All sides in Yemen’s long conflict yesterday offered support for the United Nations’ call for a ceasefire to protect civilians from the coronavirus pandemic.

Two rockets slammed into the Iraqi capital’s high-security Green Zone early yesterday, hours before US-led forces were set to pull out of a second base in the country.

Libya has reported its first case of the novel coronavirus, a particular source of concern in the North African country where civil war has badly degraded the public healthcare system.

Gunmen and suicide bombers raided a Sikh religious complex in the Afghan capital of Kabul yesterday, killing 25 people before security forces killed all of the attackers, the government said.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah showed no sign of ending their bitter feud yesterday, even after it cost the impoverished nation $1 billion in US aid -- with yet more on the line.

The UN rights chief yesterday called for any sanctions imposed on countries like Iran facing the new coronavirus pandemic to be “urgently re-evaluated” to avoid pushing strained medical systems into collapse.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN refugee agency, airlifts more than four tonnes of medical aid items, including supplies to support the Covid-19 response in Iran.

Saudi Arabia imposes a nationwide curfew starting after reporting a jump of almost a quarter in coronavirus cases, while the United Arab Emirates will suspend all passenger and transit flights to and from the country.

Iran’s death toll from the coronavirus outbreak rises by more than 100 to 1,556 and the total number of people infected now exceeds 20,000, a health ministry official says.

At least two dozen Afghan security forces were killed yesterday in an insider attack on their base in southern Afghanistan, officials told AFP, as fighting raged in the war-weary country while efforts to start talks with the Taliban stalled.

Qatar has temporarily suspended entry for people from Bangladesh and 13 other countries as a preventive measure due to the spread of coronavirus worldwide.

Saudi Arabia imposed a temporary lockdown on its eastern oil-producing province of Qatif, home to most of its 15 coronavirus infections, and suspended schools and universities nationwide.

UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths calls for an immediate end to military action by Yemen’s warring parties as renewed violence between the Houthi movement and a Saudi-led coalition threatens peace efforts.

Saudi authorities have detained three princes including King Salman's brother and nephew on charges of plotting a coup, the US media report, signalling a further consolidation of power by the kingdom's de facto ruler.

At least 27 people are killed in an attack on a political rally in Kabul, officials say, in the deadliest assault in Afghanistan since the US signed a withdrawal deal with the Taliban.

In a field dotted with olive trees in embattled northwestern Syria, Shamseddeen Darra steps down into the gloomy underground shelter he and his family now call home.

Saudi Arabia suspends foreigners' entry for the Umrah pilgrimage and tourism from countries where the new coronavirus has spread, as a growing number of cases outside China deepened fears of a pandemic.

Western European powers stepped up efforts yesterday to try to save a 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions -- on life support since a 2018 decision by the US to withdraw and reimpose sanctions.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday vowed Turkey would not take the “smallest step back” in an escalating stand-off with Damascus and Russia over the northern Syrian region of Idlib.

Egypt held a military funeral yesterday for its former president Hosni Mubarak, bestowing the state’s final rehabilitation on the man who ruled for 30 years until he was ousted in disgrace in a 2011 popular uprising.