An unprecedented fall in the water levels of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has exposed the rural population to dangers of heat, drought – and displaced wildlife. 　　Swarms of snakes are attacking people and cattle in southern Iraq as the Euphrates and Tigris rivers dry up and the reptiles lose... More

　　The Palestinian village of Silwan clings to a steep hillside facing the southern walls of Jerusalem's Old City. 　　In the valley below, Al Bustan neighborhood stretches out in the shadow of Haram al-Sharif, also known as the Temple Mount. It is a setting rich in meaning for Muslims, Jews and... More

　　Arye King is an Israeli settler on a self-appointed "mission from God": to extend Jewish ownership over the whole of Jerusalem. 　　Armed only with a crash helmet and a list of properties which, he says, belong to Jewish owners, he travels by motor scooter around the Jerusalem area, posting eviction... More

　　The International Committee of the Red Cross has described the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza as people "trapped in despair". 　　In a report, it said that a main cause was the continuing Israeli blockade. 　　The report comes six months after the end of Israel's military offensive in Gaza in... More

　　Troops fighting in Israel's war on Gaza were urged by their commanders to shoot first rather than worry about killing civilians, a document from an Israeli activist group shows. 　　Published on Wednesday, the document also gives an insight into Israel's policy of house demolitions and its use of white phosphorus... More

　　Israel ordered original Arabic names of all signs on Palestinian areas under occupation since 1948 to be turn into Hebrew language in an attempt to erase Palestinian identity in the region. 　　The Israeli transport ministry Yisrael Katz said on Monday that it will "get rid of Arabic and English names"... More

　　The Uyghur people of East Turkestan, an area known by the Chinese authorities as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, have long been victims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s sixty-year authoritarian rule. In the years since the CCP gained control of East Turkestan in 1949 and before Deng Xiaoping launched his... More

　　Israeli settler groups have set up 11 new outposts in the occupied West Bank, in a direct rebuttal of mounting US calls to freeze settlement activity. 　　Young Jewish groups are reported to have set up the structures – mostly tents and huts on hilltops – in the West Bank over... More

　　Israel arrested 9,000 Palestinians last year, 700 of them children. 　　A former Israeli military commander has told the BBC that Palestinian youngsters are routinely ill-treated by Israeli soldiers while in custody, reports the BBC' s Katya Adler from Jerusalem and the West Bank. 　　"You take the kid, you blindfold him,... More

　　The polling was conducted by Gallup Pakistan, an affiliate of the Gallup International polling group, and more than 2,600 people took part. 　　Interviews were conducted across the political spectrum in all four of the country's provinces, and represented men and women of every economic and ethnic background. 　　When respondents were... More

　　The senior human rights official at the United Nations has said that the Israeli military acted with "near impunity" during its late-December to mid-January offensive on the Gaza Strip, violating international law. 　　Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a report on Friday that evidence collected... More

　　In November 2008, an Iraqi mother called Sabria Jaloob received what she described as a "blessing". 　　It was the body of her son, Noori, who had vanished during the 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran and had not been heard of since. 　　For more than two decades, Sabria did not... More

　　Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing unrest are now living in camps that Oxfam said on Thursday were horrifically overcrowded and unfit for humans. 　　The fighting has created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa nation, with one million internally displaced people and thousands more... More