The World Health Organization (WHO) has been unable to get a desperately needed medical aid convoy through to civilians in the rebel-held part of Aleppo despite a government promise last month to give it access.
The new head of Syria's Western-backed political opposition cast doubt on Monday on whether members of his group would attend talks in Russia this month aimed at finding a solution to the nearly four-year Syrian conflict.
A new Syrian opposition group linked to a prominent cleric said on Thursday President Bashar al-Assad would have to step down as part of any political solution to the civil war, setting out its position ahead of possible peace talks in Moscow this month.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited a district on the outskirts of Damascus and thanked soldiers fighting "in the face of terrorism", his office said on Twitter late on Wednesday, posting pictures of the rare trip.
A 20-year-old German man was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison on Friday after he admitted joining Islamic State militants in Syria, in the first trial in Germany of a home-grown jihadi accused of membership of the insurgent group.
Syria's conflict will be long and difficult and its army cannot be everywhere at once, President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published by a French magazine on Thursday, in which he also vowed to remain in power.
As winter sets in along the front lines of Aleppo, residents are desperate for the sort of relief United Nations officials hope a new ceasefire push will soon bring to the war-battered Syrian city.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel resigned on Monday, leaving under pressure as President Barack Obama faces critical national security challenges, including fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and revising plans to exit Afghanistan.
Egypt's interior ministry said on Wednesday it had arrested an Egyptian militant who had returned from fighting in Syria with a group linked to the al Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front in order to train Egyptians in bombmaking.
Islamic State militants have beheaded another American hostage, Peter Kassig, issuing a video claiming the killing on Sunday and warning the United States they would kill other U.S. citizens "on your streets."
With moderate rebels facing defeat by al Qaeda in Syria's north, groups holding a corner of the south are seeking a higher profile and more help, as the last Western-backed forces holding out against both President Bashar al-Assad and the jihadists.
A few brief encounters between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin during an Asia-Pacific summit in China on Tuesday spoke volumes about the chilly state of relations between the United States and Russia.
The coalition fighting Islamic State must now save Syria's second city Aleppo as moderate rebels face destruction by attacks from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and jihadi militants, France's foreign minister said.
When Sunni rebels rose up against Syria's Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Turkey reclassified its protégé as a pariah, expecting him to lose power within months and join the autocrats of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen on the scrap heap of the "Arab Spring".
The U.S. decision to air-drop weapons to Kurdish forces in Syria on the same day Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan dismissed them as terrorists is the latest false note in the increasingly discordant mood music coming out of Washington and Ankara.
Residents of a Turkish border town, an hour's drive from where Islamic State is battling for control of Kobani, appreciate the quiet they say the Sunni militants brought when they swiftly seized neighboring Syrian territory.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Monday blamed the United States and the "wicked" British government for creating the Islamic State in his first speech since undergoing prostate surgery last month.
It's not a particularly strategic location, the United States and its allies never pledged to defend it, and few people outside the region had even heard of it before this month.
Iran is to give a military grant to the Lebanese Army, the head of Iran's national security council said on Tuesday, boosting security forces that are already backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
U.S. intelligence agencies underestimated Islamic State activity inside Syria, which has become "ground zero" for jihadists worldwide, President Barack Obama said in a CBS television interview broadcast on Sunday.
Egypt has accused Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan of supporting terrorists and seeking to provoke mayhem in the Middle East after he questioned the legitimacy of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a speech at the UN General Assembly.
