I stopped to buy walnuts in Sidon last week from a sunburned man sitting on the pavement of the old souk. Like the walnuts – soft, almost creamy inside their iron-hard husks – he came from the Syrian town of Bloudan. In years gone by, I would take the steam train from the old Haj...

    Education is the orphan of any war. This is particularly true in Syria, where brutal violence has spilled over onto university campuses, with tragic bombings this year at the University of Aleppo and the University of Damascus. Students and professors have been...

  The Syrian conflict is "devastating" the lives of Palestinian refugees in the country, a UN agency said Monday, after weekend shelling of a Palestinian camp in the southern province of Daraa.   "Initial reports indicate the (Daraa) Palestine refugee camp was...

Shortly before its operatives killed 14 Iraqi Shiite children in a school bombing this month, the group once known as al-Qaeda in Iraq sent guerrillas into northern Syrian villages with orders to reopen local Sunni classrooms. In a series of early fall visits, the militants handed out religious...