Middle East | featured news

President Barack Obama urged Israel on Wednesday to help ease restrictions on humanitarian aid and civilian goods for Gaza after a deadly flotilla raid, saying the situation in the blockaded coastal strip was unsustainable.

Israel is easing its Gaza embargo to allow snack food and beverages into the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian officials said Wednesday, following an international outcry over Israel's raid on an aid flotilla.

The U.N. Security Council is set to impose a new round of sanctions on a defiant Iran on Wednesday over a nuclear program that Western powers suspect is aimed at developing atomic weapons.

Turkey has recently asserted a new approach in the Middle East, its words and methods as likely to provoke Washington as to advance its own interests.

Iran will not propose to Washington the release of three U.S. detainees in return for an Iranian nuclear scientist it says was kidnapped by the CIA, the foreign minister's spokesman said on Tuesday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hit a strident tone on a variety of topics during a press conference on the sidelines of an Asian security summit in Istanbul on Tuesday.

Israeli forces have killed four Palestinian divers that Israel says were heavily armed and preparing to carry out a terrorist attack. The Israel Defense Forces says its navy spotted several men in diving suits off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza, a representative of Tehran's supreme leader said on Sunday.

One of the nine people killed in the Israeli raid was an American citizen of Turkish descent, according to a Turkish official.

As some world leaders came out against an Israeli raid on a flotilla carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza, so did protesters in various cities around the world.