Middle East | featured news

The U.N. refugee agency says the number of Syrian refugees seeking its help now tops a quarter-million. Agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says 253,106 people have registered or are awaiting registration as Syrian refugees.

The United States handed control of the controversial giant Bagram jail and its 3,000 suspected Taliban inmates to Afghan authorities on Monday, amid concerns the transfer could leave prisoners vulnerable to further rights abuses.

A look at the deadliest attacks in Iraq since the withdrawal of U.S. troops on Dec. 18, 2011: - Sept. 9: Insurgents kill at least 82 people in a wave of attacks, gunning down soldiers at an army post and bombing police recruits waiting in line to apply for jobs.

Attaf Abu Ali, who drives a taxi van, had a hand-lettered sign on his vehicle Thursday that said: “Car for sale, with driver.” “I can’t live off of this,” Abu Ali said of his work, ticking off a list of operating expenses, the most onerous among them the rising price of diesel fuel.

President Obama, seeking to quell a storm of criticism from Republicans and pro-Israel groups, directed the Democratic Party on Wednesday to amend its platform to restore language declaring Jerusalem the Israeli capital.

A former Navy SEAL's insider account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden contains classified information, the Pentagon said Tuesday, and the admiral who heads the Naval Special Warfare Command said details in the book may provide enemies with dangerous insight into secretive U.S. operations.

A militant who fought alongside Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and is now the leader of a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda in South Yemen has struck a deal with the United States and Saudi Arabia to send 5,000 Al-Qaeda fighters into Syria according to reports out of the Middle East.

Iran will hold a large-scale military drill involving all its air defense systems next month, an Iranian commander was quoted as saying on Saturday, one of a number of military simulations it has carried out this year.

An adolescent boy and a young girl have been beheaded in two separate incidents in Afghanistan, local officials and police said on Friday, in the latest brazen attacks that have raised fresh questions about a splintering Taliban.

Our expert panel gauges the odds that the United States or Israel will strike the Islamic Republic in the next year. The probability of conflict with Iran is now at 40 percent, according to The Atlantic's Iran War Dial.