A 35-year-old man was killed in the southeastern Turkish town of Ceylanpinar early on Monday when a stray mortar shell fired across the border from Syria struck a house near the frontier, security sources said. The shell was fired during clashes between Kurdish and...
UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi flew in to Beirut on Monday on his way to Damascus to try to whip up support for a peace conference on Syria, airport sources said. Brahimi arrived from Tehran, where he said it was "necessary" for Iran, a key ally of the Damascus...
China supports the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to play an role in solving the issue of Syria's chemical weapons, a spokeswoman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday. "The Syrian government has...
Syria has never had a large Shiite population, but in recent years there has been an increase in conversions to Shiism within Syria’s Sunni, Ismaili, and Alawite populations. The geographical proximity of Iran to Syria has always led to a certain degree of Iranian influence there, which...
For much of the last several months, news of the Syrian opposition has been vastly overshadowed by debate in the United States regarding a possible military response to the August 21 chemical weapons attacks in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta, which there is strong...
Shabiha, Pro-Assad militia has breached a planned truce in al-Waer neighborhood in Homs which was supposed to open all blocked crossings to allow people breaking the siege after 3 week of suffering, local sources told Zaman Alwasl. Also, sources said that 7 people have been...
Kurdish militants sought to consolidate their control of an oil-producing region in northeastern Syria on Sunday after seizing a border crossing with Iraq from Islamist rebels, activists said. Fighters linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought in...
A Sunni militant group, Jaish-ul Adl, has claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 14 Iranian border guards in the country’s mountainous southeast, ISNA news agency reported Sunday. The hitherto-unknown Jaish-ul Adl (Army of Justice)...
Just days ago in London, I listened with sadness and shock as Ahmad Jarba and leaders of the moderate Syrian opposition described how ordinary Syrians with no links to the civil war are forced to eat stray dogs and cats to survive a campaign of deprivation waged by the Assad regime....
Each Saturday morning in July and August, Susan E. Rice , President Obama ’s new national security adviser, gathered half a dozen aides in her corner office in the White House to plot America’s future in the Middle East. The policy review, a kind...
Syria's armed opposition in a statement posted on YouTube yesterday said Geneva II peace conference in no more than a conspiracy on the Syrian people. 19 factions, including the Islam Army and Ahrar al-Sham assured their refusal for any solution will keep Bashar al-Assad or...
Its almost 15 months since the news agencies surfaced the first such incident since the Syrian uprising on March 15, 2011, ''Syrian air force pilot flew into neighboring Jordan and defected with his Russian-made fighter jet.'' Zaman Alwasl was pleased to...
Syria handed over a detailed plan to destroy its chemical stockpile on time, international watchdog OPCW said Sunday. "On 24 October 2013, the Syrian Arab Republic submitted to the OPCW its formal initial declaration covering its chemical weapons programme," the watchdog...
The death toll from a week of clashes in Lebanon between supporters and opponents of Syria’s regime has risen to 13, a security official said on Sunday. Two people died in clashes on Saturday and another two were killed early on Sunday in the northern port city of Tripoli, the official...
The UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said Saturday from Tehran that Iran’s participation at the Geneva II conference on the Syrian crisis, scheduled for next month, was essential. Diplomat sources revealed...
Some five million Syrians are now refugees in their own country, many living hand-to-mouth in vacant buildings, schools, mosques, parks and the cramped homes of relatives. Others are trapped in neighborhoods isolated by military blockades, beyond the reach of aid groups. Already...
Three people died overnight in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli in clashes between supporters and opponents of Syria's regime, bringing to nine the toll this week, an official said Saturday. Sunni and Alawite gunmen have been fighting in the Bab al-Tebbaneh...
The European Union said Saturday it was ready to increase assistance to the World Health Organisation (WHO) if an outbreak of polio is confirmed in war-ravaged Syria. UN agencies are stepping up efforts to vaccinate children in Syria against a host of diseases and the WHO has received...
Syria's regime Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun says at least 2,000 Russian citizens are fighting along with foreign-backed militants in Syria, wreaking havoc on the Arab country, pro-Assad media reported . During a visit to the Islamic University of...
While the emergence of al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as a major force in the Syrian civil war has caused deep concern for many rebels, one group’s fighters claim its presence has given them a popularity boost. Until ISIS asserted its place in the war earlier...
