A loud explosion was heard near a military site in the Syrian port city of Latakia on Wednesday, opposition groups and state media said, but the cause of the blast was unclear. Explosions in Latakia, part of President Bashar al-Assad's stronghold on the Mediterranean coast, have been...

As the Syrian civil war got under way, a former electrician who calls himself Sheikh Omar built up a brigade of rebel fighters. In two years of struggle against President Bashar al-Assad, they came to number 2,000 men, he said, here in the northern city of Aleppo. Then, virtually overnight,...

Abdul Basit Haroun says he is behind some of the biggest shipments of weapons from Libya to Syria, which he delivers on chartered flights to neighbouring countries and then smuggles over the border. After fleeing Libya in his 20s, Haroun established himself as a property developer in...

    Alma Abdulrahman is lying gaunt and unable to move anything below her diaphragm in a hospital bed in Amman. Some bedsores have become so deep she's having surgery tomorrow. Screws hold together her upper vertebrae, and cigarette burns pock her right shoulder. Her voice fades...