Latest Middle East News
Middle East latest: Syrians celebrate Assad's fall as US seeks a peaceful political transition
Thousands of Syrians gathered in Damascus’ main square and a historic mosque for the first Muslim Friday prayers since former President Bashar Assad was overthrown, a major symbolic moment for the country’s dramatic change of power. The rebels are now working to establish security and start a...
US military flies American released from Syrian prison to Jordan, officials say
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military has transported out of Syria an American who had disappeared seven months ago into former President Bashar Assad’s notorious prison system and was among the thousands released this week by rebels, U.S. officials said Friday. Travis Timmerman,...
Middle East latest: Israeli strikes in Gaza kill more than 50 people, including kids
An Israeli airstrike flattened a multistory building in central Gaza, killing at least 25 people and wounding dozens more, according to Palestinian medical officials, after strikes Thursday across the Gaza Strip killed at least 28 others. The latest deadly strike hit the urban...
Biden administration makes final diplomatic push for stability across a turbulent Mideast
AQABA, Jordan (AP) — Top U.S. officials were in the Middle East on Thursday, pushing for stability in Syria and an end to Israel’s 14-month war in the Gaza Strip in a last-ditch diplomatic push by the outgoing Biden administration before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in a few weeks....
America's closest ally in Syria is losing ground as a new order takes shape
The jihadi rebels who toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad say they want to build a unified, inclusive country. But after nearly 14 years of civil war, putting that ideal into practice will not be easy. For Syria’s Kurdish minority, America’s closest ally in the country, the...
The Trump and Biden teams insist they're working hand in glove on foreign crises
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump doesn't think much of Joe Biden's foreign policy record. The Republican president-elect frequently casts the outgoing Democratic president as a feckless leader who shredded American credibility around the world during his four-year term. But a funny...
Secretary of State Blinken is returning to the Mideast in his latest diplomatic foray
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken is returning to the Middle East this week on his 12th visit since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last year but his first since the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The upheaval in Syria has sparked new fears of instability in a region...
These Palestinians disappeared after encounters with Israeli troops in Gaza
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Reem Ajour says she last saw her husband and then 4-year-old daughter in March, when Israeli soldiers raided a family home in northern Gaza. She is haunted by those chaotic last moments, when the soldiers ordered her to go – to leave behind Talal and Masaa, both...
AP photos in 2024 show a Middle East riven by wars, but also moments of grace
An Israeli bomb hangs suspended in air, caught in a split-second image of a suburb in Beirut before it slams into an apartment building, passersby already bracing for the explosion. An Israeli woman grieves, the deep lines of wrinkles stark as she thinks of a man killed in Hamas’...
Middle East latest: Israel bombs hundreds of sites across Syria as army pushes into border zone
Israel said Tuesday it had bombed more than 350 military sites in Syria during the previous 48 hours, targeting “most of the strategic weapons stockpiles” in the country. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the wave of airstrikes in neighboring Syria was necessary to keep the weapons...
