Friends of mine who just came from Damascus described how the city transformed into a ghost city, and how depressing it is to walk in its up-scaled residential areas such as Abu Romana , Al Malki, which have become dark and empty of its people . Even though these areas...

Firefights and shelling on Sunday shattered a weeks-old truce at the Yarmuk Palestinian camp in Damascus, but a ceasefire allowed residents to return to another besieged area near Syria’s capital. Syria’s three-year conflict is estimated to have killed more than 140,000 people,...

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon urged on Monday for the need to re-launch the Syrian peace process, stressing that Damascus in particular must return to Geneva with a more “constructive position,” Agence France-Presse reported. The U.N. secretary general calling to reinstate the peace...

Syrian troops seized control Monday of a village near the strategic rebel bastion of Yabrud as they pushed closer to the town near the border with Lebanon, state television said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, meanwhile, said the army, backed by Lebanon’s...