Russia is to go ahead with deliveries of  anti-aircraft missiles  to the Syrian government,  the BBC reports . Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, has said the S-300 missiles were a “stabilising factor” that could dissuade “some hotheads” from joining the...

UK’s Hague says EU failure to agree on extending arms embargo effectively ends ban on supplying arms to Syrian rebels. European foreign ministers have lifted an arms embargo on Syria, paving the way for individual EU member states to provide weapons to the Syrian rebels.   The...

  Two rockets fired at Hezbollah-controlled southern Beirut bring  Syria 's escalating civil war deeper into the heart of Lebanon and closer to unrestrained regional conflict. The two-year-old conflict in  Syria  has already tumbled into Lebanon's Bekaa Valley,...

 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...