Syria

In Syria's northeastern province of Latakia, workers roll the country's first locally made cigars, a new product being launched despite the devastating civil conflict now in its fifth year.
      
The workers are employed by Syria's state-run General Tobacco Company, which has decided to branch out into cigars in a bid to create desperately needed jobs and boost revenue.

Could there be that much of a difference between how developments of this "Greater Middle Eastern Area" are perceived in Ankara, Cairo or Kuwait? Listening in a Kuwait hotel room to a political analyst on a Saudi news channel reporting live on the Cairo meeting of the Arab League, the difference of perception was crystal clear.

A multiple-vehicle collision killed 12 people amid difficult weather conditions on a "deadly" highway in a southeastern Turkish province on March 29.

Five Dutch citizens have been detained while trying to cross from Turkey to Syria illegally, the Turkish army announced in a statement on March 29.

According to the General Staff statement, a total of 97 foreigners, 92 of them Syrian citizens, tried to cross into Syria on March 28.

Tens of thousands of Tunisians marched through the capital in a show of solidarity against Islamist militants on March 29, hours after the government said its forces had killed nine members of a group suspected of carrying out this month's deadly Bardo Museum attack.
   

Arab leaders have agreed to form a joint military force, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced on March 29 on the second day of a summit.
 
"The Arab leaders had decided to agree on the principle of a joint Arab military force," Sisi said in a speech at the summit held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The chairperson of the State Agency for Refugees (DAB) Nikola Kazakov stated on Saturday that Bulgaria should grant over 10 000 people with refugee status by the end of the year.

Kazakov said that most of the refugees in Bulgaria were Kurds from Syria and Iraq and nearly half of the newcomers in 2015 were illiterate.

Along with the unrest in Syria and Libya, there are two other big ongoing regional armed conflicts in the Middle East.

?Eat a big mouthful, but don?t make big promises,? a Turkish saying goes. Our ancestors were right, weren?t they?

What were we saying yesterday about Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi? We were saying he was ?a dictator, coup stager and murderer.? We said we would not sit at his table.

Nigeria's military on Friday announced that troops had retaken the town of Gwoza from Boko Haram, from which the group declared their caliphate last year.
      
"Troops this morning captured Gwoza destroying the Headquarters of the Terrorists self-styled Caliphate," Defence Headquarters in Abuja said on Twitter.