Middle East

Australian travel advice agency Smartraveller have downgraded its travel advice to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar just days after an alleged hijacker attempted a terrorist attack in the region. 

The co-pilot who attempted to hijack a flydubai flight last week had planned to crash the aircraft into Israel as early as July, according to regional officials with knowledge of the investigations. 

Israelis mourned at the site of the Nova Music Festival, as well as at bomb shelters, intersections and in communities targeted in the deadliest day in the nation’s history three years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to seize the opportunity to associate himself with the heroics of Israelis who helped stop a FlyDubai co-pilot from crashing a plane bound for Tel Aviv.

Technological advances in warfare have heightened concerns about the vulnerability of air bases and other hard-to-protect military facilities in populated areas.

Houthi fighters in Yemen say they have struck a facility belonging to oil company Aramco in ‌the capital of Saudi Arabia.

The co-pilot who tried to crash a FlyDubai passenger jet on Wednesday was ‘suicidal’ and ‘underwent Islamic radical indoctrination,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says.

THE WASHINGTON POST: Captain Smit Machchhar once said he had planned to join his family’s textile business before being bitten by the ‘aviation bug’.

Unsettling new details have emerged of the Omani co-pilot accused of a terrifying bid to plunge a passenger jet and all 174 on board into the Saudi desert.

Members of a prominent Australian family were reportedly passengers on board the international flight where an attempted hijacking took place on Wednesday.

AARON PATRICK: Flight 1703’s survival is a warning that security measures designed to defeat terrorism after the 9/11 attacks may need to be reconsidered.

Passengers have been hailed heroes after storming the cockpit and overpowering a pilot accused of stabbing his captain and trying to crash the jet.

Some Iraqis are celebrating the end of an American military presence that unleashed waves of bloodshed. Others fear what happens next for their country, trapped between Washington and Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi says indirect talks with the US over the Strait of Hormuz have become ‘more serious’ as the value of the rial drops.

Tehran has proposed an ‘off-ramp’ to Washington that would cease hostilities, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and open talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

To the grandees gathered in New York this week, America does not look like a solution to the Middle East’s woes: it is a source of them.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has condemned US attacks on what he described as civilian targets during the early stages of the Iran war.

Donald Trump has signalled a potential breakthrough in the Iran war as Tehran puts a major offer on the table to reopen a crucial global shipping route.