As part of the ongoing Turkey-led operations in northern Syria, 228 Daesh targets were destroyed and 18 terrorists were neutralized on Saturday, according to the Turkish army. The Turkish-led Operation Euphrates Shield, which began in late August, aims to improve security, support coalition...

Residents of the Iraqi city of Mosul said up to 30 civilians died in an airstrike on a district held by ISIS this week. Locals said they saw at least three missiles hit the western Mosul al-Jadida area on Thursday, in a raid that appeared to target the house of senior militant Harbi Abdel...

 Diego Costa's future at Premier League leaders Chelsea was plunged into doubt on Friday after their leading scorer was dropped for Saturday's away match with champions Leicester. The 28-year-old Spanish international, who has scored 14 goals in 19 games this season, is believed to have...

 Ransom-seeking Muslim militants in the southern Philippines freed Saturday a South Korean captain and his Filipino crewman who were abducted three months ago from their cargo ship amid a wave of offshore kidnappings, officials said. Abu Sayyaf gunmen handed skipper Park Chul-hong and...

Iraqi commanders say that their forces have secured less than a quarter of Mosul University Saturday as they face stiff resistance from ISIS fighters in the battle for control of the city. Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil and Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi said that Iraqi forces continued to push...

Maintenance workers arrived in Syria's rebel-held Wadi Barada near Damascus Friday to fix the water facility there, signaling an end to the violent standoff that has dried out the capital for weeks and threatened a fragile cease-fire, activists and the government said. For days, negotiations...

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved a measure making the first move toward scrapping Obamacare, joining the Senate in instructing key committees to write legislation repealing the health insurance law. Eliminating Obamacare is a top priority of the...

(The Wall Street Journal)- The campus is one of the two main facilities in Mosul that U.S. and Iraqi officials said the militants used to build bombs, develop chemical weapons and treat wounded fighters. Iraqi forces seized the other facility, a hospital, last week. “If they lose the campus,...

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- Key Syrian rebel groups on Friday have intensified their discussions in Turkish capital over participation in Syria's peace talks that would be held in the Kazakh capital of Astana on Jan. 23, amid reports of Turkish pressure on rebels to lessen demands, commanders and...

(Middle East Eye)- Russia has agreed the United States should be involved in talks on Syria's future planned for later this month, Turkey's top diplomat said, as a series of explosions rocked Damascus.  Moscow and Ankara last month brokered a fragile ceasefire for the war-torn country,...

(The Guardian)- In the valleys between Damascus and Lebanon, where whole communities had abandoned their lives to war, a change is taking place. For the first time since the conflict broke out, people are starting to return. But the people settling in are not the same as those who fled...

The UK Government has a "long way to go" to successfully meet its target of resettling 20,000 refugees from Syria by 2020, a group of MPs has warned. According to the latest statistics, 4,414 refugees have been resettled so far across the country since former Prime Minister David Cameron...

The United States has not received a formal invitation to Syria peace talks being organized by Russia and Turkey to be held in the Kazakh capital of Astana on Jan. 23, the U.S. State Department said Friday. "To my knowledge we have not received ... a formal invitation to the talks," State...

International investigators have said for the first time that they suspect President Bashar al-Assad and his brother are responsible for the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, according to a document seen by Reuters. A joint inquiry for the United Nations and global watchdog the...

Israel's UN ambassador on Friday raised concern over what he said were moves at the Security Council to adopt a new measure to build on the Paris Middle East conference. Sweden's Ambassador Olof Skoog, who holds this month's presidency of the Security Council, said however that there were no...

(Eqtsad)- All the medical and health facilities in the ISIS-held town of al-Shajara in the southern Daraa province have been closed, including the woman and delivery hospital, besides the field hospitals as well as many medical centers, due to fund shortage and the rebel-imposed siege on drugs...

Poland on Friday told US President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration that any improvement in Washington's ties with Moscow cannot come at the cost of harming Warsaw. "You can't criticise anyone for wanting to improve relations with Russia," Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski...

Engineers have entered a damaged rebel-held water pumping station and supplies will soon be restored to the Syrian capital, the governor of Damascus Countryside Province said on state television on Friday. The engineers had entered the facilities at Ain al-Fija in the Wadi Barada area by...

(Al- Monitor)- Lebanon is a country of unsettled scores. Each time I visit the country, I keep seeing and feeling the burdensome legacy of its 15-year civil war, no matter how many years had gone by since it ended in 1990. What would I find in neighboring Syria, as its nearly 6-year-old civil...

The Donald Trump administration would be committing "sheer folly" if it supports the European Union's breakup as it seems to be doing, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the EU warned Friday. Anthony Gardner, who is leaving his Brussels post after three years, said Trump's transition team had...