Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Saturday said Turkey would if necessary take military action against the Syrian Kurdish PYD fighters, whom Ankara considers a terror group. "We can if necessary take the same measures in Syria as we took in Iraq and Qandil," Davutoglu said in a...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Russia warplanes staged on Saturday air strikes on rebel-held areas in Homs and Hama provinces as regime forces and allied militias step up attacks on the besieged countryside, rebel source said. A rebel commander told Zaman al-Wasl that regime forces are mobilizing troops to...

 Russia said Saturday a ceasefire deal for Syria agreed by major powers was more likely to fail than succeed, as Syrian government forces backed by further Russian airstrikes gained more ground against rebels near Aleppo. International divisions over Syria surfaced anew at a Munich...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- At least 16 fighters of regime allied militia have been killed and wounded in rebels' counter-attack on regime-held villages in rural Hama goveronate, activists said Saturday. Rebels of the northern countryside of Homs have attacked two checkpoints of National Defense forces...

Germany's foreign minister pressed for progress on a year-old peace plan for eastern Ukraine as he met Saturday with senior officials from Russia, Ukraine and France, saying he hopes that Moscow and Kiev realize that they don't have forever to implement the deal. Germany's Frank-Walter...

Iraq's influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is calling for the inclusion of more technocrats in government and is threatening to withdraw from the political process if his proposal is not accepted. Al-Sadr spoke Saturday following Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's call for a Cabinet...

  (Zaman Al Wasl)- People of al-Waer neighborhood in the central Homs city celebrated Friday their first wholesale vegetable market after three years of shelling and siege as regime allowed a daily 12 tons of vegetables to entering the district in binding to a U.N.-mediated deal. Al-Waer's...

Rescuers have found the bodies of more than 100 people killed after an apartment block in Taiwan collapsed during an earthquake one week ago, emergency services said Saturday. Only three residents of the Wei-kuan complex in the southern city of Tainan remained unaccounted for as emergency...

(Al Arabiya English)- Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Friday the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was crucial to defeat ISIS. Speaking at a security conference in Munich, Jubeir said Assad was responsible for the creation of ISIS by turning Syria into a “fertile ground”...

(Brookings- Shadi Hamid)- U.S. policy toward Syria is a fascinating, if depressing, case study. Many of my friends and colleagues who work on Syria—nearly all of them, in fact—have been baffled by President Obama’s approach to the Syrian conflict. The administration’s apparent resistance...

Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill embraced and kissed on Friday in a historic meeting nearly 1,000 years after the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity split apart. "Finally," Francis said as he and Kirill entered through doors on opposite sides of a...

Syrian rebels have been sent "excellent quantities" of ground-to-ground Grad missiles by foreign backers in recent days, to help them confront a Russian-backed offensive by the government north of Aleppo, two rebel commanders told Reuters on Friday. "It is excellent additional fire power for...

Bashar Assad has vowed to recapture the whole of Syria and keep "fighting terrorism" while also negotiating an end to the war, as international pressure mounts for a ceasefire. His defiant stance, in an exclusive interview with AFP released Friday, doused hopes of an imminent halt to...

Yemeni pro-government forces have advanced to within 40 kilometers (25 miles) of Sanaa in a push towards the rebel-held capital from the northeast, loyalist military sources said Friday. Loyalist forces took the town of Nihm after overrunning the headquarters of the renegade pro-rebel 312th...

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg accused Russia of undermining efforts to reach a peaceful solution in Syria by targeting opposition groups instead of Isis militants and said a lasting peace would only be achieved if this stopped. "Russia has mainly targeted opposition groups and not...

 German Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal refugee policy, which brought 1.1 million asylum seekers to Germany in 2015, is not sustainable in the long run, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned Friday. "This policy, which is justified temporarily, is unsustainable in the long term," he...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- At least 16 civilians killed in Russian air strikes on the besieged countryside of Homs, activists and monitoring group said Friday. The Syrian Network for Human Rights and local activists said 14 people killed on Friday in missile attack on al-Ghanto town in the northern...

Two suspected people smugglers went on trial in Turkey on Thursday charged with causing the death in September of a Syrian toddler, images of whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach shocked the world. The trial of Syrian nationals Muwafaka Alabash and Asem Alfrhad opened at the...

Saudi Arabia, which is leading air strikes against rebels in neighboring Yemen, has warned the United Nations and international aid groups to protect staff by removing them from areas held by Yemen's Houthi rebels, a letter seen by Reuters on Thursday said. It was not immediately clear why...

Major powers agreed Friday to a pause in combat in Syria, but Russia pressed on with its relentless bombing in support of its ally President Bashar Assad, who vowed to fight on until he regains full control of the country. Although billed as a potential breakthrough, the "cessation of...