Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, Saddam Hussein's vice president and the highest-ranking member of his regime still on the run, has backed ongoing rallies in Sunni-majority areas of Iraq in an online video.
The 53-minute video, posted on YouTube on Friday, shows Duri reading a prepared statement behind a desk with a small Saddam-era flag atop it, and appears to be his first video message since April 2012.

The aging Christians holed up inside a retirement home in the devastated northern Syrian city of Aleppo have no light, no telephone lines, and little idea of what is happening in the outside world.
But fellow Christians and rebel fighters still ensure they do not go hungry, bringing the dozen or so residents whatever food they can every day.

A shell hit a Christian area of Damascus and a car bomb exploded elsewhere in the Syrian capital on Saturday, a watchdog said, as clashes raged around an airport in the north of the country that rebels have sought to capture.
"A shell was fired on Bab Tuma," a Christian quarter of Damascus's old city, said the Syrian Observatory for Human rights, without specifying exactly where it landed or where it was fired from.

The United Arab Emirates has rejected a request from Egypt for the release of 11 of its nationals detained for suspected links to Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood, the Gulf News newspaper reported on Saturday.
The case has sparked a sharp deterioration of relations between Abu Dhabi and Cairo, which had already been strained since the election of Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi as Egyptian president last June.

A Tunisian military appeals court on Friday handed down a heavier one-year suspended prison term to a former aide of President Moncef Marzouki for defaming the military, his lawyer said.
Ayoub Messoudi, 33, was earlier given a four-month suspended term on charges of "defaming" the army and "undermining senior officials in the military," lawyer Leila Haddad told AFP.

U.S. troops began arriving in Turkey on Friday to man Patriot missile batteries against threats from neighboring Syria, where the 21-month conflict between the regime and rebels has escalated.
Syrian air and ground forces were pounding insurgents dug in outside Damascus in a ferocious offensive being waged a day after a car bomb in the north of the capital killed at least 11 people, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Thousands of Sunnis demonstrated across Iraq on Friday, in the latest of nearly two weeks of rallies criticizing the country's premier and demanding the release of prisoners they say are wrongfully held.
The protests, which come amid a political deadlock between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government and a secular Sunni-backed party that is in his cabinet but publicly opposes him, have blocked off a key trade route and forced heavy security measures.

The benches in Hawas park in the battered city of Aleppo are now mere metal skeletons, the wood stripped off by residents to burn so they can keep warm in the northern Syrian winter.
After months of battles devastated much of the city, the country's former commercial hub, the people of Aleppo are trying to lead as normal a life as possible, despite the deadly conflict that has raged for more than 21 months.

Egyptian security forces have seized U.S.-made anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles destined for Gaza, where militants have said they would acquire more weapons to use against Israel, security officials said on Friday.
The officials said six missiles were found hidden in the Sinai, which borders both the Gaza Strip and Israel, after security forces were tipped off to the hiding place.

A Yemeni man has been arrested on charges of spying for Israel and will be tried this week, the defense ministry said on Friday.
"Abraham al-Dharrahi, a 24-year-old Yemeni IT worker, will be tried in the next two days in Yemen's criminal court on charges of espionage for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency," the ministry quoted a judicial source as saying.
