Police and protesters clashed in several Tunisian cities yesterday as demonstrators demanding the government step down attacked offices of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that is the biggest in parliament.

Tunisian President Kais Saied announced yesterday the suspension of the country’s parliament and the dismissal of Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi following a day of protests against the ruling party.

Afghan authorities yesterday imposed a night-time curfew across 31 of the country’s 34 provinces to curb surging violence unleashed by a sweeping Taliban offensive in recent months, the interior ministry said.

Iran yesterday rejected “false accusations” by the UN rights chief on protests over water shortages in the country’s southwest, where at least four people have been killed since last week.

Lebanon’s deepening economic crisis has piled pressure on hospitals, leaving them ill-equipped to face any new wave of the coronavirus, a top hospital director has warned.

A Palestinian teenager has died after being shot during clashes with Israeli soldiers at a protest over illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian authorities said yesterday.

In Tunisia’s Mediterranean resort of Sousse, exhausted medics struggle to stem surging coronavirus deaths, desperately monitoring oxygen supplies beside patients’ beds, while on the beach tourists relax in the sun.

More than 140 Palestinians were hurt yesterday in clashes with Israeli troops in the flashpoint West Bank village of Beita, medics said, during protests against an illegal Israeli settlement outpost.

A migrant boat carrying 45 people has sunk to the south of Turkey, and Turkish naval ships and an aircraft are carrying out search and rescue operations, the defence ministry said on Friday.

Iran has opened its first oil export terminal that does not require tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint patrolled by warships of the US, President Hassan Rouhani announced yesterday.

Former UN rights chief Navi Pillay will lead the United Nations’ open-ended inquiry into “systematic” abuses in the Palestinian territories, it was announced yesterday.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said yesterday citizens have “the right” to demonstrate, after days of protests against water shortages in southwestern Khuzestan province in which three people have been killed. Wealthy Khuzestan is Iran’s main oil-producing region, but has been struggling with an i