Mahmoud

AT least 80 people, including two Turkish nationals, were killed and many more wounded in a suicide truck bomb attack on a security checkpoint in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Dec. 28, said Turkey's envoy to the country.

BELGRADE - Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic Wednesday held separate meetings with the outgoing ambassadors of Iran and Pakistan, Majid Fahim Pour and Arif Mahmood.

Nikolic and Pour said Serbia-Iran trade had been on an increase, expressing the expectation it would soon match the levels from the era of the former Yugoslavia, the presidential press office said in a statement.

Israel started setting up roadblocks in Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem and deploying soldiers in cities across the country on Oct. 14 to try to combat the worst surge of violence in months.

Palestinian officials condemned the security measures - the most serious clampdown in the Jerusalem area since a Palestinian uprising a decade ago - as collective punishment. 

Kurdish militia pressed a big offensive against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in northeast Syria Feb. 25, cutting one of its supply lines from Iraq, as fears mounted for dozens of Christians abducted by the hardline group that recently beheaded 21 Egyptian Copts.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon has condemned Turkey for "hosting members of Palestinian faction Hamas despite being a NATO member."

"It's unbelievable that NATO would allow a terror organization to host a headquarters in its territory," Ya'alon said during a meeting with his Spanish counterpart Pedro Morenés in Tel Aviv on Dec. 2.