Humanitarian aid drops to besieged areas in Syria are not imminent and need regime approval, the United Nations said yesterday,

Saudi Arabia, which oversees the pilgrimage to Makkah, accused Iran of depriving its citizens of the religious duty after talks on

Militants from the so-called Islamic State have launch a dawn counter-attack as Iraqi government troops push into the city of Falluja.

The Iraqi army stormed to the southern edge of Falluja under US air support yesterday and captured a police station inside the city

Elite Iraqi troops were yesterday poised to assault one of the Islamic State group's most emblematic bastions, Fallujah, as the jihadists counterattacked in both Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

More than 50,000 people were trapped in Fallujah as an offensive to push the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (IS) group from the

Islamic State fighters capture territory from Syrian rebels near the Turkish border and inch closer to a town on a supply route for foreign-backed insurgents fighting the jihadists, a monitoring group said.

With Saudi Arabia's government announcing reforms aimed at moving the kingdom away from its dependence on oil, another source of income looks set to become a major contributor to the economy - religious tourism.

Satellite imagery appears to show extensive damage to an air base in Syria used by Russian forces following an attack by fighters from the Islamic State group, US intelligence company Stratfor said yesterday.

New satellite imagery appears to reveal extensive damage to a strategically significant airbase in central Syria used by Russian forces after an attack by so-called Islamic State (IS).

Islamic State (IS) is losing territory, its finances are being drained and the number of foreign fighters recruited has reportedly down to a trickle, dropped by as much as 90 percent from a high of 2,000 a month in the past year.

Twin bombings claimed by the Islamic State group hit Yemeni forces in Aden yesterday, killing at least 41 people in the latest of a spate of attacks in the southern city.

Egypt has sent a robot submarine to join the hunt for an EgyptAir plane which crashed in some of the deepest waters of the Mediterranean Sea with 66 people on board, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said yesterday.

One of the people on board the EgyptAir flight almost did not make the trip after losing his passport last week, his friends tell media in France.

Three bombings have killed at least 63 people and wounded more than 100 in Baghdad today, police and medical sources said, extending the deadliest spate of attacks in the Iraqi capital so far this year.

World powers said yesterday they supported the lifting of an arms embargo on Libya and were ready to supply weapons to the

US military officials are monitoring reports that Islamic State have declared a state of emergency in Raqqa.

Amid fierce fighting after the Taliban captured the northern Afghan city of Kunduz last year, US special forces advisers

The politically charged trial began yesterday of an Israeli soldier accused of shooting dead a wounded Palestinian assailant as he

For 1,000 years, Thonis-Heracleion was completely submerged. Fish made their homes among the rubble of mighty temples; hieroglyphs gathered algae. Gods and kings sat in stasis, powerless, their statues slowly withdrawing from the world, one inch of sand at a time.