Mena Today

Lebanon's Beirut airport authorities seized $2.5 million in cash destined for militant group Hezbollah concealed with a man arriving from Turkey, three sources said on Friday.

Tayyip Erdogan's long-held goal of ending Turkey's conflict with Kurdish militants is a step closer after their jailed chief's peace call, giving the president a potential political boost at home and a chance to resolve key regional security concerns.

Two Egyptian security sources said on Friday that the Israeli delegation in Cairo was trying to reach a deal to extend the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal for an additional 42 days.

The BBC issued a formal apology on Thursday for "serious errors" made during the production of a documentary on Gaza, after it emerged that the child narrator at the center of the story was the son of a former Hamas deputy minister of agriculture.

Iraq announced on Friday that it will officially declare the resumption of oil exports from the Kurdistan region in the coming hours, through the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) via the Turkish Ceyhan terminal, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and sign a critical minerals deal on Friday as Kyiv works to regain U.S. support to fight off the Russian invasion as Washington reverses its punitive policy towards Moscow.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that his government had good talks on Gaza and that he thought it was coming up with solutions to problems in the Middle East.

The Israeli military drastically underestimated the capabilities of Hamas before its attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, and "failed in its mission to protect Israeli civilians", a summary of an Israeli military investigation published on Thursday said.

Qatar is holding off providing Syria's new rulers with funds to increase public sector pay due to uncertainty over whether the transfers would breach U.S. sanctions, four sources said, a setback to efforts to revive the war-stricken economy.

Explosions killed 11 people and wounded 65 at a rally held by M23 rebels in the eastern Congo city of Bukavu on Thursday, the leader of the rebel alliance said, blaming President Felix Tshisekedi for the violence.

More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture or maltreatment at a site that was widely feared, according to a report to be published Thursday tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites. 

The jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, appealed on Thursday to his militant group to disarm and to dissolve itself.