Kurdish forces said they drove Islamic State militants out of villages near the oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq on Wednesday, in an offensive backed by airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition. The assault consolidated their control over Kirkuk and brought the peshmerga, the...

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Wednesday in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, plunging the four-year-old civil war into a volatile new phase as President Vladimir Putin moved forcefully to stake out influence in the unstable region. Moscow's assertion...

 Russian airstrikes in northwest Syria which Moscow said targeted ISIS fighters hit a rebel group supported by foreign opponents of President Bashar Assad on Wednesday, wounding eight of the insurgents, the group's commander said. He said the fighters were hit in the countryside of Hama...

Russian airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday killed at least 36 civilians and targeted areas where ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked fighters are not present, the head of the Western-backed Syrian political opposition said. "All the targets in today's Russian air raid over northern Homs were civilians,"...