Jordan has arrested 11 members of the Islamic State (IS) group who it said confessed to planning "terrorist operations" in the kingdom, a security official said on Sunday.
IS jihadists have seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, both of which border Jordan, declaring a "caliphate" and imposing a brutal interpretation of Islamic law.
Full StoryJordan arrested a senior member of the country's Muslim Brotherhood Tuesday on charges of "incitement" against the authorities, a judicial source said, as the group's political wing demanded his release.
Mohamed Said Bakr, a member of the Brotherhood's consultative council, was detained for 15 days by prosecutors after criticizing the government at an event marking the end of the conflict in Gaza, the source said.
Full StoryProgressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat has rejected the so-called self-security, reiterating his warning from the rise of terrorist threats in Lebanon and inquiring the U.S. about planned airstrikes against jihadists in the region.
“Self-security leads to total chaos,” Jumblat warned in remarks published in As Safir newspaper on Friday amid reports that certain Lebanese factions were arming themselves to confront terrorists.
Full StoryThe World Food Program said on Tuesday that it provided food to a record 4.1 million people inside Syria last month.
The U.N. agency said it was able to reach more people because of a Security Council resolution adopted in July that authorized the movement of humanitarian aid to Syrians in rebel-held areas without government approval.
Full StoryThe U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday debated whether to send an emergency mission to Iraq to investigate suspected "crimes against humanity" by the Islamic State, as Baghdad called the jihadists an "imminent threat" to the world.
"This terrorist organization must be criminalized and its acts must be criminalized because they are equivalent to genocide and crimes against humanity," Iraqi Human Rights Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told the council.
Full StoryThe number of refugees from the Syria conflict now tops three million, the U.N. said Friday, as U.S. President Barack Obama admitted he has no strategy to tackle advancing jihadists.
In Geneva, U.N. refugee agency chief Antonio Guterres said Syria had become the "biggest humanitarian emergency of our era" after a million people joined the exodus in the past year alone.
Full StoryJordanian military prosecutors on Monday charged eight suspects, including a Syrian fugitive, with plotting to attack U.S. soldiers and Israel's embassy in the kingdom and recruiting people to join Hizbullah.
"State security court prosecutors accused the eight men with plotting to carry out terrorist acts, including attacks against U.S. soldiers in 2006 and the Israeli embassy in Amman," a court official told Agence France Presse.
Full StoryBritain, France and Germany have launched a fresh bid at the U.N. to end six weeks of violence in Gaza, after Israeli warplanes killed three top Hamas commanders, inflicting a heavy blow on the movement's armed wing.
The European initiative on Thursday came as fighting flared on the ground and an Egyptian-led effort to broker peace talks teetered on the verge of collapse.
Full StoryA Cairo court on Wednesday sentenced an Israeli tried in absentia to life imprisonment and a Jordanian telecoms engineer to 10 years in jail for espionage on behalf of Israel.
Bashar Ibrahim Abu Zeid from Jordan was arrested in April 2011 and accused of trying to recruit Egyptian engineers to help Israel intercept telephone calls in Egypt.
Full StoryA Jordanian air force captain who joined jihadists in Syria to fight against President Bashar Assad's forces was killed in battle on Tuesday, a Salafist source said.
Ahmad Atallah Shbeib al-Majali reportedly deserted to fight alongside Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian franchise of Al-Qaeda, before joining the extremist Islamic State group.
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