Awakened by the sound of gunfire, Ahmad could hear the armed men knocking on his brother's door, shouting insults and calling the family "dogs". Ahmad's sister-in-law said the gunmen told her husband to "bow to your god, Bashar" -- the Syrian president. She and her husband and...

A British doctor who left his home, family and job in the UK to help civilians wounded by the conflict in  Syria  has died after the makeshift hospital he was working in was shelled. Dr Isa Abdur Rahman, 26, was working as a volunteer in the north-western city of Idlib with the...

For the past year, rebel groups that took their war to  Syria 's main cities have been unable to finish what they started. Pinned down by air power and shelling that can hit them wherever they are, opposition fighters have barely advanced in Aleppo and Damascus; their gains in some areas...

 More than 70 people were killed in a wave of bombings in markets in Shi'ite neighbourhoods across Baghdad on Monday in worsening sectarian violence in Iraq. No group claimed responsibility for the blasts. But Sunni Muslim Islamist insurgents and al-Qaeda' s Iraqi wing have...