A U.S. airstrike targeting an al-Qaida leader in northern Syria wounded a family of six, including a 10-year-old child who suffered serious head injuries, The Associated Press has learned. Ahmad Qassim had picked up his family from his in-laws in northwestern Syria where they had spent...

The five Syrians pulled from their homes by secret police on the same night last year were not insurgents, spies or suspected of being disloyal to the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Instead, they were targets in a desperate new phase of Assad’s battle to survive: the hunt for...

 The Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented at least 228 cases of arbitrary arrests/ detentions in November, including 18 children and two women, noting that Syrian regime forces carried out widespread arrest campaigns, while the US-backed Kurdish forces continue to kidnap children...

High school girls are sitting at home almost everywhere in Afghanistan, forbidden to attend class by the Taliban rulers. But there’s one major exception. For weeks, girls in the western province of Herat have been back in high school classrooms — the fruit of a unique, concerted effort...