Algeria's newly elected President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has chaired a rare meeting of the country's top security body to discuss contingency plans for a threatened Turkish military intervention in neighboring Libya.

Iraqis were divided Friday by their president's threat to resign rather than accept a pro-Iran coalition's candidate for premier, with some saying it was unconstitutional but others praising his civic-mindedness.

More than 235,000 people have fled the Idlib region over the past two weeks, the UN said Friday, amid heightened regime and Russian attacks on Syria's last major opposition bastion. 

Japan will send a military vessel and two patrol planes to help protect waterways in the Middle East but will not join a US-led coalition in the region, the government said Friday.

Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told supporters Friday he would win a March general election after scoring a landslide victory in the leadership primary of his right-wing Likud party.

Israel's longest-serving premier, who faces a corruption indictment as well as a third general election in 12 months, was expected to beat rival Gideon Saar in the leadership primary.

An air strike Thursday on a shopping area during rush hour near Libya's capital killed at least two civilians and wounded 20 others, a local official said.

Libya's U.N.-recognized unity government said Thursday it may officially seek Turkish military support in the face of a bid by the country's eastern based strongman to seize Tripoli.

A Moroccan YouTuber was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for "insulting the king" in a video broadcast on social networks, his lawyer said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday called for the governments in Moscow, Damascus and Tehran to stop the violence in Syria's rebel-held province of Idlib.

"Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing, thousands" of civilians in the northwestern province, Trump tweeted, adding: "Don't do it!"

Iraq's president said Thursday he was "ready to resign" rather than put forward the candidate of a pro-Iranian coalition for the post of prime minister, deepening the country's political crisis.