Leila Fadel

Libya keeps spiraling downward as Islamist fighters slug it out with forces loyal to a rogue general in the capital and elsewhere.

Conditions in Libya have gone from bad to worse in recent months, with its main airport now a battleground and foreigners pulling out of the country.

Human rights groups are accusing the Iraqi government of indiscriminate bombing. Baghdad officials deny that and note they're fighting a Sunni insurgency that commits mass executions and suicide bombings.

Yet rights workers say civilians are being killed by government attacks with so-called barrel bombs — the crude weapons made famous ...

North Korea has fired a short-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, according to The Associated Press, which quotes an unnamed South Korean official.

The test is described as beginning with a launch in the country's southwest Hwanghae province on Saturday morning and ending when the missile landed off ...

The radical Islamic State and former associates of Saddam Hussein have fought together against Iraq's government. But the fault lines between the unlikely partners are beginning to show.

The Sunni extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State is solidifying its hold on the Iraqi city of Mosul. As it does so, the group is building a track record for how it actual...

For the first time since the first century, there are basically no Christians left in the historic Iraqi city of Mosul.

A small Sunni Arab town north of Baghdad put up a fight when Sunni Muslim extremists from the so-called Islamic State tried to impose their rule on the town.

The residents lost, and now the town, Zowiya, just outside of Tikrit, is destroyed. More than 200 of its homes have ...

Iraq chose a new speaker of its parliament today — a small step that the U.S. has been urging it to take toward ending the crisis there. But many say it's far from the overhaul that's needed.

Egypt's government has slashed subsidies on fuel. While economists say the subsidy decrease is necessary to address the deficit, already-suffering middle class and poor Egyptians are furious.

The beach bums of Tripoli say that no matter who's in charge of Libya, they'll still be at the beach. NPR's Leila Fadel sends this postcard from Tripoli.

No one is safe in Libya these days. Judges, activists, human rights defenders and former officers in Moammar's Gadhafi's army are being silenced with bullets and knives.

There are no formal security forces, weapons remain unsecured and the economy is foundering because rebels seized oil ports in the east.

For ...

It's a question that's persisted for over a century: how could a slight 19-year-old fire two shots and end up starting a war that killed millions around the world?

Tim Butcher, the well-traveled British war correspondent who covered later wars in the Balkans, went back to Sarajevo to try to ...

A prominent Libyan human rights worker was assassinated Wednesday. NPR's Leila Fadel interviewed Salwa Bugaighis earlier this month and remembers the lawyer's efforts against former dictator Moammar Gadhi's regime.

An Egyptian court issued its verdict in the trial of three journalists from the Al Jazeera English network. Though evidence of their alleged crimes was never presented in court, two o...

Two journalists in Cairo got seven years in prison and third received 10 years. Egypt's government accused them of helping the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Sunni militants of ISIS have raised their black flags in towns they've captured in northern Iraq. But they've had help from, and share a goal with, former members of Saddam Hussein's security forces.

Islamist Sunni militants reportedly control most of Iraq's largest oil refinery, as they vow to push on to Baghdad. Meanwhile, there is a growing call for Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to step down.

Residents of the embattled Iraqi city of Mosul have fled to the village of al-Qoush. Among them were about 40 Christian families, a sign of just how few Christians are left in Iraq.