The United Arab Emirates has opened an embassy in Israel, housed in Tel Aviv's new stock exchange building, in the latest normalization move under a deal brokered by Washington last year. 

The United States has warned Egypt not to target rights campaigners after a prominent activist was indicted, saying the issue would be a factor in arms sales to the ally.

Shelling by Syrian regime forces Thursday killed nine civilians, including three children, in the Idlib region in the country's northwest, a war monitor reported.

The deaths came amid an uptick in violations of a ceasefire deal that was brokered by Turkey and Russia in March 2020 and had since largely held.

The Israeli army said Thursday it had arrested between 20 and 30 Palestinian students in the occupied West Bank it accused of being "terror operatives" of Islamist group Hamas. 

Populist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has warned he will hold the Iraqi government responsible if it fails to action over a devastating fire that killed at least 60 people in a Covid isolation unit.

When Covid-19 hit Tunisia hard last September, the germ of an idea was born. Too many patients were overwhelming the system, so why not take medical care directly to them?

Qatar said Tuesday that it has been given a preliminary green light by a U.N. body on a proposal to control its own airspace, months after resolving a rift with its neighbors.

Grief and anger gripped the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah after fire swept through a Covid isolation unit killing 64 people and wounding dozens more.

The devastating Monday evening blaze in the city's Al-Hussein Hospital, which medics said was fuelled by the explosion of oxygen canisters, was the second such fire in Iraq in three months. 

War-scarred Iraq is seeing thousands of new Covid cases a day but few people wear face masks and even fewer are vaccinated, sparking fears of an "epidemiological catastrophe".

Healthcare workers say they are battling not just the pandemic but also a widespread skepticism over vaccines, borne of misinformation and public mistrust in the state.

Israel said Sunday it would punish Palestinians for the practice of paying militants for attacks by freezing tax payments it collects for the Palestinian Authority.