President Bashar al-Assad has forecast that much of the fighting in the Syrian civil war will be over by the end of the year, a former Russian prime minister was quoted on Monday as saying. "This is what he told me: 'This year the active phase of military action in Syria...

The government of Syrian President Bashar Assad is no longer in danger of falling, the leader of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group said in an interview with a Lebanese newspaper. In an interview with daily newspaper As-Safir, Hassan Nasrallah also said the threat of bombings in...

Voting was largely peaceful in Afghanistan's presidential election on Saturday, with only isolated attacks on polling stations as a country racked by decades of chaos embarked on its first ever democratic transfer of power. A roadside bomb killed two policemen and wounded two...

  Former Lebanon warlord Samir Geagea, a staunch opponent of Syria and the Shiite movement Hezbollah, will stand for the presidency in May, his Christian Lebanese Forces party said on Friday. Geagea, 61, was the only leader from the 1975-1990 civil war ever jailed, but was...