SRI LANKA: Former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa today denied allegations in a British television programme that Islamic State-inspired extremists were used to carry out suicide bomb attacks in 2019 to create insecurity in the country and help him win election later that year.

Mr Rajapaksa said: “To claim that a group of Islamic extremists launched suicide attacks in order to make me president is absurd.”

POLAND: Poland’s main opposition leader, Donald Tusk, accused the conservative government today of hypocrisy for allegedly admitting large numbers of foreign workers despite its anti-migrant rhetoric and a new border wall.

Mr Tusk, leader of the opposition Civic Coalition, and Polish media allege that the government admitted about 130,000 Muslim migrants last year despite its anti-migrant statements, aimed chiefly at non-Christians. 

SYRIA: Two Syrian men were arrested in Germany yesterday on suspicion of membership of extremist groups, and one of them is suspected of involvement in a 2013 attack in eastern Syria in which more than 60 Shiite fighters and civilians were killed, prosecutors said yesterday.

The suspects, identified only as Amer A and Basel O in line with German privacy rules, are both accused of membership in a foreign terrorist organisation called the Brigade of the Soldiers of the Merciful God.

PALESTINE: A Palestinian man was wounded today during another raid by Israeli occupying forces in the central West Bank city of Bethlehem.

The shooting came after Israeli forces stormed the Dheisheh refugee camp south of Bethlehem, according to eyewitnesses, who said Israeli soldiers opened fire and threw tear gas canisters toward protesting Palestinians.