Attacks by five suicide bombers on an Iraqi military base north of Baghdad on January 3 killed at least 15 members of the security forces and wounded 22 others, security sources said.

Gunfire and blasts were heard on January 3 at an Indian Air Force base attacked by militants a day earlier, as security forces hunted two gunmen still at large in the sprawling facility near the border with Pakistan.

President Barack Obama, frustrated by Congress' inaction on gun control, will meet with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on January 4 to discuss ways of reducing gun violence unilaterally through measures that do not require congressional approval.

A new appraisal names the United States as one of the threats to Russia's national security for the first time, a sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years.

A series of Iranian officials vowed on January 1, 2016 to expand Tehran's missile capabilities, a challenge to the United States which has threatened to impose new sanctions even as the vast bulk of its measures against Iran are due to be lifted under a nuclear deal.

A suicide attack on a French restaurant in the Afghan capital Kabul on January 1, 2016 killed a 12-year-old boy and wounded more than a dozen other people, officials said.

Europe ushered in the New Year with heightened security fears on December 31 as German police evacuated two train stations in Munich, citing a tip about a planned militant attack, and Belgium arrested three people over an alleged plot.

A UN plan to suspend Syria's nearly five-year-old civil war calls for listing which militant groups may be fought despite an eventual ceasefire, one of the toughest issues vexing diplomats trying to end the conflict.

The White House has delayed imposing new financial sanctions on Iran over its ballistic-missile program, The Wall Street Journal reported on December 31.

President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defense minister on December 31 to expand Iran's missile program, in defiance of a US threat to impose sanctions over a ballistic missile test Iran carried out in October.