( The Globe and Mail )- At 2 a.m. in the midst of Ramadan in 2012, Mohamed Sharbaji got a call from a neighbour of his Aleppo home: “There are men with guns in your house.” In the moment before that conversation, Mr. Sharbaji was a man of influence. A former business owner and land...

(The New York Times)- Nine animals that had been kept alive — barely — at a damaged zoo on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, were evacuated and taken to a rehabilitation center in Turkey last week. The animals — three lions, two tigers, two bears and two hyenas — were trucked from...

An international animal welfare charity was on Friday completing the evacuation of a dozen animals stranded in a neglected zoo in the conflict-torn Aleppo province of northern Syria. The Four Paws group was seeking to move two lions and two domestic dogs from the "Magic World" zoo and...

Kurdish fighters wearing the blue eagle insignia of the Asayish security force stopped the taxi entering the Sheikh Maqsoud district in Aleppo, checking papers and searching for contraband. When they waved it on into the Kurdish-controlled district, it stayed inside the city while leaving,...