Syrian air defenses confronted Israeli missiles targeting an area near the capital, Damascus, downing some of them, Syria's state news agency reported Monday. SANA cited a military source as saying the missiles came from the skies over eastern Lebanon, and targeted outposts in the vicinity...

Jawdat Said, a non-violent Syrian Islamic thinker and author who opposed the fanaticism of some of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideologues, died in exile in Istanbul on Sunday. He was 90. His death leaves a centrist gap in a fragmented Syria, with the country divided between the...

Iraqi airstrikes killed nine suspected Islamic State fighters, including four Lebanese, in retaliation for an IS attack on Iraqi army barracks earlier this month, officials said Sunday. IS gunmen in Iraq broke into a barracks in the mountainous al-Azim district outside the town of Baqouba on...

With a spectacular jail break in Syria and a deadly attack on an army barracks in Iraq, the Islamic State group was back in the headlines the past week, a reminder of a war that formally ended three years ago but continues to be fought mostly away from view. The attacks were some of the...