Middle East News

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan greets members of parliament from his ruling Justice and Development Party during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara on April 8, 2014.

The Western-allied Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council said Thursday the bloc has agreed on the mechanisms to implement a security pact, marking a possible first step toward bridging deep rifts among its six energy-rich states.

The U.S government says its criminal case against a former Blackwater security guard is in jeopardy as a June 11 trial looms on charges stemming from the shootings of dozens of Iraqi citizens in an incident in Baghdad nearly seven years ago.

More than 20 people, many of them health-care workers, have been reported infected with the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in two distinct clusters - one in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - likely involving human-to-human transmission since early last week.

Iran's state TV says a magnitude 5.3 earthquake has jolted a sparsely populated district in the south of the country.

Israeli soldiers leave after an operation near the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah October 22, 2013.

This bustling center of Palestinian life is just a 20-minute drive from Jerusalem, but for Israelis it might as well be on the other side of the world.

Activists say Waleed Abu al-Khair was taken into custody on Tuesday after attending a court hearing in Riyadh where he faces charges that include inciting public opinion.

A Lebanese security official says a longtime ally of former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi detained in Lebanon has been moved to a Beirut hospital after falling ill.

A combo picture of three Al-Manar TV journalists, cameraman Mohammed Mantash, left, reporter Hamza al-Haj Hassan, center, and technician Halim Allaw, right, who were killed while covering the battle between the Syrian government forces and rebels, in the Syrian town of Maaloula, Syria, Monday, April 14, 2014.

Philippine officials say a Filipino health worker who tested positive for the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus has arrived home from the United Arab Emirates .

In this Friday, April 11, 2014 photo, masked anti-government gunmen hold their weapons in combat position in Fallujah, 65 kilometers west of Baghdad, Iraq.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says Palestinian rioters hurled stones and firecrackers on Wednesday from atop the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

Syrian forces tried to seize rebel-held areas of Homs on Tuesday, with fighters weakened by defections and cut supply lines, in some of the fiercest fighting in the central city for months, activists said.

An Egyptian Islamic preacher's statements that "everybody was happy" when the World Trade Center was hit by airplanes can be heard by a jury sitting just blocks from the site of the Sept.

News agency WAM says Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif discussed bilateral relations and regional developments Tuesday.

Zeina Karam, who has reported on political upheaval, war and transformation in the Middle East for almost two decades, has been named as Beirut bureau chief for The Associated Press, leading coverage of Lebanon as well as the devastating conflict in Syria.

Masked gunmen abducted the Jordanian ambassador in the Libyan capital early Tuesday, officials said, the latest in a wave of abductions in the North African nation still plagued by lawlessness more than two years after the ouster of dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

The prime minister of the Hamas -ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday praised a shooting that killed an Israeli and wounded his wife and son as they drove through the West Bank the previous evening en route to a Passover Seder.

The United Nations and international human rights groups joined a growing call on Monday urging the Iranian government to call off the impending execution of a 26-year-old woman convicted of murder.