Spotlight
Iraqi Kurdish authorities said Monday they had issued arrest warrants for 11 Iraqis including leaders in a powerful paramilitary group, in an apparent tit-for-tat move after Baghdad took similar measures.

Israeli police raided a Palestinian neighbourhood in annexed east Jerusalem overnight and arrested 51 people accused of violent protests against security forces, authorities said Monday.

Bahrain has temporarily freed a female activist who has accused her government of torture in detention, rights groups said Monday.
Ebtisam al-Saegh was released late Sunday pending her trial on "terrorism" charges, Amnesty International and the Bahrain Institute for Human Rights (BIRD) said.

The Islamic State group executed dozens of civilians this month in the Syrian desert, a monitor said Monday, in a gruesome massacre as the jihadists see their "caliphate" collapse.

Four Yemeni soldiers and five assailants were killed in an attack on a military base in the southern province of Abyan on Monday, a security source said.

Bahraini authorities have referred a group of civilians accused of targeting security forces to a military court, state media said Sunday, months after a constitutional amendment expanded the court's reach.

When Haider al-Abadi was tasked with forming a new Iraqi government in August 2014, just weeks after a lightning offensive by the Islamic State group, many believed he would fail.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday demanded that Iranian "militias" leave Iraq at a press conference in Riyadh, where the U.S. diplomat is holding talks with top Gulf officials.

A U.S.-backed Arab-Kurd alliance announced on Sunday it had retaken one of Syria's largest oilfields from the Islamic State group in the east of country.

Russia on Sunday accused the U.S.-led coalition in Syria of having flattened Raqa with a Dresden-like bombing campaign and masking the destruction with a rush of humanitarian aid.
