TEHRAN: Thousands demonstrated across Iran on Friday at government-backed pro-hijab counter rallies, after a week of bloody protests over the death of a woman arrested for wearing the Islamic headscarf “improperly.”
At least 50 people have been killed by security forces in the anti-government protests, Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based organization, said on Friday — more than three times the official death toll of 17, which includes five security personnel.

BEIRUT: At least 77 people drowned when an illegal migrant boat traveling from Lebanon sank off Syria’s coast in the eastern Mediterranean.
Around 150 people, mostly Lebanese and Syrians, were on board the small vessel that went down on Thursday off the Syrian city of Tartous.
“Seventy-seven people have died,” Syria’s Health Minister Hassan Al-Ghabash told Agence France-Presse.
Lebanon has become a starting point for illegal migration, with its citizens joining Syrian and Palestinian refugees clamoring to leave their homeland.

JEDDAH: The regime in Tehran is braced for Iran’s biggest protests in three years on Friday amid mounting anger over the death of a young Kurdish woman in police custody.

Activist groups say Mahsa Amini, 22, was beaten to death after being arrested by the country’s morality police for wearing a hijab in an “improper way’.

AQABA: The Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan launched the “Clean up the World 2022” campaign in Aqaba on Wednesday, Petra News Agency reported.

The campaign is a social action program aimed at combating the global solid waste problem. Running in 130 countries it offers opportunities for people to contribute toward the conservation of the environment.

Its debut in Jordan attracted more than 700 volunteers from local businesses and institutions.

SOFIA: The Bulgarian coast guard rescued 38 migrants trying to reach Romania from the Black Sea Thursday, the interior ministry announced, the first such incident in the region since 2014.
The group, which included eight women and eight children, were found in Bulgarian territorial waters where they had got into difficulty in stormy weather, said Anton Mirkov, the head of the region’s border police.
The migrants, who included people from Afghanistan and Syria, had started out from Turkey.