Bands of masked gunmen went on a rampage on Sunday in a predominantly Sunni Baghdad neighbourhood, killing at least 42 Sunni Arabs in a gruesome sectarian attack despite a massive security crackdown, witnesses said. The apparent response to the attacks was swift, with at least 15 people killed and 35 wounded in two powerful car bombs next to a Shi’ite mosque.
On a hot summer’s day, veterans of Iraqi cinema, government officials and their bodyguards join a clutch of diehard fans for a ”special evening” at Baghdad’s main theatre. The event is billed as the ”first Iraqi film festival” since the United States-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, but it is more like a tribute to the good old days.
Amid the massive construction and development drive under way in Dubai that is bringing in each year tens of thousands of expatriates and Asian labourers, and aims to attract 15-million tourists by 2010, a large number of the small native population have resettled on the city’s fringes to preserve cherished tribal and family values.
About a dozen veiled women, some with only their eyes visible, stare at a large flat screen flashing stock prices inside a female-only dealing room at the Dubai bourse.
Motivated by a desire to make some quick money, share their husbands’ passion for stocks or simply fill in time, many housewives in the United Arab Emirates have been lured into a bubbling stock market over the past year.
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/ 14 February 2006
Young Saudis defied on Tuesday the ultra-conservative kingdom’s ban on Valentine’s Day celebrations to exchange sweets, red teddy bears, greeting cards, roses and even kisses. On the night before Valentine’s young men and women strolled up and down the Tahliya shopping avenue in the western city of Jeddah, browsing at heart-shaped chocolate boxes and the red lingerie.
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/ 16 January 2006
Was it God’s will or human error that killed 439 in two separate incidents during this year’s annual pilgrimage to Mecca? That’s the question which many pilgrims were pondering as they bid the holy city farewell. The hajj began on January 8, three days after the collapse of an aging hostel in the heart of Mecca killed 76 people, and ended on Thursday with 363 pilgrims dead in a stampede.
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/ 13 January 2006
Stricken families were hunting for their loved ones on Friday after a stampede that killed 362 Muslims at the annual hajj — a disaster Saudi authorities have blamed on unruly pilgrims. Weeping in front of a wall of pictures of dead pilgrims, families continued to seek news of missing relatives at the morgue in Mina, where the stampede took place.
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/ 13 January 2006
At least 345 Muslim pilgrims were trampled to death on Thursday as they tripped over luggage in a scramble to hurl pebbles at symbols of Satan during the annual pilgrimage, Saudi officials said. It was the latest in a succession of stampede tragedies to hit the hajj pilgrimage despite efforts by Saudi authorities to avoid a repeat of disasters like the one that killed 1 426 people in 1990.
An estimated 2,5-million Muslim pilgrims began the annual trek on Sunday from the holy city of Mecca to the valley of Mina, with Saudi authorities on high alert to prevent another tragedy. The pilgrimage rites, known as the hajj, start three days after an ageing hostel in the heart of Mecca collapsed, killing 76 people.
Survivors of the collapse of a hostel in the holy city of Mecca recounted on Friday the horror of the latest tragedy to strike the hajj as the death toll rose to 76. ”I heard one big noise,” said Tayeb Mizasha (70), a Frenchman of Algerian origin, as he lay in bed in Mecca’s King Faisal hospital with broken ribs and a bruised face.