Pilgrims performing umrah in the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah have been given a surprise after heavy rain fall swept Makkah and Hail, as overjoyed pilgrims circumambulated the Ka`bah chanting “Allah Akbar”.

A pro-Islamist newspaper was sold in the West Bank on Saturday for the first time in seven years, another sign of a Palestinian unity pact that prompted Israel to suspend peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Syrian armed forces moved into Homs on Friday, the provincial governor told Reuters, combing through rubble-filled streets for booby traps and mines a day after hundreds of rebels left the central city as part of a deal with the government.

At least four Yemeni soldiers have died in a gun battle with militants outside the presidential palace in the capital, Sanaa, according to reports.

Ukraine’s interior minister said security forces had killed about 20 pro-Russian rebels in the port city of Mariupol on Friday, in what appeared one of the biggest actions in Kiev’s attempt to end an insurgency in the country’s east.

Thailand’s political scene looks set for a new round of unrest after the country’s Constitutional Court ordered caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra out of office on Wednesday, six months after a wave of violent demonstrations demanding her resignation.  

The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group is in complete control of the city of Fallujah and there are no government forces within the city limits, former Iraqi finance minister and deputy prime minister Rafie Al-Issawi told Asharq Al-Awsat.

World famous Muslim scholar Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani has passed away at the age of 92 in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

About 30 Syrian government fighters were killed when rebels set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint in a northwestern province, activists said on Tuesday.

In the first legal action against Sri Lanka’s extremist Buddhists, a group of monks have been released on bail, facing accusations of desecrating the holy Qur’an.