International

JUBA: Sudan’s power-sharing government and several rebel groups on Saturday formalised a peace agreement aimed at resolving decades of conflict which left millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead. Three major groups signed a preliminary deal in August after months of talks hosted by South Sudan. The US Special Envoy Donald Booth, said: “This historic achievement addresses decades of conflicts …

PARIS: Two people died and 25 others were missing in France and Italy after a storm hit border regions of the two countries, bringing record rainfall in places and causing heavy flooding that swept away roads and damaged homes, authorities said on Saturday. The storm, dubbed Alex, ravaged several villages around the city of Nice on the French Riviera. Nice …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday said that its active and prominent participation in the United Nations General Asse­m­bly’s opening session and allied meetings manifested its support and commitment to the UN’s purposes and principles. In a statement, the Foreign Office spokesperson said Pakistan would continue to participate actively in that endeavour, in cooperation with other member states, to build a world …

SRINAGAR: Government investigators on Saturday exhumed the bodies of three young men in occupied Kashmir, two weeks after the Indian military in a rare admission said its soldiers exceeded their legal powers in killing the men they wrongly described as “Pakistani terrorists”. A team of police and medical officials exhumed the bodies of three men in western Baramulla district and handed them …

NEW DELHI: Five senior police officers were suspended in India on Saturday over their handling of an investigation into the gang-rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman that has sparked outrage across the country and triggered days of protests. The seriously injured teenager from the disadvantaged Dalit caste was found in mid-September outside her village in Uttar Pradesh state and died this …

Azerbaijan said on Sunday that Armenian armed forces had shelled its second city of Ganja in a major new escalation of the conflict in the South Caucasus. Armenia denied that it fired towards Azerbaijan, but the leader of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, said his forces had destroyed a military airbase located in Ganja. “Permanent military units located …

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia will reopen the holy places for the year-round Umra pilgrimage on Sunday, scaled back and with extensive health precautions, seven months after coronavirus prompted its suspension. Umra usually attracts millions of Muslims from across the globe each year. It will be revived in three stages, with the initial phase seeing just 6,000 citizens and residents already within …

THE HAGUE: The global chemical weapons watchdog said on Friday that two investigations into alleged attacks in Syria in 2016 and 2018 couldn’t establish that chemicals were used as weapons in either case. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons issued two reports by its Fact-Finding Mission into attacks in Saraqib in the Idlib region on Aug 1, 2016, …

STEPANAKERT: Armenia accused Azerbai­jani forces of striking the main city in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region on Friday as fighting raged for a sixth day. Yerevan said it was ready to work with mediators for a ceasefire but Azerbaijan fired back and said that Armenia must first withdraw its troops. Baku and Yerevan have for decades been locked in a simmering …

LES MUREAUX: President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a plan on Friday to “defend” France’s secular values against “radical Islam”, announcing stricter oversight of schooling and better control over foreign funding of mosques. Describing Islam as “a religion in crisis” worldwide, Macron insisted that “no concessions” would be made in a new drive to eradicate “extremist religious teaching in schools and mosques”. …