German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a German radio station that military efforts were necessary in Syria even though they would not put and end to the four-year-old civil war there. Merkel said she had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the conflict in Syria on...

Airstrikes by Russian jets hit targets around the town of Talbiseh in western Syria Sunday, residents and an activist group in Syria said, a day after Russia promised to step up its air campaign. Ambulances rushed wounded people to hospital in Talbiseh, north of the city of Homs, and one...

Suspected militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) abducted two Turkish soldiers in eastern Turkey amid a flare-up of violence between Kurdish rebels and security forces, the army said Saturday. The militants seized the soldiers late Friday after stopping a passenger bus on a highway...

A U.N. plan towards ending the civil war in Syria would not work in its current form, Syria's western-backed opposition and rebel groups said in a rare show of unity on Saturday, a day after the government said it was ready to take part in the initiative. In July, U.N. special envoy to Syria...