Author: Aya Batrawy

HORDYNIA, Ukraine • Planting season has arrived in Ukraine. Boot marks stamped in the frozen earth have thawed. But the Pavlovych family’s fields remain untouched in a lonely landscape of checkpoints and churches. Over a week ago, the family learned their 25-year-old soldier son, Roman, had been killed near the besieged city of Mariupol. On…

AL-ULA, Saudi Arabia • Gulf Arab leaders signed a declaration Tuesday to ease a rift with Qatar, after Saudi Arabia’s decision to end a 3 1/2-year embargo of the tiny energy-rich country that deeply divided regional U.S. security allies and frayed social ties across the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia also said it was restoring full…

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates • The cellphone of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos was hacked in what appeared to be an attempt by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince to “influence, if not silence” the newspaper’s reporting on the kingdom, two U.N. human rights experts said Wednesday. The U.N. experts called for an “immediate…

UNITED NATIONS • Iran’s president warned world leaders Wednesday that security in the energy-rich Persian Gulf could collapse quickly with a “single blunder,” and he accused the United States of engaging in “merciless economic terrorism” against his country. On the same day as President Hassan Rouhani spoke, the U.S. ramped up oil-related sanctions on Iran,…

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called the attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil installations an “act of war” against the kingdom by Iran, as the Saudis displayed missile and drone wreckage and cited other evidence they said shows the raid was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran.” Iran, which has denied involvement…

GENEVA • The gathering on the second floor of the Saudi consulate featured an unlikely collection: a forensic doctor, intelligence and security officers, agents of the crown prince’s office. As they waited for their target to arrive, one asked how they would carry out the body. Not to worry, the doctor said: “Joints will be…

TEHRAN, Iran • Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe traveled to Tehran on Wednesday to warn that an “accidental conflict” could be sparked amid heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S., a message that came hours after Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels attacked a Saudi airport, wounding 26 people. Abe’s trip is the highest-level effort yet to…

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates • Saudi Arabia on Tuesday beheaded 37 Saudi citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. It also publicly pinned the executed body and severed head of a convicted Sunni extremist to a pole as a warning to others. The executions were…