Friends including Tony Blair joined with old political rivals Thursday in saluting Israel's Nobel laureate Shimon Peres and his dream of peace, on the first anniversary of his death.

Iraq and Turkey on Thursday stepped up the pressure on Iraqi Kurdistan over its planned independence referendum, as the governor of oil-rich Kirkuk province that decided to take part in the vote was sacked.

Gunmen and suicide car bombers on Thursday killed at least 74 people, including Iranians, near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

A Saudi pilot was killed in Yemen while providing air support for an operation against al-Qaida militants, a Saudi-led coalition backing the government said on Thursday.
The Saudi Royal Air Force plane crashed in the southern province of Abyan on Wednesday night "due to a technical failure," coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Maliki told the official Saudi Press Agency.

Iraq's parliament voted on Thursday to sack the governor of oil-rich Kirkuk over his decision for the northern province to vote in a Kurdish independence referendum opposed by Baghdad.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, now controls more than two-thirds of the Islamic State group's former Syrian stronghold Raqa, a monitor said Thursday.

Yemeni forces backed by the United Arab Emirates have driven Al-Qaeda militants from a southern district that is the birthplace of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, security sources said Thursday.
Wadea is located in Abyan province, which for months was a no-go zone for pro-government troops and where Al-Qaeda fighters fled after a similar offensive in the neighbouring province of Shabwa last month.

The UN agency for migration is trying to improve "terrible" conditions for migrants detained in Libya, and repatriate those willing and able to go home, its deputy head told AFP.

Authorities in Egypt have arrested a lawyer whose human rights group opposes enforced disappearances and is linked to one such case involving murdered Italian student Giulio Regeni, officials said Wednesday.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani will visit Turkey on Thursday to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his first visit abroad since the start of a diplomatic crisis with Saudi Arabia, Ankara said.
