming that new… Read moreTurkey’s Laz minority face cultural exclusion
The German-based pro-Kurdish Flash-Bulletin website has posted a Feb. 16 letter from a group of Ezidi academics protesting that Ezidi children in eastern Turkey are being forced to study Islam in school by local village authorities—a practice they charge is… Read moreEzidis face “Islamization” in Turkey
A powerful bomb tore through a shopping mall in the Christian area north of Beirut March 23, killing three Asian immigrant workers and bringing Lebanon closer to chaos weeks before general elections. (Reuters, March 23) It is the latest outburst… Read moreAnother bomb blast in Lebanon
At least six were wounded by a car bomb which wrecked the front of a government building in a predominantly Christian suburb of Beirut March 19. The motive and target of the attack in New Jdeideh were not immediately clear,… Read moreBeirut blast raises civil war fears
Amidst ongoing pro- and anti-Syria protests in Lebanon, Damascus is beginning to call home some units stationed in the country—starting with the intelligence agents in Beirut and Bekaa Valley. Faced with this partial success, Bush has adopted a somewhat softer… Read moreAnti-Syria violence in Lebanon
