Middle Orient

Palestinians held demonstrations across the region Friday to protest President Donald Trump’s Middle East initiative, while militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets and mortar rounds at Israel, drawing retaliatory strikes.

The Kurdish-led administration that runs much of northeastern Syria is planning to organise a local tribunal to try IS fighters held captive in the region, a representative of its foreign relations committee said on Thursday.

Terror group continues to seek opportunities to strike in west, says security council report Islamic State has begun to reassert itself in its heartlands in the Middle East and continues to seek opportunities to strike in the west, the United Nations has said.

The Islamic State group vowed in an audio message released Monday that the extremists will start a new phase of attacks that will focus on Israel and blasted the U.S. administration’s plan to resolve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Islamic State group’s self-styled “caliphate” across parts of Iraq and Syria seemed largely defeated last year, with the loss of its territory, the killing of its founder in a U.S. raid and an unprecedented crackdown on its social media propaganda machine.

Hoping to bring about a “new dawn in the Middle East,” U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his peace plan for the region on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing at his side.

The General Command of the Syrian Army and Armed Forces announced that the army units operating in Idlib countryside have liberated during the past few days the city of Ma’aret al-Nu’aman and a number of villages and towns in the southern countryside of Idlib from terrorism.

The Ansarallah forces (var. Houthi) announced on Wednesday that their rocket battalion unleashed a new attack on the Saudi Aramco oil facilities in the southern region of Saudi Arabia.

Formed by Hezbollah and its allies, new government faces one of the biggest financial crises in the country’s history.

Islamic State fighters did not capitalize on a recent break in U.S. operations to significantly reconstitute their ranks in Iraq, according to a top general.