A suicide bomber struck on Monday inside a mosque in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least 27 people and wounding as many as 147 worshippers, officials said. Most of the...More
Seven people have been killed after air strikes destroyed a convoy of trucks carrying arms into eastern Syria from Iraq , a war monitor said on Monday. The seven were "truck drivers and their...More
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken kicked off a Middle East trip in Cairo on Monday focussed on urging calm amid an escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. Washington's top...More
Israeli jets struck Gaza overnight on Friday in retaliation for two rockets fired by Palestinian militants, further escalating tensions after one of the worst days of violence in the occupied West...More
The IMF will send a team to Pakistan next week to discuss reviving a desperately needed bailout programme , with a foreign exchange crisis bringing imports almost to a standstill. The South Asian...More
At a packed festival in central Jakarta, hijab-clad sexagenarian singer Rien Djamain bursts into an upbeat track about nuclear destruction to a crowd of thousands, mostly young Indonesians . Behind...More
Tunisians are to vote again on Sunday in elections for a parliament stripped of its powers, the final pillar of President Kais Saied's remake of politics in the birthplace of the Arab Spring. The...More
The Lebanese judge investigating the deadly 2020 Beirut port blast has resumed his work, a judicial source said, after a 13-month suspension due to political pressure. "Judge Tarek Bitar has decided...More
The national power grid was restored in Pakistan , the energy minister said on Tuesday, a day after a nationwide breakdown left most of the country's 220 million people without electricity and caused...More
Sally Azar (26) studied theology in Lebanon and then in Gottingen and Hermannsburg in Germany, and was most recently a pastor in Berlin for two years. Bishop Sani Ibrahim Azar, her father, who has...More
The regulations, which have faced waves of condemnation from the European Union and United States , have also been clouded by uncertainty. Israel has said the rules, which came into force in October...More
Protests in Stockholm on Saturday against Turkey and Sweden's bid to join NATO , including the burning of a copy of the Koran , sharply heightened tensions with Turkey at a time when the Nordic...More
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed a senior cabinet member with a criminal record on Sunday, complying with a Supreme Court ruling even as he pursues contested judicial reforms that...More
Turkey cancelled a visit by Sweden's defence minister to Ankara on Saturday in response to a protest planned in Stockholm at which a copy of the Koran was to be burned. "Swedish Defence Minister Pal...More
Transgender Indonesian woman Chika Ananda Putrie wakes every morning in her decrepit rented room in a Jakarta slum, worried for her safety because of her gender identity. She saw some of her worst...More
Tens of thousands of Israelis joined demonstrations on Saturday against judicial reform plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government that protesters say will threaten democratic checks...More
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday signalled that he intended to bring the next general election forward by one month to 14 May. The announcement sets the stage for what some...More
A son of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been freed after serving more than seven years of a 10-year jail sentence for fraud, Iranian media reported on Wednesday. Mehdi Hashemi...More
Saudi Arabia is working to reduce its reliance on oil exports, Economy Minister Faisal Al-Ibrahim said Wednesday, as the Middle East powerhouse sent one of the largest delegations to the Davos summit...More
Pro-Kurdish activists in Stockholm who hanged an effigy of Turkey's president, further impeding Sweden's bid to join NATO, say their stunt aimed to draw attention to Ankara's "dictatorial" regime...More
Gunmen shot dead an Afghan former lawmaker and one of her bodyguards in the capital Kabul in a night-time attack at her home, police said on Sunday. Mursal Nabizada had been a member of parliament in...More
Five Indonesian men charged with negligence leading to one of the worst stadium disasters in football history appeared in court by video link on Monday as their trial began. The stampede in October...More
An Egyptian court on Sunday handed down life prison sentences to 38 people, including a self-exiled businessman whose social media posts helped to spark anti-government protests. Public protests are...More
Tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated on Saturday against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial reform plans, with organisers accusing him of undermining democratic rule weeks after his...More
Iran has executed British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari, who once served as its deputy defence minister, its judiciary said, defying calls from London and Washington for his release after he was...More
Huge crowds swarmed the streets of Bangladeshi cities on Wednesday to demand Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's resignation and fresh elections, with public anger mounting over rising food and fuel costs...More
Lebanese Shia politician Hussein al-Husseini, a former parliament speaker who was an architect of the peace agreement ending the 1975–90 civil war, died on Wednesday aged 86. Husseini ( pictured...More
German police acting on a tip-off from US security officials said earlier this week they had found no evidence yet of a planned bio-weapons attack during searches of properties linked to two Iranian...More
Pakistan 's Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said on Wednesday that several countries and some of the world's institutions have pledged $9.7 billion to help his country rebuild from the summer's...More
Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Wednesday admitted serious human rights violations had occurred across the country in recent decades and vowed to compensate victims and prevent such abuses from...More
Pope Francis on Monday broke his silence on the nationwide protests convulsing Iran , denouncing the recourse to the death penalty there and seemingly legitimising the rallies as demonstrations "...More
Public anger has been growing for months in Egypt over a severe dollar crunch and soaring food prices. But for many, a money-saving tip from a state body has been the last straw. As families have...More
The United Arab Emirates will begin teaching about the Holocaust in history classes in primary and secondary schools across the country, the country's embassy in the US says. The embassy provided no...More
About 2,700 people took to the streets in the German city of Hamburg to rally in solidarity with Iranian anti-government demonstrators who have been protesting for months despite a brutal crackdown...More
A tip-off from US security officials prompted police in Germany to arrest two Iranian brothers suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated bio-weapon attack, prosecutors said on Sunday. The brothers...More
Several thousand people took to the streets in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's new government, the country's most right-wing ever. The demonstrators...More
The UN rights chief called on Saturday on the transitional authorities in jihadist -hit Burkina Faso to swiftly and transparently probe the killing of 28 people whose bodies were found last weekend...More
World-renowned conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim (pictured above) said on Friday that he was stepping down as general musical director of Berlin's State Opera due to deteriorating health,...More
The Taliban administration has criticised Prince Harry after the British royal said in his memoir that he had killed 25 people in Afghanistan when serving as a military helicopter pilot, describing...More
The Israeli police on Friday arrested two teenagers who they said vandalised over two dozen Christian graves in a historic Jerusalem cemetery earlier this week. The graves of Christian figures at the...More
The Iranian authorities have shut down a French institute in Tehran in reaction to caricatures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured above) published by the French satirical magazine...More
Iranian authorities released star actor Taraneh Alidoosti on bail on Wednesday after holding her for almost three weeks over her support for the protest movement , her lawyer said. Alidoosti is one...More
The German government criticised a visit by Israel's newly appointed national security minister, far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, to a contested religious site in Jerusalem. Ben-Gvir, a member...More
Egypt announced on Monday the recovery of a sarcophagus lid dating back nearly 2,700 years that it said had been smuggled out and put on display at a museum in the United States . Egyptian Foreign...More
Israeli President Isaac Herzog thanked Morocco's King Mohammed VI for his country's provision of "safe haven" for Jews during the Holocaust, in a missive seen by AFP in late December. The letter –...More
Israel's extreme-right firebrand Itamar Ben-Gvir visited Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Tuesday for the first time since becoming a minister, his spokesman said, enraging Palestinians who see...More
Pakistan's political and military leadership on Monday vowed that no nation will be allowed to shelter militants who stage attacks against the country – an apparent reference to neighbouring...More
Two Iranian teenagers face the death penalty after being sentenced to be hanged over involvement in protests that have rocked the Islamic republic for months , a rights group said on Monday. Two men...More
Israel's military fired missiles towards the international airport of Syria's capital early on Monday, putting it out of service and killing two soldiers and wounding two others, the Syrian army said...More
Two children were killed and five other civilians wounded in a blast in a village in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday, a day after assailants sprayed bullets toward a row of homes, leaving at...More
Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group has handed over a man suspected of killing an Irish United Nations peacekeeper earlier this month , a security official told AFP on Sunday. Private Sean Rooney, 23...More
France charged a suspected gunman on Monday with last week's killing of three Kurds in Paris, as hundreds of people marched in the French capital to pay tribute to the victims. The 69-year-old...More
Since seizing power in mid-2021, the Taliban have continued to restrict the rights of Afghan women and girls. At the end of 2022, they banned women from attending higher education. By Nele Jensch