A ferry overloaded with people celebrating the Kurdish new year and Mother's Day capsized in the Tigris River near the Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killing nearly 100 people, including families, officials said.

The Israeli military said a soldier stationed at a military post near Bethlehem identified rocks being thrown at Israeli vehicles and in response fired his weapon. The military said it was investigating the incident, which comes amid heightened tensions in the West Bank.

Jordan's King Abdullah II is vowing to keep protecting Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, calling it a "red line" for his country.

The full-scale fishing vessel inside a warehouse has become a key training tool in efforts to combat threats in Middle East waters, such as drug trafficking that funds extremists in places like Afghanistan.

Former Marine Miles Lagoze hopes his film “Combat Obscura” will alter the “sanitized and sanctified view of the military” many Americans hold by showing them his view of what combat is actually like.

Afghan security forces have been harassing contractors and confiscating their equipment at military bases across the country, costing the U.S. hundreds of thousands of dollars, a government watchdog said.

At a base Americans handed over to Afghan forces in 2014, roaming packs of feral dogs now bed down at a former helicopter landing pad, crows pick over scrap heaps, and snow blows through collapsed walls of wood huts that once housed military offices.

Army Sgt. Holli Bolinski and aSpc. Jackson D. Johnson were deployed to the Army’s sprawling Camp Arifjan in the Middle Eastern nation and died in the wreck early Tuesday morning.

The remains of Sgt. Holli R. Bolinski and Spc. Jackson Johnson, who both died in a vehicle crash in Kuwait on March 5, returned home Monday.

The fire started Thursday evening while the mine countermeasures ship was pierside at NSA Bahrain, the Navy's 5th Fleet said in a statement.

Navy Chief Petty Officer Shannon M. Kent, Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan R. Farmer, Defense Intelligence Agency civilian Scott A. Wirtz and interpreter Ghadir Taher were among 16 people killed in the January incident at a restaurant in northern Syria.

The taking of the ISIS camp was a major advance but not the final defeat of the group in Baghouz, the last village held by the extremists where they have been holding out for weeks under siege.

The complete fall of Baghouz would mark the end of the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate, which at its height stretched across large parts of Syria and Iraq. Controlling territory gave it room to launch attacks around the world.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan did not travel to the northern city, according to the U.S.-led NATO Resolute Support mission. An Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman said Friday that Army Gen. Scott Miller had made the trip.

A resident of the United Arab Emirates who worked for a security firm was detained and deported after making comments on Facebook celebrating the New Zealand mosque attacks that killed 50 people.

The battle to capture the extremist group’s last patch of territory in eastern Syria — a collection of tents covering foxholes and underground tunnels in the village of Baghouz — has dragged on for weeks amid an unexpected exodus of civilians from the area.

Thousands of foreign-born women left their homes and lives to join Islamic State and marry its fighters. But now that the militant group’s so-called caliphate is reduced to crumbled masonry and scorched rebar, many of them want to return home.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday lauded the White House's warm ties with Israel during a visit to the country and promised to step up pressure on Iran, giving a public boost to Israel's prime minister at the height of a tight re-election campaign.

Staff Sgt. Steven McQueen was nearly killed when he was shot from about 20 feet away by a Russian 7.62x54mm round in Afghanistan. His headgear saved his life, and officials say it underscores the importance of protective gear amid a rollout of new and improved body armor.

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters are searching tunnels a day after seizing most of the last pocket of land held by Islamic State militants, an official said Wednesday.

Battles mark the latest setbacks for the country's battered security forces, who come under daily attack by the insurgents and have suffered staggering casualties in recent years.

A U.S. Navy veteran from California has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran, his lawyer said Saturday, becoming the first American known to be imprisoned there since President Donald Trump took office.

The Israeli military says it has shot and killed two Palestinians who attacked troops in a West Bank city.

The missile test in southern Israel was conducted Tuesday by the Israeli Ministry of Defense along with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and Rafael, an Israeli defense technology company.

Egypt's top media regulator has put into effect tighter restrictions that allow the state to block websites and even social media accounts with over 5,000 followers if they are deemed a threat to national security.

Hamas is facing the biggest demonstrations yet against its 12-year rule of the Gaza Strip, with hundreds of Palestinians taking to the streets in recent days to protest the dire living conditions in the blockaded territory.

A senior Houthi rebel leader in Yemen said Tuesday that his group will not give up the key port city of Hodeida, the focus of months of U.N.-brokered talks with the government.

Ignoring widespread criticism, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday again showed excerpts of a video taken by the attacker who killed 50 people in mosques in New Zealand, to denounce what he called rising hatred and prejudice against Islam.

The U.S. will revoke or deny visas to International Criminal Court personnel seeking to investigate alleged abuses committed by U.S. forces or its allies in Afghanistan or elsewhere. Any wrongdoing committed by American personnel would be dealt with in U.S. military and criminal courts, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

ANALYSIS

President Ashraf Ghani, who once hoped to win re-election as a champion and orchestrator of peace after 17 years of grueling conflict, has been denied that role at Taliban insistence.

A sentence of lashes and decades in prison handed down to a prominent human rights lawyer is the latest example of Iran’s expanding crackdown on such attorneys in an effort to silence dissent.

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the operation against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, began Monday

The U.S. currently has about 2,000 troops in eastern Syria and is expected to withdraw hundreds of them in the coming months.

Beilinson Hospital says Ahiad Attinger, a 47-year-old father of 12, died on Monday of wounds he sustained in the shooting and stabbing attack the previous day.

Moshe Feiglin's Zehut party has a real shot of getting elected next month and could even emerge as a kingmaker in a tightly contested race for prime minister.

Monday's televised remarks by Hassan Rouhani were meant to deflect criticism of his administration's performance amid a spiraling economy.

Everything about the truffle exemplifies the food-as-challenge aspect of so many ingredients in the Iraqi cookbook. And for those who prize the desert truffle – and many do, sometimes at the risk of their lives – finding it means nothing less than a quest for treasure, one that mixes equal parts timing, superstition and danger.

The commander, known only as Subhan, was the target of a raid Saturday night in Nangarhar province, an ISIS stronghold where U.S. forces are based.

The Iraqi government has started exhuming a mass grave left behind by the Islamic State group in the northwestern Sinjar region in the presence of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, whose slain relatives are believed to have been buried in the area.

The firefight was a result of a lack of communication between Afghan forces, a senior Defense Ministry official said. No Americans were killed or wounded in the incident, said a spokesman for NATO’S Resolute Support mission.

The Afghan national security adviser, Hamidullah Mohib, charged that any U.S. deal with the Taliban would "dishonor" American troops who have fought and died in the war.

The three Islamic State fighters emerged from the group's last bastion in eastern Syria on Friday acting as though they wanted to surrender, but when they reached the U.S.-backed forces that have them surrounded they blew themselves up, killing six people.

President Donald Trump had an hour-long, classified meeting with top national security officials on Afghanistan Friday a day after an Afghan official complained that the Trump administration was keeping his government in the dark about its negotiations with the Taliban.

Experts and intelligence analysts have long believed Mullah Mohammad Omar fled to Pakistan after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001. But the Taliban’s one-eyed leader actually might have remained in Afghanistan and relinquished direct command of the group, according to the report.

The United States and China clashed Friday over Beijing's $1 trillion "belt and road" global infrastructure program after the Security Council unanimously approved a bare bones resolution extending the mandate of the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan for six months.

What started as peaceful protests in 2011 asking for government change turned into one of the cruelest modern wars and left a trail of broken lives among the country's pre-war population of 23 million. Now half are displaced, nearly half a million dead and many live with permanent scars or have joined militias.

Cross-border fighting between Israel and Gaza's ruling Hamas group appeared to be winding down Friday, amid reports of an Egyptian-brokered truce and Israeli media saying a misfire was believed to be responsible for the rare Gaza rocket attack on Tel Aviv that triggered the exchange.

Benny Gantz's campaign confirmed late Thursday that the former military chief, who has been campaigning on his security credentials in a bid to end Netanyahu's decade-long rule, was the target of an Iranian hacking attack several months ago.

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters said Thursday a "large number" of Islamic State militants and their families are surrendering a day after intense fighting in the last speck of land the extremists still hold in eastern Syria.

Authorities are investigating an errant U.S. strike on an Afghan military base in the country's south that killed at least five Afghan troops, a lawmaker said Thursday.

In the biblical book of Jonah, God wants to destroy the city of Nineveh because of its wickedness, but ultimately relents and spares it. Today, what was once Nineveh is the eastern half of the Iraqi city of Mosul, where a version of the biblical story has played out again.

Yemen's warring sides were divided Thursday over a U.S. Senate vote to end America's support for the Saudi-led war in the impoverished country, with the Yemeni government condemning it and the Iran-backed rebels welcoming the development.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets toward Tel Aviv late Thursday, the Israeli military said, marking a significant escalation that raised the likelihood of a harsh Israeli reprisal.

International donors have pledged around $7 billion in aid for Syria and refugees who fled the conflict-ravaged country, the European Union announced Thursday, as the civil war enters its ninth year.

Israeli authorities have opened criminal investigations of the deaths of 11 Palestinians who were killed by Israeli fire during protests along the Gaza border in the past year, a senior Israeli official said Wednesday.

The vote marks the second time in recent months that the Senate has rejected the United States' continued participation in the Saudi-led bombing campaign against Yemen's Houthi rebels, waged in the name of holding back Iranian expansion in the Gulf.

Israeli warplanes attacked militant targets in the southern Gaza Strip early Friday in response to a rare rocket attack on the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, as the sides appeared to be hurtling toward a new round of violence.

Yemeni military officials say the Saudi-led coalition launched a series of airstrikes along the Yemen-Saudi border that mistakenly killed and wounded forces allied with the government.

The top U.S. commander in the Mideast told House lawmakers Thursday that he has not been ordered to withdraw most American forces from Syria by a specific date, telling them troops would leave as military conditions in the fight against the Islamic State allowed.

The United States and the Taliban have drafted an agreement in principle on two of four core issues at the center of peace talks intended to end the U.S.’s longest war, but officials and experts say much work remains.

The meeting signals to Washington that the religious, cultural and economic bonds that tie Iran and Iraq will not be undermined by a focused U.S. effort to isolate Tehran.

The attacks were the latest violence in war-torn Afghanistan even as the Taliban and the U.S. concluded another round of negotiations held in Qatar, with both sides reporting progress in the talks.

Besieged by U.S.-backed forces in their last foothold in eastern Syria, Islamic State militants are calling on supporters across the world to stage attacks in their defense, according to a newly released audio recording.

Officials say the Taliban killed at least 13 Afghan soldiers in battles that raged for three days in western Badghis province where insurgents overran several army checkpoints.

The Israeli military said Wednesday it has uncovered a militant network run by the Lebanese Hezbollah group inside Syria, along the frontier with Israel.

U.S.-backed Syrian forces said Wednesday that Islamic State militants are putting up a desperate fight against their advances and staged a counterattack overnight from the tiny speck of land the extremists still hold in eastern Syria.

The beat-up Hyundai station wagon turned onto the street, a signal that the party could begin. The women gathered at the door, ululating as children spilled past them to lob candy at the three boys who slowly disembarked from the vehicle.

Violence in northwestern Syria has killed dozens over the past three weeks and displaced tens of thousands, raising concerns a truce reached six months ago between Turkey and Russia is in danger.

France’s U.N. ambassador told reporters after Wednesday’s closed-door meeting that there was “no posturing but constructive dialogue” in getting the warring parties in Yemen to withdraw their forces from the key port of Hodeida and two smaller ports.

The latest quarrel between the leaders of Turkey and Israel continued for a second day Wednesday as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "thief" and a "tyrant."

An Israeli organization has minted a coin emblazoned with the face of Nikki Haley, President Donald Trump's former ambassador to the United Nations, to commemorate her defense of Israel in the world body.

The State Department highlights the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by government agents in the annual human rights report released Wednesday, saying Saudi Arabia has an "environment of impunity" for officials suspected of human rights abuses.

Many Afghans are taking to social media, demanding harsh punishment for two men arrested in the kidnapping and killing of a little girl in Kabul, a case that has shaken the city's residents.

A U.N. humanitarian agency warned on Tuesday that thousands of Yemeni civilians caught in fierce clashes between warring factions are trapped in an embattled northern district, an area that has become another flashpoint in the country's bitter civil war.

Michael White, held in the northeastern city of Mashhad, is the first American known to be detained since Donald Trump became president.

Warplanes and drones circled over the besieged village of Baghouz. Explosions and fires illuminated columns of smoke over Baghouz as it came under intense artillery and rocket fire. On several occasions, the village was struck with apparent cluster fire.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped a startling social media bomb Tuesday, arguing that not only was the post-9/11 war on Afghanistan a "mistake," but that "non-intervention" might have been an appropriate answer to the terrorist attacks.

According to a report released Monday by Lawyers and Doctors for Human Rights, a Syrian rights group, security forces have used rape and enforced sterilization, as well as the tying, burning and mutilation of men’s genitals, to force confessions and submission.

U.S.-backed Syrian forces made slow advances into the edges of the last village held by the Islamic State group, battling militants holed up in underground tunnels, a spokesman for the force said Monday.

For the first time in 15 years there is no major war or insurgency in Iraq. But few dare to hope the current lull in fighting will last and many fear the growing power of the Shiite militias.

The longest peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban to end America's 17-year war in Afghanistan concluded Tuesday night in Qatar, with both sides saying progress had been made.

Israeli police on Tuesday closed the entrances to Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site after Palestinian suspects threw a firebomb at a police station.

The Palestinian health ministry says a 37-year-old man has been shot dead by Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The military also said in its statement on Monday that Egyptian forces destroyed 15 hideouts, and dismantled 204 explosive devices.

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid faced criticism Saturday after the death of a U.K. teenager's baby in a Syrian camp. Javid revoked Shamima Begum's passport, saying she hadn't shown any remorse. Begum left London as a 15-year-old in 2015 to join the Islamic State group.

As attacks continued on Islamic State's final shred of territory in Baghouz, Syria, the Classy Hotel in Irbil, Iraq, was the closest Bashirul Shikder had gotten to his two children since March 2015, when his wife took them, left Florida and traveled to Syria to join ISIS.

Iran is looking for Iraq's continued support as it faces a pressure campaign by President Donald Trump after his decision to withdraw America from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.

Video, which spread on social media last Friday, shows the young man standing in a heart-shaped ring of flower petals next to colorful balloons in a mall in the central city of Arak.