At least 15 killed and 55 others wounded in a wave of deadly bombings across Iraqi capital.

Iraqi security forces gather at the site of the blast [Ahmed Saad/Reuters]

A series of bomb blasts has killed at least 15 people and wounded 55 others in Baghdad, according to police and medics.

In the first attack on Tuesday, a lone bomber detonated himself around a gathering of construction workers on a commercial street in the Jadida neighbourhood in the east of the city, a police official said.

At least eight people were killed and 29 wounded in Jadida, although some said the area was hit by a roadside bomb as well as a suicide bomber.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Another suicide bomber targeted the Bayaa area in south Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding 26, officials said. There were conflicting accounts of the death toll, and officials said they were likely to rise.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the second suicide attack, but ISIL frequently carries out attacks in Shia areas of the city.

Tuesday’s violence came two days after another suicide bombing killed six people in western Baghdad.

A day before that, 12 people were killed in the area of Tikrit, a city north of the capital.

Officials say bodies of 162 people have been pulled from the Mediterranean, amid fears death toll could rise further.

The military said that it had rescued 163 survivors [Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters]

The death toll from a refugee boat sinking off Egypt’s coast has risen to 162, as rescuers recovered more bodies from the Mediterranean Sea.

Survivors have said up to 450 people were on board the overcrowded fishing vessel that was heading to Italy from Egypt when it capsized off the port city of Rosetta on Wednesday.

The bodies of 162 people had been pulled from the waters off the Egyptian coast, Mohammed Sultan, the governor of Beheira  province, where Rosetta is located, told the Associated Press on Friday.

An earlier official toll on Friday had put the number of dead at 148.

The military said that it had rescued 163 survivors, and recovery attempts were continuing.

There are fears the death toll could rise further, with rescuers focusing their efforts on the boat’s hold where witnesses said around 100 people had been when the vessel flipped over.

In a new report on Friday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that “as many as 240 [people are still] unaccounted for or presumed missing” from the shipwreck.

“Normally in such situations, ‘missing’ migrants are presumed drowned, their remains never recovered,” it said.

The IOM said most of those rescued were Egyptians, but also included Sudanese, Eritreans, a Syrian and an Ethiopian.

Authorities arrested four suspected people traffickers on Thursday over the incident, the latest in what the UN refugee agency expects to be the deadliest year on record for the Mediterranean.

The accident comes months after the EU border agency Frontex warned that growing numbers of Europe-bound refugees were using Egypt as a departure point for the dangerous journey.

People-traffickers often use barely seaworthy vessels and overload them to extract the maximum money in fares from desperate refugees.

The IOM reported on Friday that 300,450 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in 2016 through 21 September, arriving mostly in Greece and Italy. Some 166,050 people have arrived in Greece and 130,567 in Italy during 2016.

Total arrivals for the entire month of September last year were 518,181 – nearly 50 percent higher than 2016’s totals, with slightly over a week remaining before the start of October.

Deaths, however, are considerably higher than last year’s total of 2,887 on this date.

According to the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, this year’s deaths stand at 3,501, including the people who died in the latest tragedy off Egypt.

The incident that reportedly happened in the West Bank town of Hebron is the latest in a recent surge of violence.

by Al Jazeera

A Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after trying to stab one of them near the West Bank town of Hebron, according to the Israeli army – the latest of a recent surge in such incidents.

“An assailant armed with a knife attempted to stab a soldier at a checkpoint at the entrance to [the southern town of] Bani Naim,” an army statement said on Tuesday morning.

“Responding to the immediate threat, forces fired at the assailant, resulting in his death.”

UPDATE: Assailant armed with a knife attempted to stab an IDF soldier near Hebron. Responding to the immediate threat, forces shot assailant

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) September 20, 2016

Since October, 230 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two Americans, one Jordanian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese have been killed in ongoing violence, according to a count by the AFP news agency.

Israel says that most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks. Others were shot dead during protests or Israeli air raids on Gaza.

Nine attacks on Israeli forces, including this latest one, have been reported since Friday as Israel tightened security before major Jewish holidays in October.

The upsurge in bloodshed has shattered several weeks of relative calm.

At least 50 people were also injured when fierce fire engulfed packaging factory north of the capital Dhaka.

Weak fire protection systems are common in factories in Bangladesh [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]

by Al Jazeera

At least 20 people have been killed and 50 injured after a fire engulfed a packaging factory north of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

The Dhaka Tribune newspaper reported on Saturday that the fire erupted due to a boiler explosion at the Tampako Packaging Factory in the industrial town of Tongi, 20km north of the capital.

Citing hospital officials, the paper said the bodies of 17 people were taken to a nearby hospital while three others succumbed to their injuries while undergoing treatment.

Michael Shipper, the Secretary of Labour and Employment Ministry told Al Jazeera that the death toll stood at 22.

About 100 people are believed to have been working at the building when flames tore through the four-storey factory.

A series of deadly incidents have raised concern over safety standards in the South Asian country’s factories.

Working conditions have been described as notoriously poor, with little enforcement of safety laws, while overcrowding and locked fire doors are common.

A fire at a plastics factory last year killed 13, and in 2013 more than 1,100 people died in the Rana Plaza factory collapse, Bangladesh’s worst industrial accident.

Officials from Iran, Saudi trade verbal blows after countries fail to reach agreement on this year’s pilgrimage.

Iran boycotted the Hajj for three years between 1988 and 1990 [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Iran has urged the Muslim world to unite and punish Saudi Arabia as the bitter war of words between the two countries escalates ahead of the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

On Monday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticised Saudi Arabia over how it runs Hajj after a stampede last year killed over 750 people.

He said Saudi authorities had “murdered” some of them, describing Saudi rulers as godless and irreligious.

“This incident proves once again that this cursed, evil family does not deserve to manage the holy sites,” Khamenei said.

In response, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh said he was not surprised at Khamenei’s comments.

“We have to understand that they [Iran’s leaders] are not Muslims,” he told the Makkah daily. “They are children of the Magi and their hostility towards Muslims is ancient.”

Magi refers to Zoroastrians and those who worship fire. Predating Christianity and Islam, Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion in Persia before the Muslim conquest.

Custodian of Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia organises the annual Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to is obliged to undertake at least once in a lifetime.

Millions of Muslims from around the world have already arrived in Saudi for this year’s pilgrimage, which culminates on Sunday.

Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia hit a new low after the two countries failed to reach a deal on arrangements for Iranian citizens to attend this year’s pilgrimage.

At the leadership level, Saudi Arabia and Iran follow different branches of Islam – Sunni and Shia.

Iran boycotted the Hajj for three years between 1988 and 1990 after clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi police in 1987 left around 400 people dead.

Diplomatic ties were restored in 1991, but relations have deteriorated in recent years, particularly over the countries’ support for opposing sides in the Syria and Yemen wars.

In January, relations were severed again after Iranian demonstrators torched Saudi Arabia’s embassy and a consulate following Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shia leader along with 47 “terrorists”.

“If the existing problems with the Saudi government were merely the issue of the Hajj … maybe it would have been possible to find a way to resolve it,” said Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani at a cabinet meeting.

“Unfortunately, this government – by committing crimes in the region and supporting terrorism – in fact shed the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Yemen,” Rouhani added.

On Monday night, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif joined the fray on Twitter.

Meanwhile, the head of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council hit back on Wednesday, calling Khamenei’s remarks “inappropriate and offensive … and a desperate attempt to politicise” the Hajj.

Khaled Batarfi, senior columnist with the Saudi Gazette, told Al Jazeera that the rebuke to Saudi Arabia over last year’s tragedy contrasted with Iran’s health minister, who said during a visit to the country at the time of the accident that Saudi authorities had provided all needed medical assistance and care to victims of the crush, including Iranian pilgrims.

Security forces say all three attackers killed, 11 hours after they took over Pamlarena’s offices in a residential area.

The siege came after at least 24 people were killed in the bombings [Jawad Jalali/EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Afghan officials say at least six civilians have been wounded after armed men stormed a building housing of an international aid organisation in Kabul, provoking a deadly firefight with security forces.

Early on Tuesday, police special forces killed all three men involved in the overnight attack in the Shar-e Naw district of Kabul, said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Afghan interior minister.

The interior ministry initially said one civilian had been killed but a later statement said only the attackers died in the gun battle.

Security forces blocked all roads leading to the Shar-e Naw neighbourhood while the siege last.

The assault began late on Monday night with a suicide car bombing close to a building belonging to Pamlarena, the charity CARE International, after which the attackers entered the building.

“Police special forces immediately reached the site of the attack and started rescuing people from the building. … 42 people who were trapped were evacuated by the security forces,” the interior ministry statement said.

In a statement on Tuesday, CARE said that “an armed group launched an attack on what is believed to have been an Afghan government compound located close to the Kabul office of CARE International”.

It said the incident continued through to the early morning, “with damage sustained to the CARE compound.

“All CARE staff have been evacuated, are safe and are accounted for”.

The area being home to several guest houses, many foreigners and diplomats reside there.

Amnesty International, the human-rights advocacy group, on Tuesday termed the attack a “war crime”.

“The attack by an armed group on the aid agency CARE International in Kabul is the deliberate targeting of civilians and constitutes a war crime,” said Champa Patel, Amnesty International’s South Asia director.

“The cardinal rule of international humanitarian law is that parties to an armed conflict must never deliberately attack civilians.”

The attack on Pamlarena’s offices commenced several hours after a double suicide bombing near the Afghan defence ministry killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 100 others.

An army general and two senior police commanders were among the dead, a defence ministry official said.

Another official said the deputy head of President Ashraf Ghani’s personal protection force was among those killed.

The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack on the defence ministry.

Surging violence

The Taliban’s ability to conduct coordinated deadly attacks in Kabul has mounted pressure on Ghani’s government, which has struggled to reassure the population that it can guarantee security.

Two weeks ago, fighters attacked the American University in Kabul, killing 13 people.

At least 80 people were killed by a suicide bomber who targeted a demonstration on July 23 in an attack claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Outside Kabul, the fighters have stepped up their military campaign, threatening Lashkar Gah, capital of the strategic southern province of Helmand, as well as Kunduz, the northern city they briefly took last year.

At least 40 killed and dozens wounded in five explosions in mostly government-held areas, including Tartous and Homs.

The blasts targeted four government control cities including Homs [EPA]

At least 40 people have been killed and dozens wounded in five explosions across mostly government-controlled areas of Syria, according to state media reports.

Monday morning’s blasts hit the coastal city of Tartous, the central city of Homs, the suburbs of the capital Damascus as well as the northeastern city of Hasaka, which is mostly controlled by Kurdish forces but where the government maintains a presence.

The blast in Hasaka was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

State media said at least 11 people were killed and 45 injured in a double bomb attack just outside Tartous, in the coastal province of the same name, which is a base of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

“Two terrorist blasts on Arzuna bridge, the first a car bomb and the second a suicide bomber who detonated his explosive belt when people gathered to help the wounded,” Syrian state television said.

State media also reported five people killed in Hasaka, in the northeast of the country.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based monitor, said the blast hit a checkpoint belonging to the Kurdish Asayesh security forces.

And state media also reported a car bomb at the entrance to the Al-Zahra neighbourhood in Homs, which is controlled by the government.

It said at least two people were killed and four wounded in the bombing, which is the latest in a series of attacks targeting Al-Zahra, where most residents are Alawite, the sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.

State media also reported another bomb attack on a road west of the capital Damascus, but gave no immediate toll in the blast.

That attack targeted a checkpoint and left three people dead, said the SOHR.

Top diplomats from the US and Russia on Monday failed to reach a deal to ease fighting in Syria amid the string of bomb attacks in the country.

As blasts maimed and killed in Syria, a senior State Department official said fresh crisis talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the margins of the G20 summit in China had ended without agreement.

A deal to provide aid to Aleppo’s ravaged civilians and at least partially halt Russian and Syrian bombardments had looked likely on Sunday, before talks collapsed.

US officials accused Russia of backtracking on already agreed issues which Washington refused to revisit, but the talks seemed to have been overtaken by developments on the ground.

Syrian government troops renewed their siege of Aleppo on Sunday, with state media saying they had taken an area south of the city, severing the last opposition-held route into its eastern neighbourhoods.

Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by the war that began with protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government in March 2011.

More than 300 people evacuated amid fears of forced demographic changes around the capital.

More than 300 people were evacuated from the besieged Damascus suburb of Moadamiyeh on Friday [Reuters]

Buses carrying more than 300 Syrians left the besieged Damascus suburb of Moadamiyeh on Friday, in the first stage of a deal that will enable the government to retake control of the rebel-held area.

In the first stage of the deal, 303 people, including 62 gunmen who agreed to lay down their arms and accept a presidential amnesty deal, were bussed out of the area and taken to the nearby government-controlled town of Horjelah, according Syrian state news agency SANA.

The Moadamiyeh agreement comes just a week after a deal was struck in neighbouring Daraya that brought about the full evacuation of the suburb, a move heavily criticised by the international community as forced displacement.

Those who left Moadamiyeh on Friday were originally from Daraya, having fled heavy bombardments earlier in the year.

“The heroic acts of the Syrian army in Daraya led to the achievement in Moadamiyeh,” Alaa Ibrahim, the governor of rural Damascus, told Syrian state TV.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria border, said the concept of “forcing deals on local populations” has been criticised by the United Nations and the international community as something “that would give the government precedent to continue starving its own population into surrender”.

The UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura voiced concern that the Daraya agreement was part of a larger strategy by the government to empty rebel enclaves and that it may soon be extended to other areas.

There are “indications that after Daraya we may have other Darayas,” he told reporters in Geneva on Thursday.

“There is clearly a strategy at the moment to move from Daraya” to other besieged areas “in a similar pattern”.

Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian chief, said the UN humanitarian task force for Syria had “failed the people of Daraya”.

The UN has underlined that it was not consulted on the Daraya deal, and described the evacuation of the suburb as a forced displacement.

Fears of ‘demographic change’

In the second stage of the Moadamiyeh deal, rebels who refuse to hand over their weapons will be forced to leave the suburb, probably to rebel-controlled Idlib province.

It was not clear when the second stage would be implemented or when government security forces would take over control of the suburb.

The deal was reportedly reached on Tuesday in a meeting between Moadamiyeh’s local council, government officials and Russian military officers at the army’s 4th Armoured Division headquarters in the mountains on the southern outskirts of Damascus.

“It wasn’t a negotiation or a conversation, it was a threat,” Moadamiyeh-based media activist Dani Qappani told Al Jazeera. “They basicallly told us: ‘Either surrender or we burn Moadamiyeh.'”

“They know the situation here. There’s little to no food or medical supplies,” said Qappani, adding that residents of the besieged suburb could not hold out much longer.

“Once they finish evacuating people of Daraya who are living here, they’ll try to begin the process of surrendering arms and dismantling the revolutionary establishments inside the city.”

Fears of ‘demographic change’

In the second stage of the Moadamiyeh deal, rebels who refuse to hand over their weapons will be forced to leave the suburb, probably to rebel-controlled Idlib province.

It was not clear when the second stage would be implemented or when government security forces would take over control of the suburb.

The deal was reportedly reached on Tuesday in a meeting between Moadamiyeh’s local council, government officials and Russian military officers at the army’s 4th Armoured Division headquarters in the mountains on the southern outskirts of Damascus.

“It wasn’t a negotiation or a conversation, it was a threat,” Moadamiyeh-based media activist Dani Qappani told Al Jazeera. “They basicallly told us: ‘Either surrender or we burn Moadamiyeh.'”

“They know the situation here. There’s little to no food or medical supplies,” said Qappani, adding that residents of the besieged suburb could not hold out much longer.

“Once they finish evacuating people of Daraya who are living here, they’ll try to begin the process of surrendering arms and dismantling the revolutionary establishments inside the city.”

At least 14 people killed and dozens wounded after two bombs go off at a court in northwestern Pakistan.

Police said some of the wounded in the blasts were in a critical condition [AFP]

At least 14 people were killed and dozens wounded when two bomb blasts went off at a district court in northwestern Pakistan, officials said.

A suicide bomber threw a hand grenade at police guards before storming into the compound and blowing himself up in the court in Mardan town in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

Nasir Khan Durrani, provincial police chief, told AFP news agency that the death toll had reached 14, with at least 58 people wounded, three of whom were critical.

Officials said the bomber had up to eight kilogrammes of explosives packed into his vest, while the dead included lawyers and police.

Amir Hussain, president of the Mardan Bar Association, said lawyers were being targeted because they are “an important part of democracy, and these terrorists are opposed to democracy”.

“Our morale is not dented. It is still high,” he told AFP.

Earlier, four suicide bombers who were trying to attack a Christian colony were killed during a gunfight with security forces outside the northwestern city of Peshawar, the army said.

Soldiers backed by army helicopters fought back the fighters who had tried to attack the colony near Warsak Dam, just north of Peshawar.

Asim Bajwa, an army spokesman, said “all four suicide bombers were killed” in the operation carried out against the fighters on Friday and that a clearance operation was under way.

Local sources, though, told Al Jazeera that at least one civilian was killed and several wounded in the attack.

Two of the four suicide bombers detonated their vests and the other two were shot dead, the sources said.

Pakistani Taliban faction Jamaat-ur-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The group’s spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, promised more attacks in a statement released to media.

“We appeal to civilians to remain away from law enforcement installations and these un-Islamic courts. We will target them more,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said despite army claims to have limited the number of attacks, armed groups still managed to operate across the country.

“Just yesterday the Pakistan military gave a press conference in which they said they had been able to control the number of attacks in the country,” he said.

“But it appears that the Tehreek-e-Taliban and their factions are still able to operate within Pakistan and carry out these attacks.”

Last month, the Pakistan Taliban faction and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL,also known as ISIS) both claimed responsibility for a suicide attack at a hospital in Pakistan’s Quetta that killed at least 70 people.

The attack targeted a group of mourning lawyers, who had gathered at the emergency department of the hospital to accompany the body of a murdered colleague.

The Pakistan army launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb under US pressure in 2014 in an effort to wipe out fighters and their bases in the North Waziristan tribal area.