Author: Steven Sahiounie

The Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, claims to have downed two Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles, LNA spokesman Ahmed Mismari said on Thursday. “LNA air defense forces have downed two Turkish drones. The first one was downed over the Okba Ibn Nafa airbase, the second one over the southeastern part of the capital [Tripoli], the Ain Zara district,” Mismari wrote on his Facebook page. Since the US-supported overthrow and assassination of the country’s long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has been torn apart between two rival governments. Tensions escalated last year after the LNA began its operation to retake…

The nomination follows the resignation of previous designated prime minister, Adnan al-Zurfi, after he failed to garner enough support to form a government. Iraqi President Barham Saleh has named intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi as the country’s prime minister-designate, state TV reported on Thursday. The nomination ceremony was held with the attendance of the country’s major political figures in contrast to the two previous ceremonies this year for PM-designates who have since stepped down from their posts. The newly-appointed prime minister now has a month to form a new cabinet and present it to parliament for approval. Al-Kadhimi’s designation comes as…

The coronavirus pandemic and the oil price collapse are rapidly deteriorating the sovereign rating outlook – with more multi-notch downgrades on the way, Fitch Ratings said in a statement. “We will continue to assess sovereign creditworthiness case-by-case as the crisis and policy responses evolve, and this commentary does not identify specific sovereigns that might be vulnerable to multi-notch downgrades. However, conditions that have typically formed the backdrop to such rating actions in the past are clearly coalescing again,” Fitch Ratings said. Just last week, Fitch downgraded Gabon, a small OPEC producer, in a multi-notch downgrade action, slashing the rating to ‘CCC’ from…

The head of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah says the occupying Israeli regime is feeling an existential threat to its political survival. “At the time being, there exists a usurping entity in the occupied Palestine, which is worried about sustaining its political existence,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech on Tuesday. “It fears it may not live beyond 80 years,” he added. Israel proclaimed existence in 1948 after overrunning huge swathes of Arab territories. It launched a fresh war in 1967, occupying more Arab land, including the Palestinian West Bank, and began propping up illegal settlements upon the seized…

The Syrian Army has discovered a large cache with militants’ ammunition in the area of ​​the village of Khan al-Sabil in Idlib Province. “A month ago, our army liberated this area. Work [by sappers] began immediately, they began to look for remnants from militants so that the inhabitants of this area could return”, Hadu Yasser, a colonel in the Syrian Army’s engineering corps, said. The village is located next to the M5 highway connecting Damascus and Aleppo. An ammunition depot with dozens of hand grenades, US-made anti-personnel mines, detonators, improvised explosive devices, and a suicide belt was discovered in one of the…

On April 8, the Houthis’ media wing released a new episode of its “Jihad Fields” series, featuring the headquarters of the Saudi-led coalition near al-Hazim military camp in the northern province of al-Jawf. The Houthis captured the headquarters, the nearby al-Hazim military camp and al-Hazim’s town center earlier this year in a large-scale operation. The attack was a major blow to the Saudi-led coalition and its local proxies. In the new episode of Jihad Fields, the Houthis show off containers of large calibers projectiles, which had been left behind by Saudi forces. A field commander of the group claims in the video…

Syrian Arab Army (SAA) troops and locals prevented U.S. forces from conducting two patrols in the northern al-Hasakah countryside. The first patrol was intercepted in the noon. U.S. forces were prevented from entering the town of Hammo, southeast of the border city of al-Qamishli, by the locals who gathered around an SAA checkpoint. A few hours later, a convoy of U.S. forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) attempted to patrol the northern al-Hasakah countryside. However, the convoy was intercepted by the locals and SAA personnel near the town of Khirbat al-Asad. Several similar incidents took place in northeast Syria…

Dozens of Saudi-led soldiers and Saudi-sponsored militiamen loyal to Yemen’s former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, have been killed when Yemeni army forces and their allies fired a domestically-manufactured ballistic missile at their camp in the southern Yemeni provinces of Abyan. The spokesman for Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said on Wednesday afternoon that Yemeni missile defense units launched a Qassim missile at al-Shajeri camp as Saudi coalition forces and their mercenaries were preparing to sneak towards areas in the province. He added that the missile hit the designated target with great precision, leaving dozens of coalition members and Saudi-paid militiamen killed and injured. Saree highlighted that Yemeni Armed…

The Yemeni army says the Saudi-led coalition has carried out nearly 300 air strikes across the country over the past week. Brigadier General Yahya Saree, the spokesman for Yemen’s Armed Forces, made the announcement on Tuesday, saying that the air raids were conducted on a number of governorates — among them Bayda, Ma’rib and Sana’a — and resulted in the killing of civilians. Saree also warned that the escalation would not go unanswered. “The dangerous escalation of aggression will not pass without an appropriate response, and it is our duty to defend our people and our country,” the Arabic-language al-Masirah…

Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), also known as Bank Markazi, says the country has won a legal battle in Europe to dismiss a US attempt to have Iranian funds blocked and handed over to Washington for compensating the so-called victims of terror. Abdolnasser Hemmati said on Wednesday that courts in Luxembourg had taken Iran’s side in a dispute over $1.6 billion worth of Iranian funds hold by Clearstream, a securities depository, which Washington had sought to block and confiscate. “Through Bank Markazi’s legal follow-up, the US attempt to have CBI’s funds in Europe confiscated and transferred was…