Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on Monday the launching of a military operation to retake the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja. "Zero hour for the liberation of Falluja has arrived. The moment of great victory has drawn near and Daesh has no choice but to flee," he said on...

A diplomat says Iraq's border crossing with Jordan is expected to reopen in about two weeks, ending an 11-month closure and enabling the resumption of vital trade and a return of Iraqi refugees. Safia al-Souhail, the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan, said Saturday that the Trebil crossing is to open...

 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he is planning to assign the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party's Binali Yildirim as prime minister on Sunday. Erdogan's remarks came late Thursday during a live televised event at the Presidential Palace in Ankara where he met...

ANKARA: Turkish lawmakers voted Friday in favor of an article of constitutional change that could see pro-Kurdish and other lawmakers prosecuted, with the voting indicating support would be sufficient to avoid a referendum on the issue. In a secret ballot, 373 MPs in the 550-seat parliament...

Egypt's military said its search teams found wreckage Friday from the EgyptAir plane that crashed in the Mediterranean with 66 people on board. "Egyptian aircraft and navy vessels have found personal belongings of passengers and parts of the wreckage 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of...

An Islamic State militant was killed after detonating explosives strapped to their body when Turkish police raided a militant cell in a house in the southeastern city of Gaziantep on Thursday, the Dogan news agency reported. Turkish police on Monday issued a nationwide warning about possible...

The White House said on Thursday the crash of an EgyptAir plane over the Mediterranean was being investigated and it was too soon to determine what caused the aircraft to go down. "It's too early to definitively say what may have caused this disaster," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said...

  Turkey's Transport Minister Binali Yildirim emerged on Thursday as the likely new leader of the ruling AK Party and therefore the next prime minister, cementing President Tayyip Erdogan's hold on government as he seeks to extend his powers. Yildirim, 60, and a close ally of Erdogan...

An EgyptAir flight carrying 66 passengers and crew on a flight from Paris to Cairo disappeared from radar over the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt's national airline said. Officials with the airline and the Egyptian civil aviation department told Reuters they believed the Airbus (AIR.PA) A320 had...

Turkish warplanes hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq, killing at least ten fighters, security sources said Wednesday. The military has been carrying out regular air strikes against positions of the outlawed group in the mountainous regions of...

 Turkish police have issued a nationwide warning about possible Islamic State attacks on Thursday's national holiday, state media said, with military facilities seen as targets after the army stepped up attacks on the militants in Syria. Both Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish militants have...

ISIS has continued losing control over territory across Iraq and Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday, including almost half of what it had once held in Iraq. The Defense Department had previously estimated that ISIS fighters had lost control of about 40 percent of the territory they...

Turkish authorities on Monday detained seven suspected ISIS members, including figures described as a senior leader and an "executioner", the state-run Anatolia news agency said. The seven suspects were detained during raids on addresses in the eastern region of Elazig. Large numbers of...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Cairo Wednesday for talks with President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, amid a stark crackdown on political freedoms in Egypt. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Kerry would fly to Cairo after talks on the Syrian crisis in Vienna and before heading...

Iraqi security forces and allied fighters launched an operation on Monday to retake the town of Rutba from ISIS, the military said. Special forces, soldiers, police, border guards and pro-government paramilitaries are involved in the operation to retake the Anbar province town, Iraq's Joint...

Iraq's Shi'ite-led authorities have shut the offices of two television channels popular with Sunni Iraqis and ordered a satirical show off air, tightening control over the media as political tensions rise in Baghdad. The crackdown, which began in March, appears to be prompted by concerns that...

An Egyptian court sentenced 152 protesters on Saturday to between two and five years in prison each after they demonstrated against a decision to transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, judicial sources and state media said. Hundreds of police officers were deployed in central Cairo on...

The ISIS group infiltrated a town in Iraq's Anbar province with several fighters wearing suicide belts Saturday, in a raid that killed at least five people, security officials said. The extremist attackers entered Amriyat al-Fallujah, a government-held town 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest...

Iran has failed to reach agreement with Saudi Arabia on arrangements for its pilgrims to join the annual hajj in September following a severing of ties, its culture minister said Thursday. "The arrangements have not been put together and it's now too late," Ali Jannati told the official IRNA...

Attacking journalists and prosecuting critical voices fuels violent extremism rather than preventing it, the United States told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday in a thinly veiled warning to Egypt, which chaired the meeting. "Arresting journalists, sentencing reporters to...