The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Iran rose by 2,089 to 402,029, a health ministry spokeswoman told state TV Sunday, as the country reported 128 new deaths in the past 24 hours. Sima Sadat Lari said the official death toll stood at 23,157 in Iran, one of the worst-hit...

Protesters set fire to the government's headquarters in the Libyan city of Benghazi, as rare demonstrations over living conditions and corruption continued in the east of the country for a third day. The protests late Saturday also erupted in Al-Bayda, where the government was previously...

Mohammad al-Bahadli dug into Iraq's hot desert sand with bare hands to reach his father's corpse. "Now he can finally be with our people, our family, in the old cemetery," 49-year-old Bahadli said, as relatives sobbed over the body, wrapped in a shroud. After restrictions were eased for...

Hundreds of Lebanese marched Saturday on the presidential palace to denounce a lack of progress in a probe by authorities into a monster blast that ravaged swathes of the capital 40 days ago. Some marchers carried black versions of the Lebanese flag in a sign of mourning for the more...

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Saturday announced a "robust" arms purchase programme and an overhaul of the country's military amid rising tension with Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean. What appears to be Greece's most ambitious military overhaul in nearly two decades...

Bahrainis opposed to forming diplomatic ties with Israel vented their frustration Saturday, while lonelier voices supported the accord, underlining the complexities of the Gulf's rapprochement with the Jewish state. The hashtags "Bahrainis against normalisation" and "normalisation is...

 Iran’s state TV is reporting that the country’s authorities has executed a wrestler for allegedly murdering a man after President Donald Trump asked for the 27-year-old condemned man's life to be spared. State TV quoted the chief justice of Fars province, Kazem Mousavi as saying...

Hamas on Friday called the normalization deal between Bahrain and Israel as an extension of the US administration's Deal of the Century which "obliterates the Palestinian cause". "Joining these countries to the path of normalization make them complicit with the Deal of the Century which...

The top trending tweet Friday on Twitter in Bahrain was "Bahrainis against normalization" shortly after a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Bahrain was announced. "It is an illusion that the Bahraini people enter the tunnel of normalization. The Egyptian people up to the...

An explosion in a battery workshop near the Iranian capital Friday killed one person, injured 10 others and damaged apartment buildings and cars, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported. The blast struck at 5:15 pm on the ground floor of a three-story residential building in Tehran...

 Bahrain is to normalize relations with Israel, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel's public broadcaster Kan said in a tweet Friday, without citing sources. Another Israeli reporter, Raphael Ahren of the Times of Israel, said US President Donald Trump would Friday announce that...

Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes built without planning permits that are almost impossible to obtain have risen sharply during the coronavirus pandemic despite the health risks, the UN said Friday. "The period from March to August 2020 saw the demolition or confiscation of 389...

Turkey slammed a statement by European Union Mediterranean states on Friday, saying the comments were biased and “detached from reality”, but added Ankara was still open to unconditional talks with Greece. NATO members Turkey and Greece have overlapping claims to continental shelves and...

A first official visit to Israel by a United Arab Emirates delegation, provisionally planned for Sept 22, may be postponed or conducted under restrictions given a looming coronavirus lockdown, an Israeli cabinet minister said Friday. The delegates are expected to come in reciprocation of...

Thousands of supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr gathered at a mosque in east Baghdad Friday for the first weekly prayers since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Iraq's mosques have been closed to gatherings for close to six months, but notoriously outspoken Sadr said Wednesday that...

Lebanese firefighters and army helicopters on Friday put out the remains of a huge fire at Beirut’s port that had flared up a day earlier, barely a month after a massive blast devastated the port and the surrounding area. Thursday’s fire, which officials said was sparked by welding during...

A trove of Saddam-era files secretly returned to Iraq has pried open the country's painful past, prompting hopes some may learn the fate of long-lost relatives along with fears of new bloodshed. The five million pages of internal Baath Party documents were found in 2003, just months after...

Jordan said a series of massive explosions that rocked the city of Zarqa early on Friday was likely caused by an electric short circuit at a nearby army munitions depot. There were no immediate reports of casualties from the explosions which took place in the desert east of Jordan's...

A series of large explosions rocked a Jordanian army base outside the city of Zarqa on the northeastern edge of capital Amman, a security source said. It was not immediately clear what caused the explosions in an area where there are dozens of army bases on the outskirts of the sprawling...

Israel’s military said on Thursday that one of its drones fell inside Lebanon during “operational activity” along the frontier, while the Lebanese army said it had shot it down. “There is no risk of breach of information,” an Israeli army spokesman said, offering no further details. The...