Mena Today

Longing to be reunited with her son, Ayten Elhaman was glued to the television all day as Turkey’s parliament debated and passed a law this week enabling Kurdish militants to return home under a peace process to end their decades-old insurgency.

A threat that Air Force One could be targeted by a shoulder-fired missile prompted the Secret Service to secretly move President Donald Trump onto an unmarked government jet during a trip to Turkey last month, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

Israeli troops clashed with Jewish settlers on Wednesday while trying to disperse them from a West Bank outpost they set up directly in front of Palestinian homes, and later withdrew from the area after failing to clear the settlers, witnesses said.

The status of the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla as Spanish territories is not up for discussion, Spanish officials said on Wednesday, after Morocco's justice minister reiterated Rabat's sovereignty claims over the cities.

Israel and Lebanon have agreed on Britain, Italy, Switzerland and Indonesia as potential contributors to a proposed mechanism that could see foreign troops deployed to Lebanon to verify Hezbollah's disarmament, people familiar with the matter said.

Iran and the United States remain at loggerheads over efforts to agree a permanent end to the war in the Gulf, according to a senior Iranian source who said there had been no progress in talks to revive the interim deal agreed in June and define a timeframe to implement it.

Bashar al-Assad's 24-year rule of Syria ended abruptly in December 2024 following a lightning advance by rebel forces who struck while the Russian and Iranian allies who had backed him through years of civil war were distracted by conflicts elsewhere.

Fifteen people were killed and 32 others were injured when a pickup truck carrying workers rolled over in Egypt's Ismailia Governorate, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that a deal reached with Syria on the future of Moscow's military bases in the country would boost ties between the nations, and a Syrian source said some Russian forces would still be stationed there under the agreement.    

Lebanon's parliament on Tuesday abolished the death penalty and replaced all existing death sentences with life imprisonment, the speaker's office said in a statement.

U.S. President Donald Trump accused Iran of being "devious negotiators" in an interview released late on Monday and described some of his current options in the war — "just bop along" and let Tehran fail economically or hit them "really, really hard."

Leaking crude oil from a tanker grounded off a nature reserve in Oman has created a slick covering almost 400 square kilometres, the country's government said on Monday.