Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed ways of enhancing ties with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, in a rare phone call since the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, his office said.

Washington has granted Iraq a shortened 45-day sanctions waiver to import Iranian gas that will expire days before US President Donald Trump's term ends, an Iraqi official said Saturday.

U.N. human rights experts on Friday voiced alarm at reports that a further 50 terror convicts were facing execution in Iraq on Monday, as they urged Baghdad to halt all "mass executions."

Iran has instructed allies across the Middle East to be on high alert and avoid provoking tensions with the U.S. that could give an outgoing Trump administration cause to launch attacks in the U.S. president's final weeks in office, Iraqi officials have said.

The request -- delivered by a senior Iranian general to allies in Baghdad this week -- reflects the growing regional anxiety over President Donald Trump's unpredictable behavior and the uncertainty in the chaotic transition period until President-elect Joe Biden takes over in two months.

The United Arab Emirates, a Gulf powerhouse home to millions of foreign residents, has revamped an array of laws in a social liberalization drive designed to burnish its progressive brand.

As winter nears and coronavirus cases surge across the Middle East, the regional director for the World Health Organization said Thursday the only way to avoid mass deaths is for countries to quickly tighten restrictions and enforce preventative measures.

In a press briefing from Cairo, Ahmed al-Mandhari, director of WHO's eastern Mediterranean region, which comprises most of the Middle East, expressed concern that countries in the area were lowering their guard after tough lockdowns imposed earlier this year.

Mike Pompeo said he will make the first visit by a US secretary of state to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday, after labelling the pro-Palestinian BDS movement an anti-Semitic "cancer".

The U.S. will label the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which seeks to isolate Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians, as anti-Semitic, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday, calling the movement "a cancer".

Nurses hover over a patient to insert a breathing tube as his condition suddenly deteriorates. ICU beds fill up almost overnight. As one patient dies of the coronavirus and is wheeled out, another is whisked in to take his place. An exhausted doctor leans against a wheelchair for a breather.

The pace is dizzying at the largest isolation hospital in Syria's northwestern city of Idlib. There are no bombs falling outside and the wounded don't crowd bloodstained corridors amid a shaky cease-fire in the country's decade old civil war. Still, the intensive care unit staff is overwhelmed with beds full of elderly patients gasping for air.

Yazidis crowned a new spiritual leader on Wednesday at their holiest site of Lalish in northern Iraq, nearly two months after the death of the minority's top cleric.