The United States has deployed Patriot air defense batteries to Iraqi bases to protect American troops recently targeted by Iranian missiles, U.S. and Iraqi military sources told AFP.

A year after the unexpected downfall of Algeria's longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the ailing octogenarian remains holed up in his plush and medically adapted home, with his detractors still demanding justice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his close aides have been placed under quarantine after a staffer within his office tested positive for COVID-19, a statement and Israeli media said.

Jordanian authorities Monday started to take home about 5,000 people quarantined in hotels to guard against the spread of coronavirus since their return to the country two weeks ago.

Prisoners at a Syrian jail run by Kurdish forces holding suspected Islamic State members rioted and some escaped Sunday, said Kurdish sources and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Saudi authorities have seized more than five million medical masks that were illegally stockpiled amid the coronavirus outbreak, state media reported on Sunday.

Saudi air defenses intercepted ballistic missiles over Riyadh and a city on the Yemen border late Saturday, leaving at least two civilians wounded in the capital that is under curfew in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his erstwhile rival Benny Gantz on Sunday announced "significant progress" in talks towards forming an emergency unity government amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

As countries across the Middle East tighten restrictions on movement to curb the spread of the coronavirus, a spokesman for the U.S. Agency for International Development said Thursday that it would suspend humanitarian aid to parts of Yemen over restrictions by the Houthi rebels that predate the pandemic.

A spokesman for USAID, one of the largest donors to U.N. operations in Yemen, told The Associated Press that it will "partially suspend" its operations the following day in Houthi rebel-held areas, where 70% of Yemenis live.

On a deserted street in the old city of Damascus, the new coronavirus has forced salesmen like Ahmad to close up shop indefinitely for the first time in Syria's war.