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Israeli archaeologists excavating ‘Jesus midwife’ tomb
An ancient tomb traditionally associated with Jesus’s midwife is being excavated anew by archaeologists in the hills southwest of Jerusalem, the antiquities authority said Tuesday.
The intricately decorated Jewish burial cave complex dates to around the first century A.D., but it was later associated by local Christians with Salome, the midwife of Jesus in the Gospels. A Byzantine chapel was built at the site, which was a place of pilgrimage and veneration for centuries thereafter.
The cave was first found and excavated decades ago by an Israeli archaeologist. The cave’s large forecourt is now under excavation by archaeologists as part of a heritage trail development project in the region.
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Crosses and inscriptions in Greek and Arabic carved in the cave walls during the Byzantine and Islamic periods indicate that the chapel was dedicated to Salome.
Pilgrims would “rent oil lamps, enter into the cave, used to pray, come out in give back the oil lamp,” said Ziv Firer, director of the excavation. “We found tens of them, with beautiful decorations of plants and flowers.”
Read more : UNESCO lauds 5 countries for best practice in underwater cultural heritage protection
8 killed in attack by gunmen on an Iraqi village: Official
Eight people were killed and three injured Monday in an attack by gunmen on an Iraqi village previously held by the Islamic State extremist group, officials said.
The attack took place in the village of Albu Bali northwest of Fallujah in Iraq.
Read more: Explosion in northern Iraq kills 9 policemen: Iraq officials
Uday al-Khadran, commissioner of the al-Khalis district where the attack occurred said “a group of terrorists riding motorcycles” had attacked the village at around 8:30 p.m. and that dozens of residents, some of them unarmed, had rushed to confront the attackers, the official Iraqi News Agency reported.
Security forces are searching for those responsible, he said.
The violence came a day after an explosive device went off in northern Iraq, killing at least nine members of the Iraqi federal police force who were on patrol. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the village of Ali al-Sultan in the Riyadh district of the province of Kirkuk.
Read more: Iranian Guard attacks militant group in Iraq amid unrest
On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed when a bomb exploded during a security operation in the Tarmiyah district, north of Baghdad. Among the dead was the commander of the 59th Infantry Brigade.
No one claimed responsibility for that attack either, but remnants of the militant Islamic State group are active in the area and have claimed similar attacks in Iraq in the past.
Explosion in northern Iraq kills 9 policemen: Iraq officials
An explosive device went off in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing at least nine members of the Iraqi federal police force who were on patrol, Iraqi security officials said.
Among the fatalities was an officer with the rank of major, according to a tweet from a military spokesman, Yahya Rasool. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the village of Ali al-Sultan in the Riyadh district of the province of Kirkuk.
Read more: Iranian Guard attacks militant group in Iraq amid unrest
Rasool added that Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani had been briefed about the attack. An investigation was underway.
Two Iraqi security officials said nine were killed and clarified that the explosive device was a bomb. They said another three policemen were wounded in altercations with militants that broke out following the explosion, without elaborating.
The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
On Wednesday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed when a bomb exploded during a security operation in the Tarmiyah district, north of Baghdad. Among those killed was the commander of the 59th Infantry Brigade.
Read more: Heavy gunfire rocks Iraq's Green Zone amid violent protests
No one claimed responsibility for that attack either, but remnants of the militant Islamic State group are active in the area and have claimed similar attacks in Iraq in the past.
IS was defeated and lost all territory it once controlled in Syria and Iraq, with its last stronghold in Syria falling to the U.S.-backed campaign in 2019. However, sleeper cells remain and have carried out attacks that have killed scores of Iraqis and Syrians.
In Iraq, the militants have successfully exploited security gaps across a patch of territory in the north because of an ongoing dispute between Baghdad and Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish-run semi-autonomous region of Iraq.
Rural areas of Kirkuk, Diyala, Ninevah and Salahaddin provinces in particular have been difficult to police, with Iraqi security forces spread thin and IS militants routinely terrorizing local residents. At times they have managed to overrun towns overnight due to the security gaps.
Israel says it deported Palestinian activist to France
) Israel said it deported a Palestinian lawyer and activist to France, claiming he has ties to a banned militant group, despite objections from the French government.
The explusion of Salah Hammouri underscored the fragile status of the status of Palestinians in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and set up a possible diplomatic spat with France. The French government had repeatedly appealed to Israel not to carry out the expulsion.
Israel’s interior minister, Ayelet Shaked, announced the deportation in a brief statement.
Read more: Beefed-up Israel police clash with Palestinians in Jerusalem
“I’m happy to announce that justice was served today and the terrorist Salah Hammouri was deported from Israel," she said in a videotaped statement.
Israel says Hammouri is an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Hammouri had been held in administrative detention without being charged. Shaked ordered the expulsion when his detention ended.
Hammouri was born in Jerusalem but holds French citizenship
Read more: Palestinians clash with Israeli police at major holy site
Iran execution: Man publicly hanged from crane amid protests
Iran executed a second prisoner on Monday convicted over crimes committed during the nationwide protests challenging the country's theocracy, publicly hanging him from a construction crane as a gruesome warning to others.
The execution of Majidreza Rahnavard came less than a month after he allegedly fatally stabbed two members of a paramilitary force after purportedly becoming angry about security forces killing protesters.
The development underscores the speed at which Iran now carries out death sentences handed down for those detained in the demonstrations that the government hopes to put down.
Activists warn that at least a dozen people already have been sentenced to death in closed-door hearings. At least 488 people have been killed since the demonstrations began in mid-September, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that's been monitoring the protests. Another 18,200 people have been detained by authorities.
Iran’s Mizan news agency, which falls under the country’s judiciary, published a collage of images of Rahnavard hanging from the crane, his hands and feet bound, a black bag over his head.
Masked security force members stood guard in front of concrete and metal barriers that held back a gathered crowd early Monday morning in the Iranian city of Mashhad.
Read more: Second Iranian detainee executed over alleged protest crime
Mizan alleged Rahnavard had stabbed two security force members to death Nov. 17 in Mashhad and wounded four others.
Footage aired on state TV showed a man chasing another around a street corner, then standing over him and stabbing him after he fell against a parked motorbike. Another showed the same man stabbing another immediately after. The assailant, which state TV alleged was Rahnavard, then fled.
The Mizan report identified the dead as "student" Basij, paramilitary volunteers under Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The Basij (ba-SEEJ’) have deployed in major cities, attacking and detaining protesters, who in many cases have fought back.
A heavily edited state television report aired after Rahnavard's execution showed clips of him in the courtroom. In the video, he says he came to hate the Basijis after seeing video clips on social media of the forces beating and killing protesters.
The Mizan report accused Rahnavard of trying to flee to a foreign country when he was arrested.
Mashhad, a Shiite holy city, is located some 740 kilometers (460 miles) east of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Activists say it has seen strikes, shops closed and demonstrations amid the unrest that began over the Sept. 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by Iran's morality police.
Mizan said Rahnavard was convicted in Mashhad's Revolutionary Court. The tribunals have been internationally criticized for not allowing those on trial to pick their own lawyers or even see the evidence against them.
Rahnavard had been convicted on the charge of “moharebeh,” a Farsi word meaning “waging war against God.” That charge has been levied against others in the decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and carries the death penalty.
Read more: Iran executes first known prisoner arrested in protests
In the images of his execution, a banner bearing a Quranic verse: “Indeed the requital of those who wage war against Allah and His Apostle, and try to cause corruption on the earth, is that they shall be slain or crucified, or shall have their hands and feet cut off from opposite sides, or be banished from the land.”
Executions conducted in public with a crane have been rare in recent years, though Iran used the same manner of hanging to put down unrest following the disputed 2009 presidential election and the Green Movement protests that followed.
Typically, those condemned are alive as the crane lifts them off their feet, hanging by a rope and struggling to breathe before they asphyxiate or their neck breaks.
Activists have put pressure on companies providing cranes to Iran in the past, warning they can be used for executions.
From Brussels, the European Union's foreign ministers expressed dismay at the latest execution. The bloc approved on Monday a fresh series of sanctions against Iran over its crackdown on protesters, and also for supplying drones to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat said.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he spoke to Iran’s foreign minister regarding Tehran’s response to the protests and the latest execution and that it was “not an easy conversation.”
“We are going to approve a very, very tough package of sanctions,” Borrell told reporters as he arrived to chair the ministerial meeting in Brussels. Finland’s foreign minister said that he also called his Iranian counterpart.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described the execution as “a blatant attempt at intimidation” of Iranians.
“We are making clear that we stand beside innocent people in Iran,” Baerbock said as she arrived at the Brussels meeting. “A system that treats its people in this way cannot expect to continue to have halfway normal relations with the European Union.”
Iran is one of the world’s top executioners and typically executes prisoners by hanging. It executed the first prisoner detained during demonstrations last Thursday. So far this year, it has executed over 500 prisoners, the highest number in five years, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights.
"In the absence of serious measures to deter the Islamic Republic from executing protesters, we will be facing even more horrific crimes like the 1980s mass execution of political prisoners," the group warned Monday. That refers to the 1988 executions in part overseen by Iran's current hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi that activists believe saw as many as 5,000 inmates put to death.
Amnesty International has said it obtained a document signed by one senior Iranian police commander asking that the execution for one prisoner be “completed ‘in the shortest possible time’ and that his death sentence be carried out in public as ‘a heart-warming gesture towards the security forces.’”
Amid the unrest, Iran is also battered by an economic crisis that has seen the national currency, the rial, drop to new lows against the U.S. dollar.
Second Iranian detainee executed over alleged protest crime
Iran said Monday it executed its second prisoner detained amid the nationwide protests now challenging the country's theocracy.
Iran's Mizan news agency, under the country's judiciary, identified the man executed as Majidreza Rahnavard. He had been convicted over allegedly stabbing two security force members to death Nov. 17 in Mashhad and wounding four others.
Read more: Iran executes first known prisoner arrested in protests
Iran executed the first prisoner detained amid the demonstrations Thursday.
The protests have expanded into one of the most serious challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Activists warn that others could also be put to death in the near future, saying around a dozen people so far have received death sentences over their involvement in the demonstrations.
Read more: Iran morality police status unclear after 'closure' comment
China’s Xi at Saudi palace to meet royals on Mideast trip
Chinese leader Xi Jinping met on Thursday with Saudi Arabia’s king and crown prince while on a visit to the kingdom, solidifying ties with a region crucial to his country’s energy supplies as sanctions intensify on Russia over its war on Ukraine.
Xi arrived at Al Yamama Palace in Riyadh and was greeted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, King Salman’s assertive son who stands ready to rule the oil-rich kingdom in the decades to come. Xi shook hands with the prince as an honor guard on horseback carried Saudi and Chinese flags.
It wasn’t immediately clear what Xi focused on in his discussions, though he wrote in a newspaper column published by Al Riyadh newspaper that “exchanges between China and Arab states date back more than 2,000 years.” The column also quoted a saying by Islam’s Prophet Muhammad: “Seek knowledge even if you have to go as far as China.”
“The Arab people value independence, oppose external interference, stand up to power politics and high-handedness, and always seek to make progress,” Xi’s column read.
He also noted that the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, which include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, serve as “an energy tank for world economy.” China, the world’s largest crude oil importer, relies heavily on Saudi oil, paying tens of billions of dollars annually to the kingdom.
Read: China security forces are well-prepared for quashing dissent
Saudi state media released silent video of Xi and Prince Mohammed meeting at the palace, with a large picture of King Salman hanging in the background. Another video showed Xi later talking with the 86-year-old monarch and signing documents alongside him. Many of the Saudi officials wore facemasks in that meeting.
Saudi officials later said deals had been signed between the nations, including some involving Chinese technology company Huawei on cloud-computing, data centers and other high-tech ventures. The U.S. has already has warned its Gulf Arab allies about working with Huawei over spying concerns.
Xi and King Salman also agreed to holding meetings between the two countries’ leaders every two years, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The agency later reported that Xi met with Sudanese military leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan after a deal Monday to establish a civilian-led transitional government following the military takeover there last year. However, no timeline has been set and the deal sparked renewed protests Thursday in the country.
Xi separately met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as well in Riyadh.
Gulf Arab states are trying to recalibrate their foreign policy as the United States turns its attention elsewhere in the world.
Read: China’s protests are small but significant
Russia’s war on Ukraine — and the West’s hardening stance on Moscow — has also left the Arab countries wanting to cement ties with China. For Prince Mohammed, hosting Xi boosts his own international profile after being linked to the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Beyond China’s oil purchases, its construction expertise could be tapped as well for Prince Mohammed’s planned $500 billion futuristic city of Neom on the Red Sea. Chinese construction firms have worked elsewhere in Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, particularly in Dubai in the UAE.
Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest sites in Islam, also has provided political cover to China over its harsh policies toward Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. More than a million have been sent to detention centers, forced to denounce Islam and swear fealty to Xi and the party.
The trip to Saudi Arabia marks a further move by Xi to restore his global profile after spending most of the pandemic inside China. The visit is his third overseas trip since early 2020. It also comes as Xi, who was granted a third five-year term as leader in October, has faced street protests over his zero-COVID-19 policies that represent the most-significant challenge to his rule.
During the visit, Xi is expect to attend the inaugural China-Arab States Summit and a meeting of the GCC.
Iran executes first known prisoner arrested in protests
Iran said Thursday it executed a prisoner convicted for a crime allegedly committed during the country's ongoing nationwide protests, the first such death penalty carried out by Tehran.
The execution of Mohsen Shekari comes as other detainees also face the possibility of the death penalty for their involvement in the protests, which began in mid-September, first as an outcry against Iran's morality police. The protests have expanded into one of the most serious challenges to Iran's theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Activists warn that others could also be put to death in the near future, saying that at least a dozen people so far have received death sentences over their involvement in the demonstrations.
The execution “must be met with strong reactions otherwise we will be facing daily executions of protesters,” wrote Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights. “This execution must have rapid practical consequences internationally.”
The Mizan news agency, run by Iran's judiciary, said Shekari had been convicted in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, which typically holds closed-door cases. The tribunals have been internationally criticized for not allowing those on trial to pick their own lawyers or even see the evidence against them.
Read more: Iran morality police status unclear after 'closure' comment
Shekari was accused of blocking a street in Tehran and attacking with a machete a member of the security forces, who required stitches for his wounds, the agency said.
The Mizan report also alleged that Shekari said he had been offered money by an acquaintance to attack the security forces.
Iran's government for months has been trying to allege — without offering evidence — that foreign countries have fomented the unrest. Protesters say they are angry over the collapse of the economy, heavy-handed policing and the entrenched power of the country's Islamic clergy.
Mizan said Shekari had been arrested on Sept. 25, then convicted on Nov. 20 on the charge of "moharebeh," a Farsi word meaning “waging war against God.” That charge has been levied against others in the decades since 1979 and carries the death penalty. Mizan said an appeal by Shekari's lawyer against the sentence failed.
After his execution, Iranian state television aired a heavily edited package showing the courtroom and parts of Shekari’s trial, presided over by Judge Abolghassem Salavati.
Salavati faces U.S. sanctions for meting out harsh punishments.
“Salavati alone has sentenced more than 100 political prisoners, human right activists, media workers and others seeking to exercise freedom of assembly to lengthy prison terms as well as several death sentences,” the U.S. Treasury said in sanctioning him in 2019.
“Judges on these Revolutionary Courts, including Salavati, have acted as both judge and prosecutor, deprived prisoners of access to lawyers and intimidated defendants.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned Shekari’s execution in a Twitter post, saying “the Iranian regime’s contempt for humanity is limitless.”
Read more: Iran executes four people accused of working for Israel’s Mossad: State news
James Cleverly, the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, described himself as “outraged” and said: “The world cannot turn a blind eye to the abhorrent violence committed by the Iranian regime against its own people.”
France’s Foreign Ministry said the “execution is yet another instance of the serious, unacceptable violations of fundamental rights and freedoms committed by the Iranian authorities.”
Iran has been rocked by protests since the Sept. 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being detained by the country's morality police. At least 475 people have been killed in the demonstrations amid a heavy-handed security crackdown, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that's been monitoring the protests since they began. Over 18,000 have been detained by authorities.
Iran is one of the world's top executioners. It typically executes prisoners by hanging. Already, Amnesty International said it obtained a document signed by one senior Iranian police commander asking an execution for one prisoner be “completed ‘in the shortest possible time’ and that his death sentence be carried out in public as 'a heart-warming gesture towards the security forces.'”
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Thursday reiterated the organization's strong opposition to the death penalty.
“And we deplore what we see today in Iran and sadly we see in other countries,” Dujarric said. “What we would want to see is a world where there is no death penalty.”
Roadside bomb kills 6 people in north Afghanistan: Taliban
A roadside bomb went off near a bus with government employees during rush hour on Tuesday morning in northern Afghanistan, killing six people, a Taliban official said.
Mohammad Asif Waziri, the Taliban-appointed spokesman for the police chief in Balkh province, said the bombing in Mazar-e Sharif, the provincial capital, also wounded seven people.
Read more: Taliban captured, bound and shot to death 27 men in Afghan province: Report
The bomb was placed inside a cart by the side of the road and detonated when a bus belonging to the Hiaratan gas and petroleum department was taking employees to work.
No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the regional affiliate of the Islamic State group — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province and a rival of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban — has increased its attacks since Taliban takeover in 2021.
Read more: 19 killed in Suicide bombing in Shiite area of Kabul: Taliban
Images posted on social media from the scene show a damaged bus and another vehicle, along with several carts and fruit stalls lying scattered by the roadside following the explosion. The bus was later towed away.
Iran morality police status unclear after 'closure' comment
An Iranian lawmaker said Sunday that Iran's government is “paying attention to the people’s real demands,” state media reported, a day after a top official suggested that the country’s morality police whose conduct helped trigger months of protests has been shut down.
The role of the morality police, which enforces veiling laws, came under scrutiny after a detainee, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died in its custody in mid-September. Amini had been held for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress codes. Her death unleashed a wave of unrest that has grown into calls for the downfall of Iran's clerical rulers.
Iran's chief prosecutor Mohamed Jafar Montazeri said on Saturday the morality police “had been closed," the semi-official news agency ISNA reported. The agency did not provide details, and state media hasn't reported such a purported decision.
In a report carried by ISNA on Sunday, lawmaker Nezamoddin Mousavi signaled a less confrontational approach toward the protests.
Read more: Iran executes four people accused of working for Israel’s Mossad: State news
“Both the administration and parliament insisted that paying attention to the people’s demand that is mainly economic is the best way for achieving stability and confronting the riots,” he said, following a closed meeting with several senior Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi.
Mousavi did not address the reported closure of the morality police.
The Associated Press has been unable to confirm the current status of the force, established in 2005 with the task of arresting people who violate the country’s Islamic dress code.
Since September, there has been a reported decline in the number of morality police officers across Iranian cities and an increase in women walking in public without headscarves, contrary to Iranian law.
Montazeri, the chief prosecutor, provided no further details about the future of the morality police or if its closure was nationwide and permanent. However he added that Iran’s judiciary will ‘‘continue to monitor behavior at the community level.’’
In a report by ISNA on Friday, Montazeri was quoted as saying that the government was reviewing the mandatory hijab law. “We are working fast on the issue of hijab and we are doing our best to come up with a thoughtful solution to deal with this phenomenon that hurts everyone’s heart,” said Montazeri, without offering details.
Saturday's announcement could signal an attempt to appease the public and find a way to end the protests in which, according to rights groups, at least 470 people were killed. More than 18,000 people have been arrested in the protests and the violent security force crackdown that followed, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the demonstrations.
Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said Montazeri’s statement about closing the morality police could be an attempt to pacify domestic unrest without making real concessions to protesters.
Read more: Iranian general acknowledges over 300 dead in unrest
‘‘The secular middle class loathes the organization (morality police) for restricting personal freedoms," said Alfoneh. On the other hand, the “underprivileged and socially conservative class resents how they conveniently keep away from enforcing the hijab legislation” in wealthier areas of Iran's cities.
When asked about Montazeri's statement, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian gave no direct answer. ‘‘Be sure that in Iran, within the framework of democracy and freedom, which very clearly exists in Iran, everything is going very well,’’ Amirabdollahian said, speaking during a visit to Belgrade, Serbia.
The anti-government demonstrations, now in their third month, have shown no sign of stopping despite a violent crackdown. Protesters say they are fed up after decades of social and political repression, including a strict dress code imposed on women. Young women continue to play a leading role in the protests, stripping off the mandatory Islamic headscarf to express their rejection of clerical rule.
After the outbreak of the protests, the Iranian government hadn't appeared willing to heed the protesters' demands. It has continued to crack down on protesters, including sentencing at least seven arrested protesters to death. Authorities continue to blame the unrest on hostile foreign powers, without providing evidence.
But in recent days, Iranian state media platforms seemed to be adopting a more conciliatory tone, expressing a desire to engage with the problems of the Iranian people.