Mena Today

US Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and James Lankford (R-OK) introduced legislation Thursday that would authorize up to $1.2 billion in security assistance to Lebanon over five years, with part of the funding conditioned on Beirut's progress toward a state monopoly on arms and the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis launched ballistic missiles and drones at displacement camps and residential neighbourhoods in the city of Marib on Friday, killing two people and wounding 14, state news agency SABA reported, citing local authorities.

Iran said on Saturday that a deal with Oman on control of the Strait of Hormuz was close but would not be enough to free up the waterway, and the United Arab Emirates said Iran had hit another ship there.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met Saudi general intelligence chief Khalid al-Humaidan on Friday to discuss coordination over regional security developments, the prime minister's office said.

Spain's government said on Friday it would establish border controls for flights and ships from Italy from midnight on Saturday until September 7 in a dispute with the neighbouring country over irregular migration.

Lebanon and Israel have agreed a shortlist of countries that could send troops to verify the disarmament of Hezbollah under a U.S.-brokered agreement, a Lebanese official said on Friday, with the United States due to pick countries from the list.

The French consulate in Lebanon announced on X that non-biometric Lebanese passports are no longer accepted for Schengen visa applications at Beirut's TLS center, which handles visa requests for France and other consular services.

A bomb planted in a minibus wounded 14 people on the outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus on Thursday night, with some of the injuries so severe that they were taken for fatalities, an official said on Friday.

Saudi Arabia expects imminent coordinated attacks from Iraqi militias north of the Gulf state and from Yemen's Houthis from the south under the supervision of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a senior Saudi official said.

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed a joint defence agreement in Mecca on Friday, wedding Sunni Muslim U.S. allies alarmed at a regional conflagration that has brought Iranian missile fire onto Gulf oil exporters. 

A bomb planted in a minibus killed two people and wounded 14 others on the outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus on Thursday night, officials said.  

There is a specific brand of exhaustion that settles into the bones during a Gulf summer—a heavy, adhesive fatigue born from the endless negotiation between punishing outdoor heat and aggressively refrigerated interiors. It is an urban siege.