A top Syrian official says the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons refused to visit key sites linked to a nerve gas attack, casting doubt on the international monitor's credibility. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad dismissed an OPCW report released last week...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- At least 16 civilians were killed in southern Sweida province when Russian warplanes struck a border village with Jordan, spokesman for a U.S.-backed group said. Saad al-Haj, spokeman for Osoud al-Shariqiya, formed by tribesmen in eastern Qalamoun, said the strikes hit...

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- A Syrian military helicopter has been destroyed and four soldiers have been killed by the Islamic State in eastern Deir Ezzor province, Russian Sputnik agency said Sunday.   The helicopter that landed in an army base to deliver food rations to regime forces was a...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The villages of Kafarya and al-Fu’ah occasionally witness the pro-Assad militias burning the villages’ fruit trees and bulldozing agricultural land in the two towns or at the front lines. Villagers in nearby Binesh, also hear the sound of massive explosions coming from the two...

US-backed fighters pierced jihadist-held Raqqa from the south for the first time on Sunday, crossing the Euphrates River to enter a new part of the Syrian city, a monitor said. The Syrian Democratic Forces have spent months closing in on the Daesh (ISIS) bastion Raqqa and entered the city's...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- At least 160 officers and soldiers from Homs, Latakia and Hama provinces were killed last June in clashes with the Islamic State and rebels, pro-regime media outlets said. The death toll included 39 officers who mostly killed by ISIS in the Syrian desert, also known as Badiya,...

President Bashar al-Assad has appeared on the Syrian currency for the first time, his portrait printed on a new 2,000-pound banknote that went into circulation on Sunday. Central bank governor Duraid Durgham said the 2,000-pound note was one of several new notes printed years ago but the...

At least 19 people have been killed after a suicide bombing struck an eastern district of Damascus, according to a Syrian state television report. It said security forces intercepted three suicide car bombers on Sunday morning, blowing up two at the entrance to the city. The third was able to...

(Zaman Al Wasl)-  Two top army officers killed in an explosive device planted by the Islamic State in the eastern countryside of Aleppo province on Saturday, pro-regime media outlets said. M. General Wahib Sakr and his fellow Ghassan Rached along with an officer and driver were killed...

A Syrian rebel group accused the Syrian army of using chlorine gas against its fighters on Saturday in battles east of Damascus - an accusation the military swiftly denied as a fabrication. The Failaq al-Rahman group said more than 30 people suffered suffocation as a result of the attack in...

The Syrian government on Saturday dismissed a report by the international chemical weapons watchdog that said the banned nerve agent sarin was used in an April attack in northern Syria, saying it lacked "any credibility". Western governments including the United States have said the Syrian...

More than 5,000 civilians were killed in civil war-torn Syria in the first six months of 2017, according to a London-based NGO. According to a new report released by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on Saturday, at least 5,381 civilians, including 1,059 children and 742 women, have...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- U.S.-led coalition killed a family of five, including 3 children, in airstrikes targeted north of Deir Ezzor province in support of Kurdish-led fighters who press to expel ISIS from the de facto capital, local sources said Saturday. The US-led strikes also pounded a prison...

(Zaman Al Wasl)-  Pro-regime media outlets mourned 42 troops, including 11 officers, who had been killed by the Islamic State in the Syrian desert last June. The desert, also known as Badiya, extends over 90,000 square kilometres (35,000 square miles) from central Syria to the borders...

US-backed fighters have launched a renewed attack on Daesh (ISIS) extremists inside their Syrian bastion Raqqa, seeking to retake a key eastern neighborhood, a monitor said on Saturday. "The Syrian Democratic Forces started a counter-offensive on Friday night to retake Al-Senaa," said Rami...

The Syrian government has vastly overestimated the size of the country’s wheat crop, officials, traders and farmers told Reuters, indicating that a population that has endured unrelenting war could struggle to feed itself this year. A large part of Syria’s agricultural heartland in the north...

  (Zaman Al Wasl)- This amputated hand is that of a refugee who used to live in al-Nour camp in the Lebanese town of Arsal. It was found thrown on a mat on Friday. The hand is a sign and reminder of the Lebanese Majqul Company’s raid on the camp in search of those they call terrorists...

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia aims to "liberate" the area between Azaz and Jarablus held by Turkey-backed Syrian rebels, a YPG commander said in a statement. Commander Sipan Hemo did not give a timeline or details of plans to take the area, which was seized by the Turkey-backed rebels last...

A war monitor said Daesh (ISIS) regained control over most of the industrial district in Syria's Raqqa Friday, but the alliance fighting it denied that while acknowledging there was an extremist counter attack in the east of the city. The assault marked Daesh's first sustained effort to...

Nearly half a million Syrians have returned to their homes so far this year, including 440,000 internally displaced people and more than 31,000 returning from neighbouring countries, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Most returned to Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, it said,...