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Herzog becomes first Israeli president to visit Bahrain

Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrived Sunday in Bahrain, the first visit by an Israeli head of state to the small Gulf kingdom since the two countries normalized relations in 2020.

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Iran executes 4 over 'links to Israeli intelligence'

Iran on Sunday put to death four people accused of working with Israel's intelligence service, the judiciary said.

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Israel strikes Gaza after rocket fired from enclave

The Israeli air force said it had carried out overnight air strikes against sites of the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip after a rocket was fired from the Palestinian enclave towards Israeli territory.

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Civilian killed in Iraq strike blamed on Turkey

A civilian was killed and another one wounded Friday in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region in an attack likely carried out by Turkey, a local official said.

The pair were working on their land near the village of Mawat when they were killed in a bombardment "likely carried out by Turkey", the town's mayor Kamaran Hassan told AFP.

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Israeli peace activists show presence in West Bank hot spot

Dozens of Israeli peace activists toured the occupied West Bank's largest city Friday in a show of solidarity with Palestinians, amid chants of "shame, shame" from ultra-nationalist hecklers.

The encounter in the center of Hebron signaled the widening rift among Israelis over the nature of their society and Israel's open-ended military rule over the Palestinians, now in its 56th year.

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UN: Iraq Christians were victims of Islamic State war crimes

Evidence collected in Iraq strengthens preliminary findings that Islamic State extremists committed crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Christian community after it seized about a third of the country in 2014, a U.N. investigative team said in a report circulated Thursday.

The report to the U.N. Security Council said crimes included forcibly transferring and persecuting Christians, seizing their property, engaging in sexual violence, enslavement and other "inhumane acts," such as forced conversions and destruction of cultural and religious sites.

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Arabs unite in celebration as Morocco advances in World Cup

First Qatar was out, exiting the World Cup with the worst record of a host country. Then the Saudi national team's run ended, despite a historic upset against Argentina last week. Finally Tunisia was eliminated, after a dramatic victory against already-qualified France.

Now, at the first World Cup ever to be held in the Middle East, Morocco is the Arab world's last hope. The fractured region is rallying around the North African nation after its 2-1 win Thursday against Canada that advanced Morocco to the knockout stage of the tournament for the first time since 1986.

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Syrian rebels did not know Iraqi militant killed was IS head

When Syrian rebels attacked a hideout in mid-October in the southern Syrian village of Jassem, they had no idea that a militant commander who was killed in the operation was the leader of the Islamic State group.

Syrian opposition activists and state media apparently did not know that the man killed was IS leader Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and identified him as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi.

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Rebel port attacks pose new threat for Yemen

Two months after Yemen's truce expired, fighting largely remains on hold but a series of attacks by Huthi rebels could have serious repercussions for a country crippled by war.

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Israel says it will deport Palestinian lawyer to France

Israel on Thursday announced it has stripped a Palestinian lawyer of his Jerusalem residency and plans to deport him to France, saying the man is an activist in a banned militant group.

The decision by Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked underscored the fragile status of Jerusalem's Palestinians, who hold revocable Israeli residency rights but with few exceptions are not citizens. It also threatened to trigger a diplomatic spat with France, which has argued against the deportation.

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