UN human-rights experts on Tuesday urged 57 countries whose nationals are detained in the notorious Al-Hol and Roj detention camps in northeastern Syria to repatriate them “without delay.” They warned that failure to do so could be tantamount to torture under international law. The experts...

Two civilians were killed and six others wounded when a ballistic missile strike targeted a region in northwestern Syria, according to reports from the ground. Six ballistic missiles were fired on Tarhin in Aleppo’s al-Bab region by persons unknown. The wounded were taken to nearby...

Five current and former EU members of the UN Security Council said Tuesday they regret that no progress has been made to draft constitutional reform in Syria despite several meetings.  In a joint statement after a Security Council briefing, Estonia, France, Ireland and former members...

Authorities in Canada are reviewing an audio recording in which someone identified as a high-ranking government official says it is possible that a Ukrainian airliner that crashed in Iran last year was deliberately downed, local media reported Tuesday.   Canadian official...

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Tuesday defended his recent controversial visit to Moscow in an address to a plenary session of the European Parliament.  “Foreign policy cannot be reduced to issuing statements from a safe distance, from my office at the...

On Tuesday, the UN sent 60 truckloads of humanitarian aid to Idlib, northwestern Syria, where millions of people need assistance due to internal conflict in the country. The trucks carrying supplies passed through the Cilvegozu border gate in Turkey’s southern Hatay province. The aid...

With the approaching presidential elections in Syria, it has become clear that the military solution is not within sight, and that the current borders between the four Syrian regions, which are protected by international and regional balances, have become more stable than ever before. This...

On February 2, Syria’s Ministry for Media and Information posted a video in which Colonel Elias al-Bitar, head of the army’s Exemptions and Reserves Branch, informed the country of an amendment that allows authorities to seize the property of “military evaders” who fail to pay egregious...

U.S. forces in Syria are focused on fighting the remnants of the Islamic State group and are not guarding oil fields as previously ordered by former President Donald Trump, a U.S. defense official said Monday. Since a U.S. firm contracted last year with the Kurds in northern Syria to...

A string of attacks on Tuesday in Afghanistan killed five government employees and four policemen, officials said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. In the capital, Kabul, gunmen opened fire in the Bagh-e Daud neighborhood and killed four employees of the...

Dozens of Uighurs assembled near the Chinese Embassy in Turkey on Tuesday, demanding information about family members they fear are being kept in detention camps in China. The protesters held photographs of relatives they say they have not heard from in months. More than a million...

Iran’s intelligence minister warned the West that his country could push for a nuclear weapon if crippling international sanctions on Tehran remain in place, state television reported Tuesday. The remarks by Mahmoud Alavi mark a rare occasion that a government official says Iran could...

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Police cracked down on demonstrators opposing Myanmar’s military coup, firing warning shots and shooting water cannons to disperse crowds that took to the streets again Tuesday in defiance of rules making protests illegal. Water cannons were used in Mandalay, Myanmar’s...

Five years ago, Tareq Alaows crossed the Mediterranean in a flimsy rubber dinghy and trekked north through the Balkans toward Germany, fleeing the civil war in his homeland of Syria to seek a safe haven. Since then, the 31-year-old has learned fluent German, found a steady job — and has...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran on Tuesday launched a coronavirus inoculation campaign among healthcare professionals with recently delivered Russian Sputnik V vaccines as the country struggles to stem the worst outbreak of the pandemic in the Middle East with its death toll nearing 59,000. At a...

 Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced on Monday plans to approve a set of new draft laws designed to enhance the efficiency and integrity of the kingdom's judicial system, a step that would eventually lead to an entirely codified law. The prince, often referred to...

Israeli forces on Tuesday detained leading Hamas member Khaled al-Hajj in the West Bank city of Jenin, according to his wife. “An Israeli force raided our home in Al-Jabriyat neighborhood and detained my husband,” the wife, who did not provide her name, said. The cause of the detention...

Evidence is mounting that having COVID-19 may not protect against getting infected again with some of the new variants. People also can get second infections with earlier versions of the coronavirus if they mounted a weak defense the first time, new research suggests. How long immunity lasts...

The Islamic State group Monday killed 26 pro-regime fighters in eastern Syria, as alarm grew following a spate of murders including beheadings in a camp housing families of the jihadists. Almost 10 years into Syria's civil war, the jihadists have lost the last scrap of their so-called...

When Dr. Stanley Fineman started as an allergist in Atlanta, he told patients they should start taking their medications and prepare for the drippy, sneezy onslaught of pollen season around St. Patrick’s Day. That was about 40 years ago. Now he tells them to start around St. Valentine’s Day....