Iraqi forces yesterday piled pressure on the Islamic State group around Mosul, moving closer to cutting off the militants’ escape route west to Syria and thrusting deeper into the east of the city.

Palestinian women march on a street demonstration and carrying signs reading in Arabic ‘Upright, walk’ (centre), ‘Restore your youth by walking’ (left), and ‘Let’s walk’, calling for the rehabilitation of marginalised women in Gaza City.

HE the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi, participating in an emergency meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Makkah yesterday.

Almost three million tourists visited Cyprus in the first 10 months of 2016, data showed on Thursday, ensuring a record year for the island seen as a regional safe haven.

Syrian air strikes and shelling killed 25 civilians in eastern districts of Aleppo on Thursday, a monitor said, on the third day of a wide-ranging regime assault on rebel-held areas.

Clashes raged in Yemen killing at least 27 people on Thursday, military officials said, despite a truce announced by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday pardoned 82 "youths" including a prominent advocate of Islamic reform, following calls to free prisoners swept up in a crackdown, his spokesman said.

Iraqi forces piled pressure on the Islamic State group around Mosul on Thursday, moving closer to cutting off the jihadists' escape route west to Syria and thrusting deeper into the east of the city.

Islamic State militants probably killed more than 300 Iraqi former police three weeks ago and buried them in a mass grave near the town of Hammam al-Alil south of Mosul, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

The Israeli parliament gave initial approval yesterday to a bill to legalise thousands of West Bank settler homes, a measure drawing international anger and posing the government’s biggest test since 2015 polls.

Syrian government and Russian warplanes pounded rebel-held parts of northern Syria yesterday, including battered second city Aleppo, where food aid rations were all-but-exhausted after months of regime siege.

Egyptian authorities have taken the name of former presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq, who fled the country after his 2012 defeat, off airport watch lists, his lawyer said, clearing the way for him to return home.