MOGADISHU (AFP) - A suspected suicide car bomb attack hit a hotel near the presidential palace in Somalia's capital Mogadishu on Thursday, causing casualties, police and witnesses said. The attack, which bore the hallmarks of the Al-Qaeda-affilated Shebab rebels, hit the gate of a...

An Egyptian court on Thursday ordered the release of Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, the two sons of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, pending a final trial for corruption. "Alaa and Gamal will be released Thursday evening since they are no longer involved in any other trials," Fareed al-Deeb,...

Foreign ministers from the international coalition against the Islamic State group gather for talks in London on Thursday, with the threat posed by foreign fighters in focus following jihadist attacks in France. US Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary Philip...

Sudan's army on Wednesday denied reports that the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) had captured a strategic area in South Kordofan state. "The Talodi area is still under the control of the Sudanese army," army spokesman Col. Al-Sawarmy Khaled Saad told...

Around 200 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants have been killed in a major operation by Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces early on Wednesday, an official said. "A wide-ranging military operation started in the east and west of the Mosul Dam...

Moscow (AFP) - Russia on Wednesday responded disparagingly to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, claiming it showed that the United States wanted to dominate world affairs. "Americans have set a course for confrontation," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told...

Thousands gathered Wednesday in Tehran at a funeral procession for a Revolutionary Guards general killed by Israel, after his commander warned the Jewish state it should "await destructive thunderbolts". General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi died alongside six fighters from Lebanon's...

Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama warned Congress on Tuesday that any move to impose new sanctions on Iran could scupper delicate negotiations aimed at reaching a complex nuclear deal. "New sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but...

(Reuters) - A Palestinian man stabbed up to 10 people on a commuter bus in central Tel Aviv on Wednesday before he was shot in the leg by a prison security officer as he tried to escape, police said. Tel Aviv police commander Bentzi Sau said 10 people had been injured. He said...

(AFP) _ The UN on Tuesday decried numerous executions of civilians in Iraq by the Islamic State group, warning that educated women appeared to be especially at risk. The jihadist group is showing a "monstrous disregard for human life" in the areas it controls in Iraq, the UN...

ISIS militants have executed 13 teenage boys for watching the Asian Cup football match between Iraq and Jordan last week. The young football fans had been caught watching the game on television in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which is controlled by the Islamic State. ...

Reporting by Abdullah Al Ghadawi (Zaman Al Wasl)- A well-informed source revealed an imminent political rapprochement between Riyadh and Ankara, noting that the differences and rifts began to fade in recent times. The Syrian opposition figure told Zaman al-Wasl that...

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The EU will appeal a December court decision ordering the removal of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas from its terror blacklist, a spokesman said on Monday. Foreign ministers from the 28 member states decided at a meeting on Monday "to appeal the judgement...

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Saturday that his country will provide humanitarian and military aid to Middle East countries to the tune of $2.5 billion in the coming phase. "This aid will be directed to improve infrastructure and military fields," Abe remarked...

A plane carrying returning peshmerga Kurdish forces departed from Turkey’s Sanliurfa Airport for Sulaymaniyah, instead of Erbil, in northern Iraq Saturday because of bad weather conditions. The plane was transporting the second batch of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga...

(Reuters) - The International Criminal Court has launched an inquiry into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, opening a path to possible charges against Israelis or Palestinians. In a statement on Friday, prosecutors said they would examine "in full independence and...

  At least 43 people, including 40 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants were killed across the country Friday, security forces said. The U.S-led international coalition launched airstrikes on five alleged ISIL bases in eastern al-Baghdadi area in Anbar province...

(Reuters) - Arab foreign ministers on Thursday endorsed a Palestinian plan to resubmit a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council calling for  Israel  to withdraw from occupied territories by late 2017. The United States helped defeat a similar draft resolution in a...

(Reuters) - Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said after talks in Cairo on Thursday he hoped that a Canadian journalist working for Qatar-based Al Jazeera television could be released from prison in Egypt . Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy, Egyptian Baher Mohamed and...

(Reuters) - Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers will press ahead with a plan for more sanctions on Iran , the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Wednesday, despite White House warnings that they risked derailing nuclear talks. Lawmakers, who say...