There are 416 articles

  • Afghan Taliban: Our enemy is occupation, not the West

    The Afghan Talibanpose no threat to the West but will continue their fight against occupying foreign forces, they said on Wednesday, the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that removed them from power. U.S.-led forces with the help of Afghan groups overthrew theTalibangovernment during a five week battle which started on October 7, 2001. "We.. More

  • 'False pretext' used in Afghan war

    The leader of an Afghan political group wanted by the US has said that Washington used a false pretext to launch its war on Afghanistan, on the eve of the eighth anniversary of the conflict. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who leads a faction of the Hizb-e Islami group, said that the war launched against the Taliban and al-Qaeda by the US in 2001 was not justified.. More

  • Lebanon's cluster bomb lessons

    "He was picking grapes when he died," says Khalil Kassem Terkiya, glancing at his wife as he recalls the day their son was killed by a cluster bomb in southern Lebanon. Graying and slight, Terkiya looks older than his 46 years: "A cluster bomb was caught in the vine and it exploded. It was the day after the war finished. He was 19." His.. More

  • UN: Israel terrorized Gazans in war

    Israel "punished and terrorized" civilians in Gaza in a disproportionate attack in its three-week war on the territory earlier this year, a United Nations report has found. Judge Richard Goldstone, who led the inquiry, said he found evidence Israel targeted civilians and used excessive force in the assault, which was launched on December.. More

  • Ramadan in Saudi Arabia inspires conversion to Islam

    The Muslim blessed month of Ramadan has become a popular time for many non-Muslims, especially Filipino migrant workers, to convert to Islam. Everyday in Saudi Arabia, Islamic centers across the country open their arms to non-Muslim migrant workers who decide to join the world's fastest growing religion. During Ramadan, a period of fasting, Muslim.. More

  • Soviet nuclear tests leave Kazakh fallout

    Decades of Soviet nuclear testing on the steppes of Kazakhstan have been blamed for an alarming number of health problems suffered by residents in the area. Now scientists are trying to determine whether the victims are passing on faulty genes to their children, the BBC's Rayhan Demytrie reports. "It looked like a mushroom, it grew bigger and.. More

  • Somali refugees trapped in camps 'barely fit for humans'

    Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing unrest are now living in camps that Oxfam said on Thursday were horrifically overcrowded and unfit for humans. The fighting has created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa nation, with one million internally displaced people and thousands more fleeing across borders to Ethiopia,.. More

  • Trapped between grief and hope

    In November 2008, an Iraqi mother called Sabria Jaloob received what she described as a "blessing". It was the body of her son, Noori, who had vanished during the 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran and had not been heard of since. For more than two decades, Sabria did not know whether he was dead or alive, and lived under a shadow of uncertainty.. More

  • UN: Israel had 'impunity' in Gaza

    The senior human rights official at the United Nations has said that the Israeli military acted with "near impunity" during its late-December to mid-January offensive on the Gaza Strip, violating international law. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a report on Friday that evidence collected on the Gaza war had.. More

  • Pakistanis see US as biggest threat

    The polling was conducted by Gallup Pakistan, an affiliate of the Gallup International polling group, and more than 2,600 people took part. Interviews were conducted across the political spectrum in all four of the country's provinces, and represented men and women of every economic and ethnic background. When respondents were asked what.. More

  • Israeli troops 'ill-treat kids'

    Israel arrested 9,000 Palestinians last year, 700 of them children. A former Israeli military commander has told the BBC that Palestinian youngsters are routinely ill-treated by Israeli soldiers while in custody, reports the BBC' s Katya Adler from Jerusalem and the West Bank. "You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he's really.. More

  • Militant Jewish settlers set up 11 outposts in the occupied West Bank

    Israeli settler groups have set up 11 new outposts in the occupied West Bank, in a direct rebuttal of mounting US calls to freeze settlement activity. Young Jewish groups are reported to have set up the structures – mostly tents and huts on hilltops – in the West Bank over Monday night, in a move timed as a precursor to the meeting between.. More

  • The Uyghurs: A history of persecution

    The Uyghur people of East Turkestan, an area known by the Chinese authorities as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, have long been victims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s sixty-year authoritarian rule. In the years since the CCP gained control of East Turkestan in 1949 and before Deng Xiaoping launched his era of economic reforms, Uyghurs.. More

  • Israel to erase Arabic from all signs in Jerusalem

    Israel ordered original Arabic names of all signs on Palestinian areas under occupation since 1948 to be turn into Hebrew language in an attempt to erase Palestinian identity in the region. The Israeli transport ministry Yisrael Katz said on Monday that it will "get rid of Arabic and English names" for cities and towns on road signs, keeping.. More

  • Israel troops speak out on Gaza war

    Troops fighting in Israel's war on Gaza were urged by their commanders to shoot first rather than worry about killing civilians, a document from an Israeli activist group shows. Published on Wednesday, the document also gives an insight into Israel's policy of house demolitions and its use of white phosphorus during its 22-day campaign. "Better.. More