This photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published by Associated Press photographers in the Middle East, Afghanistan & Pakistan Region between Aug. 20-26, 2020.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas agreed with his Israeli counterpart Thursday that an effort must be made to extend a weapon embargo on Iran, while stressing Germany still sees the landmark 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers as the best way to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Lebanon is in such a deep political and economic crisis that the country risks collapsing altogether, France's foreign minister said Thursday.

Turkey on Thursday accused France of stoking tensions in the eastern Mediterranean, where NATO allies Turkey and Greece are locked in a stiff standoff over competing claims over offshore energy exploration rights.

China on Thursday accused Washington of violating international law by imposing sanctions on officials and companies over Beijing's military buildup in the disputed South China Sea, but gave no indication of possible retaliation.

Protests in Oakland, California, over the shooting of a Black man in Wisconsin turned violent late Wednesday night.

Hurricane Laura pounded the Gulf Coast for hours with ferocious wind, torrential rains and rising seawater as it roared ashore over southwestern Louisiana near the Texas border early Thursday as a life-threatening storm.

A German man wanted on allegations he helped spearhead a far-right group that posted pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic material online has been extradited from the Netherlands, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

The family of a Hezbollah member convicted in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri described Thursday the guilty verdict handed down by a U.N.-backed tribunal as a 'grave injustice.'

Francesca Moody is spending August the way she always does: in darkened rooms in Edinburgh, watching some of the best new theater and comedy the world has to offer.