Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

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Muslim pilgrims gather outside the Grand Mosque, a day before Muslims’ annual pilgrimage, known as the Hajj, in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on October 1, 2014. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Saudi Arabia: 2 million in Mecca for start of Hajj

by Asharq Al-Awsat | Oct 2, 2014 | Middle East

Mecca, AP—Saudi Arabia sought to assure the public that the kingdom was safe and free of health scares as an estimated 2 million Muslims streamed into a sprawling tent city near Mecca on Thursday for the start of the annual Islamic Hajj pilgrimage. Earlier this year,...

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Nowa Paye, 9, is taken to an ambulance after showing signs of the Ebola infection in the village of Freeman Reserve, about 30 miles north of Monrovia, Liberia, on September 30, 2014. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Hunger threat shadows Ebola in West Africa

by Asharq Al-Awsat | Oct 2, 2014 | World

Freetown and Dakar, Reuters—The threat of hunger is tracking Ebola across affected West African nations as the disease kills farmers and their families, drives workers from the fields and creates food shortages. In the worst-hit states of Liberia, Sierra Leone and...

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Picture released on October 1980 of Iraqi soldiers standing in front of tanks and looking at Khorramshahr, near Chatt-el-Arab, in Iran, as fights between Iran and Iraq started again despite the cease-fire. (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images)

A War that Produced Only Losers

by Amir Taheri | Oct 2, 2014 | Book Reviews

In terms of its length, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 was one of the longest in modern history. It was also one of the costliest in terms of casualties, claiming an estimated one million lives on both sides, plus twice as many injured or permanently disabled. It was...

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Smokes rise after a mortar shell landed in the south of the city center of Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, seen from the Turkish side of border as thousands of new Syrian refugees from Kobani arrive in Suruc, Turkey, Wednesday, October 1, 2014. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

ISIS presses assault on Syrian border town, Kurds warn Turkey

by Asharq Al-Awsat | Oct 2, 2014 | Middle East

Suruc and Beirut, Reuters/Asharq Al-Awsat—Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) insurgents pushed on with their assault on a Syrian border town on Thursday despite coalition air strikes meant to weaken them, sending thousands more Kurdish refugees into Turkey and...

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Interior ministers from the GCC states meet in the Saudi city of Jeddah, on October 1, 2014 (SPA)

GCC denounce “foreign intervention” in Yemen

by Hamdan Al-Rahbi | Oct 2, 2014 | Middle East

Jeddah and Sana’a, Asharq Al-Awsat—Interior ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) denounced on Wednesday recent acts of violence and looting in Yemen’s capital and called for the restoration of state authority, as Houthi rebels remained in control of Sana’a...