Air strikes by Syrian government and Russian forces killed at least 20 people in rebel-held northwestern Syria on Saturday, activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The number of deaths in an attack on a key protest site in the Iraqi capital Baghdad has risen to at least 16, witnesses said on Saturday, a day after the incident.

Israel detained four Palestinian journalists in Jerusalem yesterday for several hours over “illegal activity” connected with the Palestinian Authority, a police spokesman said.

Iraq's top cleric said Friday he was not taking part in talks on the country's new premier, as his supporters joined apprehensive youths still protesting in the capital despite widening intimidation campaigns.

Businessman Samir Khatib looks set to be nominated as Lebanon’s next prime minister when consultations with lawmakers to name a premier are held on Monday, political sources said yesterday.

Palestinian journalist Amjad Yaghi was just nine years old when his mother left the Gaza Strip on what should have been a short trip to Egypt for medical treatment. But until a joyful reunion this week, they did not see each other again for 20 years.

At least two people were killed yesterday by a car bombing in a town controlled by the Turkish forces and allied rebels in northeastern Syria, a rebel spokesman said. The bombing, the latest in a series of attacks in northeastern Syria

Iraqi politicians and their regional allies gathered in Baghdad yesterday to discuss how to resolve two months of protests that brought down the government, as violence hit southern cities.

Twenty-three people were killed and more than 130 injured when a fire broke out after a gas tanker exploded while unloading at a ceramics factory in the Sudanese capital Khartoum yesterday, the government said.

Iraq’s rival parties were negotiating the contours of a new government yesterday, after the previous cabinet was brought down by a two-month protest movement insisting on even more deep-rooted change.

Air strikes killed 19 civilians yesterday in Syria’s last major opposition bastion, the site of the deadliest clashes between regime forces and armed groups since an August ceasefire came into force, a monitoring group said.

Regime air strikes Monday killed 10 civilians in Syria's last major opposition bastion, where deadly clashes between regime forces and armed groups have escalated