Princess Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum, daughter of Dubai’s ruler, is at home and living with her family – and has met with Ireland’s former president Mary Robinson, according to United Arab Emirates officials. Rights groups had called on the UAE to disclose the whereabouts and condition of Sheikha Latifa, following reports in the international […]

A densely-populated country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel is the only state in the world with a majority Jewish population. It has been locked in conflict with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours over ownership of land considered holy by many Jews, Christians and Muslims since its creation in 1948. The […]

US president says leaders discussed ‘slow and highly coordinated’ withdrawal of US troops and ISIL in phone call. US President Donald Trump has said his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, informed him he will “eradicate whatever is left of Isis in Syria”. In a tweet late on Sunday, Trump said that Erdogan “is a man who […]

Turkey is massing troops near a town in northern Syria held by a US-backed and Kurdish-led force, a war monitor has said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed Turkish reinforcements have been sent to the front line near Manbij, where US troops have been based. It said 50 vehicles crossed into Syria – carrying […]

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought on Sunday (Dec 23) to calm domestic concerns over United States President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria, saying his country will still act against Iran there. Mr Trump said last week that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group had been defeated and […]

Israel, Turkey in new war of words on social media after a year of tense relations over multiple issues. Turkey has hit out at Israel’s “lawless occupation” of Palestinian territory after the Israeli prime minister accused Turkey of “massacres” against Kurds in a new war of words. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu labelled Benjamin Netanyahu […]

A close Hezbollah ally, Speaker Nabih Berri says his country’s request for tunnel coordinates went unanswered. Lebanon’s parliament speaker said Israel provided no evidence of the existence of cross-border attack tunnels, a day after it launched a military operation to “neutralise” them. Israel accused Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement of digging across the frontier. It said the tunnels did […]

A court in Egypt has acquitted at retrial 43 employees of non-governmental organisations accused of illegally receiving foreign funding. In 2013, three Egyptian workers, an American and a German were sentenced to two years in prison. However, they avoided spending time in jail. Eleven others got suspended sentences, while the rest were tried in absentia. […]

A US-backed alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters is closing in on the last pocket of territory in eastern Syria controlled by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS). Four years ago, IS militants overran large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, proclaimed the creation of a “caliphate”, and imposed their brutal rule on almost […]

DOHA, Qatar — For signs of how Qatar has adapted to the blockade imposed by its neighbors, you need to go no further than the Al Meera grocery in a strip mall across from a mosque, in a residential part of the capital. Shelves where local products were once rare now hold Qatari milk, Qatari […]