Cpl. Eloiza Zavala, 20, a native of Sacramento, was a motor vehicle operator with Combat Logistic Battalion 13 out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.

An Islamic State militant fired mortars at U.S. and international troops at Bagram Airfield in what security officials said was the third attack on the base since the U.S. signed a peace deal with the Taliban last month.

According to the announcement, the order will likely affect about 90,000 service members slated to deploy or redeploy over the next 60 days.

The announcement comes after some U.S. lawmakers last week voiced concerns that U.S. troops in Afghanistan were not properly protected from the pandemic.

The so-called Taliban Five, a group of high-level militant inmates traded for American soldier Bowe Bergdahl during the Obama administration, worked behind the scenes to build support for the agreement, current and former U.S. and Taliban officials say.

Four service members in Afghanistan have tested positive for the coronavirus while being held in a screening facility after arriving in the country, military officials said Tuesday.

Both the Islamic State group and al-Qaida see the coronavirus as a threat, but some of their fighters also see the upheaval from the pandemic as an opportunity to win over more supporters and strike harder than before.

Early this week, the streets of the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak were bustling with shoppers as ultra-Orthodox residents ignored pleas to stay home in the face of the coronavirus threat. By Friday, Bnei Brak had become the country's worst hot spot and now resembles a ghost town.

A contractor billed the Pentagon millions of dollars for ads that never aired in Afghanistan,the company's former president says in a whistleblower lawsuit.

President Donald Trump asserted Wednesday, without citing specific evidence, that Iran or an Iran-backed militia is planning a “sneak attack” on U.S. troops or assets in Iraq and warned that Iran would “pay a very heavy price” if it were carried out.

The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan transited the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf Wednesday, becoming the first U.S. Navy “big deck” to enter these strategic waters in 2020.

While Katyusha rockets have been the deadliest thing flying over Camp Taji in recent weeks, officials have long been concerned about the threat of potentially toxic burn pit smoke, a government watchdog has found.

A regional Pakistani court Thursday overturned the convictions of the men involved in the 2002 killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl. The ruling can still be appealed to Pakistan's Supreme Court.

Gunnery Sgt. Diego D. Pongo, of Simi Valley, Calif., and Capt. Moises A. Navas, of Germantown, Md., both 34 and both with 2nd Marine Raider Battalion out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., were identified as the service members killed Sunday during a joint U.S.-Iraq raid.

The State Department has ordered some U.S. government employees at diplomatic facilities in Iraq to leave the country, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said Thursday, hours after two rockets hit the Green Zone.

COVID-19 was not suspected as a cause in the service member’s death, which happened on Monday in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, according to officials.

The U.S.-led international coalition in Afghanistan is closely monitoring the potential spread of coronavirus in the country, as Afghan officials confirmed the first case of infection Monday.

A Syrian militia said no alleged Islamic State prisoners had escaped, contrary to initial reports, after the group quelled a prison uprising with the help of aircraft from U.S.-led coalition forces.

Iran-backed militias are becoming more audacious in attacking U.S. personnel in Iraq, with rocket strikes against military bases occurring more frequently and, for the first time, in broad daylight.

The new coronavirus is forcing more top Israeli officials into isolation after the country's health minister, who has had frequent contact with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tested positive.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Roberts and Army Spc. Juan Miquel Mendez Covarrubias were killed in Wednesday's attack on the training base north of Baghdad.

In the streets of Beirut's southern suburbs, Hezbollah paramedics and volunteers on trucks and on foot sprayed disinfectants on shops and buildings. At a hospital where it once treated its wounded fighters, the group's medical staff set up beds for a center to deal with coronavirus patients.

Coalition forces handed over the K1 air base in the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk to Iraq's military, according to a coalition statement.

Three Gold Star families talk about the prospect of the U.S.’s longest war coming to an end.

The long-planned transfer of the base, located 40 miles south of Mosul, and about $1.7 million in equipment, took place amid a pause in the U.S.-led coalition’s training of Iraqi forces and a temporary withdrawal of some foreign forces.

Syrian air defenses opened fire Tuesday night on missiles launched from Israeli warplanes on the central province of Homs, shooting down some of them, state media said, adding that the aircraft fired the missiles while flying in Lebanese airspace.

A three-member Taliban technical team arrived Tuesday in the Afghan capital to monitor the release of their prisoners as part of a peace deal signed by the Taliban and the U.S., a spokesman for the insurgent group said.

Prisoners in southern Iran broke cameras and caused other damage during a riot, state media reported Monday, the latest in a series of violent prison disturbances in the country, which is battling the most severe coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East.

Bahrain’s Health Ministry said Thursday it had confirmed 33 cases of infected citizens in the small island kingdom, which is home to the U.S. Navy Central Command headquarters and the largest concentration of U.S. service members and their families in the Middle East.

A U.N. aid agency Tuesday began delivering food to the homes of impoverished Palestinians instead of making them pick up such parcels at crowded distribution centers — part of an attempt to prevent a mass outbreak of the new coronavirus in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

The biennial exercise, called Native Fury, shows the close ties between American forces and the UAE.

The insurgents targeted a military checkpoint in a multi-pronged attack in the district of Argandab in southern Zabul province on Sunday night.

At least 25 people were killed when a lone gunman attacked a Sikh temple in Kabul’s old town Wednesday, starting an hourslong firefight with Afghan security forces, local officials said.

Thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan could start being released by early next week, fulfilling a key condition of the nearly month-old U.S.-Taliban deal to bring peace to the country, government and Taliban officials said.

Iran reported another 139 deaths on Saturday, pushing the total number of fatalities to 2,517 amid 35,408 confirmed cases.

Under the sign "Take out only" and a tall bottle of antiseptic by his side, Mazin Hashim, 54, rearranged the coals heating a water pipe outside his famed cafe in Baghdad.

Iran announced another 144 deaths from the coronavirus on Friday and said thousands more were in critical condition as the military completed work on a 2,000-bed field hospital in an exhibition center in the capital.

After months of deliberation, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday announced his 21-member team to negotiate peace with the Taliban, only to have his political opponent reject it as not inclusive enough.

The U.S. transfer of an outpost near Iraq’s western border with Syria to Iraqi security forces Tuesday marked the official start of a long-planned consolidation of coalition troops in the waning battle against the Islamic State group.

U.S. and coalition troops deploying to the Middle East will be put under a 14-day predeployment quarantine at their home stations to prevent potential strain on medical facilities amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. government has concluded that retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished more than a decade ago, has died while in the custody of Iran, his family said Wednesday.

The human and economic toll of the lockdowns against the coronavirus mounted Thursday as India struggled to feed the multitudes, Italy shut down most of its industry, and a record-shattering 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in a single week.

Iraq's military on Thursday said at least two rockets hit inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of Iraq's government and home to the American Embassy, in the first attack following a brief lull in violence from earlier this month.

A top U.S. general on Thursday fingered an Iranian-linked Shia militia group as likely responsible for the rocket attack on an Iraqi base that killed two American troops and a British service member, potentially reigniting tensions between the United States and Iran.

As countries across the Middle East tighten restrictions on movement to curb the spread of the coronavirus, a spokesman for the U.S. Agency for International Development said on Thursday that strict measures are forcing it to halt aid for deficient health care in war-ravaged Yemen.

Michael White was hospitalized Wednesday in a ward for coronavirus patients in Iran and has experienced fever, fatigue, a cough and shortness of breath since his furlough last week.

With the number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan soaring to 645 in the past few days, officials there have banned all international flights and have requested that security forces help institute a full lockdown in Sindh Province, where a majority of cases have been reported.

A Trump administration proposal to fix a visa program that allows war zone interpreters to resettle in the U.S. has been rejected as “downright offensive” by a refugee advocacy group.

The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq has paused training activities and begun pulling some international troops from the country because of concerns about the rapidly spreading coronavirus, military officials said Thursday.

During his visit, U.S. secretary of state is expected to try to help end the impasse, which has put on hold the start of intra-Afghan peace talks that would include the Taliban.

80-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei instead chose to traffic in the same conspiracy theory increasingly used by Chinese officials about the new virus to deflect blame for the pandemic.

An American air raid early Friday morning on an Iranian-backed militia group in Iraq was precise, proportionate and defensive — designed to deter the group from launching more rockets at American and anti-ISIS coalition forces, the top general for U.S. Central Command said.

The network was established as Army Gen. Austin Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, prepared to shrink the number of U.S. troops last summer while the Trump administration negotiated a U.S. troop withdrawal deal with the Taliban.

Lt. Col. Paul K. Voss and Capt. Ryan S. Phaneuf were killed Monday in the crash of a Bombardier E-11A aircraft in Ghazni province, Afghanistan.

Egypt will impose a two-week nightly curfew in the Arab world's most populous country in an effort to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, its prime minister announced Tuesday, as the International Monetary Fund warned that a shortage of medical supplies could affect the Mideast's poorest nations.

The U.S.-led international coalition in Afghanistan said quarantine areas have been established for those awaiting tests.

In countries with American troops in CENTCOM's area of responsibility in the Middle East and southwest Asia, 43 cases of coronavirus were reported in Kuwait, 33 in Bahrain, 13 in the United Arab Emirates, six in Iraq, and one each Afghanistan and Egypt.

The airstrikes killed four Islamic State fighters in Kunar province, said Col. Sonny Leggett, spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.

Ground troops based overseas with tanks and artillery are better at preventing conflict than their light infantry counterparts, a study said after examining more than 70 years of military deployments.

The arrest of ISIS mufti Abu Abdul Bari, also known as Shifa al-Nima, was announced by the Iraqi government’s security media cell in a statement Thursday.

Lebanon's foreign minister on Friday summoned the U.S. ambassador, seeking an explanation for how an American on trial in Beirut was transferred out of the country from the U.S. Embassy compound.

The celebration of Nowruz, once banned by the Taliban regime in the 1990s, has since become a festive annual rite of rebirth and freedom in Afghanistan. On Friday, though, the arrival of Nowruz was overshadowed by the coronavirus.

With Afghanistan hovering between peace and war, and the government paralyzed by a tense political power struggle, it took a while for the coronavirus to become a reality for Afghans.

The USS Bataan pulled into Bahrain over the long President’s Day weekend, but it doesn’t appear the crew had much time off.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS said Monday it will move hundreds of troops out of bases in Iraq, with most redeployed to other locations in the country, as threats from the militants wane and risks to foreign troops elsewhere in Iraq increase.

U.S. troops have pulled out of a key base in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, the site of some of the fiercest fighting of the war, officials said Friday.

The soldier’s isolation came as a “precautionary measure,” Navy Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said in a statement.

Military children at the Bahrain School have been told to stay home the rest of the week, following the country’s first confirmed coronavirus case and several others reported at the island kingdom’s airport.

Turkish prosecutors have formally charged two former aides of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and 18 other Saudi nationals over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, officials said Wednesday.

President Donald Trump called on the Syrian government to release U.S. Marine veteran Austin Tice, buoying the family’s hopes for the return of the Texan, who was abducted while working as a freelance photojournalist near Damascus in 2012.

ANALYSIS

The Middle East is shutting down as the coronavirus accelerates its spread across a part of the world where war, famine, financial collapse and political unrest threaten to compound the impact of the disease.

The two American deaths are the first combat fatalities in the country in 2020 and bring to three the number of Americans who have died while deployed as part of the U.S. anti-ISIS coalition in Iraq and Syria.

Afghan women fear their hard-won rights could be bargained away when government negotiators meet with the Taliban to map out the future of the country, female students at an American-backed university said Sunday.

In recent months, hundreds of booby-trapped balloons — sometimes bearing the messages “I Love You” and “Happy Birthday” along with small, improvised explosives dangling by a string — have descended onto communities downwind of the nearby Gaza Strip, according to Israeli police.

A U.S. sailor assigned to U.S. Central Command has tested positive for the coronavirus, CENTCOM said Saturday.

An international aid group said Wednesday that closures aimed at containing the coronavirus pandemic are preventing it from reaching 300,000 people in conflict zones across the Middle East, as the virus arrived in war-torn Libya and four more cases were detected in Syria.

A special operations gunship directly supported maritime operations in the Persian Gulf for the first time during a joint exercise with Navy ships and a patrol aircraft last week, the U.S. military said.