Middle East
Latest stories
UN names Palestinian media program for slain reporter

The United Nations announced Tuesday that it is naming the annual training program for Palestinian broadcasters and journalists after Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead May 11 during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who made the announcement, said Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American, "had a distinguished career in journalism for a quarter of a century" and "was a trailblazer for Arab women, and a role model for journalists in the Middle East and around the world."

W140 Full Story
Leading charity urges Yemen's warring sides to extend truce

An international charity on Tuesday urged Yemen's warring sides to extend a two-month truce, appealing to the parties in the conflict to work together to avoid "catastrophic hunger" in the war-wrecked country.

Oxfam said the U.N.-brokered cease-fire is essential for millions of Yemenis suffering from a lack of basic services and soaring prices of food and other goods. The charity's Yemen director, Ferran Puig, said the truce has brought a "long overdue sense of hope that we can break the cycle of violence and suffering in Yemen."

W140 Full Story
Group urges ICC to probe alleged use of mines in Libya war

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called for the International Criminal Court to investigate allegations of the use of landmines in 2019 by Russian paramilitaries fighting in Libya.

According to the New York-based watchdog, new data has emerged from Libyan demining groups linking mercenaries from Russia's Wagner Group to the use of "banned booby traps" in Libya during an offensive by east-based Libyan forces trying to capture the capital of Tripoli from rival militias.

W140 Full Story
Israel, UAE sign free trade deal, first with an Arab country

Israel and the United Arab Emirates signed a free trade agreement on Tuesday, the first of its kind that Israel has concluded with an Arab country.

The UAE agreed to normalize relations with Israel in a U.S.-brokered deal in 2020, the first of the so-called Abraham Accords that Israel eventually concluded with four Arab nations. Since then, the two countries have boosted cooperation in a number of economic sectors.

W140 Full Story
Erdogan Says Turkey's Syria operation could happen 'suddenly'

Turkey's president told journalists that Ankara remains committed to rooting out a Syrian Kurdish militia from northern Syria.

"Like I always say, we'll come down on them suddenly one night. And we must," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on his plane following his Saturday visit to Azerbaijan, according to daily Hurriyet newspaper and other media.

W140 Full Story
Egypt displays trove of newly discovered ancient artifacts

Egypt on Monday displayed a trove of ancient artifacts dating back 2,500 years that the country's antiquities authorities said were recently unearthed at the famed necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo.

The artifacts were showcased at a makeshift exhibit at the feet of the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, 24 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of the Egyptian capital.

W140 Full Story
Iran Guards accuse 'Zionists' of assassinating colonel

Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Monday accused "Zionists" of shooting dead a colonel in Tehran earlier this month, days after Israel reportedly told the US it was behind the killing.

Guards Colonel Sayyad Khodai, 50, was fatally shot on May 22 outside his home in the east of the Iranian capital by assailants on motorcycles. He was hit with five bullets, according to official media.

W140 Full Story
Severe water shortages strain wheat harvest in Iraq

Salah Chelab crushed a husk of wheat plucked from his sprawling farmland south of Baghdad and inspected its seeds in the palm of one hand. They were several grams lighter than he hoped.

"It's because of the water shortages," he said, the farm machine roaring behind him, cutting and gathering his year's wheat harvest.

W140 Full Story
Israeli nationalists chant racist slogans in Jerusalem march

Thousands of Israeli nationalists, some of them chanting "Death to Arabs," have paraded through the heart of the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem's Old City, in a show of force that risked setting off a new wave of violence in the tense city.

The crowds, who were overwhelmingly young Orthodox Jewish men, were celebrating Jerusalem Day -- an Israeli holiday that marks the capture of the Old City in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians see the event, which passes through the heart of the Muslim Quarter, as a provocation. Last year, the parade helped trigger an 11-day war with Gaza militants, and this year's march drew condemnations from the Palestinians and neighboring Jordan.

W140 Full Story
Visit to al-Aqsa by Israeli lawmaker sparks Jerusalem unrest

A far-right Israeli lawmaker, joined by scores of ultranationalist supporters, entered Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque compound early Sunday, prompting a crowd of Palestinians to begin throwing rocks and fireworks toward nearby Israeli police.

The unrest erupted ahead of a mass ultranationalist Israeli march planned later Sunday through the heart of the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Some 3,000 Israeli police were deployed throughout the city ahead of the march.

W140 Full Story