Syria's foreign minister will visit China this week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, amid a renewed bid by Beijing to play a more active role in finding an end to conflict in the Middle East. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem will be in China from Dec. 23 to Dec. 26 and...

 Iraq's foreign minister denied Tuesday that his government had anything to do with the kidnapping of a group of Qatari hunters in the south of the country this month. A large group of unidentified armed men abducted at least 26 Qataris from their desert hunting camp near the Saudi...

ISIS militants shelled a school district in eastern Syria Tuesday, killing at least nine students and wounding around 20 other people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. Syrian state media said nine girls had been killed and said "shells fired by terrorists" had hit...

The United Nations is mulling "light touch" options for monitoring a possible ceasefire in Syria that would keep its risks to a minimum by relying largely on Syrians already on the ground, diplomatic sources said. The U.N. Security Council on Friday unanimously called on...