DAMSCUS: Syria’s Aleppo airport reopened on Friday, with the first civilian flight landing in more than 72 hours, after repairs following an Israeli air strike earlier this week.

Damage to the main runway in Tuesday’s raid had put the airport — the country’s second-largest — out of service, but the transport ministry said Friday repairs had been completed.

The first incoming flight, from Kuwait, landed at 8:30 pm local time (1730 GMT), according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

ANKARA: As part of a joint operation, Turkey’s police and intelligence agency apprehended Bashar Hattab Ghazal Al-Sumaidai, a senior Daesh member codenamed Abu Zeyd, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced late on Thursday.
Al-Sumaidai, long associated with Daesh, confessed that he was a qaadi, or judge, in a Shariah court in the terror group’s ministries of education and justice. He had entered Turkey months ago using a fake ID.

RIYADH: The impact of digital technology on family cohesion in the Middle East, and the family’s role in confronting children’s addiction to electronic devices, will be among subjects tackled at a Gulf Family Forum to be held in Riyadh.

Specialists, researchers and prominent personalities from the region and worldwide will take part in the two-day forum, which has been organized by Saudi Arabia’s Family Affairs Council in cooperation with the Secretariat General of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday he wanted grain from Russia to be exported too, adding Vladimir Putin was right to complain that grain from Ukraine under a UN-backed deal was going to wealthy rather than poor countries.

The grain export agreement aimed to avert a global food crisis by guaranteeing the safe passage of ships in and out of Ukrainian ports, allowing them to export tens of millions of tons of grain that had been blockaded by Russia’s operations.

WASHINGTON: Dozens of international human rights campaigners and legal experts have sent an open letter to Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo urging him not to release Iranian former diplomat Assadollah Assadi from prison as part of a recently signed prisoner-exchange treaty with Iran.

A Belgian court convicted Assadi in 2021 of providing explosives to a Belgian-Iranian couple and plotting a foiled terrorist attack on a political event hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Paris in 2018. He is serving a 20-year prison sentence.