The UN special envoy for Syria on Thursday voiced his growing concern at increased hostilities in the south of the country and warned of the alarming shortages faced by civilians.

In early July, as Taliban insurgents were seizing territory from government forces across Afghanistan, fighters from the group walked into the offices of Azizi Bank in the southern city of Kandahar and ordered nine women working there to leave. 

A Philippine court has dismissed a libel case against Maria Ressa, a lawyer said yesterday, one of several lawsuits filed against the journalist who says she has been targeted because of her news site’s critical reports on President Rodrigo Duterte.

Israel is to approve 2,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, defence sources said yesterday, despite opposition from dovish members of the governing coalition.

Sudan will hand longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court along with other officials wanted over the Darfur conflict, Foreign Minister Mariam al-Mahdi said yesterday.

Taliban fighters could isolate Afghanistan’s capital in 30 days and possibly take it over in 90, a US defence official told Reuters yesterday citing US intelligence, as militants took control of an eighth provincial Afghan capital. 

Saudi Arabia announced the arrest of 207 employees across about a dozen government ministries in the latest sweep by an anti-corruption body empowered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi yesterday told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that negotiations with world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal must guarantee Tehran’s “rights”.

The Taliban seized a sixth Afghan provincial capital yesterday following a weekend blitz across the north that saw urban centres fall in quick succession and the government struggle to keep the militants at bay.

Saudi Arabia will begin accepting vaccinated foreigners wanting to make the umrah pilgrimage, authorities said yesterday, a move that will boost an economy hit by the Covid pandemic.

Saudi Arabia will gradually begin receiving Umrah pilgrimage requests from abroad for vaccinated pilgrims starting Aug. 9 after about a year and a half of not receiving overseas worshippers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state news agency (SPA) reported early on Sunday.

Israel conducted overnight air strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza in retaliation for the launching of incendiary balloons from the Palestinian enclave that caused fires in southern Israel, the country’s military said early yesterday. 

Iran yesterday rejected Western allegations its drones were used in a deadly tanker attack, while accusing Israel of concocting the “scenario” in a bid to undermine the Islamic republic.

The Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah fired barrages of rockets towards Israeli forces on Friday, drawing retaliatory fire from Israel into south Lebanon, in a third day of cross-border salvoes amid wider regional tensions with Iran. 

Leaders of five Central Asian countries sounded the alarm over the spiral of war in neighbouring Afghanistan at a regional summit yesterday, as US-led forces withdraw from the country and the Taliban advances.

Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi yesterday said he will support “any diplomatic plans” to lift US sanctions but that foreign pressure will not make Tehran back down from its “rights”. 

Hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi will be sworn in as Iran's president on Thursday, with the Islamic Republic's clerical rulers face growing crises at home and abroad.

The Israeli air force said it carried out its first air strikes on neighbouring Lebanon in seven years Thursday following a second day of rocket fire across the border.

German police yesterday arrested a Syrian man for war crimes, accusing him of having fired a grenade into a crowd of civilians waiting for food and water from UN relief workers in Damascus in 2014.

The Taliban yesterday claimed responsibility for a huge bomb attack in Kabul targeting the defence minister, as the insurgents fought for control of a string of besieged cities across the country.