Iraqi authorities have uncovered a mass grave in Ramadi containing at least 40 bodies, including women and children, apparently killed by Islamic State insurgents when they seized the city in May, police and provincial officials said. Footage posted on the Facebook page of the provincial police...

Security forces killed 20 Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey while three Turkish soldiers died in a rebel attack, the military said on Wednesday, as authorities widened a curfew in the mainly Kurdish region's largest city, Diyarbakir. Hundreds of locals, including children...

France did not ask the European Union to consider new sanctions on Iran at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels last week, EU diplomats and a French official said on Wednesday. "No such request was made," said one EU diplomat who declined to be named, in response to a report that Paris...

Russia’s federal tourism agency on Wednesday issued a warning that Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) were planning to abduct Russian citizens in Turkey. “According to the competent agencies, leaders of the ISIS terrorist group plan to take hostages from among Russian citizens in...

Iran says it will hold a "massive" naval drill near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the first such exercise since the incident involving 10 U.S. sailors who were briefly captured by Iran when they drifted into Iranian territorial waters earlier this month. The official IRNA news agency says...

 Iraq summoned the new Saudi ambassador Sunday after he suggested Iranian-backed Shiite militias were exacerbating sectarian tensions and should leave the fight against Daesh (ISIS) to the Iraqi army and official security forces. Riyadh only reopened its embassy in Baghdad last month,...

A video published on Sunday by the media center of Islamic State claimed to show images and last statements of nine of the people who took part in the Paris attacks that killed 130 people on Nov. 13. Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage. The French Foreign...

A spokeswoman for Israel's former President Shimon Peres says the 92-year-old is being rushed to hospital after experiencing chest pains. Ayelet Frisch said medics treated him at his home Sunday night and detected a "light irregular heart rate." She said the doctors decided he should spend the...

Gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a checkpoint in Egypt Sunday, killing two policemen and a bystander, security officials said on the eve of the anniversary of the 2011 uprising. Another two policemen were wounded in the attack near the town of Fakous in the Nile Delta province of Sharkiya...

Senior Saudi and Iranian figures clashed behind closed doors at a private meeting convened by the World Economic Forum in Davos this week to try to promote peace in Syria, participants said. The barbed exchange between Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif at an...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday he believed that, with effort and good faith on both sides, it would be possible to implement the Minsk agreements on Ukraine in coming months to allow for a lifting of sanctions on Russia. In a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos,...

Five children were hurt on Friday when an explosive ripped through a schoolyard in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, a region gripped by violence between militants and state security forces for months, security sources said. The sources blamed the attack on the Kurdistan Workers...

Iraqi Prime Minister Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Thursday that three Americans who disappeared in Iraq last week "just went missing," and he very much doubted any Iranian involvement. Asked by a pool reporter at the start of a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Davos...

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused Russia Thursday of jeopardizing peace talks on Syria planned for next week by insisting on the inclusion of "terrorist groups" such as the Kurdish YPG militia on the opposition side. Turkey is concerned by the growing influence of the YPG, across...

Israel confirmed on Thursday it was planning to appropriate a large tract of fertile land in the occupied West Bank, close to Jordan, a move likely to exacerbate tensions with Western allies and already drawing international condemnation. In an email sent to Reuters, COGAT, a...

The U.S.-led anti-Daesh effort will increase the number of troops in Iraq that will train more Iraqi fighters ahead of a Mosul operation, a coalition spokesman said Wednesday.  “That's really the next step in generating the amount of combat power needed to liberate Mosul,” said...

Kurdish forces have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of Arab homes across northern Iraq in what may constitute a war crime, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a report published on Wednesday. In the report, Amnesty said it found evidence of a...

Germany wants to work with Iran to help calm regional conflicts now that the Islamic Republic is emerging from international isolation and also prevent tension escalating with regional rival Saudi Arabia, Germany's foreign minister said on Tuesday. Iran emerged from years of...

Iraqi Sunni lawmakers and ministers decided to boycott Tuesday's parliament and government sessions to protest violence targeting their community in a town east of Baghdad, the independent al-Sumaria TV channel reported on Monday.A coalition of Sunni Arab parliament members took the...

Kurdish militants detonated a roadside bomb in the southeastern province of Sirnak overnight, killing three police officers and wounding four others in an armoured vehicle, security sources said on Monday. The mainly Kurdish southeast has been rocked by daily violence since a 2013 ceasefire...