(Reuters) - An Ethiopian government air strike on the capital of the northern Tigray region on Friday forced a U.N. flight carrying aid workers to abort a landing there, the United Nations said. Humanitarian sources and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the...

A U.S. outpost in southern Syria was attacked on Wednesday, but there were no reports of any American casualties from the blast, U.S. officials told Reuters. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was too early to say who was responsible for the attack. One of...

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on the set of a Western and killed the cinematographer in what the actor Friday called a “tragic accident.” The director of the movie was wounded, and authorities were investigating. Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer on “Rust,” and...

The first round of talks between the Syrian government and the opposition to draft constitutional reforms in Geneva ended in disappointment and no new date has been set for the next meeting, the United Nations envoy for Syria said Friday. The talks started Monday following a nine-month...

A new Russian film tackles one of the country’s great taboos: the role of Russian mercenaries in trouble spots around the world and the toll this takes on the family members of the often unacknowledged soldiers who die in combat. “Mama, I’m Home”, produced by Alexander Rodnyansky, who is...

The Syrian government is siphoning off millions of dollars of foreign aid by forcing UN agencies to use a lower exchange rate, according to new research. The Central Bank of Syria, which is sanctioned by the UK, US and EU, in effect made $60m (£44m) in 2020 by pocketing $0.51 of every aid...

  Beirut, Lebanon – Continuing Syrian government human rights abuses mean refugees should not be returned, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says, urging host nations to immediately halt all refugee returns. The New York-based organisation said in a new report on Wednesday that it had...

British police charged a 25-year-old man Thursday with the murder of a Conservative lawmaker, alleging that the killing was an act of terrorism by a supporter of the Islamic State group. Prosecutors said Ali Harbi Ali, a man from London with Somali heritage, had “religious and ideological...

Lebanon will be able to provide six more hours of power a day through the national grid within weeks after a deal with Egypt and Jordan, Energy Minister Walid Fayad told The National. The country is suffering a major power crisis with state-run Electricite du Liban recently announcing that...

CAIRO (AP) — Libya is hosting an international conference aimed at resolving the country's thorniest issues ahead of general elections planned for December. Western, regional and United Nations representatives are meeting Thursday in the capital, Tripoli. According to documents obtained by...

Syria executed 24 people Thursday after charging them with igniting wildfires last year that left three people dead and burnt thousands of hectares (acres) of forests, the Justice Ministry said. Executions are common in war-torn Syria, but the number of those put to death Thursday is larger...

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's top security official on Wednesday proposed introducing joint German-Polish patrols on the two countries' border to help clamp down on illegal crossings into Germany by migrants arriving from Belarus, but said no one has any intention of closing the frontier....

 The United Arab Emirates’ crown prince received a rare telephone call from Syrian President Bashar Assad in which they discussed strengthening relations and cooperation, Syria’s state media reported Wednesday. The call between Assad and UAE’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed came as...

A boast by the leader of Hezbollah that he commands 100,000 fighters came as a surprise to many Lebanese, not least because it was addressed to a domestic audience rather than the militia's archenemy Israel. Experts say the figure, which exceeds the size of Lebanon's army by about 15,000...

LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization said there was a 7% rise in new coronavirus cases across Europe last week, the only region in the world where cases increased. In its weekly assessment of the pandemic released late Tuesday, the U.N. health agency said there were about 2.7 million...

He was only a year old when his panicked father picked him up and they fled with his mother from the gunfire rattling their neighborhood. It was the day Lebanon’s civil war started 46 years ago. His family’s apartment building in Beirut was on the frontline. Now 47, Bahij Dana did the same...

Shelling by the Syrian regime army killed 13 people Wednesday in the northwestern region of Idlib controlled by rebels, a war monitor and local activists reported. Rockets struck a busy area of the town of Ariha, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Among the...

 Two roadside bombs exploded near a bus carrying troops during the morning rush hour in the Syrian capital early Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding others, state TV reported. The attack was the deadliest in Damascus in years, and a rare event since regime forces captured suburbs...

Washington, DC – Absent an unforeseen event, experts say Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is not going to lose his grip on power any time soon – something that is moving many Arab countries to normalise relations with the government in Damascus. Thousands of kilometres away in Washington,...

Interpol has denied receiving a Red Notice alert for the head of the Lebanese Forces party from the Syrian authorities. "There has been no Red Notice request, nor any type of request, from Damascus for Samir Geagea," the international police organisation told The National. Pro-Syrian...