(Al-Jazeera)- A letter from a young woman to her fallen husband, a pro-Assad fighter in Syria, was recently published in Tasnim News, one of Iran's most prominent news agencies affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). "This shrine [the Zaynab shrine] is sacred ... I am...

(Sky News)- To the very end nobody was absolutely sure that Yahya Jammeh, The Gambia's president of 22 years, would actually leave. A jet set to take him to Guinea had idled on the runway of the country's main airport in Banjul for seven hours as he continued talks with negotiators about his...

(The Guardian)- Key parties in Syria’s brutal civil war, now stretching towards the end of its sixth year, will meet in the Kazakh capital of Astana this week for a new round of peace talks. Organised by Russia and Turkey, and backed by Iran, these are the latest in many attempts to...

Iraqi forces used to facing deserted, explosives-rigged streets and booby-trapped buildings are discovering fewer bombs planted by jihadists in Mosul than in earlier battles against them. The Islamic State group has no qualms about killing civilians, but the presence of a large number of...