Middle East

Beirut (dpa) – Thousands of people besieged by Syrian government forces and rebels began their exodus from four Syrian enclaves on Friday under a new evacuation deal coordinated by Iran and Qatar. Sixty buses have left rebel-held Sunni towns of Madaya and al-Zabadani near the border with Lebanon, while 45 left the pro-regime Shiite villages

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist who engineered the country’s landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, registered on Friday to run for a second four-year term in the May election, state television reported. “Once again, I am here for Iran, for Islam, for freedom and for more stability in this country. I am urging

Tel Aviv (dpa) – Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has condemned a deadly knife attack on a British national in Jerusalem on Good Friday. “Terror will never destroy our lives here,” Rivlin said. The attack came as thousands of Christian and Jewish pilgrims thronged Jerusalem’s Old City to commemorate Easter and Passover. An Israeli-Arab man was

There are just two days to go until Turkey goes to the polls in a referendum that could give sweeping new powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He wants to replace Turkey’s parliamentary system with an executive presidency. It would mark the biggest change in Turkey’s political system in the nation’s modern history. After a