Turkey is calling on all sides in the Ukraine crisis to respect an international pact on passage through the Turkish straits to the Black Sea, Defence Minister Hulusi Akar was cited as saying yesterday after Ankara closed access.

Seven people died and dozens more were injured when a 6.2-magnitude earthquake rocked Indonesia’s Sumatra island yesterday, with residents shuttling loved ones to safety as buildings crumbled around them.

Archaeologists have discovered a 7,000-year-old stone age site in a remote desert in Jordan, with structures which show humans were rounding up and hunting gazelles much earlier than previously thought.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi yesterday told gas exporters to avoid any “cruel” sanctions such as those imposed by the United States on Tehran, and his government said any revival of Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord with world powers must lift such curbs.

Israel on Monday named Khaled Kabub as its first Muslim judge to gain a permanent seat on the Supreme Court, the Jewish state's highest judicial authority, court authorities said.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said on Saturday the kingdom was looking to schedule a fifth round of direct talks with rival Iran despite a “lack of substantive progress” so far, and urged Tehran to change its behaviour in the region.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett yesterday said that Iran may “shortly” agree a new nuclear deal with major powers but warned it will be weaker than the original 2015 agreement.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Thursday for talks on reviving a two-state solution to the conflict, Abbas’s office said.

Israel’s military said its air defences fired at an unmanned aerial vehicle that had crossed into its airspace from Lebanon yesterday, the second such incident in as many days.

Kuwaiti women are angry after the military, having allowed female soldiers in combat roles, decided they need the permission of a male guardian and banned them from carrying weapons.

A job advert to recruit 30 female train drivers in Saudi Arabia has attracted 28,000 applicants, highlighting the scale of pent up demand as the conservative kingdom opens up more opportunities to women.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed rebels in Yemen yesterday destroyed a communications system used for drone attacks and located near the telecoms ministry in Sanaa, it said in a statement.

Iran yesterday said talks with world powers in Vienna to restore the 2015 nuclear deal are “complicated and difficult” but have not hit an impasse.

Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has called a White House order to unfreeze $3.5bn in Afghan assets held in the United States for families of 9/11 victims an atrocity against the Afghan people.

Hundreds of people in Sweida, a Druze-majority city in southwestern Syria, have taken to the streets for a fifth day to decry corruption and worsening living standards, according to activists.

Dozens of Yemeni pro-government fighters have been killed in a new offensive to take a rebel-held city, loyalist sources said yesterday, following a surge in violence including missile attacks on the United Arab Emirates.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali accused Joe Biden and Donald Trump of damaging the reputation of the United States in rare direct criticism of US

The United Nations is set to begin the restoration of a historic valley in the Palestinian Gaza Strip next month, hoping to transform it from a landfill and sewage dump into a vibrant nature reserve in a planned $66 million project.

Israeli and Palestinian public figures have drawn up a new proposal for a two-state confederation that they hope will offer a way forward after a decade-long stalemate in Mideast peace efforts.

Morocco was in shock yesterday after emergency crews found a five-year-old boy dead at the bottom of a well in a tragic end to a painstaking five-day rescue operation that gripped the nation and the world.