GAZA CITY: Religious conservatives have forced the cancelation of a football match for young girls in the Gaza Strip, describing it as an attempt to “replace the hijab with shorts.”
The pressure led to the cancelation of the match for girls aged nine to 12 from the Rafah Services Club and the Rafah Youth Club, which was scheduled for Thursday. Scholars and clerics criticized the match, calling it a “moral disgrace.”
Hani Abu Kush, a board member of the Rafah Services Club, said it wanted to hold the match as part of a sporting project.

LONDON: Witnesses to the killing of a Palestinian have questioned the accounts of Israeli authorities, who say an officer killed the 22-year-old in self-defense, the BBC reported on Tuesday.

Ammar Mefleh was shot dead by an officer at point-blank range in the West Bank on Friday. The killing has sparked widespread condemnation in Palestine, with the UN envoy to the region tweeting that he was “horrified” over Mefleh’s death.

The incident occurred when Mefleh allegedly stabbed the officer in the face following a scuffle.

LONDON: A 27-year-old man who is one of six people sentenced to death in Iran over ongoing anti-regime protests has been subjected to several mock executions in prison, the BBC reported

Last month, a Revolutionary Court found Sahand Noormohammadzadeh guilty of acts of “vandalism and arson of public property with the aim of causing disruption to the country’s peace and order and confronting the Islamic government,” according to the Mizan News Agency.

CAIRO: French fashion house Dior held its first show at Egypt’s ancient Giza pyramids, presenting its 2023 fall men’s collection in the shadow of the millennia-old tombs.

Naomi Campbell, Lewis Hamilton, Robert Pattinson and K-pop star Cha Eun Woo were among the 800 guests at the show, which took place after sunset with the pyramids lit up in the background.

PARIS: Iranian activists and Western nations have dismissed a claim that the protest-hit regime is disbanding its notorious morality police, insisting there was no change to women’s rights.

There were also calls on social media for a three-day strike in Iran, culminating Wednesday on the annual Student Day, nearly three months into a nationwide wave of unrest sparked by the death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini.