(Zaman Al Wasl)- Syrian rebel factions on Wednesday have taken control of a town and its strategic hilltop in the northwestern Hama province, inflicting humiliating defeat on regime forces and allied militias, local activists said. Seizing the town of al-Hamameyat in the northern...

Labor Minister Camille Abousleiman said Wednesday his ministry’s inspectors shuttered 20 shops as part of its crackdown on undocumented foreign labor, after the one-month grace period he gave employers to apply for a work permit ended. “Our goal is to regulate foreign labor and grant work...

Syrian man jailed by the Bashar al-Assad regime has haunting memories of unbearable torture and abuse in the interrogation centers.   Jamal Abidin Najjar, a mechanical engineer, was detained while he was traveling from Syria to Lebanon as a warrant had been issued for his arrest...

A new team established by the global chemical weapons watchdog to attribute blame for the use of banned munitions in Syria will investigate nine alleged attacks during the country's civil war, including in the town of Douma, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. The Organization for...

President Bashar al-Assad’s assault in the northwest has been met with a painful rebel counterpunch that underlines Turkish resolve to keep the area out of his hands and shows why he will struggle to take back more of Syria by force. More than two months of Russian-backed operations in and...

The United Nations is close to agreement with Syria on establishing a constitutional committee, the U.N. Secretary General's Syria envoy Geir Pedersen told reporters on Wednesday. The U.N. wants to convene the committee as a next step in efforts to find a political solution to end the war...

.Regime and Russian air strikes on northwestern Syria on Wednesday killed 11 civilians including four children and knocked a hospital out of service, a monitor said. The raids are the latest in an uptick in deadly government and Russian bombardment since late April on the...

The UN special envoy for Syria arrived in Damascus Tuesday to press fresh talks on forming a constitutional committee to revive a stalling peace process to end the eight-year war. "Pleased to be back in Damascus," Geir Pederson, a seasoned Norwegian diplomat and the fourth UN ambassador to...

Member states of the global chemical weapons watchdog voiced concern Tuesday that Syria may still possess such weapons after inspectors discovered traces of what could be a byproduct of a nerve agent or poison gas at a Syrian research facility. In a report submitted to the Organization for...

At 2 am one Saturday night, Syrian brothers Mustafa and Ahmed were at home hunched over a screen watching live black and white security camera footage of men destroying their clothes shop. They watched as a small group of Turkish men broke their glass storefront, ripped up Arabic leaflets...

Attempting to evade accountability, the regime of Bashar al-Assad has dismissed Syrian security intelligence chiefs accused of war crimes and replaced them with “clean figures,” according to local sources. The officials of the regime, known as perpetrators of war crimes including the use of...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Syrian rebels on Monday have thwarted an attack by regime forces and allied militias in northwestern Hama province, killing 30 troops, commander told Zaman al-Wasl.   Abu Yasser al-Hamwi, senior rebel commander, said the Syrian opposition had foiled new offensive on...

Syrian opposition activists and a war monitoring group say rebels have launched an offensive in the mountains of the coastal Latakia province, overrunning a series of Syrian army positions. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says clashes are underway in several locations in the...

Germany on Monday rejected demands by the United States to deploy ground troops in Syria, a stance likely to anger President Donald Trump who wants Chancellor Angela Merkel to commit to a bigger military role in the Middle East. "When I say the government envisages sticking to the current...

Activists have embarked on a so-called “I’ll Be Back Home” campaign in an attempt to urge concerned authorities to reconstruct Yarmouk Camp and allow displaced Palestinian families to safely return to their homes. The campaigners called on the concerned families to gather at Al-Bashir...

Besides facing torture, many prisoners in Syrian jails are subjected to pay huge bribes in exchange of their freedom, say ex-prisoners. “My family paid a bribe of 500,000 Syrian liras (about $10,000) to one of the members of the Assad family for my release,” Um Hisam, 50, told Anadolu...

Syrian President Bashar Assad has replaced some heads of influential security agencies, including Maj. Gen. Jamil Hassan, who has headed the powerful Air Force Intelligence Directorate since 2009, pro-government Syrian pages on social media reported Sunday. No reason was given for the...

Qusayr, a once bustling commercial hub in western Syria, has not seen any fighting since government troops, with the help of Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group, drove out Sunni Muslim rebels six years ago. Large sections of the city lie in ruin and of the thousands who fled the...

Regime bombardment Sunday killed 12 civilians including three children in an opposition bastion in northwestern Syria, a war monitor said. Idlib, a region of some three million people, has come under increasing fire by the regime and its ally Russia since late April, despite a months-old...

Dima al-Kanj’s house is now a pile of rubble and twisted metal. It was just a concrete hut near the Lebanese border, but she had spent five years trying to make it cozy for her children after fleeing the war in Syria. Then, under army orders, she had to smash it. “Every year, we...