On March 22, the Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy met in Beirut with Lebanon’s minister of industry, Hussein Hajj Hassan , who also represents Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful Iranian-backed Shia Islamist movement. The group doesn’t only influence Lebanese policy...

Both sides in Syria's bloody civil war said Saturday that a rural village fell victim to a poison gas attack, an assault that reportedly injured scores of people amid an ongoing international effort to rid the country of chemical weapons. What exactly happened Friday in Kfar Zeita, a...

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA...

Iran on Saturday rejected a U.S. decision to deny a visa for its newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations , pledging to take up the case directly with the world body in a dispute that has reopened old wounds dating to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The United States,...

Hiba Alhaji’s flight from Syria was sparked when she was summoned for interrogation after she encouraged her university students to join protests against the government. Her inquisitors never realized that the trunk of her car parked outside was full of guns she was running for the...

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA...

Lebanese families have long sought to know the fates of the missing from the country's civil war and post-war years, and now the civil war in Syria is adding yet another generation to the long rolls of missing from the Middle East's conflicts. Here is a look at the numbers from several...

Syrian rebels have advanced in Aleppo, killing scores of troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, Al Jazeera's reporter in the northern city said.  Opposition fighters stormed the Ramouseh district in an attempt to cut the government's supply route between the city's...

Lebanon launched a fourth round of polio immunisation on Friday, trying to prevent the disease spreading from neighboring Syria along with the tide of refugees fleeing the three-year conflict. Protection against polio requires several vaccinations but aid workers are concerned that...

As he pushes a cart full of tomatoes and cucumbers in the market at Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon, nothing marks out Mahmud as an experienced Hezbollah fighter. The stocky vegetable vendor in his fifties, who sports a red beard, fought Israel here in 2006, but that battle is now...

For 22 years, Mary Mansourati has been waiting for her son, Dani, to come home. His shirts are ironed and hanging in his closet. His trousers, neatly folded, are stacked on the shelves next to his bed in the family's Beirut apartment. Dani was 30 when he was detained by Syrian...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad political and media advisor Bouthaina Shaaban dismissed recent statements posted on her alleged official Facebook page saying that her country needed no one to help the regime fight rebels in the three-year conflict. “I don’t have any Facebook...

Activists say the death toll from infighting between rival Islamic rebel groups in eastern Syria has jumped to 68. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says battles are still raging on Friday, for a second day, around Bukamal town in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province...

A “new regional balance” is a phrase you often hear among policy wonks in Washington dealing with the Middle East. On the surface, it refers to obvious new realities that have shaped the region post-Iraq war and the Arab Spring, but it also reflects the Obama administration’s mindset...

Recent statements by top Iranian officials appear to divulge the Islamic of Republic of Iran’s frustration and dissatisfaction with the Assad apparatuses’ inability to thoroughly crack down on various rebel groups and oppositional fronts, and to regain full control of the state....

A Syrian opposition news outlet claimed Friday the government troops attacked a Damascus suburb with poison gas and that residents were showing symptoms of shortness of breath. The Shaam News Network identified the Damascus suburb of Harasta as the site of the poison gas attack...

Insurgents are pursuing a notable victory — the capture of an Air Force intelligence headquarters near Aleppo. The opposition have surrounded the building last month after moving into Layramoun. Defense of the building has been further hindered by insurgent advances in other areas...

In a courthouse near Cairo, a peremptory message hangs above the judge presiding over one of a series of trials involving Egypt's briefly powerful and now almost impotent Muslim Brotherhood. "In the name of God the Merciful", it reads, "Allah commands you to render trust to...

Insurgents in Iraq have added water to their arsenal of weapons after seizing control of a dam in the west of the country that enables them to flood certain areas and prevent security forces from advancing against them. The dam helps distribute water from the Euphrates river on...

Kuwait has imposed a news blackout on an investigation into reports of a recording that implicates unnamed people in an alleged plot to overthrow the Gulf state's ruling system, state news agency KUNA said. Kuwait's public prosecutor opened a case in December after a legal...