Saudi Arabia says it has broken off diplomatic ties with Iran, amid a row over the Saudi execution of a prominent Shi’ite Muslim cleric.

A suicide bomber purportedly from an IS affiliate unleashed the first terrorist attack in Kuwait in more than two decades, killing at least 25 people and wounding scores more in a bombing that targeted Shi’ite worshippers after midday prayers.

Gunmen on motorcycles boarded a bus and opened fire on commuters in Pakistan’s volatile southern city of Karachi yesterday, killing at least 43 in the latest attack directed against religious minorities.

Iraqi officials say they believe government forces have killed the last remaining Saddam Hussein henchman on the run in Iraq.

Pope Francis has called for an end to all forms of fundamentalism and said fighting hunger and poverty, rather than military intervention alone, were key to stopping Islamist militants carrying out "grave persecutions" in Syria and Iraq.

Iraq’s prime minister said his country’s intelligence operation had uncovered a plot for an imminent attack on subway systems in the United States and Paris.

US Secretary of State John Kerry endorsed Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s plans to mend Baghdad’s relations with Sunnis and Kurds, and said Iraq was a partner in the fight against Islamic State militants.

Iraq’s president snubbed incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and picked another politician to form the next government yesterday, setting up a fierce political power struggle even as the country battles extremists in the north and west.

President Barack Obama said he was sending up to 300 US military advisers to Iraq but stressed the need for a political solution to the country’s crisis, as government forces battled Sunni rebels for control of the country’s biggest refinery.

Iraq has asked the US for air support in countering Sunni rebels, the top US general said last night, after the militants seized major cities in a lightning advance that has routed the Shi’ite-led government’s army.

Barack Obama threatened US military strikes in Iraq yesterday against Sunni Islamist militants who have surged out of the north to menace Baghdad and want to establish their own state in Iraq and Syria.

US secretary of state John Kerry said yesterday that the United States will support Iraq’s fight against al Qaeda-linked militants who have overrun two cities, but won’t send in US troops.

WE were all new to this country once. My people sailed into Cobh and built their churches on the hills of Cork. There weren’t too many Congregationalists round the city in the early years of the last century, but my grandfather integrated quickly.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was still seeking a formal Syrian response to its request for urgent access to the besieged town of Qusair after a minister said aid efforts should wait until the fighting was over.

Some marked Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez’s death with tears; others with cheers.

A car bomb killed 13 people in central Damascus yesterday as President Bashar al-Assad told an international mediator seeking a truce in Syria’s civil war that the key to any political solution was to stop arming rebels.

Refugees are fleeing Syria in ever greater numbers, UN agencies said yesterday, as the conflict between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels intensifies.

Syrian army tanks shelled Aleppo yesterday and a helicopter gunship strafed rebel positions with heavy machine-gun fire as they fought for control of the country’s biggest city.

The government of Bashar al-Assad has declared victory in a hard-fought battle for Syria’s capital Damascus, and pounded rebels who control parts of the country’s largest city Aleppo.

UN observers yesterday came under fire as they tried to reach the site of the latest reported mass killing in Syria — about 80 people, including women and children who were shot or stabbed. The deaths added urgency to diplomatic efforts to end the escalating bloodshed.

Diplomatic roadblocks, a complex social make-up, and a densely distributed population combine to render the Syrian uprising more complex than that of Libya, writes Alastair Macdonald

ADDING to the problem of wanton violence on the streets of Iraq are the increasing numbers of displaced families who are either returning home to lands once confiscated from them or from which they left due to terrorism.

MIDDLE EAST powerhouse Turkey yesterday warned against a sectarian Cold War in the region and said rising Sunni-Shi’ite tensions would be “suicide” for the whole region.

THE last convoy of US soldiers pulled out of Iraq yesterday, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country grappling with political uncertainty.

SYRIAN forces shot dead 20 protesters despite a pledge by President Bashar al-Assad that a crackdown was over, activists said as thousands marched across Syria, spurred on by US and European calls for him to step down.

PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad extended a tank onslaught in Syria’s Sunni Muslim tribal heartland, residents said, in an escalating crackdown on protesters that prompted an extraordinary rebuke from the Saudi king warning the Syrian leader to adopt reforms or risk defeat.

THE youth groups who began a month-long uprising said yesterday that they wanted a new constitution and the dissolution of parliament, local councils and Yemen’s notorious security agencies in addition to the immediate ouster of the president.

BAHRAIN has foiled a “foreign plot” to target Gulf countries, King Hamad said in a possible reference to Iran, after security forces crushed Shi’ite-led unrest, the state news agency reported.

Soldiers and riot police used tear gas and armoured vehicles to expel hundreds of protesters from a landmark square in Bahrain’s capital.

SAUDI ARABIA has sent troops into Bahrain to help put down weeks of protests by the Shi’ite Muslim majority, a move opponents of the Sunni ruling family called a declaration of war.

Thousands of singing and dancing protesters streamed back into Manama’s central Pearl Square today after Bahrain’s leaders withdrew tanks and riot police following a bloody crackdown by security forces in the tiny monarchy.

SOLDIERS opened fire yesterday on thousands of protesters defying a government ban and streaming toward the landmark square that had been the symbolic centre of the uprising to break the political grip of the Gulf nation’s leaders.

SUICIDE bombings targeting religious minorities killed at least 44 people in Pakistan yesterday, sharply driving up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country already battered by massive flooding.

THREE bombs ripped through a Shi’ite Muslim religious procession in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore yesterday, killing 25 people and wounding about 150 others, officials said.

LEBANON’S Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of Shi’ite Islam’s main religious figures who had a strong following world over, died yesterday after a long illness.

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S notorious cousin “Chemical Ali” was convicted yesterday of crimes against humanity, receiving a death sentence for his involvement in one of the worst poison gas attacks ever against civilians – one of several he faces.

Preparations were today under way for the return to the UK of former hostage Peter Moore after his release yesterday from two and a half years of captivity in Iraq.

IRANIAN security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters in the capital yesterday, killing at least eight people and injuring two others, according to opposition websites and witnesses.

RIOT police attacked hundreds of demonstrators with tear gas and fired live bullets in the air to disperse a rally in central Tehran yesterday, carrying out a threat by the country’s most powerful security force to crush any further opposition protests over the disputed presidential election.

BRITISH Defence Secretary John Hutton signalled yesterday there would be a “fundamental change” in Britain’s role in Iraq early next year as he made his first visit to Baghdad.

THE number of Iraqis killed in March climbed to 1,082, the highest monthly figure since August 2007, amid a spike in violence driven by clashes between Shi’ite militiamen and security forces, officials have said.

TWO former Saddam Hussein aides were removed from a Baghdad courtroom for unruly behaviour yesterday on the second day of a trial over the brutal crushing of a 1991 rebellion in Iraq by Shi’ite Muslims.