Nearly 245,000 Lebanese living abroad have signed up to vote in next year’s parliamentary polls, Lebanon’s foreign ministry said yesterday, after it closed the window for registration.

A militant of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement yesterday opened fire in Jerusalem’s Old City, killing one person and wounding three before he was shot dead, Israeli officials, police and medics said.

Taliban begin paying salaries to govt employees

Tehran yesterday criticised as “illegitimate” a Western statement that assured Arab allies their security interests would be taken into account during talks aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal.

Thousands of protesters converged on Isfahan in central Iran yesterday to voice their anger after the city’s lifeblood river dried up due to drought and diversion.

Fifty migrant workers died in Qatar last year and over 500 were seriously injured, the UN’s International Labour Organization said Friday, as the Gulf nation readies for the 2022 World Cup.

Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to court for his graft trial yesterday, but judges granted a defence request to postpone highly anticipated testimony from his former spin doctor.

Khalifa Haftar, a major figure in the Libyan civil war who wields wide sway over the east of the country, announced on Tuesday he will run in a Dec. 24 presidential election that aims to help end a decade of conflict.

A recent Huthi rebel advance near Yemen’s lifeline port of Hodeida has displaced more than 6,000 people, the United Nations has said.

An Israeli rights group said yesterday that in 183 incidents of Jewish settler violence against Palestinians, Israeli forces did not intervene to protect Palestinians and at times actively joined the attacks.

The Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen yesterday said it has killed 80 Huthi rebels in the past 24 hours in strikes around the city of Marib. 

Israel is working for the release of an Israeli couple being held in Turkey, denying allegations carried by Turkish state media that the two were spies, the Israeli prime minister said.

Turkey yesterday rebuffed French President Emmanuel Macron’s call on foreign powers to remove their forces from Libya as part of efforts turn on a page on a decade of strife.

Sudanese security forces yesterday shot dead at least one protester in a crackdown on anti-coup demonstrations, medics said, after the military tightened its grip by forming a new ruling council.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting rebels in Yemen yesterday said that its air strikes over the previous 24 hours killed 186 Huthi fighters in the battleground provinces of Marib and Al-Bayda.

Twenty-one people survived being buried under heavy debris when a two-storey building collapsed in eastern Turkey, the government said, with no fatalities reported as search operations ended early yesterday.

The Taliban appointed 44 of its members to key roles including provincial governors and police chiefs on Sunday, a key step in shoring up its governance as the country grapples with growing security and economic problems.

The mobile phones of six Palestinian rights workers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were hacked using Israeli technology firm NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, Amnesty International and internet security watchdog Citizen Lab said yesterday.

A drone attack that targeted the Iraqi prime minister on Sunday was carried out by at least one Iranian-backed militia group, Iraqi security officials and sources close to the militias said.

Kuwait's government on Monday submitted its resignation to the ruling emir, state news agency KUNA reported, a move that could help end a standoff with opposition lawmakers that has hindered fiscal reform.