Author: Anadolu Agency

Lawyers representing victims in Syria encouraged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to ‘urgently’ issue arrest warrants for Bashar al-Assad and 17 senior officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In a statement Thursday after meeting Syrian authorities, Gulden Sonmez and Cihat Gokdemir said they initiated proceedings in 2017 on behalf of their clients, who suffered under the Baath regime, to prosecute Assad and senior military and political figures at the ICC in The Hague. Highlighting that victims’ case files remain active due to conditions linked to the Syrian war, Sonmez and Gokdemir said: “With the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s…

Three Palestinians sustained injuries as dozens of illegal Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian village in the central occupied West Bank on Saturday. Speaking to Anadolu, Lafi Shalabi, mayor of Turmus Ayya village, east of Ramallah city, said that 30 to 40 armed settlers attacked the village, set fire to two cars, and beat up three Palestinians. He said the villagers confronted the settlers before the Israeli army’s intervention. The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said in early January that settlers in 2024 committed 2,971 violations across the occupied West Bank against Palestinians and their properties leaving 10 Palestinians dead…

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday called the US sanctions on Serbia’s Petroleum Industry (NIS), controlled by Russian energy giant Gazprom Neft, the “toughest sanctions” imposed on a Serbian company. Speaking in the capital Belgrade, he said the sanctions demand the complete withdrawal of Russian capital and interests from NIS. “The company will continue to operate, but we must begin the transfer process immediately. We have until February 25 to finalize this,” he said. The Serbian leader stressed that his country had not contributed to the conflict between major powers and stressed the importance of handling the issue calmly. He…

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday reaffirmed his country’s insistence on Israel’s full withdrawal from all Lebanese territories, according to a statement. It came during Aoun’s meeting with the leader of the Greek Cypriot Administration, Nikos Christodoulides, at the Presidential Baabda Palace in eastern Beirut, said the Lebanese Presidency. As both leaders discussed the situation in southern Lebanon, Aoun “reaffirmed Lebanon’s insistence on the complete withdrawal of the Israeli enemy from its remaining occupied territories and the deployment of the Lebanese army along the southern border.” Under a cease-fire signed Nov. 27, Israel is required to withdraw its forces south…

South Korean officials on Saturday said black boxes of a jet that crashed last month at the Muan International Airport stopped recordings before the crash as data of final four minutes before the explosion is missing, Yonhap news reported. An analysis by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from the Jeju Air passenger plane showed that recordings stopped on both devices approximately four minutes before the aircraft collided with a localizer structure. The explosion occurred at 9.03 a.m. on Dec. 29, when the flight struck a concrete mound…

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday called the US sanctions on Serbia’s Petroleum Industry (NIS), controlled by Russian energy giant Gazprom Neft, the “toughest sanctions” imposed on a Serbian company. Speaking in the capital Belgrade, he said the sanctions demand the complete withdrawal of Russian capital and interests from NIS. “The company will continue to operate, but we must begin the transfer process immediately. We have until February 25 to finalize this,” he said. The Serbian leader stressed that his country had not contributed to the conflict between major powers and stressed the importance of handling the issue calmly. He…

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday awarded a soldier with the country’s highest honour for bravery after a widely posted video showed him killing a Ukrainian opponent in hand-to-hand combat. Putin awarded Corporal Andrei Grigoryev the Hero of Russia medal for his “courage and heroism”, the Kremlin said in a statement. Russian military bloggers this month posted a video purportedly shot by a camera on the helmet of a Ukrainian soldier. According to Russian and Ukrainian media reports, the footage was actually filmed last year. In the video, the soldier wearing the camera walks toward a house, then an exchange…

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday reaffirmed his country’s insistence on Israel’s full withdrawal from all Lebanese territories, according to a statement. It came during Aoun’s meeting with the leader of the Greek Cypriot Administration, Nikos Christodoulides, at the Presidential Baabda Palace in eastern Beirut, said the Lebanese Presidency. As both leaders discussed the situation in southern Lebanon, Aoun “reaffirmed Lebanon’s insistence on the complete withdrawal of the Israeli enemy from its remaining occupied territories and the deployment of the Lebanese army along the southern border.” Under a cease-fire signed Nov. 27, Israel is required to withdraw its forces south…

Israeli illegal settlers carried out assaults Friday against Palestinian farmers in the Al-Aghwar area, also known as the Jordan Valley, in the northern occupied West Bank. Moataz Bisharat, who is responsible for monitoring Israeli settlement-building activity, told Anadolu that settlers, protected by Israeli forces, attacked the farmers in the Umm al-Quba Plain in the northern Al-Aghwar area and forced them to leave their lands. He noted that the army intervened in favor of the settlers and declared the area a “closed military zone.” The activist said that the settlers, in a separate incident, set up a tent on a hill…

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday reaffirmed his country’s insistence on Israel’s full withdrawal from all Lebanese territories, according to a statement. It came during Aoun’s meeting with the leader of the Greek Cypriot Administration, Nikos Christodoulides, at the Presidential Baabda Palace in eastern Beirut, said the Lebanese Presidency. As both leaders discussed the situation in southern Lebanon, Aoun “reaffirmed Lebanon’s insistence on the complete withdrawal of the Israeli enemy from its remaining occupied territories and the deployment of the Lebanese army along the southern border.” Under a cease-fire signed Nov. 27, Israel is required to withdraw its forces south…