Middle East | featured news

Iran said on Tuesday it had successfully tested medium-range missiles capable of hitting Israel as a response to threats of attack, the latest move in a war of nerves with the West.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday the latest EU sanctions on the sale of Iranian oil are "the strongest" measures yet imposed on the country.

An Afghan policeman shot dead three British soldiers at a checkpoint in southern Helmand province on Sunday, Afghan officials said, the latest in a chain of increasingly frequent rogue killings.

UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's top deputy, Nasser al-Qudwa, called on Syrian opposition groups on Monday to formulate a unified set of demands that would allow for better cooperation with the international community in searching for a solution to the political crisis in Syria.

A conference called by special envoy Kofi Annan to end the Syria crisis appeared on the brink of failure as it opened Saturday, with the U.S. and Russia still divided over a role for President Bashar Assad in a transition government....

A cargo vessel from Pakistan suspected to be carrying stowaways was boarded in the waters near Port Newark in New Jersey on Wednesday morning and escorted to a dock there by officers from the United States Coast Guard, the authorities said.

Foreign ministers from the global powers and Middle East countries will meet in Geneva on Saturday to work out a way to end the worsening conflict in Syria and bring about a political transition.

A surprise assault by Syrian insurgents on a Republican Guard base in Damascus, just a few miles from the presidential palace, elicited a furious military response on Tuesday, with government forces shelling surrounding neighborhoods in an escalation that brought combat in the Syrian conflict close to the heart of the capital.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday threatened a military response if Syrian forces approached the Turkish border, hardening the tone over Turkey’s downed warplane.

Turkey promised on Saturday to do "whatever necessary" in response to Syria's shooting-down of a Turkish fighter, but did not immediately contest an assertion by Damascus that the jet had been in its airspace at the time.