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  • Iran fires at least 180 missiles into Israel as regionwide conflict grows

    JERUSALEM (AP) — Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel on Tuesday, the latest in a series of rapidly escalating attacks between Israel and Iran and its Arab allies that threatens to push the Middle East closer to a regionwide war.

  • An American bomb from WWII explodes at a Japanese airport, leaving a crater on the taxiway

    TOKYO (AP) — An unexploded U.S. bomb from World War II that had been buried at a Japanese airport exploded Wednesday, causing a large crater in a taxiway and the cancellation of more than 80 flights, Japanese officials said.

  • What calculations stand behind Tehran's massive missile strike on Israel?

    Some critics have cynically described Iran’s missile strike as an elaborate, expensive spectacle intended for public consumption. Others are worried this is the final nail in the coffin that will spark the region's biggest war in decades. But why did Tehran choose to escalate now?

  • Israel bars U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from country over response to Iran attack

    Israel Wednesday banned U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres from entering the country because in Israel's opinion he was not sufficiently unequivocal about condemning Iran's missile attack on Israel.

  • Exclusive-Gulf states sought to reassure Iran of their neutrality in Iran-Israel conflict, sources say

    Gulf Arab states sought to reassure Iran of their neutrality in the conflict between Tehran and Israel in meetings in Doha this week on the back of concerns that a wider escalation in violence could threaten their oil facilities, two sources told Reuters. Ministers from Gulf Arab states and Iran attending a meeting of Asian nations hosted by Qatar centred their conversations around de-escalation, the sources said. The Islamic Republic launched its largest ever assault on Israel on Tuesday in what it said was retaliation for Israel's assassination of senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and its operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

  • Exclusive-Iran's Khamenei warned Nasrallah of Israeli plot to kill him, sources say

    Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Hezbollah leader Syyed Hassan Nasrallah to flee Lebanon days before he was killed in an Israeli strike and is now deeply worried about Israeli infiltration of senior government ranks in Tehran, three Iranian sources said. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Hezbollah's booby-trapped pagers on Sept. 17, Khamenei sent a message with an envoy to beseech the Hezbollah secretary general to leave for Iran, citing intelligence reports that suggested Israel had operatives within Hezbollah and was planning to kill him, one of the sources, a senior Iranian official, told Reuters.

  • Yazidi woman freed from Gaza after decade in captivity

    A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq a decade ago was freed from Gaza this week in a secret operation months in the making that involved Israel, the United States and Iraq, officials said. The woman is a member of the ancient Yazidi religious minority mostly found in Iraq and Syria which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in an IS campaign in 2014 that the U.N. has said constituted genocide. She was freed after more than four months of efforts that involved several attempts that failed due to the difficult security situation resulting from Israel's military offensive in Gaza, Silwan Sinjaree, chief of staff of Iraq's foreign minister, told Reuters.

  • Israel presses forward on two fronts and reports 8 combat deaths as fears of a wider war mount

    BEIRUT (AP) — Israel pressed forward on two fronts Wednesday, pursuing a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah that left eight Israeli soldiers dead and conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children. As Israel vowed to retaliate for Iran’s ballistic missile attack a day earlier, the region braced for further escalation.

  • Iran calls on UN to prevent further escalation in Middle East tensions

    Iran's foreign ministry called on the United Nations Security Council to take "meaningful action" to prevent threats against regional peace and security, after Tehran launched a salvo of missiles against Israel on Tuesday. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said the assault was in retaliation for recent Israeli killings of militant leaders and aggression in Gaza and Lebanon. Lebanese Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah and Revolutionary Guards deputy Commander Abbas Nilforoushan were killed in Beirut last week.

  • Macron condemns Iran's attacks, mobilises French military in Middle East

    French President Emmanuel Macron has said he strongly condemns Iran's latest attacks on Israel, adding that France has mobilised military resources in the Middle East.In a statement released Wednesday, Macron reiterated France's demand that the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah cease its terrorist actions against Israel and its population. The French president also insited that Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity be reinstated in strict compliance with United Nations Security Council

  • UN calls Israel's ban on its top leader a political statement in long-running rift

    UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations on Wednesday called Israel’s ban on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres entering the country a political statement by its foreign minister and stressed that the world body’s contacts with Israel will continue “because they have to.”

  • 7 dead in suspected terror shooting, stabbing in Tel Aviv amid Iran missile attack

    At least seven people were killed and eight others injured in a stabbing and shooting attack Tuesday night in Tel Aviv, Israel, according to the Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. The two suspected terrorists started the killing on the city's light rail system and continued on foot before they were killed by the Municipal Security Patrol and citizens present using personal firearms, according to police. The incident took place on Yerushalayim Street in Tel Aviv.

  • Iranian president, visiting Qatar, aims to rally opposition to Israeli 'crimes'

    DUBAI (Reuters) -Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned of a strong response from Tehran to any further Israeli actions against it and sought to rally Asian countries to its side as he visited Qatar on Wednesday. Pezeshkian arrived in Qatar a day after Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, and Israel stepped up its war with Tehran's proxy Hezbollah by sending troops over the border into Lebanon.

  • Democratic senator worried Netanyahu trying to ‘influence’ US election

    Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says he’s worried Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be trying to influence the U.S. presidential election by showing little interest in striking a peace deal with Hamas and instead escalating the threat of a broader war in the Middle East by aggressively confronting Hezbollah in Lebanon. Murphy acknowledged that the…

  • What to know about Hezbollah's capabilities after its recent losses

    BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah has suffered some of the heaviest losses in its history over the past two weeks, chief among them the killing of its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an Israeli airstrike.

  • Middle East latest: Iran fires ballistic missiles at Israel, US calls it a severe escalation

    Iran has fired a barrage of missiles at Israel, sending Israelis diving into shelters but prompting celebrations across Iran. There was no immediate report of casualties in the attack late Tuesday.

  • Gazan buried as only known victim of Iranian barrage against Israel

    JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) -A 38-year-old Gazan, the only known fatality in Iran's missile attack against Israel, was buried on Wednesday. Sameh Khadr Hassan Al-Asali had been staying in a Palestinian security forces compound in the occupied West Bank when he was killed by falling missile debris during Tuesday's attack, which Israel said was largely thwarted by its air defence systems. Around 700 workers from Gaza have been staying in Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago.

  • Israel kills Hamas militant once jailed for role in West Bank lynchings

    CAIRO (Reuters) -Israel has killed Abdel-Aziz Salha, a West Bank Hamas militant who had been jailed for life for taking part in the lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000 but later deported to Gaza in a prisoner swap, Hamas media and medics said. Salha was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent inside Al-Aklouk School, which shelters displaced Palestinians, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip earlier on Thursday, medics said. The 2000 incident took place in Ramallah in the West Bank, where the reservists were seized at a Palestinian checkpoint, brought to a police station and set upon by a mob that choked and beat them to death.

  • Israel strikes Beirut suburb, Hezbollah keeps up cross-border fire

    BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel's military told residents of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately on Thursday as it pressed on with its cross-border incursion and struck Hezbollah targets in a suburb of Beirut. The latest warnings took the number of southern towns subject to evacuation calls to 70 and included the provincial capital Nabatieh, suggesting another Israeli military operation was imminent against the Iran-backed armed group. Hezbollah also carried out new strikes, targeting what it called Israel's "Sakhnin base" for military industries in Haifa Bay on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel with a salvo of rockets.

  • Tehran says G7 statement on Iran's missile attack on Israel is 'biased'

    DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran views the Group of Seven (G7) condemnation of its attack on Israel as "biased and irresponsible", Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Thursday. Iran launched more than 180 missiles at Israel on Tuesday in what it said was retaliation for the killings of militant leaders and aggression in Gaza and Lebanon.