(Zaman Al Wasl)- Activists reported on Tuesday fierce fighting between regime troops and rebels at the gates of Salma village in the coastal Latakia province, Bashar al-Assad's heartland. Regime troops backed by their allied militias have pressed more advances the northeastern countryside of...

An explosion rocked the central Istanbul Sultanahmet square, a major tourist attraction, Tuesday, causing some casualties, the Dogan news agency reported. Witnesses reported hearing a loud blast and video footage on the CNN Turk channel showed police and ambulances at the scene. The cause of...

 Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday it was premature to say whether Moscow would grant asylum to embattled Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who had made "many mistakes." "You know I believe that it is premature to discuss this," Putin said in the second half of a two-part interview...

 The U.N. Security Council discussed the besieged towns of Syria after reports emerged that tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped for months without supplies and are starving to death. The meeting on Monday was called by New Zealand, Spain and France in response to the reports...

Syria's opposition co-ordinator Riad Hijab accused Russia of killing dozens of children after a bombing raid on Monday and said such action meant the opposition could not negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad's government. Earlier the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that at...

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- 17 aid trucks on Monday have entered for embattled al-Waer neighborhood in the central city of Homs, a move had been scheduled in the U.N.-brokered deal reached last month between rebels and the Syrian regime, activists said. Simultaneously, aid convoys have entered...

(Zaman Al Wasl- Photos)- Diab Abdul Rahman, 45-year-old, has been documented as the first hunger victim died of starvation after the entry of the long-awaited aid for the besieged town of Madaya on Monday. Abdul Rahman's emaciated body was the ugly face of Bashar al-Assad’s war crime in Madaya,...

Russian air force jets have since the start of this year flown 311 combat sorties in Syria and attacked 1,097 terrorist targets there, Russian news agencies quoted the Russian defense ministry as saying on Monday. Defense ministry official Lieutenant-General Sergei Rudskoy said...

(Zaman Al Wals)- Syrian regime warplanes on Monday have staged 14 strikes on the northern countryside of central Homs province, killing 5 people and wounding 15, local reporter said. Three women, child and a man were the victims of the aerial campaign on the rebel-held town of al-Rastan. The...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- A senior Nusra Front commander has been assassinated in the eastern countryside of Daraa province on Monday, activists said. Abu Raghad also dubbed  al-Bashiq was shot dead near Om al-Mayathen town in eastern Daraa. No rebel group has claimed the responsibility for his...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The death toll has risen to 35, including 20 children, for Russian air strikes at a school in Syria's Aleppo province on Monday, monitor and activists said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the strike in the town of Anjara also injured at least 20 people, all...

Four gunmen charged into a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad on Monday after a car bomb exploded outside, killing at least ten people, two police sources said. The sources said it was not clear if the assailants, who may have been wearing suicide vests, had killed anyone or taken hostages at the...

Aid convoys have entered for besieged Syrian town of Madaya where thousands are trapped and people are reported to have died of starvation, Reuters said. Trucks headed for Madaya, near the Lebanese border, and two villages in the northwest of the country on Monday, the Red Cross said,...

The condition of a Palestinian journalist on a 48-day hunger strike in an Israeli jail is deteriorating, the man's wife and a Palestinian official said Monday. Mohammed al-Qeq is protesting his six-month sentence without trial or charge, under a measure called administrative detention....

Pope Francis on Monday urged European governments to keep welcoming migrants while acknowledging security and other concerns over the recent mass influx of people mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Addressing ambassadors to the Holy See in the aftermath of the New Year's Eve...

Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda Party became the biggest in parliament after more lawmakers in President Beji Caid Essebsi's Nidaa Tounes party resigned Monday over the role of his son, saying they feared a return of the hereditary transfer of power. The rift does not present an immediate threat...

(The Daily Beast)- Lebanese Hezbollah field commanders with troops fighting in Syria tell The Daily Beast they are receiving heavy weapons directly from Russia with no strings attached. The commanders say there is a relationship of complete coordination between the Assad regime in Damascus,...

Al-Qaeda has warned Saudi Arabia it will pay for the executions of dozens of its members, saying they were intended to be a new year's gift to Riyadh's Western allies aimed at consolidating the rule of the Saud dynasty. Though it was the killing of a Shi-ite cleric in the Jan. 2 mass...

Turkey plans to offer Syrian refugees work permits in order to ease the pressure on them to migrate, Volkan Bozkir, Turkey's minister for European Affairs, said on Monday. The number of people immigrating illegally exceeded 150,000 in 2015, and Turkish authorities stopped 500 migrants...

 Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has accused Saudi Arabia of supporting extremists and "promoting sectarian hatred" and urged Riyadh to instead engage in promoting regional stability. Writing in The New York Times, Zarif said Saudi Arabia had devoted itself to trying...