The energy minister for top OPEC exporter Saudi Arabia said Thursday he was optimistic about OPEC's deal to limit oil output and mentioned the lower end of a previously agreed production target, helping spur a rally in the price of crude. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting...

A controversial Israeli bill to limit the volume of calls to prayer at mosques may be revived after it appeared to have been buried thanks to opposition from ultra-Orthodox Jews, reports said Thursday. Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, from the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, may...

(The Daily Star)- The General Security Thursday arrested a Lebanese man accused of links to militant groups. In a statement, the General Security identified the militant suspect by the initials Aa. M., saying he confessed to working with others in providing arms to an unnamed militant group....

Heavy fighting between government troops and opposition forces in various parts of Yemen has left 51 dead, according to military officials. They said on Wednesday that forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi been engaged in combat with the Iran-allied Houthis and their allies in the...

Islamic State militants probably killed more than 300 Iraqi former police three weeks ago and buried them in a mass grave near the town of Hammam al-Alil south of Mosul, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday. A Reuters reporter visited the site of the mass grave, where residents said the...

Iraqi paramilitary forces announced Wednesday that they had entered the Tal Afar airport west of Mosul and were fighting to clear pockets of Islamic State group jihadists inside it. The airport is located some six kilometres (four miles) south of the town of Tal Afar, the ultimate target of...

Iraqi Shi'ite militias said on Wednesday they had driven Islamic State fighters from an air base west of Mosul, a victory which would threaten the Sunni group's supply route from Syria to its last major stronghold in Iraq. "The airport of Tal Afar has been liberated," Yusif al-Kallabi, a...

Foreign medics are helping Iraqi special forces personnel treat a growing number of children wounded by intense urban warfare inside the jihadist-held city of Mosul. Car bombs, sniper fire and booby traps have led to mounting casualties in the east of the city, where advancing Iraqi troops...

Syrian and Russian warplanes bombed rebel-held areas in Aleppo and Idlib province overnight, activists said, a day after Moscow announced a fresh offensive against opponents of its Damascus ally. "Russian military planes were seen all night until morning in several regions of Idlib" in...

Clashes between Palestinian security forces and gunmen erupted in the West Bank city of Nablus Wednesday, killing a woman, medics said, as concern grows over intra-Palestinian violence. The 39-year-old was said to have been killed in the old city of Nablus, in the north of the occupied West...

The Kurdish YPG militia will pull its forces from the Syrian city of Manbij and withdraw east of the Euphrates River in order to participate in the campaign to liberate the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, it said in a statement. U.S. special envoy Brett McGurk described the move as a "milestone",...

Turkish-backed rebels are just 2 km (1.25 miles) from the northern Syrian city of al Bab and are expected to take it from ISIS quickly despite some resistance, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday. The rebels said Tuesday they had taken Qabasin, several km northeast of al Bab, to...

Syria's Bashar al-Assad said in an interview aired on Tuesday that Donald Trump will be a "natural ally" if the US president-elect fulfils his pledge to fight "terrorists". In his first reaction to Trump's election victory last week, the Syrian president struck a note of caution and said he...

Seven Iraqi refugees were burnt to death Monday in the northern province of Kirkuk, according to an Iraqi official. A tent caught fire in the Layan refugee camp in the southeastern parts of Kirkuk, killing a father and his six children, the mayor of the northern city of Baiji, Mohamed...

The Turkish Red Crescent is boosting its humanitarian aid to Jarabulus, Syria and northern Iraq, and so far has sent about 450 trucks of materials to Mosul, areas wracked by ongoing or recent conflict, the group’s head Kerem Kinik told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday. The Turkish Red Crescent is...

(The Washington Times)- Hezbollah’s terrorism finance operations are thriving across Latin America months after the Drug Enforcement Administration linked the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group to drug cartels in the region, U.S. lawmakers were told this week. Former DEA operations chief...

Hundreds of Iraqi civilians lined up on Tuesday for food in eastern neighborhoods of Mosul recently retaken from ISIS, as rations ran low, an Iraqi officer said. Maj. Salam al-Obeidi says some 700 residents gathered in three areas of the Zahra and Qadisiya neighborhoods, the latter of which...

Turkey-backed rebels are nearing the Syrian city of al-Bab and the area will be cleared of ISIS militants soon, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Tuesday. Yildirim made the comment to members of his ruling AK Party in parliament in a speech shown live on state broadcaster TRT...

(Now)- In its first-ever military parade on foreign soil, Lebanon’s Hezbollah flaunted a sizeable fleet of heavy weaponry in the Syrian city of Qusayr Friday, according to news reports and photos circulated by social media accounts close to the organization.   Among the arms and vehicles...

Islamic State claimed a series of suicide attacks that killed at least 14 people south and west of Baghdad on Monday as a U.S.-backed campaign to capture Mosul, the insurgents' last urban stronghold in Iraq, made slow progress. The attacks showed that even though the jihadists have been...