DUBAI: An Irish couple whose daughter suffered severe injuries in a Qatari villa fire face another grueling chapter in a six-year court battle after their compensation was cut in half after an appeal by the firm blamed for the blaze.
Elizabeth Soffe was two years old when her family’s villa in Al-Waab caught fire. She suffered third-degree burns to 60 percent of her body, lost fingers, her hair, part of her nose and an ear and needs lifelong expensive treatment.

JERUSALEM/GAZA: A gunman killed at least seven people and wounded 10 others in a synagogue on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Friday in an attack that heightened fears of a spiral in violence.
This comes a day after the deadliest Israeli raid in the West Bank in years.
Police said the gunman arrived at around 8.15 p.m. and opened fire, hitting a number of people before he was killed by police. TV footage showed several victims lying in the road outside the synagogue being tended to by emergency workers.

JUBA: After spending nearly a decade in a camp for the displaced in South Sudan’s Juba, Mayen Galuak hopes that Pope Francis’ visit to the capital city next week will inspire political leaders to finally restore peace, allowing him to go home.

The 44-year-old entered the UN camp, just a few kilometers from his residence, in search of safety three days after conflict broke out in 2013.

ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish party should back the main opposition candidate instead of fielding its own against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May elections, its elder statesman told AFP from jail.

“I am in favor of backing a joint candidate” Selahattin Demirtas, who ran against Erdogan twice, told AFP through a lawyer from his jail in the western city of Edirne.

The Peoples’ Democratic Party or HDP — parliament’s third-largest — faces the threat of being banned ahead of polls in which Erdogan will seek to extend his rule into a third decade.

RAQQA: Syrian Kurdish-led forces captured a local commander of Daesh in eastern Syria as part of an ongoing operation targeting sleeper cells in the city of Raqqa, the US-backed forces announced on Thursday.

The commander served as the chief of the extremist group’s faction for Raqqa and was among the 68 militants detained in the operation, the Syrian Democratic Forces said.

The operation started earlier this week, in response to a December attack by Daesh that targeted military and security buildings in Raqqa and killed at least six Syrian Kurdish fighters.