A court in Sweden has sentenced two men to life imprisonment over “terror crime” murders carried out by Islamic State militants in Syria in 2013. Hassan al-Mandlawi, 32, and Al-Amin Sultan, 30, both Swedish nationals, were found guilty of actively taking part in the murders, which were filmed. The Gothenburg court convicted the pair even though they did not wield ...

Egyptian investigators say they have so far found no evidence that terrorism caused a Russian jet to crash in the Sinai in October, killing 224 people. The plane came down en route to Russia from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. A group linked to so-called Islamic State (IS) said it bombed the plane. Nearly all the victims were Russians. Russia ...

British fighter planes have carried out their first sorties against the ISIS terrorist group in Syria. But in Iraq, the government has a message for Turkish forces who say they are fighting ISIS as well. The British Ministry of Defense said its Typhoon and Tornado jets had carried out a series of airstrikes on the ISIS-controlled oilfield at Omar, in ...

Canada’s new Liberal government will act within weeks to fulfil a campaign promise to withdraw six fighter jets that have been attacking Islamic State (IS) positions in Iraq and Syria, the foreign ministry says. The Liberals, who took power last month, say Canada can contribute more effectively to the US-led campaign against the militants by assigning more troops to train ...

The Yemeni government and the Houthi rebel movement have agreed to attend peace talks next week, the UN says. The UN special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, said the talks would start on 15 December in Switzerland. He added that Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi had told him that he was ready to call a temporary ceasefire to ...

An outbreak of swine flu has left 33 people dead in two provinces of southwestern Iran in the past three weeks, the state media reported on Monday. Deputy Health Minister Ali Akbar Sayyari said there had been 28 deaths in Kerman province and 5 in Sistan-Baluchistan and warning the H1N1 virus was likely to spread to other areas including the capital Tehran. ...

Iraq’s premier Haider al-Abadi said Monday that most of the oil smuggled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group goes through Turkey, joining a chorus of countries linking it with the militants’ financing. During a meeting with Germany’s visiting foreign minister, Abadi stressed the “importance of stopping oil smuggling by [ISIS] terrorist gangs, the majority of which ...

Yemeni loyalists supported by a Saudi-led coalition battled Sunday to oust Iran-backed militia group from a southern province where they have made gains in recent weeks, with at least 16 reported dead. Ground fighting and air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition killed 12 Houthis in Daleh province, military sources said. Four loyalists were also killed. Daleh is one of five ...

The Appalling treatment of captured women and girls in Islamic State territory has been laid bare in a shocking testimony to the UN. Zainab Bangura, the UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, recently toured refugee camps in the Middle East and returned with horror stories told by the victims of the terror group. “They are institutionalising sexual violence,” she ...

Lebanon’s political crisis has taken a dramatic turn with the possibility that a friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could become president in a power-sharing deal aimed at breathing life back into the paralyzed state. The idea of Suleiman Franjieh, a childhood friend of Assad, becoming head of state has taken aback many Lebanese, not least because of who tabled ...