Israel and Germany on Wednesday condemned remarks by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Berlin, where he compared the Holocaust to the Jewish state's killings of Palestinians.
Abbas, standing beside Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday, was asked if he would apologise on behalf of the Palestinian militants who carried out the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage-taking in which 11 Israelis were killed.
An electrical fire that turned a crowded Cairo church into a deathtrap highlights a persistent problem, say Coptic Christians in majority-Muslim Egypt -- a struggle to build or renovate their places of worship.
The residential-style multi-storey building housing the Abu Sifin Church where 41 worshippers died had only one exit and, like most structures in Egypt, lacked smoke detectors and alarms or fire escapes.
The Syrian government on Wednesday denied holding American nationals captive, including journalist Austin Tice who was abducted a decade ago in Damascus.
It issued a statement in response to US President Jo Biden saying last week that he knows "with certainty" that Tice "has been held by the Syrian regime", and calling on Damascus to help bring him home.
The foreign ministry denied the accusation in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.
A Lebanese man who held bank staff hostage in Beirut last week to demand access to his trapped savings has been released from custody after charges against him were dropped.
Judge Ghassan al-Khoury ordered the release of Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, who stormed a Federal Bank branch in Beirut with a rifle, after the bank dropped the charges against him, the state-run National News Agency reported on Tuesday.
A judicial official told AFP on Wednesday that Hussein has since been released but still faces possible charges by the state.
Mourners in Egypt attended a memorial service Tuesday for victims of a Coptic church fire in Cairo that killed 41 people -- among them many children, including twins and triplets.
The electrical fire on Sunday ripped through the Abu Sifin church in Imbaba, a working class district west of the Nile River, part of Giza governorate in greater Cairo.
At least 10 of those killed during Sunday mass, when families flock to the church and its daycare services, were minors aged under 16, according to a list from just one hospital circulated by local media.
Iraq's firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr backtracked Tuesday after earlier urging his supporters to join a massive rally as a standoff with his political rivals appeared to be getting worse.
The populist cleric's announcement came amid behind the scenes talks aimed at steering Iraq out of crisis, with the country's two branches of Shiite Islam jockeying for supremacy.
More than 10 months on from elections, Iraq still has no government, new prime minister or new president, because of disagreement between factions over forming a coalition.
The European Union and United States said Tuesday they were studying Iran's response to a "final" draft agreement on reviving a 2015 nuclear accord with major powers the EU presented at talks in Vienna.
The US had already said Monday that it was informing EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell of its response to the text he submitted on August 8.
The European Union said Tuesday it was studying Iran's response to a "final" draft agreement on reviving a 2015 nuclear accord with major powers it presented at talks in Vienna.
The United States had already said Monday that it was informing EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell of its response to the text he submitted on August 8.
Israel's army said Monday it had discovered and blocked a tunnel leading out of the Gaza Strip that had been dug by the Palestinian enclave's Hamas rulers.
Israel says the militant group aims to use so-called attack tunnels to infiltrate fighters and abduct Israeli soldiers or civilians as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges.
The Israeli military said it had identified the tunnel "with two routes belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation, dug from the northern Gaza Strip".
More than a week since Israeli air strikes smashed into a Gaza Strip highrise, local resident Said Bessia pointed to a hole punched through concrete where a missile killed an Islamic Jihad commander.
"This is where he was sitting," Bessia said, referring to Tayseer al-Jabari, who was meeting several top militants on the sixth floor of the Palestine Tower building.
The August 5 strikes were among the first of a three-day bombardment of the densely populated Palestinian enclave which, even the militants acknowledged, dealt a blow to their leadership.
