Syria peace talks due to begin in Geneva this week look set to struggle with the sides showing no sign of compromise over the issue at the heart of the five-year-long conflict: the future of President Bashar al-Assad. The U.N.-led talks getting underway on Monday with U.S. and...

ISIS Sunday pulled its fighters out of Al-Rutbah, a desert town in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, an army general and the mayor said. "Daesh (ISIS) has completely pulled out of [Al-Rutbah] and gone towards Al-Qaim," a major general told AFP, referring to a extremist bastion on the...

The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front seized bases and weapons from a Western-backed rebel group in overnight fighting in northwestern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday. Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Observatory, said the Nusra Front had also detained...

A European Union draft deal with Turkey to stop migrants reaching Greece introduces a harder edge of coercion to what critics have derided as a hitherto feeble EU response to a crisis tearing it apart. Just last week, some saw European Council President Donald Tusk running short...