Middle Orient

Usually we hear about Lebanon when tensions escalate on the border. Lately, we neglect to observe that it is going bankrupt and on the fast track to being declared a failed state.

Amid ongoing operations to find and eliminate remnants of the Islamic State (IS), the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria plans to begin public trials for accused members of the extremist organization.

Turkey has reportedly deployed a US-made air defense system to Idlib as Ankara beefs up its military presence in the militant-held Syrian region despite a ceasefire reached earlier this month to halt an escalation.

Islamic State militants rioted inside in a prison in northeastern Syria, wrestling control from guards on an entire floor in the facility while a number of prisoners managed to escape, a Syrian Kurdish official said Sunday.

Five pro-PKK Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) mayors have been detained on suspicion of having terrorist links, reports said Monday.

A group of Islamic State militants launched two attacks against the Iraqi Federal Police forces in Kirkuk governorate, a source in the area told Kurdistan 24 early on Monday.

The dissident father of the Manchester Arena bomber, who was arrested in Libya the day after the blast alongside his other terrorist son, was quietly released without charge and has vanished.

The fighter from a local armed group in the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) climbed in early March to a vantage point that had cartridges strewn about amid rusty barrels, sandbags and old, long-disused blue tarpaulins.

Russia’s foreign ministry said on Monday that militants in Syria’s Idlib region are not complying with a ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey, the Interfax news agency reported. The foreign ministry said the militants were taking counter-offensive action in the region.

Israel plans to deploy electronic counterterrorism measures to track the movements of people who might be infected with the coronavirus, officials said, a confluence of crime fighting and public health that could become more common even as it sparked civil liberty concerns.