Turkish news channels have been dominated this week by a steady stream of black-and-white drone footage showing the destruction of Syrian regime targets in rebel-held Idlib.

International experts are questioning the scale of the new coronavirus epidemic in Iran, where the official death toll is second only to China and risks creating a regional epicenter of contagion.

As the United States and the Taliban ready to sign a deal aimed at eventually getting America out of Afghanistan, here are some landmark events in the two-decade conflict:

As the men wearing long black coats approached, Shmuel, a lapsed member of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, lowered his head to avoid being recognised. 

Abu Jabber has a plan to escape the Syrian regime's advance: he has built a ladder from rusty metal for him and his 11 children to climb over the Turkish border wall.

Algeria's year-old anti-government movement is among several to have rocked the Middle East and North Africa in the past year, in an echo of the region's 2011 revolts.

When Iraq's top Shiite cleric underwent surgery for a fractured bone last month, it sent shivers around the country and beyond. "May God heal Iraq," read a photo of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that circulated online.

Frantic supporters shared prayers. Anti-government protesters hung photos of the black-turbaned cleric with a long white beard and bushy eyebrows, declaring, "The hearts of the revolutionaries are with you." Al-Sistani's well-wishers included officials from both Iran and the United States, the bitter rivals for influence in Iraq.

On a crisp winter's day the snow glistens on the mountains above Tehran, but the mood is as heavy as the pall of pollution that often shrouds Iran's capital.

Impeached for abuse of power, President Donald Trump's acquittal by the Senate is just the latest escape for the real estate tycoon turned politician who has repeatedly defied the odds.

Once the throbbing heart of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, Maaret al-Numan is an eerie ghost town where few buildings have been spared by nine years of war.

Following a major ground offensive, the Syrian army captured the town in the northwestern province of Idlib on Wednesday, a key prize in its push to reconquer the country's last rebel enclave.