REPORTED BY KALAHAN DENG On the last Sunday of October the church bells in the Iraqi Christian town of Qaraqosh rang out for the first time in two years. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) had been been driven out, leaving behind only the dead bodies of their fighters and the churches that lay desecrated but not ...

REPORTED BY KALAHAN DENG Several buses sent to transport the sick and injured from two government-held villages in Syria’s Idlib province have been burned by rebels. The attack apparently halted the latest efforts to evacuate besieged areas. Pro-government forces say people must be allowed to leave the mainly Shia villages of Foah and Kefraya for the evacuation of east Aleppo ...

REPORTED BY KALAHAN DENG The day that was supposed to mark an end to Aleppo’s violence started with some of its most despicable. The sun had barely risen when an ambulance was attacked, as it tried to evacuate injured children. The rebels blamed an Iranian backed militia. Whoever carried it out is guilty of a war crime. Footage filmed for ...

Iran’s commercial fleet is helping the Bashar Assad regime and its allies commit vast-scale atrocities in Syria. The Obama administration should have punished Tehran’s war crimes by going after Iran’s aviation sector, without which Iran could not deliver weapons and fighters to Aleppo’s killing fields. Instead, it has authorized the sale of aircraft to Iran. And it won’t leverage U.S. ...

REPORTED BY KALAHAN DENG According to the extremist group’s news agency, Amaq, the militants shot the plane near to the Jazal oil fields west of the city. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a government jet crashed in the Jazal area. The Observatory claimed on Friday that the IS assault near Palmyra has killed at least 49 pro-government ...

REPORTED BY KALAHAN DENG The Red Cross says it has evacuated 148 mostly disabled and elderly civilians found in a part of the Syrian city of Aleppo recently recaptured by the army. They were trapped for days inside a former old people’s home in what was a rebel-held part of the Old City because of heavy fighting nearby. Many had ...

EDITED BY KALAHAN DENG Faced with almost certain defeat in the city of Aleppo, Syrian rebel groups have promised to continue their war by adopting the guerrilla tactics of assassinations, armed raids and roadside bombs. The four-year battle for control of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, is likely to end in the next few weeks as Syrian regime forces either advance ...

Seeing harrowing images from war zones in Syria and Iraq can make people feel at a loss of how to help, but there are ways Australians can lend a hand. There are dozens of organisations already working within and around the war-torn cities of Aleppo and Mosul. We asked workers from Red Cross and World Vision what Australians can do. ...

Egyptian leader says his priority is to support “national armies”, noting a solution must be “political” in Syria. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi says he supports the Syrian military – a position at odds with his country’s Gulf benefactors such as Saudi Arabia. The former army chief, who has overseen a warming of ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main ...

Hunger is stalking the people of rebel-held east Aleppo. While Russia has urged the rebels to leave and take their weapons with them, they are determined to stay and fight to break the government’s siege on the city. United Nations agencies are scrambling to strike a deal that will deliver aid to the quarter of a million people living there. ...