Egypt

CAIRO, January 4. /TASS/: Additional army and police units have been sent to Baghdad’s so-called "green zone" which came under rocket fire on Saturday evening, the Al-Arabiya TV channel informed citing Iraqi security sources. 

According to recent reports, two Katyusha rockets fell near the US embassy in the heavily fortified "green zone" where foreign diplomatic missions and government bodies are located. There has been no information regarding casualties. All roads to the embassy have been blocked in the wake of the attack.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia condemns “the recent Turkish escalation in Libya” and the Turkish parliament’s approval of a troop deployment to Libya, and considers it a violation of U.N. Security Council decisions, the foreign ministry said in a statement on the state news agency SPA.

CAIRO, January 4. /TASS/: Commander of the Libyan National Army Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar announces the nation-wide mobilization to counter any aggression from the outside, Al Arabiya TV Channel reports.

"The battle for Tripoli is coming to its end. Nobody should have doubts that the capital will be liberated," Haftar said. "We accept the challenge and I announce countering and the general mobilization against any foreign troops that will be sent to our country," he added.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt on Saturday reopened the harbors of two of its Mediterranean ports, Alexandria and Dekheila, which had been shut due to bad weather, the Alexandria Port Authority said.

The harbors were shut on Friday due to high waves and wind speeds, preventing ships from entering or leaving the ports, though loading and unloading within the ports was continuing normally, the authority said in a statement.

The port authorities on Saturday ordered moored ships to enter the harbors according to their mooring order, it added.

03 Jan 2019; MEMO: The Egyptian National Action Group (ENAG) has condemned attempts of the Egyptian regime, under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to involve the Egyptian army into the ongoing battles in Libya, according to a statement released by the group.

CAIRO, January 3. /TASS/: At least 18 people were killed when an Antonov An-12 military aircraft crashed in Sudan’s West Darfur on Thursday, Sudanese Army Spokesman Brigadier General Amer Mohamed al-Hassan said, according to local media.

There were 18 people onboard the plane: seven crew members - all of them military, including four officers, eight civilians, with four children among them, and three judges. No one survived the crash.

CAIRO (AP) — Two Sudanese sisters, Seham and Ekhlas Bashir, were walking their children home from elementary school in a Cairo neighborhood when a group of Egyptian teenagers crowded around them. The boys taunted them, calling them “slave” and other slurs. Then they tried to rip off Ekhlas’ clothes.

An onlooker intervened, scolding the young harassers, and the sisters and their three children managed to escape. But they were shaken.

31 Dec 2019; MEMO: Egypt’s regime must stop its “repressive practices against dissidents”, Egyptian expatriates said yesterday, calling for the overthrow of what they described as “military rule”.

30 Dec 2019; MEMO: Egyptian rights Gamal Eid yesterday said that he was being “assaulted and tortured by plain-clothes individuals on the street, in front of passers-by.”

“Vehicle without plates, plain-clothes police officers with pistols assaulting and drowning me into paint next to my house,” Eid said on Facebook attaching a photo showing his face burst with paint colours.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Algeria’s president Abdelmadjid Tebboune named Abdelaziz Djerad as the country’s new prime minister on Saturday, state TV reported.

Djerad is a former diplomat who teaches political science at the University of Algiers.