LONDON: British police arrested three men under terrorism laws Sunday after a car exploded outside a hospital in Liverpool, killing one man and injuring another.
Counter-terrorism police said the three men, whose ages ranged from 21 to 29, were detained in the Kensington area of the northwest England city under the Terrorism Act.
Police also cordoned off another residential street in the city. They did not disclose details of the operation.
Police were called to reports of a blast involving a taxi at Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Sunday morning. Photos showed a vehicle in flames near the hospital’s main entrance.
Merseyside Police said in a statement that the vehicle, a taxi, “pulled up at the hospital shortly before the explosion occurred. Work is still going on to establish what has happened and could take some time before we are in a position to confirm anything.”
The male passenger of the car died and the driver was being treated for non life-threatening injuries, police said.
The explosion occurred just before 11 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday, the time people across Britain pause in memory of those killed in wars.
Police said the explosion had not been declared a terrorist attack and they were keeping an open mind about the cause, but counter-terrorism police were leading the investigation.
Britain’s interior minister, Home Secretary Priti Patel, said she was “being kept regularly updated on the awful incident.”
The Liverpool Women’s Hospital said it immediately restricted visiting access until further notice and diverted patients to other hospitals “where possible.”
Fire services said they extinguished the car fire rapidly, and a person had left the car before the fire “developed to the extent that it did.”
UK: 3 arrested over car explosion outside Liverpool hospital
https://arab.news/vrjeh
UK: 3 arrested over car explosion outside Liverpool hospital
- The male passenger of the car died and the driver was being treated for non life-threatening injuries, police said
Dozens injured, trapped in a ski lift accident in the north of Spain
- Around 80 people remain trapped, hanging in the chairlift at the ski resort of Astun
- The cause of the cable failure remains unknown
MADRID: A ski lift collapsed at a resort in the Spanish region of Aragon on Saturday, injuring dozens of people, nine of them very seriously and eight seriously, the regional government said.
Around 80 people remain trapped, hanging in the chairlift at the ski resort of Astun, in the province of Huesca, according to state TV channel TVE.
“It’s like a cable has come off, the chairs have bounced and people have been thrown off,” a witness told TVE.
The cause of the cable failure remains unknown.
The ski resort’s management declined to comment and was not immediately able to say if foreigners were among the injured.
Several helicopters were working in the area to rescue the skiers who were still trapped on the chairlift and transfer the injured to nearby hospitals.
The Astun ski resort, mainly popular among Spanish skiers, is located close to the Spanish border with France, in the Pyrenees mountain range.
Noman and Sajid help Pakistan dominate West Indies in spin battle
- The spin duo shared nine wickets between them to dismiss West Indies for 137
- Pakistan stretched their lead to 202 by scoring 109-3 in their second innings
MULTAN: Noman Ali and Sajid Khan guided Pakistan to a strong position against the West Indies after another spin-dominated second day’s play in the opening Test in Multan on Saturday.
The spin duo shared nine wickets between them to dismiss the West Indies for 137 in reply to the home team’s 230 all out.
By the close, Pakistan stretched their lead to 202 by scoring 109-3 in their second innings, with Kamran Ghulam and Saud Shakeel batting on nine and two respectively when bad light ended play 25 minutes early.
Left-arm spinner Jomel Warrican (2-17) dismissed Muhammad Hurraira for 29 after an opening stand of 67 and Babar Azam for a second failure, trapped leg-before for five.
Skipper Shan Masood looked solid for his 52, hitting two sixes and two fours, before Warrican ran him out after attempting a quick single.
“The weather is foggy so if we have continuous play and take our lead over 300 then we can win this Test,” said Sajid.
“It’s great to bowl with Noman, who always guides me.”
Warrican wants the target to be under 250.
“Obviously we don’t want to get the lead go over 250 because it’s a spin-favoring surface,” said Warrican.
“We need a good comeback in batting the second time around on this pitch.”
The dry and grassless Multan pitch has already produced 23 wickets in six sessions — 19 on day two — even though two-and-a-half hours were lost on day one and another 30 minutes on Saturday because of poor visibility.
Noman grabbed 5-39 for his seventh five-wicket haul in Tests while Sajid finished with 4-65 to dismiss the West Indies after lunch in a first innings that lasted just 25.2 overs.
Noman and Sajid, who shared 39 of the 40 wickets in the last two Tests against England in Pakistan’s 2-1 series win last year, were once again unplayable.
Sajid opened the bowling and removed Mikyle Louis (one), Keacy Carty (0), Kraigg Brathwaite (11) and Kavem Hodge (four) in his first three overs.
Noman then further jolted the tourists with another four wickets to leave them tottering on 66-8.
The tailenders showed more resistance, with number 10 batsman Warrican unbeaten on 31 and Gudakesh Motie adding 19.
Jayden Seales was the last wicket to fall for 22.
Seales hit three sixes before holing out off spinner Abrar Ahmed.
Earlier, Warrican took 3-69 as Pakistan lost their last six wickets for 43 runs after resuming at 143-4.
Shakeel top-scored for Pakistan with 84 off 157 deliveries, including six boundaries, while keeper Mohammad Rizwan added 71.
Shakeel added an invaluable 141 for the fifth wicket with Rizwan, lifting Pakistan from a precarious 46-4 on day one.
Pakistan begins mandatory Hajj training by holding first session in Peshawar
- The country’s religious affairs ministry plans to hold the training sessions at 147 locations across Pakistan
- These sessions will use audiovisual material and conclude before the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan
PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s religious affairs ministry on Saturday initiated mandatory training sessions for pilgrims performing this year’s Hajj under the government scheme by holding the inaugural session in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
Earlier this month, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed the annual Hajj agreement in Jeddah, which formally confirmed that the South Asian nation would send 179,210 people to perform the pilgrimage this year.
More than 200 pilgrims participated in the first session in Peshawar, held at a private educational institution in the city.
Muhammad Umair Butt, the ministry spokesperson, told Arab News that authorities have planned the mandatory Hajj training sessions at 147 locations across the country.
“According to the Saudi government’s instructions, we have to provide training to Hajj pilgrims to acquaint them with the administrative affairs and other Hajj rituals so they can complete their worship properly,” he said, adding the sessions were also designed to sensitize pilgrims on how to spend their time in Saudi Arabia.
Butt said the training sessions would cover all required topics in two sittings.
“These sessions will be concluded before [the Muslim fasting month of] Ramadan,” he said. “The sessions will be held from January 18 to February 27 across the country in every province.”
The religious affairs ministry has taken several initiatives this year to facilitate pilgrims, including the launch of the Pak Hajj 2025 mobile application to guide them.
The app is available for both Android and iPhone users.
The ministry spokesperson said each sitting of the training session will last for about three hours, during which pilgrims will receive guidelines through audiovisual material.
Speaking to Arab News, participants of the training session expressed satisfaction with the information shared, saying multiple questions they had about the Hajj rituals had been answered.
“It is good that I attended the first session in which they provided detailed information about the app,” Mujib-ur-Rehman Bhatti, a resident of Peshawar’s Gulbahar neighborhood, said after participating in the training.
He added the ministry had informed all the pilgrims in detail about how to overcome common problems reported during Hajj.
“The things they taught us were for our own ease and can save us from tension ahead,” Bhatti said.
Another participant of the session, Ali Khan, an official at the Civil Aviation who is planning to perform Hajj with his family, called it a “brilliant program.”
“Everything was explained quite well and in significant detail,” he said. “We gathered information from videos, YouTube and other sources. The session was very practical and important.”
Trump comeback restarts Israeli public debate on West Bank annexation
- With Trump returning to the White House, pro-annexation Israelis are hoping to rekindle the idea
- Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler in the Palestinian territory, said recently that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria“
JERUSALEM: When Donald Trump presented his 2020 plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it included the Israeli annexation of swathes of the occupied West Bank, a controversial aspiration that has been revived by his reelection.
In his previous stint as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for partial annexation of the West Bank, but he relented in 2020 under international pressure and following a deal to normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates.
With Trump returning to the White House, pro-annexation Israelis are hoping to rekindle the idea.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler in the Palestinian territory, said recently that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” referring to the biblical name that Israel uses for the West Bank.
The territory was part of the British colony of Mandatory Palestine, from which Israel was carved during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, with Jordanian forces taking control of the West Bank during the same conflict.
Israel conquered the territory from Amman in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and has occupied it ever since.
Today, many Jews in Israel consider the West Bank part of their historical homeland and reject the idea of a Palestinian state in the territory, with hundreds of thousands having settled in the territory.
Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and its 200,000 Jewish residents, the West Bank is home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.
Around three million Palestinians live in the West Bank.
Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization for the municipal councils of West Bank settlements, insisted the status quo could not continue.
“The State of Israel must make a decision,” he said.
Without sovereignty, he added, “no one is responsible for infrastructure, roads, water and electricity.”
“We will do everything in our power to apply Israeli sovereignty, at least over Area C,” he said, referring to territory under sole Israeli administration that covers 60 percent of the West Bank, including the vast majority of Israeli settlements.
Even before taking office, Trump and his incoming administration have made a number of moves that have raised the hopes of pro-annexation Israelis.
The president-elect nominated the pro-settlement Baptist minister Mike Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel. His nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said this would be “the most pro-Israel administration in American history” and that it would lift US sanctions on settlers.
Eugene Kontorovich of the conservative think thank Misgav Institute pointed out that the Middle East was a very different place to what it was during Trump’s first term.
The war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel’s hammering of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of Syrian president Bashar Assad, all allies of Israel’s arch-foe Iran, have transformed the region.
“October 7 showed the entire world the danger of leaving these (Palestinian) territories’ status in limbo,” Kontorovich said, referring to Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel 15 months ago that sparked the Gaza war.
He said “the war has really turned a large part of the Israeli population away from a two-state solution.”
The two-state solution, which would create an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, has been the basis of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations going back decades.
Even before Trump won November’s US presidential election, NGOs were denouncing what they called a de facto annexation, pointing to a spike in land grabs and an overhaul of the bureaucratic and administrative structures Israel uses to manage the West Bank.
An outright, de jure annexation would be another matter, however.
Israel cannot expropriate private West Bank land at the moment, but “once annexed, Israeli law would allow it. That’s a major change,” said Aviv Tatarsky, from the Israeli anti-settlement organization Ir Amim.
He said that in the event that Israel annexes Area C, Palestinians there would likely not be granted residence permits and the accompanying rights.
The permits, which Palestinians in east Jerusalem received, allow people freedom of movement within Israel and the right to use Israeli courts. West Bank Palestinians can resort to the supreme court, but not lower ones.
Tatarsky said that for Palestinians across the West Bank, annexation would constitute “a nightmare scenario.”
Over 90 percent of them live in areas A and B, under full or partial control of the Palestinian Authority.
But, Tatarsky pointed out, “their daily needs and routine are indissociable from Area C,” the only contiguous portion of the West Bank, where most agricultural lands are and which breaks up areas A and B into hundreds of territorial islets.
Hillier leads from Hatton at Dubai Desert Classic with McIlroy 7 shots back
- Tyrrell Hatton shot 68 and was the closest challenger to the No. 223-ranked Hillier
DUBAI: Daniel Hillier of New Zealand birdied the final two holes to shoot 2-under 70 on Saturday and take a one-stroke lead into the final round of the Dubai Desert Classic.
Tyrrell Hatton shot 68 and was the closest challenger to the No. 223-ranked Hillier, whose only win on the European tour came at the British Masters in July 2023.
Hillier was 13-under par for the week.
Rory McIlroy, seeking a third straight title at the prestigious tournament, was seven shots off the pace in a tie for 12th place after a round of 69.
