Mena Today

An Iranian court has begun the trial of a Swedish national employed by the European Union who was detained last year, Sweden's foreign minister said on Saturday.

Spain, Ireland, Belgium and Malta want EU leaders to debate the situation in Gaza next week and jointly call for a lasting humanitarian ceasefire that would end the conflict, a letter to the chairman of EU summits showed.

 A small group of demonstrators staged a very rare protest in Dubai on Saturday in the COP28 U.N. climate summit site to demand the release of pro-democracy activists imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

The Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Attaf, arrived Saturday evening in Doha, where he will participate in the Doha Forum starting tomorrow.

A military spokesperson for Yemen’s Houthis warned all shipping companies on Saturday against cooperating with Israel, saying they will be a target of attack in the Red Sea.

A new process for inspecting aid for Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing is being tested, but efforts to get permission for trucks to enter through the crossing and ramp up relief are still ongoing, a senior U.N. official told Reuters on Saturday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Gaza in a phone call on Saturday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday called for the United Nations Security Council to be reformed,

The teenage children of jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi fear they will never meet their mother again.

The United States' veto of a proposed United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza was a "complete disappointment," Turkey's ministry of foreign affairs has said.

There is an overall consensus that Azerbaijan should host the COP29 U.N. climate summit next year, the country's ecology minister Mukhtar Babayev said on Saturday.

Israel pounded the Gaza Strip from north to south on Saturday in an expanded phase of its two-month-old war against Hamas, after the United States wielded its U.N. Security Council veto to shield its ally from a global demand for a ceasefire.