Wildfires around the Middle East triggered by a heatwave hitting the region have killed two people, forced thousands of people to leave their homes and detonated landmines along the Lebanon-Israel border, state media and officials said Saturday. The areas hit by the heatwave are Syria,...

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab said on Friday any step to lift subsidies now on vital goods would be unacceptable and would cause a “social explosion”. In a televised address, Diab, who resigned two months ago after a huge explosion damaged much of Beirut and worsened...

Wrapped in plastic and white sheets, the ashen corpse of Mohammed Al-Shuhna, a Syrian mercenary allegedly killed in Azerbaijan, is shuttled back to north Syria just two weeks after he had first left. In the grainy mobile phone footage sent to The Independent  by Mohamed’s friends, a...

Fouad Khamasi fills his taxi every day with about 40,000 Lebanese pounds’ worth of fuel. It could cost at least four times that much if subsidies come to an end. The Beirut cab driver, 53, can just about afford to buy fuel and feed his kids. He worries the price of subsidised foods and key...