A group of several hundred Syrians from two besieged towns arrived outside Damascus Tuesday after passing through Turkey and Lebanon as part of a rare UN-backed deal to evacuate people from flashpoint areas. A source close to the deal confirmed the arrival of over 300...

The Iraqi army will need Kurdish fighters' help to retake Mosul, the largest city under the control of Islamic State, Iraqi Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said, with the planned offensive expected to be very challenging. Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad, has been designated by the...

Islamic State has set up departments to handle "war spoils," including slaves, and the exploitation of natural resources such as oil, creating the trappings of government that enable it to manage large swaths of Syria and Iraq and other areas. The hierarchical bureaucracy, including petty...

Translation by Yusra Ahmed (Zaman Al Wasl- Eqtsad)- It is not the first time for the Syrian young man Ayham to lsoe his jon in Gaziantep, but it is the hardest, because it has coincided with the end of the year time, when most companies and business firms sammarise their annual account and...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Hezbollah's military commander in southern province of Daraa has been killed with his comrades in a rebel missile attack on his base Monday, field sources said. The commander who was known as " The Ghost" was killed with others in a Katyusha rocket hit his base in Ezra'a...

Russian air strikes like the one that killed a top Syrian rebel leader last week send the wrong message to groups engaged in a political dialogue to end the conflict and complicate efforts to begin negotiations, the U.S. State Department said on Monday. Syrian rebel chief Zahran Alloush, the...

Ghada's five children cried out in terror when police broke into their run-down Istanbul flat at dawn and ordered the 36-year-old Syrian's family onto a bus, without saying why. The family of seven from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was among a group of refugees rounded up two weeks ago...

Turkey sees no normalization in ties with Israel unless its conditions for ending the Gaza blockade and compensation for the deaths of 10 Turkish activists in 2010 are met, a presidential spokesman said on Monday. Relations between Turkey and Israel soured when the activists were killed in a...

(Zaman Al Wasl- BBC)- Hundreds of fighters and civilians in three besieged parts of Syria have been evacuated under a truce deal brokered by the United Nations. Buses and ambulances ferried at least 120 Sunni rebels and civilians from Zabadani into nearby Lebanon. At the same time,...

(Zaman Al Wasl)-  Late Syrian journalist and film maker Naji al Jerf who has been assassinated Sunday in the Turkish border city of Gaziantep with a silencer-equipped pistol was not a bitter enemy for ISIS, but also for the Syrian security services. According to the intelligence archive...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- 8 unknown armed men on Monday have kidnapped Ya'qub al-Ammar, the head of Daraa council in the western countryside of the southern province, according to statement posted online. Al-Ammar, head of Daraa governorate council, was kidnapped in the road links between Mzairib town...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- ISIS fighters have recaptured early Monday three border towns with Turkey were under control of the Syrian rebels, Zaman Al Wasl local reporter said. ISIS took towns Dwaidan, Qarah Qweeri and Ghazel in the northern countryside. Omar Kassouma, military commander of Sultan...

Boko Haram Islamic extremists struck the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri for the first time in months Monday with rocket-propelled grenades and multiple suicide bombers, witnesses said. At least 50 people were killed and the death toll could go higher. At least 30 were killed and more...

Syria's opposition has yet to reach a consensus on a list of its delegates who will lead negotiations with the central government, Interfax news agency on Monday quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying. The Syrian government, meanwhile, was ready for the talks, Lavrov said.

At least 32 people were killed and 90 wounded in two bomb explosions in the Syrian city of Homs on Monday, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The blasts, one from a car bomb and another from a suicide attack, struck the Zahra district in the middle of the city, said...

 Iraqi forces swept the devastated streets of Ramadi for bombs Monday, after recapturing the city they lost in May and clinching a major victory against ISIS. Pockets of extremists may remain in parts of the city but the army said it had faced no resistance since ISIS fighters abandoned...

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Ambulances and buses on Monday entered the besieged rebel-held Syrian town of Zadabadi to evacuate scores of fighters, among them injured, to Turkey under a U.N.-sponsored deal reached by the warring sides, rebel sources in the town told Reuters. The deal will allow rebel...

Three months into his military intervention in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved his central goal of stabilizing the Assad government and, with the costs relatively low, could sustain military operations at this level for years, U.S. officials and military analysts...

(Reporting by Lama Shammas; translation by Yusra Ahmed) ISTANBUL (Zaman Al Wasl)- Abir N, a Syrian doctor who used to work individually to treat wounded victims of bombings in Damascus.  She was known as the “doctor of Jaramana” that eastern suburb of Damascus,  due to her peerless...

Besieged rebel fighters in a Syrian border town and families trapped in two Shi'ite towns in northern Syria are expected to be evacuated on Monday in the second stage of a rare, U.N.-backed deal between warring sides in Syria's war, sources close to negotiations said. The deal will allow...