Internationally brokered talks between Syria's government and opposition groups due to start on Jan. 25 may be delayed, but major powers must keep up the pressure to bring participants to the table, the United Nations envoy said on Wednesday. A Syrian opposition council backed by Saudi...

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- Syrian security services issued warrants for most of the opposition negotiating team members who are due to participate in the Internationally brokered Geneva talks with Syrian regime on Jan.25, according to the leaked intelligence archive obtained by Zaman al-Wasl....

The U.S.-led anti-Daesh effort will increase the number of troops in Iraq that will train more Iraqi fighters ahead of a Mosul operation, a coalition spokesman said Wednesday.  “That's really the next step in generating the amount of combat power needed to liberate Mosul,” said...

Secretary of State John Kerry urged his Russian counterpart Wednesday to use Moscow’s influence with the Syrian government to ensure greater humanitarian access in the war torn country. During a meeting with Sergey Lavrov in the Swiss city of Zurich, Kerry “pressed for Russia to use its...

The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) has ratcheted up pressure on ethnic Assyrians and Yazidis living in parts of Syria under its control while claiming that it is fighting the Daesh militant group, Afram Yakoub, the president of the Assyrian Federation of Sweden, told Anadolu Agency on...

Reporting by Mohamed Al Hussein; Translation by Yusra Ahmed HASAKA (Zaman Al Wasl)- The united States and Russia are competing each other on founding military bases in Hasaka province, while Iran had withdrawn from the city after termination the existence of Hezbollah in Qamishli in 2015. The...

Four months of Russian air strikes in Syria are taking their toll on rebel forces, strengthening the hand of a defiant President Bashar al-Assad as the United Nations struggles to get peace talks off the ground. Insurgents in the west are being hit harder, while in eastern and...

(Zaman Al Wasl- Exclusive)- Zaman Al Wasl has exclusively obtained 2000 documents which include the real names of ISIS fighters and their jihadi backgrounds, nationalities and hometown addresses. The leaked documents, which will be published very soon, is due to shed the light on the inner...

(The Telegraph)- The United Nations has given approval to Western countries including Britain to carry out air drops over besieged Syrian towns without regime permission, The Telegraph can disclose. In a key admission of the UN’s failure to ensure basic supplies despite a security...

Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative bloc has slipped further due to her handling of the refugee crisis and worries about crime and security after assaults on women at New Year in Cologne, a poll showed on Wednesday. Merkel's open-door refugee policy, and...

A Syrian opposition council formed in Riyadh last month said on Wednesday it will not attend peace negotiations if a third party joins the talks, a reference to a Russian bid to include other groups in the process that was due to be launched next week, Reuters reported. Riad Hijab, who heads...

Kurdish forces have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of Arab homes across northern Iraq in what may constitute a war crime, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a report published on Wednesday. In the report, Amnesty said it found evidence of a...

A group of militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens as the army hunted for any gunmen still holed up on the campus, officials said. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- ISIS has executed a Free Syrian Army fighter on Tuesday in territory it controls in the northern Aleppo province, media activists told Zaman al-Wasl. ISIS have killed FSA fighter in Qabraimou village near Manbij town 20 miles (30 km) west of the Euphrates river. Local...

(Zaman Al Wasl- Video)- Rebels of the southern suburbs of Damascus said tunnels have become their strategic tool to escape Russian air strikes. Despite the difficulty of digging tunnels and trenches due to siege and lack of equipment, rebels have insisted to  pay all efforts to secure...

A media outlet associated with Islamic State on Tuesday released a eulogy for "Jihadi John", a member of the militant group who gained notoriety for his filmed execution of hostages, the monitoring organization SITE reported. The militant was identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a British citizen of...

(The New York Times)- The world is watching Iran for signs of change, hoping it will evolve from a rogue revolutionary state into a respectable member of the international community. But Iran, rather than confronting the isolation it has created for itself, opts to obscure its dangerous...

The U.N. refugee agency says more than 92,000 people made the perilous sea crossing from the Horn of Africa to Yemen last year, one of the highest annual totals of the past decade. The Geneva-based agency says two thirds of the arrivals happened after March 2015, when the conflict in Yemen...

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday no one should dictate to the Syrian opposition who represents them at peace talks, as a proposed Jan. 25 meeting looked set to be delayed by differences over who will attend, Reuters reported. The planned Geneva talks are part of a peace process endorsed by the U.N....

A Russian bomber had destroyed ISIS strongholds in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zor, Russian agencies quoted a defense ministry official as saying Tuesday. Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the bomber's strikes had killed more than 60 of the extremist militants in comments...