BEIRUT: A US-backed Syrian force declared its operations in eastern Syria completed Friday after almost two weeks of fighting with local tribesmen left dozens of people dead.
The Syrian Democratic Forces said the fighting ended with its recapture of areas in Deir Ezzor province that the Kurdish-led force had lost during the battles triggered by the militia’s arrest of a rival US-backed commander.

TUNIS: Tunisia’s journalists’ syndicate on Friday denounced state censorship of mass media and said authorities have “repressed” freedoms in the country reeling under a political and economic crisis.
“The freedom of the press is increasingly repressed and the authorities are adopting a policy of lockdown and censorship to enforce their control over the media, particularly state media,” the head of the SNJT union, Mehdi Jelassi, told a news conference.

RABAT: An earthquake of magnitude 7 struck Morocco on Friday, the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ)said. The quake was at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles), GFZ said.

 

ANKARA: The World Bank has unveiled a new $18 billion loan package for Turkiye in what appears to be a show of support for the government’s efforts to reshape its economic policy.

The deal, which comes on top of a $17 billion loan signed off by the lender earlier in the year, was announced just a day after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz presented their medium-term plan, which included targets for inflation, employment and economic growth for the 2024-26 period.

HOUSTON: The US on Friday divulged it disrupted in April a multimillion-dollar shipment of crude oil by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, seizing more than 980,000 barrels of contraband crude oil that violated US sanctions.
In April, Reuters reported that the US confiscated cargo onboard tanker Suez Rajan, which was carrying Iranian oil at sea. The US statement on Friday confirmed and fleshed out details of the story which cited sources.