Iraqi forces readied on Wednesday for an assault on Mosul airport after blitzing extremist positions in a renewed offensive to retake ISIS' emblematic stronghold. Elite forces reinforced positions that were taken since a fresh push south of Mosul was launched on Sunday while hundreds of...

 The UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said Wednesday he was "not expecting a breakthrough" at peace talks this week but voiced hope that rival sides could build "momentum" towards a deal. "Am I expecting a breakthrough? No, I am not expecting a breakthrough," de Mistura told reporters...

The Syrian regime army and its allies took a small district on the outskirts of Aleppo from rebels on Wednesday, a war monitor and a military media unit run by Damascus ally Hezbollah said. The advance was the army's first from its lines in Aleppo city since rebels departed their enclave there...

Turkey will lift a historic ban on female officers wearing the Islamic headscarf in the officially secular country's armed forces, state media said Wednesday. The military was the final Turkish institution where women were prohibited from wearing the headscarf, after reforms by the...

A Syrian asylum seeker went on trial in Austria on Wednesday accused of killing 20 government soldiers fighting for President Bashar Assad near the city of Homs, a court spokesman said. Austria has jailed several people for "belonging to a terrorist organisation", a charge usually levelled...

Russia is open for dialogue with the United States on safe zones in Syria but believes that any such initiative needs to be coordinated with the Syrian government, Moscow's top diplomat said Wednesday. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he had briefly discussed the issue with U.S. Secretary...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Three Syrian journalists have been wounded in a suspected Russian airstrike hit the northern countryside of Hama province on Wednesday, Local Coordination Committees said. The wounded journalists are Seif Abdullah, the local reporter of Orient news channel, Mohamed al-Huwaish,...

By Abdullah Ghadawi (Zaman Al Wasl)- One of the difficult situations experienced by the Syrian opposition negotiator is that he sits in front of a team of the regime`s executioners searching for a political solution and this negotiator realizes that it is almost impossible with a regime that...

Turkey said Wednesday fewer than 100 ISIS extremists were still holed up in a flashpoint Syrian town which has seen the bloodiest clashes of Ankara's half-year campaign inside the conflict-torn country. Speaking to NTV television, Defense Minister Fikri Isik said half of the town of Al-Bab...

Rival Syrian camps were due in Geneva Wednesday for U.N.-brokered talks to end the six-year conflict with persistent violence and deadlock over the country's political future dampening hopes of a breakthrough. President Bashar Assad's negotiators and opposition delegations were expected to...

More than a year ago, Mayar and Nawar Ballish escaped car bomb attacks in Damascus. Now the Syrian sisters, both students in their twenties, go to school by train past neat gardens and farms in the quiet hills of Bavaria, southern Germany. They have lived there since October 2015. Their...

Iraq's government-sanctioned paramilitary forces, made up mainly of Shiite militiamen, have launched a new push to capture villages west of the city of Mosul from ISIS militants. The forces' spokesman, Ahmed al-Asadi, said Wednesday that the villages are located southwest of the town of Tal...

China, in an early test of U.S. President Donald Trump, is nearly finished building almost two dozen structures on artificial islands in the South China Sea that appear designed to house long-range surface-to-air missiles, two U.S. officials told Reuters. The development is likely to raise...

Yemen's deputy chief of staff was killed Wednesday when the armed Houthi movement battling government forces fired a ballistic missile at an army camp on the Red Sea coast, according to a military source. The attack killing Major General Ahmed Saif al-Yafei was a blow to Yemeni government...

A fresh round of Syrian peace talks is set to begin in Geneva on Thursday. And while the U.N-sponsored talks may represent the best opportunity in years to make progress toward an end to the conflict, the burning question for many Syria observers is whether justice will be sacrificed in the...

Britain will provide additional aid money to South Sudan, where famine has been declared in parts of the country, and to Somalia, where there is a credible risk of famine, the government said Wednesday. Britain will provide 100 million pounds ($125 million) to each country in 2017/18 in...

(The Guardian)- A suicide attack near the Iraqi city of Mosul, for which Islamic State has claimed responsibility, was carried out by a British former Guantánamo Bay detainee who was paid £1m in compensation by the UK government after his release, according to reports. Jamal al-Harith, a...

Malaysian police on Wednesday named a senior official in North Korea's embassy and a staffer at its state airline, who are wanted for questioning over the murder last week of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korea's leader. Kim Jong Nam, 46, was killed at Kuala Lumpur...

An unmanned Russian cargo ship lifted off successfully Wednesday on a supply mission to the International Space Station. A Soyuz-U booster rocket carrying the Progress MS-05 spacecraft blasted off as scheduled at 11:58 a.m. (0558 GMT) from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch complex in...

The Army Corps of Engineers' plan to close a Dakota Access pipeline protest camp that's been around for more than six months isn't likely to be the demise of on-the-ground opposition in North Dakota. Wednesday's deadline for the protesters to leave also may not spell the end of heavy law...