(BBC)- Islamic State (IS) militants have raided government buildings in and around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Iraqi media reported that suicide bombers had attacked police stations and a power station, but that security forces had repelled the assaults. A news agency affiliated to IS...

Gunmen wearing suicide vests attacked government targets in the Kurdish-controlled city of Kirkuk and killed 16 at an Iranian-run construction site further north on Friday as troops advanced on jihadist bastion Mosul. There was no immediate claim for the attacks but nearly all such raids...

(The Daily Star)- A Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen violated international humanitarian law with a so-called "double tap" air strike on a funeral gathering in the rebel-held capital Sanaa, United Nations sanctions monitors told the Security Council. The U.N. monitors said there...

(The Daily Star)- An American soldier died on Thursday from wounds sustained in a bombing in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said. It was the first U.S. service member to die from fighting in Iraq since the launch of a massive operation to retake the Islamic State-held city of Mosul earlier...

The U.S. on Thursday designated a leading Lebanese Hezbollah commander as a terrorist who the State Department says has been operating in Syria and reportedly in Yemen. Haytham ‘Ali Tabataba’i, also known as Abu ‘Ali Al-Tabataba’I, commanded Hezbollah’s special forces, the department said....

 Rebel violations mean there is "no ceasefire" in Yemen, the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition said on Thursday, the first day of a truce under a UN plan. "There is no ceasefire at all," Major General Ahmed Assiri told AFP. Huthi rebels and their allies had breached the truce...

(The Daily Star)- The fighting around the Iraqi city of Mosul has forced 5,640 people to flee their homes in the last three days, the International Organization for Migration said on Thursday, most of them in the last 24 hours. Read More: Syria regime says east Aleppo ceasefire has...

Three Yemeni army personnel and scores of Shia Houthi militiamen and their allies were killed in Thursday clashes in Yemen’s Al-Jawf province on the first day of a UN-backed 72-hour ceasefire, according to pro-government sources. "The Houthis violated the terms of the truce, attacking...

(theguardian)- Theresa May has called on her fellow European leaders to put pressure on Russia to stop its “appalling, sickening” atrocities in Syria. Arriving at her first European summit, the prime minister said Europe needed to take a “robust and united stance” in the face of Russian...

Iraqi special forces charged into the Mosul battle Thursday with a pre-dawn advance on a nearby town held by the Islamic State group, a key part of a multi-pronged assault on eastern approaches to the besieged city. The addition of the elite troops, also known as counterterrorism forces,...

An Iraqi army elite unit and Kurdish fighters on Thursday launched a fresh offensive to dislodge Islamic State militants from villages around Mosul, their last major city stronghold in Iraq, with the air and ground support of the U.S.-led coalition. Howitzer and mortar fire started at 6:00...

Turkish warplanes struck Syrian Kurdish militia targets in northern Syria and killed up to 200 militants, state media quoted the military as saying Thursday. The jets hit 18 targets in Maarrat Umm Hawsh, a region north of the city of Aleppo, the official news agency Anadolu said....

A U.N.-mediated truce to the war in Yemen went into effect a minute before midnight on Wednesday, hours after Saudi-led air strikes hit military bases in the capital Sanaa and rival militias battled near the border with the kingdom. The coalition led by Saudi Arabia said in a statement it...

Russian warships off the coast of Norway are carrying fighter bombers that are likely to reinforce a final assault on the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo in two weeks, a senior NATO diplomat said on Wednesday, citing Western intelligence. The fleet passed by the Norwegian city of Bergen on...

(theguardian)- Saudi Arabia has raised $17.5bn (£14bn) from its first foray into the global bond markets as it seeks to repair the damage to its public finances caused by the collapse in the oil price since 2014. Strong investor demand meant the Middle Eastern kingdom raised more from the...

The fight for Mosul, launched this week by Iraqi security forces supported by U.S. air power and advisers, could take months and is likely to feature periods of fierce combat, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Wednesday. Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday it was Turkey’s duty “to its brothers to blow out the fire in Aleppo". Addressing elected neighborhood representatives from around Turkey at the presidential complex in Ankara, Erdogan said at least “one million people would flock to Turkey if an...

(theguardian)- Thousands of civilians have fled Mosul and its surrounding region to crowded refugee camps in war-torn Syria, aid officials have said, as Iraqi forces continued to advance on the most populous city under Islamic State control. At least 5,000 people, mostly women and children,...

(The Daily Star)- Russia on Wednesday warned the US-led coalition against driving extremists from Iraq to Syria in the offensive to recapture Mosul from ISIS. "It is necessary not to drive terrorists from one country to the other but to destroy them on the spot," the chief of Russia's...

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad told a Swiss TV station that government forces had to rid the city of Aleppo of rebel "terrorists" under its constitutional mandate to protect the civilian population. "That's our mission, according to the constitution, according to the law, that we have to...