CAIRO: Egypt’s military said yesterday it has destroyed 1,370 smuggling tunnels under its border with the Gaza Strip, as Cairo’s ties remain sour with the Hamas movement that rules the Palestinian enclave.
Ties took a turn for the worse after the military’s July ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi, who belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Hamas is affiliated.
The statement did not say when the tunnels were destroyed, but the military has poured troops into the adjacent Sinai Peninsula to counter militancy that has grown since July.
Drone strike kills two in Yemen
SANAA: A US drone strike has killed a local Al Qaeda chief and his bodyguard in northeastern Yemen, a tribal source said yesterday.
The unmanned plane fired a missile at a vehicle transporting militants in the Jebel Jame area, in Jawf province, the source said.
The dead were identified as Moajab bin Aziz and his guard, Ali Hasan Hadhban.
Veteran Nazareth mayor loses poll
JERUSALEM: The mayor of Nazareth, Israel’s largest Arab town, was yesterday defeated in a municipal election, ending a 20-year tenure, the interior ministry said.
New mayor Ali Sallam, who had called for the run-off vote after an initial October poll was plagued by accusations of fraud, won with 27,666 votes to outgoing Ramez Jaraish’s 17,266.
The Galilee city has a population of 82,000 people, 65 percent of whom are Muslim and the remainder Christian.
AFP
