An Iraqi official says the country's Shiite-led militia force has launched an operation to retake a small village held by ISIS west of the embattled city of Mosul. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who heads the government-sanctioned militia forces known as the Popular Mobilization Units, says the push...

( The Guardian )- The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, has taken a combative tone in campaigning as conservative rivals pull out all the stops to prevent him from being re-elected.  The favourite among reformists of the six candidates running for president on 19 May, Rouhani has...

Turkey Friday detained 57 people in an operation against the Istanbul stock exchange as part of the investigation into the failed July 15 coup, state media said. The 57 people were detained in six different provinces, with over 100 arrest warrants issued, the state-run Anadolu news agency...

Al Qaeda has started reaching out for recruits in Yemen by handing out quiz sheets, with an AK-47 assault rifle as top prize, residents and media said on Thursday. Militants have been touring the southwestern city of Taiz in the build-up to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, putting up...

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces were moving to surround Mosul's Old City on Thursday, a week after launching a fresh push to drive ISIS militants from areas they still hold, according to an Iraqi officer overseeing the operation. Iraqi special forces Lt. Gen. Sami al-Arathi said battle plans had...

Turkey has warned online encyclopedia Wikipedia, blocked by Ankara two weeks ago, over what it says is content creating a perception that Turkey is supporting terrorist organisations, Turkish Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan said Thursday. Turkey's telecommunications watchdog said two weeks...

The wife of the leader of a hunger strike by hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has written to Pope Francis calling on him to intervene "before it is too late". Fadwa Barghouti, wife of Palestinian leader and prominent prisoner Marwan Barghouti, has called on the pope to...

Turkey Wednesday slammed as "unacceptable" a U.S. announcement that Washington would supply arms and military equipment to Kurdish fighters battling ISIS extremists in Syria. "The supply of arms to the YPG is unacceptable," Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli told A Haber television....

From a former president disobeying the supreme leader to open discussion of a 1980s mass execution, Iran's presidential election is pushing the boundaries of what can be discussed in public and done online, a small but noticeable shift in the country's clerically overseen polls. The push...

Thirty-four people have died of cholera-related causes and more than 2,000 have been taken ill in less than two weeks in Yemen, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. "There have been 34 cholera-associated deaths and 2,022 cases of acute watery diarrhea in nine governorates, including...

A senior Israeli official telephoned Turkey's ambassador Tuesday to express indignation over Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accusing the Jewish state of apartheid and anti-Muslim discrimination, diplomatic sources said. Foreign ministry director general Yuval Rotem spoke with...

Iranian state TV says that search crews have found seven more bodies at the site of a coal mine explosion last week, bringing the total death toll in the incident to 42. Tuesday's report quotes Reza Morovati, an official in the Golestan government, as saying that the bodies have been taken...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday said debates over the possibility of moving the US embassy In Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem are "extremely wrong" and should be dropped. US President Donald Trump had promised during his campaign to move the American embassy to Jerusalem,...

( The Guardian )- Israeli ministers have approved the wording of a new law that would downgrade Arabic as an official language and which states that the right to self-determination in Israel “is unique to the Jewish people”, despite the country’s sizeable non-Jewish minority. The go-ahead...

Israeli paramilitary police officers shot and killed a knife-wielding Palestinian teenage girl who tried to attack them at an entrance to Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday, a police spokeswoman said. The incident was the latest in a 19-month-long period of sporadic street attacks by...

Israel's cabinet breathed new life on Sunday into efforts to anchor in law the country's status as a Jewish state, legislation Palestinians have described as an obstacle to peace. A ministerial committee approved a revised version of a bill first proposed in 2011 that declares the "State of...

Multiple ISIS suicide bombers attacked a base in northern Iraq where U.S. military advisers are stationed, security sources said on Sunday. Two militants detonated their vests at the entrance to the K1 base overnight, and the remaining three were killed by Kurdish peshmerga forces who...

Thousands of south Yemenis demonstrated Thursday in support of a governor sacked by the president in a blow to his authority and his efforts to keep together a motley loyalist coalition. In his war with Shiite Muslim rebels who control the capital Sanaa and much of the north, President...

Iraqi's oil ministry Thursday asked foreign companies and investors to bid for a project to build and operate a 300,000 barrel-per-day export-oriented refinery in Fao, near the southern city of Basra. Bidding documents provide for two investment models -- build-own-operate and...

A Palestinian attempted to stab Israeli police near a flashpoint holy site in Hebron in the occupied West Bank Thursday and was shot and wounded, Israeli authorities said. The incident occurred near the site known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque and to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs in...