HARARE: President Ebrahim Raisi has received a red carpet welcome in Zimbabwe on the last leg of the first Africa tour by an Iranian leader in 11 years.

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa greeted Raisi as “my brother” on the tarmac after the Iranian
leader’s plane landed at Robert Mugabe International Airport in Harare.

“When you see him you see me. When you see me you see him,” Mnangagwa told a crowd waving Zimbabwean and Iranian flags that gathered around the two heads of state.

UNITED NATIONS: The Syrian government has given the United Nations approval to use a border crossing from Turkiye to continue delivering aid to northwest Syria for another six months after the Security Council failed to renew its authorization for the operation.
The UN aid deliveries would have to be “in full cooperation and coordination with the Syrian Government,” Syria’s UN Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh wrote in a letter on Thursday to the Security Council, seen by Reuters.

TUNIS: A Tunisian judge on Thursday released two prominent political opponents of President Kais Saied, nearly five months after they were arrested on suspicion of plotting against state security services, their lawyer Monia Bouali told Reuters.
Chaima Issa and Lazahr Akremi were detained in February along with 20 other political leaders in a crackdown the opposition says aimed to establish authoritarian rule by Saied, who in 2021 dissolved parliament and seized wide-ranging powers.

TUNIS: The Tunisian coast guard said Thursday it had recovered the bodies of 13 migrants after a shipwreck off Sfax, the port where violent clashes erupted last week between migrants and residents.
“Last night, units affiliated with the Sfax maritime region thwarted an attempted illegal crossing and rescued 25 sub-Saharan migrants, but 13 bodies were also recovered,” the coast guard statement said.
Sfax is the North African country’s second largest city and a departure point for migrants seeking to reach European shores across the Mediterranean.

RIYADH: On his first trip to Saudi Arabia since being appointed the first EU special representative for the Gulf region, Luigi Di Maio has told Arab News that recent world events show that new collaborations are needed.

He was responding to the question whether European nations can afford to ignore the rise of the GCC and Arab Gulf states in a multipolar world.