Palestinian Authority officials say Israeli settlers have attacked a West Bank mosque. They set a small fire and spray-painted anti-Islamic insults. Worshippers in the town of Tell near Nablus found smoke damage, broken glass and graffiti at the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque on Monday. A resident says security video shows two people arriving with gasoline and spray paint and running away. The graffiti includes the words "revenge" and "price tag." It's a term tied to settler retaliation attacks. Israeli police and the military say they are searching for the suspects.

Muslim pilgrims have converged on a vast tent camp in the desert near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, officially beginning the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Saudi officials say more than 1.5 million foreign pilgrims have arrived in the city of Mecca so far on Friday. They expect the number to exceed last year's, when more than 1.8 million people performed the Hajj. This year's pilgrimage comes with the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which has pushed the Middle East to the brink of regional conflict. The pilgrims stay in a desert camp, then move for a daylong vigil on Mount Arafat, a hill where the Prophet Muhammad is said to have delivered his final speech.

Muslim pilgrims have been streaming into Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca for the Hajj, as the annual pilgrimage returns to its monumental scale. Saudi officials say more than 1.5 million foreign pilgrims have arrived in Mecca so far. More are expected, and hundreds of thousands of Saudis and others living in Saudi Arabia will also join them when the pilgrimage officially begins on Friday. Saudi officials expect the number to exceed the participants in 2023, when more than 1.8 million people performed Hajj. The numbers are nearing the totals before the coronavirus pandemic. In 2019, more than 2.4 million Muslims made the pilgrimage.

Iran has interred late President Ebrahim Raisi at the holiest Shiite shrine in the nation, days after a fatal helicopter crash killed him, the country's foreign minister and six others. Raisi was placed Thursday inside a tomb at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, where Shiite Islam's eighth imam is buried. Raisi is the first top government official to be buried at the shrine since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He once oversaw the shrine and a charity foundation associated with it, believed to be worth tens of billions of dollars. The death of Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and six others in the crash on Sunday comes at a politically sensitive moment for Iran, both at home and abroad.

Millions of Indians across 93 constituencies are voting as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mounted an increasingly shrill election campaign, ramping up polarizing rhetoric against Muslims. Modi, who voted Tuesday in western Ahmedabad city, has called the minority community infiltrators and accused his rivals of scheming to seize the wealth of non-Muslims and redistribute it to Muslims. Tuesday's polling has crucial seats up for grabs in states including Karnataka, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. Nearly 970 million voters — more than 10% of the world's population — will elect 543 members to the lower house of Parliament for five years during the staggered election, which runs until June 1. The votes will be counted on June 4.