Abdul Aziz Beg, head of the Badghis council, says three other police were wounded and another detained by the Taliban early Saturday morning in the Qadis district.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington seeks monetary damages from the Kingdom of Jordan, where the Special Forces soldiers were stationed when they were gunned down Nov. 4, 2016 by Jordanian Air Force 1st Sgt. Maarik al-Tawayha.

Syria's state news agency and a war monitor say airstrikes on an area controlled by the Islamic State group have killed at least 18 people.

The United States sees "great promise" in developing energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean, a U.S. state department official said Friday, as ExxonMobil and partner Qatar Petroleum began exploratory drilling off Cyprus' southwestern coast.

The Russian military said nearly 270,000 Syrian refugees have returned home in recent months, a fraction of the estimated 5.6 million Syrians who have fanned out across the world fleeing the seven-year conflict.

A court in Istanbul convicted six people and sentenced them to life in prison for involvement in an extremist attack at Istanbul's main airport that killed 45 people and was blamed on the Islamic State group, Turkey's state-run news agency reported Friday.

A bipartisan group of senators is releasing legislation imposing sanctions, prohibitions and restrictions against Saudi Arabia and other entities considered responsible for the humanitarian suffering in war-torn Yemen.

A prominent Yemeni rights group has documented heavy damage from ground fighting and airstrikes to at least 34 archaeological sites over the past four years and urged the international community to protect Yemenis' "collective memory."

An overnight attack by the Taliban on an Afghan police outpost in western Farah province killed 30 policemen, Afghan officials said Thursday.

Iraqi security officials say four people have been killed in the first deadly bombing in western Mosul since the city district was recaptured from Islamic State group militants last year.

Saudi Arabia will seek the death penalty against five men suspected of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi, its top prosecutor said Thursday, while the U.S. slapped sanctions on 17 Saudi officials in the toughest action it has taken against the kingdom since the slaying.

Signaling zero tolerance for economic crimes, Iran hanged two financial traders who were convicted of stockpiling gold coins and profiteering during a currency crisis, state media reported Wednesday.

An important upcoming milestone for Afghanistan's Western-backed democracy and a separate, crucial chance to settle the country's 17-year war appear to be crashing into each other.

Austin Tice, a freelance journalist and Marine veteran, was taken prisoner in 2012 while reporting on the civil war in Syria. The U.S. government says he is still alive.

An anti-corruption program once seen as a beacon of hope in Afghanistan is failing to accomplish much, according to U.S. officials who say the nation’s top prosecutor is corrupt.

When Army National Guard Maj. Brent Taylor, the mayor of North Ogden, Utah, was killed Nov. 3 in an insider attack, his friend and comrade in arms, Afghan Air Force Maj. Abdul Rahman Rahmani, felt he had to send a message to Taylor's family.

Coalition troops in Baghdad paused for a two-minute silence Sunday morning to mark the centenary of the end of World War I in Europe, which coincides with the U.S. Veterans Day and the British Remembrance Day holidays.

Palestinian organizers of the weekly demonstrations in the Gaza Strip along the Israeli border said they will hold another protest on Friday — in a key test of this week's cease-fire between Israel and Gaza militant groups.

The son of Lebanon's Hezbollah leader designated by the U.S. State Department this week as a "global terrorist" is a poet and music lover who is said to move around without security and whose role within the group is shrouded in secrecy.

The Treasury Department has designated 17 Saudi Arabians for involvement in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, imposing sanctions that freeze any assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit Americans from dealings with them.

The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on four operatives linked to the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah over its actions in Iraq.

The Senate on Thursday voted against an effort to block an arms sale to Bahrain - pitched by backers as a means of forcing the island nation to stop participating in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

The explosion took place near where hundreds had gathered to denounce the latest Taliban attacks in Ghazni districts of Jaghuri and Malistan.

Pakistan released two Taliban officials on Monday during U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad's latest visit to the region, in what could be part of American efforts to revive peace talks with the insurgent group, which now controls nearly half of Afghanistan.

Palestinian militants bombarded Israel with dozens of rockets and mortar shells Monday, while Israeli warplanes struck targets throughout the Gaza Strip in what appeared to be the most intense exchange of fire since a 2014 war.

OPEC and allied oil producers will cut or adjust production as needed to balance the market, the group's president, United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei, said Wednesday.

Israel's defense minister abruptly resigned Wednesday in protest over a cease-fire reached with Gaza militants, in a move that rocked the Israeli political scene and seemed likely to bring about early elections.

Avigdor Lieberman's defection leaves Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the narrowest of parliamentary majorities — only 61 of 120 seats in his coalition.

An informal agreement to reduce hostilities between Saudi-led coalition forces and rebels in and around Yemen's Red Sea port city of Hodeida has taken hold, military officials said Tuesday, in a move that could be a prelude to peace talks that would end the ruinous war in the poorest Arab country.

The president of Afghanistan told a U.S. audience Monday that his country is not losing the war to the Taliban and is not at risk of collapse amid escalating attacks by the militant group and an expansion of the territory it controls.

Iran continued abiding by nuclear limits in its landmark accord with world powers even after President Donald Trump abandoned the agreement, according to international monitors.

Hamas and other militant groups said Tuesday they had accepted an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire to end two days of intense fighting with Israel that had pushed the sworn enemies to the brink of a new war.

A member of the Saudi team that killed Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi made a phone call shortly after the journalist's death, giving instructions to someone in Saudi Arabia to "tell your boss" that the assassination had been carried out, according to people familiar with the call.

John Abizaid, the longest-serving commander of the U.S. Central Command and a retired four-star general, will fill a key diplomatic vacancy at a time when U.S.-Saudi relations are being tested by the slaying of a journalist critical of the Saudi royal family.

Representatives of Libya's quarrelling factions and of countries keen on stabilizing the North African nation started meetings in Sicily Monday, as Italy encourages a political settlement that could bolster the fight against Islamic militants and stop illegal migrants from crossing the Mediterranean to Europe's southern shores.

Airstrikes from warplanes and Apache attack helicopters shook residential neighborhoods throughout Sunday, while ground forces clashed around the university in the city's south, as well as al-Thawra and May 22 hospitals to the east.

The Taliban carry out near-daily attacks, mainly targeting Afghan security forces at rural outposts. Seventeen years after the U.S.-led invasion, the insurgents control nearly half the country.

U.S. Central Command said Sunday that an Oct. 30 operation in Salahuddin province killed five IS leaders and more than 30 other militants.

In search of opportunity, hundreds of Pakistanis attempt to cross over to Iran through illegal routes every year hoping to continue on to Europe. Many have faced arrest or gunfire by border guards.

A Syrian woman captured by Islamic State militants said her 8-year-old son died in her lap after the extremists shot him and his cousin during a military operation to liberate them more than 100 days after they were kidnapped.

The information minister of Yemen's internationally recognized government says his counterpart in the rebel administration has fled the country and defected to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

The head of Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah said his group will not be compelled by threats or sanctions to give up its rocket a capability, urging his government in comments Saturday to contend with the diplomatic pressure it faces.

ANALYSIS

The decision by the United States to stop refueling warplanes of a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen was welcomed by Yemeni rebel officials, human rights activists and aid workers on Saturday.

While the individuals familiar with the discussions said a decision is expected to be made public in coming days, Col. Robert Manning III, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We have ongoing discussions with our partners, but have nothing to announce at this time."

Sitting between Afghan envoys and their fierce rivals from the Taliban movement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday promised to work for a united and peaceful Afghanistan, showcasing his country's return to the diplomatic forefront of the 17-year war.

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis from the Hodeida area have been forced to flee amid a Saudi-led coalition offensive to take the key Red Sea port city from Shiite rebels, the United Nations' refugee agency said Friday, as fierce battles continue to rage in the area.

Gaza's Hamas rulers lauded on Friday what they described as a gain of their weekly protests along Gaza-Israel perimeter fence, which have often turned deadly, after receiving $15 million from Qatar to help pay the salaries of the territory's civil servants.

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Herat’s new National Mission Unit is a police force intended for combat missions and advised by NATO instructors. Afghanistan hopes to double the number of crack units such as this one in Herat, a city of about 400,000 and the country’s third-largest.

As of Tuesday morning, $362,000 had been raised for the wife and seven children of Maj. Brent Taylor, 39, a Utah National Guardsman who was fatally shot on Nov. 3 by one of his Afghan trainees.

Infighting between factions killed 40 Taliban fighters in October in the western province of Herat and is part of the reason a militant group is seeking peace talks, government officials said Friday.

Two unsafe passes by a Russian fighter jet put a U.S. military aircraft at risk during flight operations over the Black Sea, Navy officials said Monday.

A U.S. servicemember in Afghanistan was killed and another was wounded in an apparent insider attack in Kabul on Saturday, two weeks after a Taliban infiltrator shot and wounded an American general in Kandahar.

A week after Pakistan's Supreme Court acquitted her of blasphemy, a Christian woman who had been on death row for eight years was freed from detention Thursday, but her whereabouts are a closely guarded secret following demands by extremists that she be hanged in public.

An Egyptian court has convicted 65 suspected militants of setting up a terrorist group and declaring allegiance to the extremist Islamic State group, sentencing 18 of them to life in prison.

The "largest-ever" U.S. sanctions list targeting Iran drew mockery from Iranian officials on Tuesday for including mothballed Boeing 747s, a bank that closed years earlier and a sunken oil tanker that exploded off China months ago.

The figures represented a bleak progress report on the U.S.’s longest war, now in its 18th year; however, a full assessment remains difficult because of Pentagon restrictions on Afghan forces data, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said.

Iraqi security officials say four people have been killed in the first deadly bombing in western Mosul since the city district was recaptured from Islamic State group militants last year.

Syrian troops have liberated 19 women and children hostages held by the Islamic State group since July in a military operation in the country's center, ending a months-long crisis that has stunned Syria's Druze religious minority, state media reported Thursday. An opposition war monitor said the release was part of an exchange.

Hackers impersonating journalists tried to intercept the communications of a prominent Saudi opposition figure in Washington, The Associated Press has found.

A high stakes lawsuit involving victims of the 2000 attack of the USS Cole seemed to divide the Supreme Court Wednesday, as justices struggled with the seemingly innocuous question of whether notice of the suit was sent to the right address.

Troops from a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition pounded Houthi rebel positions in Yemen's Hodeida with airstrikes and a ground assault on Wednesday and now control a major road leading into the city, military officials and witnesses on both sides of the front line said.

“When a man like Brent has the desire to bring freedom to others and to serve his country, and he gives his life to that cause, in our view, there’s not a whole lot of room for anger,” said Kristy Pack, sister of Jennie Taylor, widow of Maj. Brent Taylor of the Utah National Guard.

Egyptian military court has sentenced eight men to death in absentia for their alleged involvement in deadly militant attacks on troops.

The NATO chief urged the Taliban on Tuesday to stop killing their fellow Afghans, an appeal that came just hours after the insurgents attacked border troops in western Farah province, killing at least 20.

NATO’s reinforced mission will continue training Afghan forces, the alliance’s top official said Tuesday, even as government troops sustain higher numbers of casualties in a war now in its 18th year.

Italy is working to help relocate the family of a Pakistani Christian woman who was acquitted after being sentenced to death for blasphemy as her husband warns their lives are in danger in Pakistan.

Turkey's defense chief has welcomed a U.S. decision authorizing multimillion-dollar rewards for information on the whereabouts of top Kurdish rebel leaders, but urged the U.S. to also adopt a tough stance against Syrian Kurdish militia.

Washington will focus on pressuring Iran financially and contesting its activities in Syria, Iraq and Yemen where the Persian nation enjoys broad influence, the U.S. envoy to Syria said Wednesday, adding that Tehran should eventually withdraw all Iran-commanded forces from Syria.

More than 200 mass graves containing between 6,000 and 12,000 bodies have been found in Iraq from the time of the Islamic State group's three-year reign, U.N. investigators said Tuesday.

The U.S. footprint in the region has reached a low ebb as the Pentagon, under President Donald Trump's strategy for reorienting national security priorities, seeks to direct the military toward competition with China and Russia.

Yemen's rebels claim they halted advances of their adversaries, the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led Arab coalition, at a key battlefield around a strategic Red Sea port city.

The new sanctions end all economic benefits America had granted Tehran for its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, though Iran continues to abide by the accord, which requires it to curb its uranium enrichment.

At a news conference Wednesday, deputy State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said, “Unilateral military strikes into northwest Syria by any party, particularly as American personnel may be present or in the vicinity, are of great concern to us.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo predicted Sunday that the remaining sanctions against Iran that resume Monday will change the Tehran government's behavior in the region.

Indonesia has responded with outrage after Saudi Arabia executed an Indonesian domestic worker who was convicted of killing her Saudi employer – even though an activist group says the maid had been defending herself from being raped.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he Taliban and other terrorist groups are trying “to turn our beautiful country into a breeding ground of violence” and that the U.S. is struggling to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

Several thousand people gathered Saturday near the Afghan border to mourn the death of Maulana Sami ul-Haq, 82, a leading Sunni cleric and "father of the Taliban" who was stabbed to death by unknown assailants.