A car bomb detonated near a Russian military base in northeastern Syria Friday in the first such attack in the area against the ally of Damascus, a war monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported several wounded in the attack after midnight in the Tal...

Some 50 countries around the world have already started vaccinating their people against Covid-19, barely a year after the first alert by China signalled the start of the epidemic. A snapshot: - China leads the way - China, where the pandemic first emerged, was also the first to...

Sudan's foreign minister said Thursday that the army has restored control over all lands along the border that had been taken over by Ethiopian farmers. "The armed forces have now fully recovered all Sudanese territory," minister Omar Qamareddine told a Khartoum press conference. "The...

Israel's military, which rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria blamed on its forces, said Thursday it had hit about 50 targets in the neighbouring country in 2020. The annual report released by the Israel Defence Forces did not provide details about the targets hit, but Israel is...

Zaman al-Wasl has obtained information confirming that a member of the National Defense militia, George Youssef Al Sheikh, is currently in Montreal, Canada.   Al Sheikh was part of the Sednaya militia operations against rebelling cities and villages, in the southern countryside of...

A Turkish humanitarian group on Thursday sent six truckloads of aid supplies to an area in northwestern Syria cleared of terrorists by a Turkish military operation. Yusuf Bulbul, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation's (IHH) Kahramanmaras regional manager, told Anadolu Agency that they sent...

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday accused outgoing US President Donald Trump of aiming to fabricate a "pretext for war" as tensions mount between the two countries. His remarks come ahead of the first anniversary of the US killing of top Iranian military commander...

The Syrian conflict claimed at least 6,800 people in 2020, the lowest annual death toll since it began nearly a decade ago, a war monitor said Thursday. According to figures compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 10,000 people were killed in the conflict in 2019....

The United Kingdom exits the European Union’s orbit on Thursday, turning its back on a tempestuous 48-year liaison with the European project for an uncertain Brexit future that will shape the fortunes of its people for generations to come. Brexit, in essence, takes place at the strike of...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday the country would hold referendum on constitutional changes, the Belta state news agency reported. Lukashenko, who has faced weekly protests since claiming victory in an Aug. 9 election his opponents say was rigged, did not say when...

The dollar was set to end 2020 around 2-1/2 year lows on Thursday, allowing currencies from the euro to Chinese yuan to strengthen, while holiday-thinned euro zone bond yields were mostly steady after dropping 30-100 basis points over the year. The prospect of a brighter 2021 has lessened...

Yemen's new power-sharing government vowed on Thursday to bring stability to the war-torn country, a day after deadly blasts rocked Aden airport in an attack targeting cabinet members. At least 26 people, including three members of the International Committee of the Red Cross and a...

For Radwan Jibril, wounded in a bastion of Libya's 2011 revolution, losing his leg became "inevitable" and he had a prosthetic replacement, but thousands of other amputees are still waiting. An orthopaedic centre is finally scheduled to open in March to provide prostheses to amputees in the...

Lewis Hamilton has been knighted in Britain's traditional New Year Honours list after equalling Michael Schumacher's record of seven Formula One world titles. The list recognises outstanding achievements in various fields including showbusiness, sport and politics, as well as the...

China has confirmed its first case of a new coronavirus variant that was recently detected in Britain, health officials said. The new strain, which experts say potentially spreads faster than the original variant, has prompted travel restrictions on the UK by more than 50 countries --...

Iran this week honours military commander Qasem Soleimani who was assassinated a year ago by arch-enemy the United States and is revered as a heroic warrior across the Islamic republic. Since his death in a January 3 Baghdad drone strike that sparked mourning across Iran at mass funeral...

The world readied to usher in the New Year Thursday, with pandemic controls muting celebrations for billions of people eager to bid virus-ridden 2020 farewell. After a grinding year that has seen at least 1.7 million people die from Covid-19, fresh waves of infection have sparked renewed...

It is estimated that about 1.2 million Syrian citizens have been arrested and detained at some point since March 2011. During this period, an estimated number of 99 000 persons have been forcibly disappeared, while the Syrian Regime is responsible for about 84 000 of these cases (SNHR Report of...

The Biden administration will take swift action when it assumes office on Jan. 20 to roll back harmful Trump administration policies that have not taken effect by Inauguration day, a spokeswoman for President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team said on Wednesday. “The Biden-Harris White House...

Twenty-eight people were killed in an attack on a bus along a main highway in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province that borders Iraq, Syrian state media said on Wednesday, an incident that residents and defectors say was an ambush on an army vehicle. There were no more details of the incident in an...