The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said on Friday that the decision to deploy one of the largest conventional bombs ever used in combat was purely tactical, and made as part of the campaign against Islamic State-linked fighters. As many as 36 suspected Islamic State militants...

Egyptian Copts will celebrate Easter mass on Saturday, marking one of Christianity's most joyous occasions just days after the deadliest attacks in living memory against the country's religious minority. The faithful will spend a large part of Easter eve going through arduous security checks...

Backed by Russian air power and allied militiamen on the ground, Syrian troops have recaptured entire cities from rebels and ISIS extremists in the past year, including the key cities of Aleppo, Homs and Palmyra. Yet for the past three years, President Bashar Assad's forces have been unable...

(Zaman Al Wasl) A commander in Haya’t Tahrir al-Sham revealed the terms of the five-town agreement after they were undeclared for some time. The commander indicated that the agreement includes five areas, not the previously known four, including Madaya, al-Zabadani, Yarmouk camp, Kafarya,...

By Moez Hamid (Zaman Al Wasl)- The US missile strikes on Shayrat airfield last Friday in retaliation to the 4th April Sarin gas attack on Khan Sheikhdom town have caused changes in hopes, worries and opinions of Syrian people, depending on their attitude from the Syrian regime, some started...

( Washington Post )- Yesterday, the United States dropped the “mother of all bombs” on a network of Islamic State caves and tunnels in Afghanistan. The military said its spectacular use of force was necessary to destroy the underground terror hideout (though it's not clear that the MOAB was the...

The oil market is rebalancing in the short term, and demand will continue to grow in the long term, Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser said at the Columbia University Energy Summit on Friday. In the short term, the oil market has a surplus, but Nasser said that supplies are falling...

The U.S. Air Force will this weekend deploy a small number of F-35A fighter jets to Europe for several weeks of training with other U.S. and NATO military aircraft, the Pentagon said on Friday. In a statement, the Pentagon said that the deployment would allow the U.S. Air Force to "further...

 Buses evacuated thousands of people from two rebel-besieged Shi'ite villages in northwest Syria on Friday and hundreds of rebels left a town near Damascus with their families, under a deal between the government and insurgents. A monitoring group said government forces later entered...

( The New Arab )- For months, Canadian airports have hosted scenes of unbridled joy and relief, as Syrian families separated by years of war and forced displacement have finally been reunited. But what should have been a joyous event this week for Mohammad al-Rayyan and his family has been...

Qari Mehrajuddin first saw "lightning like a thunder storm" followed by the roar of an explosion, an all-to-familiar sound for residents in Afghanistan's war-torn Nangarhar province. "I thought there was a bombing just outside my home," he said. In reality, the blast was around three...

Facebook says it has targeted 30,000 fake accounts linked to France ahead of the country's presidential election, as part of a worldwide effort against misinformation. The company said Thursday it's trying to "reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including...

Canada announced new sanctions against Syria Friday in response to its alleged April 4 chemical weapons attack, freezing assets and banning transactions with senior leaders from President Bashar Assad government. The latest sanctions were Canada's first against Syria and Assad since 2014...

 ISIS denied Friday it had suffered casualties from the U.S. military's largest non-nuclear bomb which hit its mountain hideouts in Afghanistan, in a statement on its propaganda agency Amaq. "Security source to Amaq agency denies any dead or wounded from yesterday's American strike in...

A British woman was stabbed and killed in Jerusalem on Friday and her attacker arrested, an Israeli police spokeswoman said. The attack took place on the light railway close to the Old City, where Christian commemorations were under way for Good Friday as Jews marked the week-long Passover...

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi recently spoke of his aim to "normalise Saudi-Iraqi relations not only politically, but on economic and social levels too". "This is important to us," he told the Rudaw news network. "Saudi Arabia is our neighbour and we cannot continue to live without...

Liverpool, battling hard to secure a Champions League berth, still have big ambitions for this season but no specific Premier League points target, manager Juergen Klopp said ahead of Sunday's tricky visit to West Bromwich Albion. Sitting third in the table having played more games than the...

North Korea's army Friday vowed a "merciless" response to any U.S. provocation, as tensions soar over Pyongyang's nuclear program and speculation mounts that it is preparing a fresh weapons test. Pyongyang's rogue atomic ambitions have come into sharp focus in recent weeks, with United...

Russia, Syria and Iran strongly warned the United States Friday against launching new strikes Syria and called for an international probe into last week's chemical attack there. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who hosted his Iranian and Syrian counterparts at a trilateral meeting in...

( The Guardian )- Theresa May has defended Boris Johnson’s handling of the Syria crisis, saying he had done an “excellent job” despite criticism of his failure to win backing for further sanctions on Russia. The prime minister said Johnson had taken a very clear message to the G7 and managed...