Beirut / AFP Five people on board a Russian military helicopter were killed on Monday when it was shot down over Syria, in the single deadliest incident for Moscow since it intervened in the war. The attack came as Syrian opposition fighters and their extremist allies battled government forces outside Aleppo in a bid to ease the regime’s siege ...

  Malé / AFP The Maldives brushed off warnings from Western governments on Monday that a new defamation bill risked undermining basic freedoms on the troubled honeymoon islands, accusing its critics of hypocrisy. After a joint statement from Western missions urging President Abdulla Yameen’s administration to “return to the path of democracy”, the government countered that the same countries had ...

  Baghdad / AFP One of the deadliest bombings to ever hit Iraq killed 323 people, two thirds of whom needed DNA testing to identify, the health minister said, raising an earlier toll from last month’s attack. A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged minibus in a crowded shopping area in Baghdad’s Karrada district early on July 3, sparking infernos in ...