They were living in holes in the ground, with only dry flatbread to eat at the end. Those injured in an intense military campaign had no access to medical care, and those who were sick had no medicine.

Yet, if it were not for the call from their leaders to leave, they would have stayed.

An Israeli spacecraft rocketed toward the moon for the country's first attempted lunar landing, following a launch Thursday night by SpaceX.

A communications satellite for Indonesia was the main cargo aboard the Falcon 9 rocket, which illuminated the sky as it took flight. But Israel's privately funded lunar lander — a first not just for Israel but commercial space — generated the buzz.

Islamic State fighters facing defeat in Syria are slipping across the border into Iraq, where they are destabilizing the country's fragile security, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

Hundreds — likely more than 1,000 — IS fighters have crossed the open, desert border in the past six months, defying a massive operation by U.S., Kurdish, and allied forces to stamp out the remnants of the jihadi group in eastern Syria, according to three Iraqi intelligence officials and a U.S. military official.

The future of a key North Korean nuclear facility is on the table as leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump prepare to meet in Vietnam next week.

The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, the heart of the North's nuclear development and research, is Kim's biggest carrot as he tries to win security guarantees and free his country from the U.S.-backed trade sanctions that are hobbling its economy.

A European human rights group says nine Syrians have filed a criminal complaint in Sweden against senior officials in Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, which works to assist survivors of torture in Syria, says the aim was to have Sweden investigate 25 named intelligence officials "as well as those not yet known by name" and issue international arrest warrants.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declined Monday to say if he had nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, though he also emphasized he did not deny doing so.

Trump's assertion Friday that Abe had nominated him for the honor and sent him a copy of the letter has raised criticism in Japan.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has denied U.S. assertions that it has cells in Venezuela saying the Latin American nation "does not need them."

Nasrallah said in a speech Saturday that his Iran-backed group is in "solidarity with the political leadership and state of Venezuela against the American aggression."

When you want results in a polarized Washington, sometimes it pays to simply leave the professionals alone to do their jobs.

That seems to especially be the case now in an era in which liberal House Democrats are sharing power in Washington with a GOP-led Senate and President Donald Trump.

Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest airport for international travel, has briefly halted flights over an alleged drone sighting.

The airport says it halted flights from 10:13 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. on Friday over "suspected drone activity." It says flights were later resumed.

The young Syrian woman walked on stage and began telling the story of her brother's kidnapping in the early years of her country's civil war, wiping away tears as she recalled the 2013 incident that changed her life.

The woman, who identified herself as Mae from a government stronghold in the central city of Homs, said Ihsan's kidnapping in 2013 turned her into a more tolerant person, despite the eight-year conflict that has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced half the country's population.