been planning to converge on the parliament and to once again demand the resignation of the government of among the shia this government that has been in power for about thirty years now they say it has miserably failed in solving the problems of the country but the security forces in very big numbers where they are ahead of the protesters and they dispersed them in several places including this theater and i'll buy you where i was there and some people have been are prevented in front of my eyes among them a camera man working with our desire as a few last and that's also a part of another story crackdown a lot of pressure on the media here no big cameras no t.v. cameras are allowed in those protests and journalists are being operated on a daily basis from a vile there so my voice president is warning the police crackdown on protests this is just a taste of things to come at least five people have been killed during protests over the rising fuel prices police have made hundreds of arrests the u.n.

human rights office is criticizing the crackdown and government forces are accused of indiscriminate shootings and beating us. is a senior consultant for southern africa at the international crisis group he says the warning from the zimbabwe government is disturbing. what we're hearing out of his mouth of course is par for the course in terms of previous experience with the government moving into a default position of allegation and threat so yes it is it is a disturbing statement and it comes on top of a range of other statements that we've seen in the last couple of weeks couple of days especially from zanu p.f. yesterday accused of the m.d.c. civil society groups and business of pursuing a terrorist agenda in zimbabwe so the situation is not looking good at all on that front there is a number of of news stories circulating at the moment talking about splits

within the party between the military and the party and so forth and there is a lot of confusion as to actually where the center is in terms of power we hear. there is a story at the moment going around the mr men of god who will be back in zimbabwe either today or tomorrow we don't know whether that's true there's been some criticism about him having left the country on state visits to eastern europe and russia and then a stance really off to divorce leaving the country in the hands of vice president when ordinarily the rotation on the vice presidency would have been to the other vice president campbell more hardy and there are concerns that the crackdown that we've seen is being largely orchestrated through mr chewing his office the extent to which donnie p.f. is marching in step and the government is marching in step of course is a good question some people say there are all these huge splits say a good cop bad cop approach is being pursued but that certainly is one of the big

burning questions at the moment that many of us are trying to look into. eight un peacekeepers have been killed in northern mali they were attacked by a group of armed fighters near the village of algal hoc the identity of the attackers is still unknown the head of the u.n. mission in mali has promised a swift and concerted response. israel says it shot down a rocket fired from syria its iron dome defense system intercepted rocket fire in the northern part of the occupied golan heights the attack follows syrian state television announcing government forces prevented an israeli air strike and there's been an explosion at an army checkpoint in syria's capital damascus there are no casualties the car bomb blast syrian army controls all areas around the capital which has been relatively untouched by the war elsewhere the lebanese president is urging world leaders to make all efforts to syrian refugees to return home to shell out on

a screen speaking at the arabic anomic summit in beirut summit is being overshadowed by a rift over whether syria should be reinstated in the arab league and poor attendance cards as a mere shake to mean been hammered valid fanny and mauritania's president mohamed will that the law of the only heads of state attending the meeting. so in a holder has more from beirut. the low level of representation is being described as unprecedented in arab league gatherings even though this this is an economic summit that has a lower profile than the annual arab league summit previous economic summits attracted numerous heads of state a number of heads of state made last minute cancellation saying that they will stay away from this meeting and it was interpreted here in lebanon as an arab diplomatic snob as a message to lebanon because they consider lebanon to be part of the so-called iran

axis the iranian backed hezbollah and its allies they hold power in lebanon they are allied with the syrian government and they wanted to use this summit as an opportunity to reinstate syria's membership in the arab league they were pushing for this and there is still no arab consensus to return syria and to the arab cold syria's membership we have to remember was suspended back in two thousand and eleven because of its violent crackdown on anti-government protesters so two heads of state attending one of them the qatari and we are lebanon attaching a lot of importance to his presence because qatar is a country under blockade saudi arabia and its allies impose the siege on qatar so the lebanese media is really describing his decision his last minute decision to attempt as qatar trying to break the siege imposed on lebanon lebanon expected to come under more pressure the arab countries who say the way of course our ally to the united states and the united states a strategy in the arab world is to exert pressure on iran and try to contain its influence in the arab world.