Blasts from a suicide bomber and explosives-laden vehicle struck a highly guarded district in the Afghan capital Tuesday, officials said, killing at least 22 people in what appeared to be coordinated attacks on an area housing important government and security agencies. A police official...

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and its political arm the PYD will not be invited to planned peace talks in Kazakhstan, a PYD official said on Tuesday, an outcome that would leave a key player in the conflict off the negotiating table. Syria's government and rebel forces started a ceasefire...

 More than 20 civilians were killed in a B-52 strike carried out by the US on the northern Idlib province in Syria on January 3, according to Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Gerasimov slammed the Western coalition in Syria for failing to achieve “any meaningful...

The bodies of two Turkish soldiers who had been missing in Syria for more than a month have been returned to Turkey, local media reported Tuesday. Turkey has been fighting ISIS in Syria since August, but the battle to take town of Al-Bab has proved tough and casualties there are on the rise....

Industrial action brought fresh disruption for travellers in Britain Tuesday as rail workers and airline cabin crew walked off the job, the day after a major strike on the London Underground. British Airways was forced to cancel 48 flights over two days at London's Heathrow airport after...

Iraqi forces have fought their way into two more southeastern districts of Mosul but their advances are being slowed by Islamic State's tactic of using civilians for cover, a military spokesman said on Tuesday. The United Nations said civilian casualties had streamed into nearby hospitals in...

(Daily Mail)- When Palestinian Fuad Abu Khaled fled Syria's war in 2013, he sought refuge among his own, looking for solidarity among Palestinian refugees based in Lebanon's Shatila camp. But instead he found a community already struggling to get by and sometimes resentful of new...

Disgraced South Korean President Park Geun-hye's longtime friend at the center of a massive corruption scandal has refused to testify at Park's impeachment trial. The Constitutional Court on Tuesday had expected to hear from Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of Park who's currently jailed and on...

The Turkish parliament voted on Tuesday to press on with debate about a constitutional reform package that would expand the powers of President Tayyip Erdogan, taking another step on the path towards an executive presidency. Erdogan and his supporters argue that Turkey needs the strong...

Barack Obama closes the book on his presidency Tuesday, with a farewell speech in Chicago that will try to lift supporters felled by Donald Trump's shock victory. Obama's last trip on Air Force One will be a pilgrimage to his adoptive hometown, where he will address a sell-out crowd not far...

ISIS fighters are increasingly less capable of using trucks packed with explosives against Iraqi troops in Mosul, a sign of their growing weakness, the Pentagon said Monday. "We see fewer and fewer VBIED than we had previously in Mosul," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said, using...

(Council on Foreign Relations)- Syria’s civil war has grown ever more complex in the nearly six years since protesters first challenged the government. President Bashar al-Assad aims to reassert control nationwide, while predominantly Sunni Arab opposition forces seek to wrest the state from...

Anyone who has spent time living in or studying the Middle East will be familiar with the work of Patrick Seale, who died last weekend in London after a battle with brain cancer. Seale was a journalist and long-term observer of the region and wrote what is still, two decades after it was...

One night this past fall, a U.S. radar plane flying a routine pattern over Syria picked up a signal from an incoming Russian fighter jet. The American crew radioed repeated warnings on a frequency universally used for distress signals. The Russian pilot didn’t respond. Instead, as the U.S....

The U.S. is economically blacklisting five more Russians, including a senior law enforcement official in President Vladimir Putin's government. Under the sanctions, their assets are blocked and people in the United States are generally prohibited from dealing with them. The new sanctions...

The leaders of both sides of ethnically divided Cyprus began new unification talks on Monday but sought to temper hopes of a swift breakthrough, though its U.N. envoy said a deal to resolve one of Europe's most enduring conflicts was within reach. Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci and...

ISIS has blown up a natural gas plant that supplied one-third of Syria's electricity, one month after getting its hands on the facility, pro-opposition activists said Monday. "In the past 48 hours, IS (ISIS) blew up the Hayyan gas plant in eastern Homs province, putting it totally out of...

(BBC)- During every visit to the self-declared republic of Somaliland, I notice something new. This time, there are even more multi-storey shopping malls, hotels and luxury villas in the capital, Hargeisa. Just two decades ago it was known as The Dresden of Africa, the city pulverised by...

Claudio Ranieri was named FIFA's best men's coach of 2016 Monday, after leading Leicester City to a fairytale Premier League title triumph. The Italian beat out France's Zinedine Zidane, who steered Real Madrid to the Champions League title in his first year as manager and Fernando Santos,...

A U.S. warship fired warning shots at the weekend at four Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels that approached it at high speed in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. defense officials said Monday. The shots fired by the destroyer USS Mahan Sunday put an end to the incident, which U.S. officials...