Three members of Hamas died Sunday when shooting erupted at the funeral procession for a member of the Islamist movement in a south Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp, the group said. Hamas official Raafat al-Murra said militants from the rival Fatah movement "shot at the funeral procession" of a Palestinian killed in a blast Friday at the Burj al-Shemali camp, outside the port city of Tyre. Six people were wounded, he added. Hamas and Fatah, the secular party led by Mahmoud Abbas, have been at odds since 2007 when the Islamists seized Gaza after a week of deadly clashes. One camp resident told ...

Pro-Palestine activists protested against the Melbourne Queer Film Festival's (MQFF) decision on Friday to go ahead with the screening of the Israeli film 'The Swimmer', despite calls for its removal from the festival's programme. Activists accused the film of "pinkwashing" Israel's image by promoting the Jewish state as queer-friendly, while portraying Palestinians as "intolerant" to distract attention from Israel's human rights record and its occupation of Palestinian land. MQFF, who queer BDS activists also say have not promoted "one film from the Arabic-speaking world", said The Swimmer wo...

Thousands of protesters converged on Isfahan in central Iran on Friday to voice their anger after the city's lifeblood river dried up due to drought and diversion, state television said. The massive protest, that drew in farmers and other people from across Isfahan province, was the biggest since demonstrations over the water crisis started on November 9. "Thousands of people from Isfahan, farmers from the east and west of the province, have gathered in the dry Zayandeh Rood riverbed with one key demand: let the river run," a state television journalist in Isfahan reported, broadcasting live i...

Fifty migrant workers died in Qatar last year and over 500 were seriously injured, the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO) said Friday, as the Gulf nation readies for the 2022 World Cup. The report comes amid criticism of working conditions for hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers -- including those who built the stadiums for the World Cup. The ILO report, entitled "One is too many", said that the top cause of fatalities were falls -- with most happening at the workplace. Qatar, which has made a series of labour reforms since being selected to host the football tournament, welco...

A British heavy machinery company has denied allegations by an international rights group that it is complicit in alleged Israeli abuses in the occupied West Bank. Amnesty International says J.C. Bamford Excavators Limited's diggers and excavators have been used to demolish Palestinian homes and in the construction of Jewish settlements, both of which are widely seen as violations of international law. JCB is among more than 100 businesses listed in a U.N. database of companies that operate in West Bank settlements. In a statement issued late Thursday, JCB said it “does not contribute to, or i...

Seven migrants were killed and eight others injured early on Friday when their vehicle crashed into a toll station on a highway in northern Greece, police said. A preliminary investigation indicated that the driver, who was being treated in hospital, was transporting the 14 migrants inland, police said. The nationalities of the passengers were not immediately known. Greece is one of the main routes into the European Union for asylum-seekers from the Middle East, Africa and Asia who cross into the country either by taking a dangerous boat journey from the Turkish coast to Greek islands, or by c...