Gunmen shot dead five female airport workers and their driver in southern Afghanistan Saturday, underlining the threat to employed women in the country. The women were in a van driving to the airport in the southern Kandahar province when at least three gunmen on motorcycles opened fire at...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The doctors and staff in al-Assad Hospital in coastal Latakia city are pursuing a policy of loot as hospital will be turned over to the regime Ministry of Defense in 2 January 2017 based on al-Assad’s decision issued in the last week of November. Social media pages and...

Several people were wounded on Saturday in a car bombing close to a public bus in the central Turkish city of Kayseri, television reports said. Initial television pictures showed that the bus had been reduced to a smouldering wreck by the impact of the blast. The Dogan news agency said...

The fall of Aleppo is a human catastrophe. It’s also a demonstration of the perils of choosing the middle course in a military conflict. Sometimes it’s possible to talk and fight at the same time. But in Syria, the U.S. decision to pursue a dual-track, halfway approach made the mayhem worse....

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Friday his administration would build "safe zones" to try to help civilians trapped in Syria's bloody conflict, an idea that President Barack Obama said would be too hard to enforce. Trump and Obama spoke separately of the conflict after efforts to...

President Barack Obama declared Friday that Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, Iran and Russia are responsible for the carnage in Aleppo and argued there was nothing Washington could have done to stop the war, short of a military takeover of Syria. And he warned Assad, who has been engaged in...

The evacuation of the last opposition-held areas of the Syrian city of Aleppo was suspended on Friday after pro-government militias demanded that wounded people should also be brought out of two Shi'ite villages being besieged by rebel fighters. The second day of the operation to take...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Syria's chief opposition coordinator will not meet with regime representatives in the planned peace talks in Kazakhstan over a Russian attempt to make a political gains along with capture of eastern Aleppo, sources told Zaman al-Wasl Friday. Riad Hijab said on Monday that...

(The wall Street Journal)- Russian special-operations forces have played a pivotal part in the Syrian ground offensive to retake Aleppo, a role shielded by secrecy about their operations there. In the wake of Russia’s punishing aerial bombardment, Russian special forces have been operating...

"It was the final time I saw Aleppo." Among a sea of sobbing men and hungry children Friday, Mohammad mourned his evacuation from his home town and Syria's second city. "It was catastrophic... I was kicked out of my homeland," the university professor told AFP in English at a staging ground...

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday urged Syrian parties to resume the evacuation of civilians from Aleppo after operations were suspended in the battered city. "Aleppo is now a synonym for hell," Ban said in his final news conference before he steps down as U.N. chief on Dec. 31....

Iran's foreign ministry has summoned the British envoy in Tehran after the U.K. accused Iran of playing a role in the "suffering" of the people of Syria's Aleppo. The semi-official Tasnim news agency is reporting that the foreign ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi, says Iran's foreign...

Syrian regime claimed that a seven-year-old girl carrying a belt of explosives had rocked a police station in southeast Damascus on Friday, such a claim has been condemned by activists and opposition.  The explosion in the bustling Midan neighborhood of the Syrian capital wounded three...

Tunisia's prime minister said Friday that his government would seek to amend a controversial law that allows men who rape underage girls to avoid punishment by marrying their victims. Youssef Chahed's comments come two weeks after a Tunisian court approved the marriage of a 13-year-old girl...

The takeover of eastern Aleppo by Syrian government forces creates the conditions for the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Syria, Russian Defense Ministry official Sergei Rudskoi said Friday. Rudskoi added that all civilians and most rebel fighters had left formerly rebel-controlled...

(The Guardian)- While US and European politicians wring their hands and indulge in recriminations over the fall of Aleppo, Russia, Iran and Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime are celebrating a “historic” victory they believe has turned the tide in the six-year-old war. “Is there nothing...

The U.S.-led coalition battling ISIS Friday it destroyed 14 tanks, an air defense artillery system and other weaponry near the Syrian city of Palmrya after ISIS seized the city from Syrian and Russian forces this month. The strikes, which the military said in a statement took place on...

(The Daily Star)- Demonstrators in north Lebanon Friday called for the expulsion of the Syrian, Iranian and Russian ambassadors to the country over the developments in the Syrian city of Aleppo, while mosques in the south performed absentee funeral prayers for those who were killed in the...

Saudi police arrested a Syrian resident in Riyadh after he posted a photo of himself Facebook praising the recapture of his home city of Aleppo by government forces, according to a report in al-Riyadh newspaper Friday. A photo published with the report showed a man with his hand raised and...

German prosecutors said Friday they were investigating a case in which a 12-year-old boy allegedly tried to detonate a home-made nail bomb at a Christmas market. News weekly Focus first reported the case, saying a German-Iraqi child had plotted the attack, possibly after being radicalized by...