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A Saudi who kidnapped and tried to rape his employer was put to death on Tuesday in the kingdom's 64th execution of the year.
Mufrih bin Ahmed Khamis worked as the victim's driver, the interior ministry said in a statement.
Full StorySyria's regime agreed Tuesday to a ceasefire deal announced by the United States and Russia, but there were widespread doubts it could take effect by the weekend as hoped.
The truce agreement, announced Monday, does not apply to jihadists like the Islamic State group and al-Nusra Front, putting up major hurdles to how it can be implemented on Syria's complex battlefield.
Full StoryYemen's president has appointed a veteran general as armed forces deputy commander in a bid to rally support from tribes and troops in the rebel-held Sanaa region, military sources said.
President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's decision to appoint Saudi-based General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a northerner known for his close ties to Sunni Islamists, was published on the government's official sabanew.net website late Monday.
Full StoryAfter a harrowing 15-hour journey by minibus, dodging gunfire and explosions, a group of Syrian refugees reached a village near Turkey, desperate to cross the recently shut border into safety.
"The people smugglers are there and they're shouting 'Turkey! Who wants to go to Turkey?'" Fatima al-Ahmed recalled, after reaching the town of Kilis on the Turkish side of the frontier.
Full StoryIsrael has destroyed the homes of two Palestinians accused of separate attacks that left five people dead, the army said Tuesday, the latest in a series of punitive demolitions that have drawn criticism from rights groups.
The overnight demolitions west of Hebron targeted the homes of two men said to be behind November 19 knife and car-ramming attacks in Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv and at a junction in the occupied West Bank.
Full StoryA psychiatrist has ruled that an Israeli found to have led the burning alive of a Palestinian teenager in 2014 was responsible for his actions, the lawyer for the victim's family said Tuesday.
The court found that Israeli settler Yosef Haim Ben-David, 31, was the ringleader of the chilling attack, but his lawyers submitted last-minute documents saying he suffered from mental illness.
Full StorySingapore has deported four suspected Indonesian extremists allegedly heading to Syria to fight with the Islamic State (IS) group, authorities said Tuesday.
The four, who included a 15-year-old boy, were arrested Sunday in the city-state when officials became suspicious after checking their documents and finding one of them had previously spent time in Syria, Indonesian police said.
Full StoryU.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday offered his condolences to Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic over the two kidnapped Serbian diplomats believed to have been killed in a U.S. air strike in Libya, Belgrade said.
Last week the U.S. targeted a jihadist training camp near the Libyan coastal city of Sabratha, killing dozens of people including an Islamic State group operative the U.S. said was behind the mass murder of tourists on a Tunisian beach.
Full StorySyrian President Bashar Assad announced Monday that parliamentary elections are to be held on April 13, state news agency SANA reported, shortly after Washington and Moscow announced a ceasefire plan.
Assad issued a decree which included seat allocations for each of the provinces in Syria, which last held parliamentary elections in May 2012.
Full StoryThe Syrian ceasefire announced by the United States and Russia will only work if there is a "major change of behavior" by the Syrian regime and Russia, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Monday.
"It will only succeed if there is a major change of behavior by the Syrian regime and its backers," he said. "Russia, in particular, must honor this agreement by ending its attacks on Syrian civilians and moderate opposition groups."
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