Mena Today

An al Qaeda affiliate in West Africa's Sahel region has taken two Russian citizens hostage in Niger, according to a video released by the group on Friday.

The U.S. military will deploy additional fighter jets and Navy warships to the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Friday, as Washington seeks to bolster defenses following threats from Iran and its allies Hamas and Hezbollah.

The father of Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer at the centre of an Olympic row over whether athletes with Differences of Sexual Development (DSD) should compete as women, said she had honoured his family, calling attacks against her immoral.

Iranians turned out to mourn Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday, a day after he was assassinated in Iran's capital in an attack that has heightened fears of a direct conflict between Tehran and its arch-enemy Israel.

The head of Hamas' military wing, Mohammed Deif, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza last month, the Israeli military said on Thursday, a day after the group's political leader was assassinated in Teheran.

Qatar and Egypt, which have acted as mediators in faltering ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, suggested on Wednesday that the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh could further jeopardise efforts to secure a truce in Gaza.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran early on Wednesday morning, an attack that drew threats of revenge on Israel and fuelled further concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.

Khaled Meshaal, tipped to be the new Hamas leader, became known around the world in 1997 after Israeli agents injected him with poison in a botched assassination attempt on a street outside his office in the Jordanian capital Amman.

The body of Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr has been found in rubble in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut, two security sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran early on Wednesday, the Palestinian militant group said, drawing fears of wider escalation in a region shaken by Israel's war in Gaza and a worsening conflict in Lebanon. 

France recognises a plan for autonomy for the Western Sahara region under Moroccan sovereignty as the only way of resolving a long-running dispute over the territory, President Emmanuel Macron said in a letter on Tuesday.

Mali's northern Tuareg rebels said they had killed and injured dozens of soldiers and Wagner mercenaries in two days of fighting near the Algerian border, after the army said it had lost two soldiers but killed some 20 rebels.