TALAT N’YAAQOUB, Morocco: Villagers wept for lost relatives in the rubble of their homes on Monday as the death toll from Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in more than six decades rose to more than 2,800 and rescuers raced against time to find survivors.
Search teams from Spain, Britain and Qatar were joining Moroccan rescue efforts after a 6.8 magnitude quake struck late on Friday in the High Atlas Mountains, with the epicenter 72 km (45 miles) southwest of Marrakech.

DUBAI: Yemen has one of the world’s highest rates of contamination with land mines and other deadly explosives, the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned, nine years after the start of the brutal civil war.
The impoverished Arab nation, plunged into conflict when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital in September 2014, is among the three worst affected countries, the ICRC said.

JERUSALEM/GAZA: Israel eased travel for Palestinian Americans from the Gaza Strip on Monday as part of final preparations for a deal enabling Israelis to enter the United States without visas, Israeli and US officials said.
As a condition for its accession to the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP), Israel has since July 20 loosened access through its borders, and in and out of the occupied West Bank, for Palestinian Americans in a pilot period.

TASELI PLATEAU, Turkiye: Rescuers pulled an American researcher out of a Turkish cave on Monday, more than a week after he became seriously ill 1,000 meters (more than 3,000 feet) below its entrance, said the Speleological Federation of Turkiye.
Teams from across Europe had rushed to Morca cave in southern Turkiye’s Taurus Mountains to aid Mark Dickey, a 40-year-old experienced caver who became seriously ill on Sept. 2 with stomach bleeding. He was on an expedition to map the cave, which is the country’s third deepest.

BEIRUT: Following days of fighting in Lebanon’s largest camp for Palestinian refugees, which left several people dead and dozens wounded, a ceasefire was declared on Monday.

It followed a meeting between Brig. Gen. Elias Al-Baysari, Lebanon’s acting general security chief, and representatives of the Joint Palestinian Action Committee, which includes members of rival Palestinian factions and the Hamas movement, Lebanon’s General Security Directorate said.