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Eni profit falls due to dip in oil prices

Q2 net profit fell by 18% to $637 million.

Emirates NBD H1 profit $3.40bn

Total income rose by 12 percent in the same period.

ADIB H1 pre-tax profit $1.08bn

Q2 pre-tax net profit increases by 14 percent.

AstraZeneca to invest $50bn in US

Bulk of funds to go into a Virginia manufacturing center.

UAB net profit up by 50% for H1

Total assets increase by 11 percent.

800 Iraqi refugees return home from Syria, more to follow

FOR REPRESENTATION PURPOSE ONLY. AFP file.
  • The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the first group left on buses via the Al-Yarubiyah border crossing.
  • Relatives of IS militants, including children, are held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria's northeast, the largest of which is Al-Hol with around 56,000 displaced people.

Eight hundred Iraqi refugees returned home from northeast Syria on Thursday and hundreds more are to follow, a Syrian official in the region’s Kurdish semi-autonomous administration said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the first group left on buses via the Al-Yarubiyah border crossing.

The Iraqi government has “agreed to the return of (a total of) 800 families”, the Syrian Kurdish source told AFP, adding that many of them had sought refuge in Syria after the Islamic State (IS) group expanded its presence in Iraq.

They had been living in villages bordering Iraq, under the control of the Kurdish-led forces that rule regions of north and northeast Syria.

A senior Iraqi security source said: “We have been checking their identities for security reasons for the past year.

“They’ve been suffering from the difficult economic conditions in Syria.”

Relatives of IS militants, including children, are held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria’s northeast, the largest of which is Al-Hol with around 56,000 displaced people and refugees.

Since last year, Iraqi authorities have repatriated hundreds of Iraqi families from Al-Hol.

The IS group ruled large swathes of Iraq between 2014 and 2017.

Kurdish-led forces backed by the United States seized the group’s last territorial bastion in Syria in 2019.