Middle East Near You

The young mother was trying to get home with food for her two children when she says soldiers pulled her off a minibus in Ethiopia's Tigray region, claiming it...

When Syria's war forced Alaa Al-Jaleel to close his cat sanctuary in Aleppo in 2015 and head north to the opposition stronghold of Idlib, he took around 100 animals...

The Suez Canal, blocked by a giant container ship that ran aground on Tuesday, is the quickest sea route between Asia and Europe and about 15 per ent of...

Just 18 months have passed since mass protests against Lebanon's political class brought down one government, and nearly eight more months since a huge explosion destroyed the port of...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to secure a solid parliamentary majority in Israel's election, according to TV exit polls early today which predicted no clear winner. The right-wing bloc...

Saudi Arabia and Egypt have begun tackling thorny issues with Qatar to rebuild ties, easing an inter-Arab feud seen by the United States as benefiting only mutual enemy Iran,...

When Syrian teenager Bashir Abazed was arrested a decade ago for scrawling anti-government graffiti on his school wall, he never imagined an uprising would flare that would devastate his...

Mohammed Abu Rdan has known nothing but conflict throughout his short life. Born in rural Aleppo in 2011 when peaceful protests against President Bashar Al-Assad's government began, his childhood is anything...

Gaza rapper Abdulrahman Al-Shanti may only be 11 years old but his rhymes on war and hardship in the Palestinian enclave have reached thousands of people

Omar Hajajla may have a private gateway to his home in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but it is hardly a sign of luxury: it runs beneath an Israeli barrier...

It's a steamy November day in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, and the tourists tramping through the ancient temples of Luxor and Karnak are sweating. But the city's...

At the 2012 opening of Trump Towers in Istanbul, real estate mogul Donald Trump sang the praises of Tayyip Erdogan, telling a mostly Turkish audience that their leader, prime...

After hitting a dead-end in efforts to defuse the crisis sweeping Lebanon, Saad al-Hariri informed a top Hezbollah official on Monday he had no choice but to quit as...

Israelis head to the polls tomorrow for the second time in less than six months in an election that could see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu win a record fifth...

John Bolton's departure from the White House removes an obstacle to the possibility of US-Iranian nuclear talks, but the odds of such a dialogue leading anywhere remain low, current...

Economists and investment banks say Egypt's economic reforms have been a huge success. Zeinab doesn't think so. "Everything is expensive," said the elderly woman, walking through a market in...

A new locally-developed app helps Palestinian drivers in the occupied West Bank negotiate traffic at Israeli military checkpoints and uncover routes to towns mainstream providers often miss. Launched in...

Security forces detained Lotfy Ibrahim, a young construction worker, as he left a mosque near his home on the Nile Delta in the spring of 2015. When his family...

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a veteran of Algeria's war for independence who has ruled for two decades, announced on Monday he had reversed his decision to seek a fifth term...

Until last week the number one topic that Algerian engineer Mohamed Aissiou and his mates would discuss over coffee was soccer. Specifically, local star Riyad Mahrez and his English...

When plans for a summit between the European Union and the Arab League were first hatched last year, it was envisioned as the start of a new friendship across...

Among others trying to continue arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Spain is trying to go ahead with the sale of 400 bombs in order to protect a Saudi contract with a shipyard in the Andalusia region that would create 5,000 jobs

Some Saudis are treating Turkish allegations that prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in their country's consulate in Istanbul as fake news. Others see the alleged murder of Khashoggi,...

The battle for the western Yemeni port of Hudaydah could be an important milestone in the three-year civil war. But analysts say the conflict is so complex that even...

Iraq holds its first parliamentary election on Saturday since defeating Daesh, but few people expect its new leaders to deliver the stability and economic prosperity that have long been...

Benjamin Netanyahu is the dominant Israeli politician of his generation. On the domestic and international stage, no rival comes close to the veteran Likud Party leader known widely as...

An estimated 65 per cent of more than 1,700 female inmates in Jordan’s prisons are held under the 60-year-old law that allows the authorities to indefinitely incarcerate women considered to be at risk of being attacked or killed in the name of family honour