President Joe Biden faced intense political pressure Monday to retaliate against Iran for a deadly drone strike on US troops, posing a major challenge for the Democrat in an election year.
Striking Iran would dramatically escalate the risk of the wider war Biden says he's trying to avoid -- not to mention the possibility of more US caskets coming home in the months before polls open.
Iraq's football association condemned the "abhorrent behaviour" of journalists who confronted coach Jesus Casas following the team's exit in the Asian Cup last 16 on Monday.
Iraq conceded two goals in stoppage time in a surprise 3-2 defeat to lower-ranked Jordan in Doha.
Tempers flared among some Iraqi reporters in the post-game press conference, who pointed and shouted angrily at Casas, and approached him at the front of the room before being ushered out by security.
Saudi Arabia said Monday donors should continue supporting the main UN aid agency for Palestinians after Israel alleged several of its staff took part in the October 7 Hamas attack.
Supporters of UNRWA should "carry out their role in supporting the humanitarian tasks toward Palestinian refugees", the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
This would "alleviate the effects of the humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territories", SPA said.
Gazans lamented Monday the suspension of funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees by several donor countries after Israel charged that some UNRWA staff took part in Hamas's October 7 attack.
The agency has fired several staff over Israel's accusations and promised a thorough investigation into these claims, which were not specified.
Several countries, including the United States, France, Britain, Germany and Japan, have announced the suspension of further funding to the agency.
An Iranian and two Canadians, including a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, have been indicted for allegedly conspiring to assassinate Iranian dissidents on US soil, officials said Monday.
Naji Sharifi Zindashti, 49, Damion Patrick John Ryan, 43, and Adam Richard Pearson, 29, plotted to murder two residents of the state of Maryland, Justice and Treasury department officials said.
Even the dead are not spared by the Hamas-Israel war raging in Gaza, with bodies dug up by Israeli troops and hurried burials happening in hospitals and even a school.
In Gaza City's Al-Tuffah district, shrouded corpses of Palestinians torn from their graves lay atop muddied earth.
Israel's military had bulldozed the site and exhumed bodies, according to an AFP photographer who visited it earlier this month.
Israeli forces killed five people in separate incidents across the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said Monday as Israeli troops carried out a series of raids.
Violence has flared in the West Bank since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants triggered war in Gaza.
In the northern city of Jenin, an AFP photographer on Monday saw residents navigating a street bulldozed by Israeli forces in their latest raid.
Thaer Naim Hamo, a 21-year-old resident of Al-Yamun, near Jenin, was killed according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Jordan will meet Tajikistan in the Asian Cup quarter-finals after scoring twice in three minutes deep in stoppage time to stun Iraq 3-2 in a thriller on Monday.
Jordan had a man advantage after the 77th-minute dismissal of Aymen Hussein but looked down and out in injury time, only for Yazan Al-Arab to prod in a 95th-minute leveller.
If that was hard to believe, better was to come two minutes later for Jordan when Nizar Al-Rashdan curled in from well outside the box to fire the underdogs into the last eight and spark wild celebrations.
Iran on Monday hanged four members of its Kurdish minority on charges of spying for Israel, defying a campaign for their lives to be spared by rights groups who had described their trial as grossly unfair.
The four men were executed at dawn after they were convicted of collaborating with Israel on a plan to sabotage an Iranian defence site in the central province of Isfahan, according to the judiciary's Mizan Online website.
Tanks churn through the mud between bombed-out buildings in Gaza's main southern city of Khan Yunis, now the epicentre of the war, as explosions and gunfire reverberate in the distance.
Piles of rubble tower near the entrance to a Hamas tunnel, part of the underground labyrinth the army dubs the "Gaza Metro" and where it says militants are hiding out and holding hostages.
