Saudi Arabia used an attack on its embassy in Tehran as a pretext to fuel tensions, Iran's foreign ministry says in response to Riyadh's severing of relations.

Bahrain and Sudan both severe relations with Iran, and the UAE has downgraded its diplomatic team. after the Saudi embassy in Tehran is attacked amid a row over the execution of a Shia Muslim cleric.

A Saudi Arabian man is shot dead in the kingdom's Eastern Province when security officers came under fire from an unidentified source, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reports.

Saudi Arabia cuts ties with Iran, responding to the storming of its embassy in Tehran in an escalating row between the rival Middle East powers over Riyadh's execution of a Shia Muslim cleric.

Saudi Arabia executes 47 for terrorism, mostly suspected al-Qaeda members but also a prominent Shia Muslim cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, Interior Ministry said in a statement broadcast on state television.

Two people die and seven others are injured after a gunman opened fire with an automatic rifle at a bar in Tel Aviv, Israeli police say.

Fire engulfed a 63-storey skyscraper in downtown Dubai, but there appears to be no injuries, a civil defence official says.

Iran's navy conducted rocket tests last week near US warships and other commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, the American military has said.

The Iraqi army, emboldened by the recent recapturing of the city of Ramadi from the Islamic State, is now eyeing another IS stronghold: Fallujah.

Three months of Russian air strikes in Syria have killed more than 2,300 people, a third of them civilians, a monitoring group said yesterday. Russia began

The United States continues to spy on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's communications despite promising to curtail the hacking of its allies, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Contacted by AFP, the White House did not deny the report, which cites several serving and former US officials, but stressed the importance of its ongoing close ties with Israel.

Nasser al-Bahri - Osama Bin Laden's former bodyguard - has died after a long illness, medical sources in Yemen have told the BBC. They said Bahri, a Yemeni

A rare UN-backed deal between Syria's warring sides saw hundreds of fighters and civilians evacuate three towns yesterday, as bomb blasts in the regime-held city of Homs killed at least 14 people. President Bashar al-Assad's regime has agreed to several ceasefires with rebel groups in the past but yesterday's evacuation plan was one of the most elaborate in the nearly five-year war.

Islamic State has set up departments to handle "war spoils," including slaves, and the exploitation of natural resources such as oil, creating the trappings of government that enable it to manage large swaths of Syria and Iraq and other areas.

A man tried to stab an Israeli police officer yesterday near Jerusalem's Old City and was killed, a police spokeswoman said. On Friday, Israeli border guards shot

Fierce clashes in northern Syria between regime loyalists and rebels including al-Qaeda fighters have left more than 70 dead, a monitoring group said yesterday.

Iraqi forces yesterday clashed with diehard jihadists from the Islamic State group defending the former government complex in the heart of the city of Ramadi.

Zahran Alloush, head of the powerful Jaish al-Islam Syrian rebel group, is killed east of Damascus, a monitoring group and Syria's opposition say.

Israeli forces killed four Palestinian assailants in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank yesterday, the army said, as a 12-week surge in street violence showed no sign of abating.

At least 18 migrants drowned yesterday when their overcrowded boat sank in the Aegean Sea on the way to the Greek island of Lesbos in the latest tragedy involving refugees seeking to enter Europe.