Lawyers

• Islamic State kills at least 145 civilians in Syria's Kobani

  Islamic State fighters killed at least 145 civilians in an attack on the Syrian town of Kobani and a nearby village, in what a monitoring group described on Friday as one of the worst massacres carried out by the hardline group in Syria.

• Iraqi refinery may be destroyed in battle to save it

  Islamic State militants have dug trenches around natural gas and hydrogen tanks at Iraq's largest refinery, raising the stakes in a battle where the price of victory may be the refinery itself.

• Syrians slowly return to Kobani after Kurds win back border town

  Around 4,000 refugees have trickled back to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani but many are wary of returning to the site of a four-month battle between Kurdish and Islamic State forces, officials said on Monday.

• Kurds regain Syrian villages from Islamic State: monitor

  Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led air strikes have regained control of at least 163 villages around the Syrian town of Kobani after driving back Islamic State militants in the past three weeks, a group monitoring the conflict said on Saturday.

• Islamic State in Syria seen under strain but far from collapse

  Islamic State's defeat in Kobani and other recent setbacks in Syria suggest the group is under strain but far from collapse in the Syrian half of its self-declared caliphate.

• Turkey opens biggest refugee camp for 35,000 from Kobani

  Turkey opened its biggest refugee camp on Sunday to house 35,000 people fleeing fighting between Kurdish forces and Islamist militants in Syria's Kobani, national disaster management agency AFAD said.

• Iraqi Kurds reinforce Kobani; U.S. planes pound Islamic State targets

  Syrian Kurds welcomed the arrival in Kobani of Iraqi Kurdish fighters with their heavy weapons, hoping they might tip the balance in the battle to defend the town against Islamic State, as U.S.-led air strikes continued to bomb the ultra-hardline group in Iraq and Syria.

• Kurds' battle for Kobani unites a people divided by borders

  Cloaked in Kurdish flags, thousands of people lined the roads to cheer on a military convoy headed for what was -- until recently -- an obscure Syrian border town, now the focus of a global war against the militants of Islamic State.

• Assad's warnings start to ring true in Turkey

  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".

• East of Kobani, Turkish town appreciates 'peace' brought by Islamic State

  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.

• U.S. Defense Secretary sees long-term fight against Islamic State

  U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Saturday that the embattled Syrian city of Kobani was a very difficult problem but added that air strikes had made some progress in driving back Islamic State militants.

• Kobani's fall would be symbolic setback for Obama Syria strategy

  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.

• Threat to Syrian town tests patience for U.S. strategy

  The threat from Islamic State fighters to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani is an early test of the U.S.-led coalition's patience for a military strategy that at the moment cannot hold ground in Syria.

• About 60,000 Syrian Kurds flee to Turkey from Islamic State advance

  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.