Embattled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has flown to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is now his chief sponsor. The talks, held Tuesday night, centered on coordinating military action in Syria, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Peskov said the talks concerned the fight against “terrorist extremist groups,” a phrase the Assad regime regularly uses to describe all ...

At least 70,000 Syrians fled the southern parts of Aleppo due to the Syrian government offensive with Russian air strikes on rebels, according to Dr Zaidoun al-Zoabi, the head of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations. Dr. al-Zoabi said that several villages he had visited were empty and he saw thousands of people have fled without shelters or medical supports. “The shelling is so ...

Sitting on a shabby green sofa somewhere in the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, Iraq, the militants laugh and joke as one of them films their excited chatter. “Today is the female sex slave market day, which has been ordained,” explains a skinny, black-clad Jihadi, gesturing at the camera. “With Allah’s permission, each will get a share,” promises another of the ...

U.S. military cargo planes gave 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups overnight in northern Syria, using an air drop of 112 pallets as the first step in the Obama Administration’s urgent effort to find new ways to support those groups. Details of the air mission over Syria were confirmed by a U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly because ...

Vladimir Putin just confirmed what many suspected — that Russian airstrikes in Syria are meant to bolster President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But exactly how they’re doing that remains a point of contention: Are Russians really focused on pummeling ISIS, or are they targeting Syrian rebels demanding an end to the Assad dynasty? “Our task is to stabilize the legitimate government ...

In war-torn Syria, a baby girl was a victim of thecountry’s civil war before she was even born. The newborn is named Amel, or “Hope,” because of what she has survived in her first days of life in Aleppo. She came into this world bearing a scar of war on her forehead. Her story is a tragic illustration of a ...

10 ISIS targets were crashed by Russian jets in Syria on Monday, according to the Defense Ministry. Moscow expands its aerial campaign that targeted the Damascus area. The ministry said in a statement that 10 facilities had been crashed on the sixth day of military intervention of Moscow in Syria. They have destroyed an ISIS command center and communications hub of Damascus province also in ...

After two days of attacks directed exclusively against insurgents opposed to the Syrian government, there is little question that Russia is determined to re-establish President Bashar al-Assad as Syria’s leader. “Russia’s goal is to defend Assad; whoever is against him is a destabilizing factor,” said Aleksei Makarkin, the deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies, in Moscow. “Russia wants ...

  U.S.-trained rebels in Syria handed over American-supplied vehicles and ammunition to an al-Qaeda linked group, the Pentagon said Friday in the latest blow to a program plagued by problems since its inception. The rebels surrendered six pickups and ammunition to an “intermediary” for the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front in Syria, the Pentagon said in a statement. The equipment was about a ...

The United States will increase the number of refugees it takes in by 15,000 over each of the next two years, bringing the total to 100,000 by 2017, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said after talks with his German counterpart on Sunday.The remarks may show increasing U.S. willingness to help cope with the mass migration of Syrians although the ...