DAMASCUS: US planes pounded Islamic State positions in Syria for a second day on Wednesday, but the strikes did not halt the fighters’ advance in a Kurdish area where fleeing refugees told of villages burned and captives beheaded. Syrian Kurds said Islamic State had responded to US attacks by int

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia's air force participated in US-led bombing strikes against the so-called Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria on Tuesday as part of global efforts to eliminate terrorism, an official source said. “The Saudi Royal Air Force participated in the military operations against IS i

ANKARA, Turkey –  Some 130,000 Kurdish refugees fleeing ISIS have crossed the border from Syria into Turkey in the past four days, Turkey's deputy prime minister said Monday as fighting raged close to Turkey's southern border. The minister, Numan Kurtulmus, warned that Turkey was facing "a refuge

KABUL: Afghanistan's election commission on Sunday has named Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai as the winner of the country's presidential election, but the commission did not release final vote figures. The commission's announcement came hours after Ghani Ahmadzai signed a power sharing agreement with oppon

RIYADH: ARAB NEWS Pilgrims arriving at the King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) are being screened, tested and given preventive medication against the Ebola virus. Fahd Al-Ghazwi, supervisor of the preventive center at the airport, told a local newspaper that a medical team wearing protecti

Three months after Afghanistan’s presidential election and two months after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry brokered an agreement to resolve the dispute that arose from it, the country’s new president has yet to take office. Announcement of the official winner keeps getting delayed. Afghanista

PARIS: French jets carried out their first air strike against IS in Iraq Friday, successfully destroying their target, President Francois Hollande announced, vowing that more operations would follow. “This morning at 9:40, our Rafale planes carried out a first strike against a logistics depot of

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of breaking the terms of a global pact on chemical weapons by unleashing chlorine gas this year. “We believe there is evidence of Assad’s use of chlorine, which when you use it — despite it not being on

Beirut: Isil fighters captured villages and besieged a Kurdish city in northern Syria near the border with Turkey on Thursday in a major assault that prompted a commander to appeal for military aid from other Kurds in the region. With the United States planning to expand military action against

ISLAMABAD: A murder case has been registered against Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his brother and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, three federal ministers and top police officials over the alleged killing of two persons during last month's clashes between the police and anti-government

ISLAMABAD: Angry Pakistani passengers have forced two lawmakers off a plane for delaying its departure by almost two hours. A video covering the drama was posted online. Irate passengers decided to take matters into their own hands this time — aiming a string of invective toward the country’s for

ROME: The number of hungry people in the world has fallen sharply over the past decade but 805 million, or one in nine of the global population, still do not have enough to eat, three UN food and agriculture agencies said on Tuesday. The number of chronically undernourished people dropped by more

Beijing: Taking a cue from an American TV programme, the Chinese city of Chongqing has created a smartphone sidewalk lane, seemingly offering a path for those too engrossed in messaging and tweeting to watch where they’re going. But the property manager says it’s intended to be ironic — to remi

GAZA CITY: As hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children returned to school in Gaza on Sunday, Azhar recited a poem eulogizing her father, killed by Israeli shelling in the enclave’s recent conflict. “Daddy, what can I tell you, if I say I love you it’s not enough,” the nine-year-old, who was

DONETSK: Heavy fighting erupted around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, piling further pressure on a precarious nine-day-old truce between the government and separatist fighters. Large clouds of thick black smoke billowed over the industrial city as the boom of sustai

CAIRO: Qatar has asked seven senior figures from Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to leave the country, the movement said on Saturday, following months of pressure on the Gulf Arab state from its neighbors to stop backing the Islamists. Ibrahim Munir, a senior Brotherhood official based in Lon

KHAN YUNIS: Fifty Palestinian families made homeless by Israeli bombing during the summer’s fierce offensive on the Gaza Strip were rehoused Saturday in mobile homes in the southern town of Khan Yunis. During the 50-day conflict, 9,800 homes were totally destroyed and another 8,000 left uninhabitab

BEIRUT: Syrian government air raids on a rebel-held area near Damascus killed 42 people, including seven children, a monitoring group said Friday. Thursday’s strikes were carried out in Douma, a satellite suburb northeast of the capital that has been under siege for more than a year. “The toll