World View: With jihadis at their door, terrified Maysoun, Nizar, Karim and Bishr reached for grenades rather than face torture and inevitable death at the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra It is a terrible story but it throws a grim light on the terrors of the Syrian war. It is...

  A second round of  Syria  peace talks got off to a shaky start on Monday with the international mediator meeting the two sides separately after violations of a local ceasefire and an Islamist offensive set back his efforts. Ahead of the talks, mediator Lakhdar Brahimi...

At a closed door meeting, Western governments led by the United States took Syria to task for failing to surrender its chemical weapons under ambitious deadlines agreed with Russia after a poison gas attack in August. Speaker after speaker stood up to berate Damascus at the Organisation for...

Six hundred people left the besieged ruins of rebel-held central Homs on Sunday, escaping more than a year of hunger and deprivation caused by one of the most protracted blockades of Syria's devastating conflict. The evacuees, mainly women, children and old men, were brought out...