The United Nations thanked Hollywood on Wednesday for raising awareness of cultural crimes during conflict with the movie "The Monuments Men" as the world body tries to stop the pillaging of Syria's heritage during the country's three-year civil war. UNESCO, the U.N. cultural,...

Well-placed sources report that the local council in the bombarded Damascus suburb of Darayya have rejected the offer of a “truce” by the Assad regime. Since December 31, more than 200 bombs have falled on Darayya, strategically located between southern Damascus and Daraa Province in...

State news agency SANA declares that “hundreds of families displaced” from the Damascus suburb of Moadaimya have begun returning to their homes after a local truce “establishing an atmosphere of quiet through national reconciliation efforts”. A local regime official said residents...

The death toll from regime bombing in Aleppo fell on Tuesday, but there was little relief in the critical situation for civilians in insurgent-held areas. Videos and images showed masses of residents and their belonging trapped at Aleppo’s main crossing point, Karaj al-Hajez, with...

  Human Rights Watch has been working on Syria for years. This video features two of Human Rights Watch's investigations in 2013, including the al-Bayda massacre and the Ghouta attacks.

The execution-style killing of four members of  Iraq ’s SWAT forces, apparently by the ISIS armed group, is the latest atrocity in a campaign of widespread and systematic murder that amounts to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today. Men presenting themselves as...

Trucked exports of oil from  Iraq  to neighbouring Jordan have been halted due to deteriorating security in Anbar province where militants have overrun the city of Falluja, an oil ministry spokesman said. When the exports were halted was not clear, but Asim Jihad said the...

Stroking a Persian leopard sprawled on his lap, tough-guy President Vladimir Putin showed his softer side Tuesday as he prepared to welcome the world to his budget-busting Winter Olympics. Basking in the glow of support from International Olympic Committee Chairman Thomas Bach, Putin...

Ukraine’s anti-government protesters have gathered at the country’s Ministry of Defence in Kiev, calling on the army not to intervene as the opposition and the ruling party seek a solution through talks with the president, mediated by EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton. The...

The United Nations has accused both sides to the Syria conflict of grave violations against children. Children caught in the Syrian war are being recruited as child soldiers, used as human shields, and tortured, according to a new UN report. The report, released on...

A truce signed Tuesday between the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Suqour al-Sham – one of the brigades constituting the Islamic Front, key rebel group, to not attack each other.   ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and  Suqour Sham Leader, Abu Eassa...

Liwa al-Tawhid, main unit in the Islamic Front rebel group, has released a video purporting to expose “the truth about Baghdadi’s state” the State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Libya has completely destroyed the chemical arsenal it inherited from Moamer Kadhafi, 10 years after the now slain dictator signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdelaziz announced Tuesday. The completion of the disarmament process, begun under the ousted...

US Secretary of State John Kerry has hit out the "brutality" of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad for its sustained barrel bomb campaign. In a written statement released on Tuesday, Kerry said use of the bombs was reminding the world of the Assad regime's "true colours."...

The World Food Programme (WFP) Tuesday started an airlift from Iraq to transport enough food to feed close to 30,000 displaced people for a month in northeast Syria, a UN spokesperson said. "The airlift comes amid growing problems in reaching people, especially in conflict and besieged...

U.S. Ambassador to  Syria  Robert  Ford  is retiring at the end of the month, current and former U.S. officials said on Tuesday. Ford , a career foreign service officer and a fluent Arabic speaker, was instrumental in negotiating with Syrian opposition...

  Men pull a girl from the rubble and haul her onto a dirty sheet of plastic, while another child, coated in white dust save for a red streak of blood from his nose, lies with his crushed leg dangling off a gurney - the grisly aftermath from the dropping of a crude “barrel bomb”...

   The son of popular Syrian Salafist cleric Adnan al-Aroor publically rejected his father's calls for jihad in Syria, criticizing him for urging young men to fight in Syria while he sits and watches from a comfortable distance. “Why don’t you get up and go...

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to his social network early Tuesday to look back on how his company came to be so successful. Zuckerberg, who launched the company when he was just a 19-year-old student at Harvard, said he never imagined that Facebook would be...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday expressed support for the Syrian National Coalition’s decision to attend the second round of the Geneva II peace talks, saying that the move showed the Coalition supported a political, rather than a military, resolution to the conflict....