American-led and Arab-backed air strikes carrying the fight against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria have dragged Washington into a new Middle East war - exactly the kind of conflict Barack Obama spent his presidency trying to avoid.
It is more than 23 years since Arab countries last made common cause to join U.S.-led military action, and it has taken the threat of Islamic State to persuade them that any public backlash in an already turbulent region is a price worth paying.
For decades the opposing poles of Middle East power politics, Saudi Arabia and Iran may be driven to set aside at least some of their differences by the rise of a mutual enemy: Islamic State.
About 60,000 Syrian Kurds fled into Turkey in the space of 24 hours, a deputy prime minister said on Saturday, as Islamic State militants seized dozens of villages close to the border.
The Syrian military's air defenses would face retaliation if Syria attempted to respond to U.S. air strikes that are expected against Islamic State targets in Syria, senior U.S. officials said on Monday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday it was "not appropriate" for Iran to join talks on confronting Islamic State militants, as he appeared to play down how fast countries can commit to force or other steps in an emerging coalition.
President Barack Obama told Americans on Wednesday he had authorized U.S. air strikes for the first time in Syria and more attacks in Iraq in a broad escalation of a campaign against the Islamic State militant group.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged President Bashar al-Assad to seek a political solution to Syria's war, saying this would help international efforts against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, al-Hayat newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia's Specialized Criminal Court jailed six people for up to six years for security offences including traveling abroad to fight, adopting militant ideology and "breaking obedience to the ruler", state media reported late on Sunday.
President Barack Obama faced criticism over his foreign policy from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Sunday as he wrestled with crises in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Ukraine.
President Barack Obama faced criticism over his foreign policy from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Sunday as he wrestled with crises in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Ukraine.
The United Nations has confirmed in a report that chemical weapons were used "unequivocally and objectively," which Secretary General Ban Ki Moon constituted as a "war crime" on Monday, as reported by BBC News. The UN, however did not attribute blame who used the weapons in the Syrian civil war.
As President Barack Obama announced outside the White House that he will seek congressional approval to strike Bashar al-Assad's regime, protests took place in Washington and New York. Protests supporting and opposing U.S. military actions to strike have taken place through the weekend.
Nicole Lynn Mansfield, a 33-year-old woman from Flint Michigan, who was a convert to Islam, was reportedly to be killed alongside a British man by an ambush on an opposition scouting mission north of the city of Idlib, Syrian state media said on Friday.
Syria's prime minister, Wael al-Halki, survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Damascus on Monday, underscoring the potency of the rebels in Damascus in their hopes of toppling Bashar al-Assad, Reuters reported. Six people were killed in the blast, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
