The sudden departure of most U.S. troops from northeastern Syria in early October has strengthened the Islamic State terrorist group in that country, despite the U.S. military’s recent killing of the group’s leader, according to a new Pentagon assessment.

The Taliban on Tuesday freed an American and an Australian held hostage since 2016 in exchange for three top Taliban figures — a move that the insurgent group asserted could help rekindle talks to end Afghanistan’s 18-year war.

Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Tuesday the military was fielding additional military police units to carry out joint patrols with Turkey. He didn’t elaborate.

Three members of Iran’s security forces were killed overnight in clashes with protesters near Tehran in the latest sign of ongoing unrest despite a nationwide Internet blackout and heavy police crackdown.

Israel's prime minister traveled to the West Bank on Tuesday to celebrate the U.S.'s announcement that it does not consider Israeli settlements to violate international law.

Anti-government protesters blocked access to a second major commercial port in southern Iraq on Tuesday, as bridge closures effectively split the capital in half, causing citizens to rely on boats for transport to reach the other side of the city.

Thousands of protesters rallying against the Lebanese political elite blocked roads in central Beirut on Tuesday, preventing lawmakers from reaching the parliament and forcing the postponement of a legislative session.

Days of protests in Iran over rising fuel prices and a subsequent government crackdown have killed at least 106 people across the Islamic Republic, Amnesty International said Tuesday, citing "credible reports."

The Israeli military said it intercepted four incoming rockets from Syria on Tuesday and explosions were heard shortly after that in Damascus, a week after another Israeli strike targeted a top Palestinian militant in the Syrian capital.

Air Force officials have called the $115 million Ghostrider “the ultimate battle plane” due to its arsenal of cannons, missiles and laser-guided bombs.

Obituary

Holocaust survivor Branko Lustig's film career took him to movie sets across Europe and to Hollywood, where in 1994 he shared the Academy Award for best picture as a producer of "Schindler's List." Lustig died Nov. 14 in Croatia. He was 87.

Kuwait’s ruler on Monday fired his own son and another Cabinet minister after they publicly feuded over accusations of corruption, ordering the prime minister to form a new government.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi initially said the back-to-back explosions were caused by suicide bombers but later said that it was from a pair of hand grenades.

A planned prisoner swap between the Afghan government and the Taliban intended to restart peace talks between the insurgent group and the U.S. has been delayed, according to Afghan and Taliban officials.

Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday backed the government’s decision to raise gasoline prices and called angry protesters who have been setting fire to public property over the hike “thugs,” signaling a potential crackdown on the demonstrations.

Twelve people were killed and at least 20 wounded Wednesday when a car bomb exploded in the north of Kabul, shattering weeks of relative calm in the Afghan capital, officials said.

Two university professors who were kidnapped in Kabul three years ago are set to be freed in exchange for high-ranking Taliban leaders, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Tuesday.

The Trump administration on Monday softened the U.S. position on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, reversing four decades of American policy and further undermining the effort to gain Palestinian statehood.

Hundreds of pages of purported Iranian intelligence documents have come to light that detail Iran’s massive influence in neighboring Iraq, The New York Times and The Intercept reported on Monday.

Sunday’s airstrike hit the village of Mallaja in Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria.

Israeli forces struck multiple targets controlled by the ruling Hamas faction in the Gaza Strip on Saturday after rockets were fired from the territory, potentially jeopardizing a shaky cease-fire following two days of intense exchanges.

A senior U.S. coalition commander said Friday the partnership with Syrian Kurdish forces remains strong and focused on fighting the Islamic State group, despite an expanding Turkish incursion into areas under Kurdish control.

A U.S.-led coalition created to secure sea lines vital to oil shipping in the Middle East formally launched operations in the most concerted international response yet to months of tensions in the region.

As the death toll in protests rises, Iraqis are having a flashback to the tales of Saddam Hussein's propagandist, Mohammed Saeed "Baghdad Bob" al-Sahhaf, whose latest incarnation comes in the form of the spokesman for Iraq's armed forces, Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf.

Iranian officials on Monday alternatively downplayed and demonized ongoing protests across the country that have killed at least five people and put renewed pressure on Iran’s government as it struggles to overcome U.S. sanctions.

At a base in eastern Syria, a senior U.S. coalition commander said Monday that American troops who remain in Syria are redeploying to bases, including in some new locations, and working with the Kurdish-led forces to keep up the pressure on Islamic State militants to prevent the extremists from resurging or breaking out of prisons.

Analysis

In a meeting Thursday at the White House, coalition partners were unable to reach an agreement on what to do about the detention of thousands of militants in makeshift prisons in Syria amid reports that Islamic State fighters are resurgent in Syria and Iraq, and that some are slipping away to Libya and other areas.

Israel said early Friday it has completed a series of airstrikes on targets linked to the Islamic Jihad militant group in Gaza after overnight rocket fire that rattled a day-old truce.

Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed landed in the southern port city of Aden, fulfilling a key point in the power-sharing deal brokered by Saudi Arabia that ended months of infighting with separatists in Yemen’s south.

The United States has the largest foreign country presence with more than 100 companies represented.

Iraqi security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas in clashes with protesters in central Baghdad on Friday, killing three people. Separately, two protesters were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in a central square.

Syrian President Bashar Assad says the American presence in Syria will lead to armed “resistance” that will eventually force the U.S. troops to leave.

Analysis

For nearly a month, the popular protests engulfing Lebanon have been startlingly peaceful. But the shooting death of a 38-year-old father by a soldier, the first such fatality in the unrest, points to the dangerous, dark turn the country could be heading into.

Protesters angered by Iran’s hike of government-set gasoline prices by 50% blocked traffic in major cities and occasionally clashed with police Saturday after a night of demonstrations punctuated by gunfire, in violence that reportedly killed at least one person.

Abdullah Abdullah said on Sunday that the commission needs to stop trying to do a recount, contending many of the ballots are fake.

Syrian government forces started deploying Thursday in areas close to the Turkish border in the country’s northeast as part of an agreement reached between Russia and Turkey, state media reported.

A car bomb exploded Saturday in a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters, killing at least 12 people and wounding several others, Syrian opposition activists and Turkey’s Defense Ministry said.

Residents say the airstrike came without warning: With fighting raging between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants throughout Gaza, two loud blasts shook the night, destroying the Abu Malhous home and killing eight members of the family in a split second.

More than 319 people have been killed and 15,000 wounded since anti-government demonstrations began in Baghdad and southern cities on Oct. 1, according to the country's human rights commission.

The United Arab Emirates said Wednesday that one of its soldiers was killed in an area of Saudi Arabia on the border with Yemen.

This Veterans Day, while many headed to the beach or cooked burgers on the grill, about 350 Hawaii Army National Guard soldiers were on unique duty in Afghanistan, and will continue to be through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year celebrations that they’ll miss before heading home in the spring.

Clashes between Iraqi protesters and security forces in central Baghdad killed four people and wounded 62 on Thursday, Iraqi medical and security officials said, as authorities continued to clamp down on the anti-government demonstrations.

Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Iran-backed rebels are holding indirect, behind-the-scenes talks to end the devastating five-year war in Yemen.

Footage captured by U.S. surveillance aircraft over northern Syria has documented several incidents that military officials say may constitute war crimes on the part of Turkish-backed forces there, a U.S. official said.

Intense clashes broke out Saturday between Syrian government troops and Turkish-led forces in northeastern Syria, the country’s state media and an opposition war monitor reported.

Iraqi protesters said Wednesday that an intensifying crackdown by authorities has been instilling fear and reducing turnout, but said they were remaining defiant and have called for people to return to the street in large numbers later this week.

Turkey’s interior minister said Wednesday that his country’s forces have captured an "important" figure within the Islamic State group, in Syria.

Israeli aircraft struck Islamic Jihad targets throughout the Gaza Strip on Wednesday while the militant group rained scores of rockets into Israel for a second straight day as the heaviest round of fighting in months showed no signs of ending.

Three car bombs went off Monday in the northeastern Syrian town of Qamishli near the border with Turkey, killing at least six people, while a priest was shot dead in a nearby area by extremists, state media and activists said.

Abdullah Abdullah said Sunday the results will have no legitimacy if his team's observers are not present during the recount by Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission.

A roadside blast wounded five Italian special forces soldiers in northern Iraq on Sunday as they were on a training mission to assist Iraqi troops, Italian military officials said.

The rocket fire appears to have originated in Mosul and struck the Iraqi army base in Qayyara, about 38 miles south of Mosul, where coalition forces are helping the Iraqis battle remnants of the Islamic State group.

Iran has discovered a new oil field in the country’s south with more than 50 billion barrels of crude, its president said Sunday, a find that could boost the country’s proven reserves by a third as it struggles to sell energy abroad over U.S. sanctions.

Iran began pouring concrete Sunday for a second nuclear reactor at its Bushehr power plant, a facility Tehran points to as its reason to break the enrichment limit set by its unraveling 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

A former British army officer who helped found the White Helmets volunteer organization in Syria was found dead in Istanbul early Monday, Turkish officials and the group said. The cause of death was under investigation.

Uranium particles of man-made origin have been discovered at a site in Iran not declared to the United Nations, the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Monday as it confirmed a litany of violations by Tehran of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Israel launched airstrikes Tuesday against two senior commanders from the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, killing one in Gaza but missing another in Syria in a sharp escalation of Israel’s regional conflict with Iran, which backs the militant group.

Iran on Sunday said an open Revolutionary Court case involving an ex-FBI agent who disappeared there in 2007 on an unauthorized CIA mission “was a missing person” filing, not a sign that the man was being prosecuted.

As many as 600 U.S. troops will remain in northeastern Syria to continue counterterrorism operations against Islamic State militants, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday.

The Cabinet voted Sunday for Naftali Bennett to become defense minister until a permanent government takes hold.

Iraqi security forces killed six anti-government demonstrators and wounded more than 100 others on Saturday, pushing them back from three flash-point bridges in central Baghdad, medical and security officials said.

As U.S. troops beef up in eastern Syria to protect oil fields, residents hope their mission will bring stability and prosperity to the remote and resource-rich region —and keep the Syrian government out.

An Iranian news agency said that Iranian air defense forces hit the drone in the early morning at the port city of Mahshahr, which is in the oil-rich Khuzestan province and lies on the Persian Gulf.

The ministry said Sunday that 20 people were also injured in the attack in the village of Salik Atik, south of Tal Abyad.

A Syrian protester was killed after a Turkish military vehicle ran him over on Friday as it drove through an angry crowd protesting a joint Turkish-Russian patrol in northeastern Syria, Kurdish forces and a Syria war monitoring group said.

French authorities reopened one of Jerusalem's most magnificent ancient tombs to the public for the first time in over a decade, despite a dispute over access to the archaeological-cum-holy site in the city's volatile eastern half.

The temblor struck Tark county in Iran's Eastern Azerbaijan province at 2:17 a.m. local time, Iran's seismological center said.

William Roebuck, the top American diplomat in northern Syria, criticized the Trump administration for not doing more to prevent Turkey's invasion or protect the Kurds, who fought alongside U.S. forces in the battle against the Islamic State group.

The 4-118th Infantry Regiment is part of the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team, which includes about 4,200 soldiers from Army National Guard units from North and South Carolina and West Virginia.

Rep. Ron Estes introduced a resolution Friday to commend the efforts of Conan, the military dog who raided a Syrian compound and hunted down Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, saying she has “captured the hearts” of Americans and people around the world.

After Army and Air Force Exchange Service announced that the crispy morsels would be sold at all Popeyes exchange locations starting this weekend, a spokeswoman said the sandwiches would be available only at locations within the United States starting Sunday

First introduced in 2008 as part of a uniform modernization program based on sailor input, the blue camouflage uniform was intended to be worn by enlisted and officers to “project a unified image/appearance regardless of rank.”

Iran alleged Thursday that the U.N. inspector it blocked from a nuclear site last week tested positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates. The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it had no immediate comment.

Turkey remains a transit point for foreign fighters looking to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which could help the terrorist group to reorganize and regain influence, a U.S. report on global terrorism says.

Speaking Sunday to the Arizona Republic, Kayla Mueller's parents praised Donald Trump's handling of the raid and expressed hope that they would one day find out more about what happened to their daughter.

The Trump administration opposes Turkey sanctions adopted by the House last week as well as a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide, arguing that the two initiatives risk further straining relations with a key NATO ally, a senior State Department official said.

Amid the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops and advancing Turkish and Syrian government forces comes an increasingly urgent question: What will become of these men and the potential threat they pose for the world outside their prison walls?