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Added on the 17/01/2024 20:21:15 - Copyright : AFPTV - First images
Images of damaged properties in Arbil and shrapnel from a missile after Iran's Revolutionary Guards launched missile attacks on multiple targets in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region and Syria. IMAGES
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has asked China's foreign minister and other counterparts to use their influence to dissuade Iran from striking Israel, the State Department says. Blinken spoke by telephone to his Chinese, Turkish, Saudi and European counterparts "to make clear that escalation is not in anyone's interest and that countries should urge Iran not to escalate," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller tells reporters. SOUNDBITE
People gather at the scene after six people were killed in Israeli strikes on an annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus. IMAGES
The United States criticizes the Arab League decision to readmit Syria, after a more than decade-long suspension. The body suspended Damascus in November 2011 over its crackdown on peaceful protests, which had begun earlier that year, and which spiraled into a war that has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country's infrastructure and industry. "We will not normalize our relations with the Assad regime, and we don’t support our allies and partners doing so either," US State Department Spokesman Vedant Patel tells reporters during a press briefing. SOUNDBITE
Smoke billows on the horizon in the village of Altrun Kupri, in the Sherawa region, south of Arbil in Iraq's Kurdistan, where a base of the Kurdistan Freedom Party is located. Two people were killed in Iranian cross-border strikes against military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, according to the KDPI. Iranian artillery fire has hit border districts of Iraqi Kurdistan on several occasions in recent days. The fire comes amid tensions generated by the death in Iranian morality police custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini earlier this month after she was arrested in Tehran for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic's strict rules on hijab headscarves and modest clothing. IMAGES