Over the past two years, Hussein witnessed the horrors of war in his hometown of Damascus. But the most frightening moment of his life did not come in Syria. Rather, it was during a stormy night in the Mediterranean Sea, when the small fishing boat carrying him and 15 other Syrians...

  The State of Iraq and The Levant (ISIL) has made gains against its rival Al Nusra Front and other Islamist groups in Raqqa, activists reported.  The ISIL regained control of Al-Qatar and Al-Hazimeh streets in Al-Raqqa city after fierce clashes with Ahrar...

  The spokesman for a gathering of Syrian opposition groups said on Friday that an international conference on the country's future later this month should focus on establishing a time-frame for an end to the fighting. Yahya al-Aridi told the Associated Press in the...

  Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has died, Israeli Army Radio said, quoting a relative of his family. He was 85 years old and had been in a coma since 2006 when a stroke incapacitated him at the height of his political power. "Ariel Sharon has passed away," said...

Syrian air force Intelligence raided Red Crescent warehouses in Damascus suburb of Jarmana which contain aid for 24,000 displaced families, according to Zaman Alwasl reporter. The powerful security branch has informed the NGO principals in Jaramana that ‘’as of today...

  The wife of a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail gave birth on Friday to a boy born from sperm smuggled into Gaza, her family said, the first successful pregnancy of its kind in the embattled coastal enclave. The procedure follows several similar cases last year in...

An Al-Qaeda surge and Sunni-Shiite tumult spanning Iraq and Syria are testing eroded US influence and the logic of a foreign policy built on antipathy to Middle East entanglements. The return of jihadists to cities like Fallujah and Ramadi, fabled battlefields for US soldiers, has left...

A Syrian monitoring group said Friday it has documented the deaths of 41 Palestinian refugees in besieged Yarmuk camp as a result of food and medical shortages, including women and children. "Food and medical shortages have killed at least 41 people in the past three months in Yarmuk"...

President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Peter Maurer arrived in Damascus Friday to seek broader humanitarian aid access to besieged areas in the strife-torn country. Maurer will discuss with Syrian officials broader access to besieged areas and visit to...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will hold joint talks on Jan. 13 in the run up to the so-called Geneva 2 conference on Syria, Russian Interfax news agency reported on Friday. "On Jan. 13 there will be a meeting...

Iraqis fleeing from Falluja question whether the masked gunmen who overran their city 10 days ago are really al Qaeda-linked militants as the government says, but fear their presence will draw a ferocious response from the army regardless. At a motel in Iraq's Kurdish north, Falluja...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will both attend the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos this month, the organisers told Reuters on Friday. Asked about their attendance, a spokeswoman for the forum said: "Yes, it's...

Jihadists have made advances on rebel fighters in the battle for Raqa, in northern Syria, but are on the back foot in parts of Aleppo and Idlib, activists said Friday. "In Idlib and Aleppo provinces, the (rebel) Free Syrian Army is advancing, but in Raqa the Islamic State of Iraq and...

Several factions of the Syrian opposition, meeting together for the first time, called on Friday for a new coalition but did not reach agreement on who should attend peace talks later this month, or whether they would attend at all. With less than a fortnight to go until the first...

  Abdul Basset al-Sarout, r evolutionary i con and vocal supporter, has released  a motivational   song , urging rebels of the embattled city of Homs for more fortitude and patience to overthrow Bashar Al Assad regime. Syrian people kept in mind...

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that nuclear negotiations with world powers had revealed U.S. enmity towards the Islamic state. Khamenei was speaking hours before the resumption of talks between Iran and the European Union in Geneva. "We had announced...

More gains have been achieved in the western countryside of Aleppo by rebels against the Islamic State of Iraq and The Levant (ISIL), source In Brigade 9 told Zaman Alwasl. Mujahedeen Army seized the big city of Manbij and the villages of Kafr Aleppo, Sheikh Ali and kafr...

Loyal forces to Bashar al-Assad have killed at least 70 Syrian rebels as they sought to break a regime siege on part of Homs, in central Syria, local activists said on Thursday. Prominent dissident Omar Edelbi said that more than 70 rebel of the embattled city of Homs...

Rebels of Al Mujahedeen Army, who took control of Al Dana, last Islamic Emirate of Al Qaeda State ‘Iraq and The Levant’ in Idlib Province, had freed dozens of hostages and abductees, according to Zaman Alwasl sources.     ‘The Black Room’ is a horrific prison...

Reports of Christians dying for their faith almost doubled between 2012 and 2013, with more Christians martyred in Syria last year than the worldwide total for 2012. Open Doors, a non-denominational group that supports persecuted Christians, said Wednesday that 2,123 Christians were...