SULAIMANIYAH: Police in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region said they had arrested 16 young men after a viral video showed a teenage girl being attacked at a motorcycle rally.
The incident took place in the suburbs of Sulaimaniyah, the Kurdistan region’s second city, where footage shared online showed dozens of young men and teenage boys following the girl before some of them assaulted her, kicking her against a car.

DUBAI: Iran’s military launched a drone to warn off a reconnaissance plane trying to approach Iranian war games on the Gulf coast, the semi-official Fars news agency said on Saturday.

The report did not specify the nationality of the reconnaissance aircraft, but Iranian forces have had repeated similar confrontations with US forces in the Gulf.

There was no immediate US reaction available.

Iran launched annual joint naval, air, and ground exercises in the Gulf on Friday near the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway.

RAMALLAH: The results of a 2022 census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics will worry Israel’s leaders, according to a Palestinian political expert.

“Israelis are constantly concerned about Palestinian demographic superiority as they want control over the Palestinians … still, at the same time, they want a pure Jewish society,” Ghassan Al-Khatib told Arab News.

“The most important fact is that we are equal to the Jews in terms of demography,” he said.

RAMALLAH: Palestinian leaders have called on the international community and human rights groups to intervene to stop the ‘extremist’ Israeli government from escalating violence in the West Bank.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said that it had warned previously that the new right-wing government in Israel would “escalate its crimes in an unprecedented manner against our people” and called for “unity at the highest levels to repel this aggression.”

LEBANON: Lebanese celebrating New Year’s Eve are looking back on a period that deepened the political and economic crisis in the country, with 2022 being described as a year of missed opportunities.

In January, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri retreated, along with the Future Movement, from political life.

“There is no room for any positive opportunity in Lebanon in light of Iranian influence, international confusion and national division,” Hariri had said.