Iraq's army and Shi'ite militia have launched a long-awaited offensive against Islamic State in Salahuddin province, a stronghold of the radical Islamist fighters north of Baghdad, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Sunday. The ultra-radical fighters control several...

 The Israeli military said it had mobilized some 13,000 soldiers for an unannounced drill on Sunday in the occupied West Bank, in the first such exercise in three years. A terse statement said army chief Gadi Eisenkot had called a "surprise exercise in Central Command" -- the...

(Reuters) - Islamic State released 19 Assyrian Christian captives in  Syria  on Sunday after processing them through a sharia court, a monitoring group which tracks the conflict said. More than 200 Assyrians remain in Islamic State hands, said the British-based Syrian...

(Reuters) - One of the main western-backed rebel groups announced on Sunday that it had dissolved itself and joined a larger Islamist alliance, weeks into a battle which saw it lose ground and men to more powerful al Qaeda insurgents. Hazzm is one of the last remnants of non-jihadist...