Mena Today

Bashar al-Assad confided in almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his reign collapsed. Instead, aides, officials and even relatives were deceived or kept in the dark, more than a dozen people with knowledge of the events told Reuters.

Turkey can step in to resolve disputes between Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, President Tayyip Erdogan told the head of Sudan's sovereign council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in a phone call on Friday, the Turkish presidency said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Friday to meet Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani for talks on the future of neighboring Syria.

French President Emmanuel Macron named Francois Bayrou as his fourth prime minister of 2024 on Friday, charging the veteran centrist with steering the country out of its second political crisis in the past six months.

Tens of thousands of Syrians, mostly Shi'ite Muslims, have fled to Lebanon since Sunni Muslim Islamists toppled Bashar al-Assad, fearing persecution despite assurances from the new rulers in Damascus that they will be safe, a Lebanese official said.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has directed the military to prepare for an extended stay throughout the winter in the buffer zone between Israel and Syria, located at the summit of the Golan Heights. Israel captured part of this strategically significant area during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that he discussed the imperative of Palestinian militant group Hamas' saying 'yes' to the Gaza ceasefire agreement in his talks with Turkey's President and Foreign Minister.

China's foreign minister Wang Yi said Beijing agreed with Egypt that both nations should promote peace and negotiations to achieve stability in the Middle East, according to a media pool report.

A fire broke out early on Friday at a private elderly care centre in the Jordanian capital Amman, killing six residents and critically injuring five more, Social Development Minister Wafa Bani Mustafa said.

Since civil war erupted in Sudan last year, dozens of cargo planes from the United Arab Emirates have landed at a small airstrip in Chad that some U.N. experts and diplomats suspect is being used to funnel arms across the border into the conflict, flight data and satellite images show.

Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin was in Damascus on Thursday, two sources with knowledge of the visit told Reuters, for what the Syrian information ministry said would be talks involving its new rebel leadership.

The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates has approved the launch of a new stablecoin, AE Coin, which will be pegged to the dirham.