Syrian mother Umm Saeed was so desperate to find her two jailed sons she even sold the family furniture to pay "fixers", but a decade of deceit has left her no closer to the truth.

Israel's top diplomat Yair Lapid opened Israel's first embassy in the Gulf during a trip to the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, nine months after they signed a normalization deal.

Thousands of members of Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary alliance gathered in Baghdad on Tuesday to mourn comrades killed in American air strikes along the Syrian border.

Jewish settlers agreed Monday to leave a new outpost in the occupied West Bank that has stirred weeks of Palestinian protests following a deal with Israel's government, officials said. 

In a camp in northwest Syria, Mohamad al-Abdullah relies on U.N. aid to treat a spinal injury that could have paralyzed him had it not been for cross-border aid. 

Pro-Iranian militias fired several shells at a U.S. base in eastern Syria's Al-Omar oil field on Monday night, causing damage but no casualties, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that strikes on pro-Iran fighters in Iraq and Syria should send a "strong" message of deterrence not to keep attacking US forces.

Israel's foreign minister has voiced concern over U.S. diplomacy with Iran but promised a less confrontational approach, in the new government's first high-level talks with the Jewish state's closest ally.

Egypt, Jordan and Iraq agreed to bolster security and economic cooperation at a tripartite summit Sunday that saw an Egyptian head of state visit Iraq for the first time in three decades.

U.S. airstrikes against Iran-backed armed groups on the Syrian-Iraqi border killed at least seven fighters overnight into Monday, sparking immediate calls for revenge and fears of a new escalation between Washington and Tehran.