The Taliban claimed Friday to have shot down a U.S. military transport plane in eastern Afghanistan in a crash that killed 11 people, as the battle for Kunduz raged after the emboldened militants briefly seized the city. The Taliban's stunning success in Kunduz, their biggest tactical...

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Francois Hollande were gearing up for talks on the Syrian conflict on Friday, as tensions rose after Moscow unleashed a fresh wave of bombing over Syrian soil. Russia says its airstrikes are against the Islamic State group (IS), and...

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Wednesday in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, plunging the four-year-old civil war into a volatile new phase as President Vladimir Putin moved forcefully to stake out influence in the unstable region. Moscow's assertion...

Russia said it launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria on Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin secured his parliament's unanimous backing to intervene to prop up the Kremlin's closest Middle East ally. Moscow gave Washington just an hour's notice of the strikes,...