At least 43 people were killed and more than 240 wounded on Thursday in two suicide bomb blasts claimed by Islamic State in a crowded residential district in Beirut's southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged the 2003 invasion of Iraq played a part in the rise of the Islamic State militant group, and apologized for some mistakes in planning the war, in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
The overpowering stench of the rubbish piling up in Lebanon's streets has become a potent symbol of the political rot protesters blame not only for the garbage crisis but a gridlocked sectarian power system unable to meet citizens’ most basic needs, from electricity to water, health to education.
Iraq's former prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, on Tuesday denounced as worthless a parliamentary report which blamed him and others for the fall of Mosul to Islamic State last year and called for them to be referred to the judiciary.
Bahraini authorities have arrested several people in connection with Tuesday's deadly bombing and suspect the attack was a "foreign attempt" to harm the Gulf state's stability, local media reported on Wednesday.
The head of one of Iraq's fiercest Shi'ite militias called the U.S.-led coalition's campaign against Islamic State ineffective and accused Washington of lacking the will to uproot radical Sunni jihadis controlling large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Saudi-led coalition forces announced on Saturday a five-day humanitarian ceasefire would take effect in Yemen starting Sunday evening at the request of exiled president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
The United Nations envoy for Syria has voiced deep concern about civilians in the city of Zabadani, the focus of an offensive by the Syrian military and Lebanon's Hezbollah aimed at wresting control of the area from insurgents.
A year after declaring his caliphate, it is clear that the secret of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's success is the army and state he has built from the remnants of Saddam Hussein's military, and the allegiance he has won or coerced from alienated Sunni Muslims in Iraq, Syria, and beyond.
Islamic State militants have set up giant television screens in the Iraqi city of Ramadi and are using them to proclaim that they will seize more Iraqi territory after capturing the provincial capital last month, residents said.
Iraq's Shi'ite paramilitaries said on Tuesday they had taken charge of the campaign to drive Islamic State from the western province of Anbar, giving the operation an openly sectarian codename that could infuriate its Sunni population.
Shi'ite Muslim militiamen and Iraqi army forces launched a counter-offensive against Islamic State insurgents near Ramadi on Saturday, a militia spokesman said, aiming to reverse potentially devastating gains by the jihadi militants.
A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shi'ite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia during Friday prayers, residents said, and up to 30 people were reported to have been killed or wounded.
Iraqi forces said they fought off an overnight attack by Islamic State militants near the city of Ramadi, which the insurgents overran at the weekend in the most significant setback for the government in a year.
A Moroccan F-16 warplane that is part of the Saudi-led force carrying out air strikes in Yemen has gone missing, Morocco's military said on Monday, and Iran-allied Houthi rebels and Saudi forces traded heavy fire across the border.
Yemeni Houthi rebels called on the United Nations on Saturday to seek an end to Saudi Arabian air strikes against them that they described as blatant aggression against the country.
Arab air strikes and artillery fire rocked the southern Yemeni city of Aden overnight as combatants battled for control of the main airport in fighting described by residents as the worst in over a month of war.
Saudi Arabia has arrested 93 people suspected of belonging to the Islamic State militant group, including two people who planned a failed suicide car bombing against the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.
Iran's Arabic-language state TV network Al Alam said on Sunday its Twitter account had been hacked and a false report was posted that an Iran-allied rebel leader in Yemen had died.
The Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters has left Iraq after he was threatened on Facebook and denounced by a Shi'ite paramilitary group's satellite news channel in reaction to a Reuters report last week that detailed lynching and looting in the city of Tikrit.
