The fighting pitted the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group led by Al-Qaeda's former Syria branch. The Britain-based war monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria, said the bombardments struck a bakery, a mosque, a power plant and a popular market.

Assad is on his first official trip to China in almost two decades as he seeks financial support to rebuild his devastated country, as well as rehabilitation for his regime from years of isolation over Syria's civil war. He will attend the opening ceremony of the 19th Asian Games in...

China becomes one of only a handful of countries outside the Middle East that Assad has visited since the 2011 start of a civil war that has since killed more than half a million people, displaced millions more, and battered Syria's infrastructure and industry. Assad also becomes the latest in...

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said the strikes near Ain Shib had targeted "military bases belonging to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)", the jihadist group that controls the bastion. Other late-night Russian strikes targeted the town of Ariha, south of Idlib city, AFP's correspondent and the Observatory...

Idlib, Syria - Thousands of fans in Syria's last opposition bastion have packed into a stadium for the frenzied final of a football cup -- an escape valve amid years of conflict and misery. "I'm really happy today," said Mohammed al-Zeer, 28, from the northwestern city of Idlib. "Between the war...

In a separate statement late Tuesday, the commerce ministry announced the total lifting of subsidies on petrol and a partial lifting of subsidies on fuel oil. As a result the price of petrol has risen to 8,000 pounds from 3,000 previously, and fuel oil to 2,000 pounds from 700 previously,...

Residents of the Damascus region heard the blasts which came from "the warehouses of pro-Iran militias" in a mountainous area east of the capital. During more than a decade of war in Syria, neighboring Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on Syrian territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters, as...

Through an arrangement that began in 2014, the UN delivered relief to the areas directly through the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey. But last month, the UN Security Council failed to reach consensus on extending the key aid route. The Syrian government has said it will allow humanitarian aid to pass...

They discussed "reinforcing cooperation between the two countries in various sectors... in addition to joint efforts to fight back against terrorism", a statement from Assad's office said.

Russian forces which back President Bashar al-Assad's regime were responding to rebel drone strikes over the past week that killed four civilians including two children, according to the Observatory. Six civilians died in Jisr al-Shughur and three rebel fighters were killed nearby by Russian air strikes. Another three civilians, including...

QAMISHLI, SYRIA- A Turkish drone strike killed three employees of northeast Syria's semi-autonomous Kurdish administration on Tuesday, a spokesman said, amid a recent uptick in attacks targeting Kurdish-held areas. The strike targeted "a vehicle transporting civilian employees, killing two Kurdish women and a Christian" man, said Farhad Shami, spokesman for the...

Syria's opposition urged the resumption of moribund United Nations-sponsored talks with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who has returned to the Arab fold after years of isolation. "The international, regional and Syrian conditions provide an appropriate circumstance for the resumption of direct negotiations...," the Syrian Negotiation Commission said in...

The visit by Faisal Mekdad comes weeks after the Arab League agreed to end Syria's suspension from the 22-member bloc, bringing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad back into the regional fold after years of civil war. Iraq remained an ally to Damascus throughout the wider Arab boycott, never severing...

"Only a few cases of child abandonment" were officially documented before the war broke out in 2011, according to the Washington-based group Syrians for Truth and Justice, which records human rights abuses in the country. But between early 2021 and late 2022, more than 100 children -- 62 of them girls...

Colonna nevertheless said Paris would not be changing its policy towards the Syrian ruler. "We have to remember who Bashar al-Assad is. He's a leader who has been the enemy of his own people for more than 10 years," she said. A lifting of European Union sanctions on the Syrian...

Beirut, Lebanon -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has returned to the Arab fold after more than a decade of isolation, eyeing reconstruction and aid from formers foes as the conflict grinds on. Since the brutal civil war broke out in 2011, it has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad returns to Arab League Summit, which confronts conflicts across the Middle East and beyond, including the war in Ukraine.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was politically isolated in the region since the conflict began, but a flurry of diplomatic activity has been underway in past weeks as a decision by Saudi Arabia and Iran, a close ally of Damascus, to resume ties shifted regional relations. Assad hopes normalisation with Gulf...

"We continue to believe that we will not normalize our relations with the Assad regime and we don't support our allies and partners doing so either," State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said. The US opposes reconciliation with Syria and domestic law forbids any assistance for reconstruction without accountability for abuses...

The bloc's foreign ministers unanimously agree to allow government delegations from Syria to resume their participation in meetings ahead of a key summit in Jeddah on May 19.

Preparations for Raisi's visit have been underway for days in the Damascus district housing Iran's embassy, with concrete barriers in front of the mission removed, an AFP correspondent said. Iran's president leads a senior "economic-political delegation" for his two-day trip at Assad's invitation, Iranian state media reported.

The visit comes against the backdrop of a rapprochement between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, and increased Arab engagement with Damascus. Iran is a major ally of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian president met with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan in Damascus. This is the first visit to Syria's capital by a Saudi official since the start of the country's civil war in 2011, marking a new era in ties betwee the two countries.

The two sisters of Somali origin clandestinely left Norway for Syria in late 2013, aged 16 and 19, to join a popular uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, as they would later explain in an e-mail exchange. Norwegian writer Asne Seierstad recounted their experiences in a book.

The Syrian leader, who arrived in Moscow on Tuesday, demanded that Turkey end its "support for terrorism" alongside a withdrawal, a reference to rebel groups that control regions of northern Syria and oppose Damascus. "This is the only way in which my meeting with Erdogan could take place," Assad was...

The massive 7.8-magnitude tremor on February 6 has killed more than 42,000 people in Turkey and more than 3,600 in Syria, while the WHO said more than 125,000 have been injured. Damascus has been hit by more than a decade of economic sanctions, and while they were not designed to...

More than four million people live in areas outside government control in Syria's north and northwest, 90 per cent of whom depend on aid to survive. Yet the first UN aid convoy crossed into the area on February 9 -- three days after the quake struck -- and carried tents...

After more than a decade of war, Assad's government remains a pariah in the West, complicating international efforts to assist those affected by the quake. Martin Griffiths also met Monday with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad in Damascus after visiting government-controlled Aleppo, where more than 200,000 people have been left...

Lebanon has adopted a policy of dissociation from Syria's years-long war but on Wednesday, it sent its first high-level official delegation and rescue team to Damascus since the start of the conflict. The delegation met with Assad and expressed readiness to open Lebanon's air and sea ports to help send...

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday ordered the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre "to provide health, shelter, food and logistical assistance" to Syria and Turkey, the official SPA news agency said. It will also launch a public donation campaign for quake victims in both countries, SPA added. The oil-rich Gulf...

More than 15 police personnel were wounded in an attack on a bus carrying them in the south of the war-scarred country on Monday. The police officers were returning from a mission in the southern province of Daraa when, according to the interior ministry, "unidentified terrorists targeted their bus with...

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on Friday visited the former rebel bastion of Aleppo, including its historic Old City, for the first time since war broke out 11 years ago.

Half a million people have been detained in Syria's prisons since the start of the war, with about 100,000 dying either under torture or due to poor detention conditions.

Assad's surprise trip on Friday was his first official visit to an Arab country since civil war erupted in his country in 2011.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held talks in the United Arab Emirates on Friday, his first official visit to an Arab country since civil war erupted in 2011, UAE state media said. Assad met with the UAE's de facto ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, discussing "fraternal relations" between the two...

During a meeting in Damascus, Shoigu "informed the Syrian president about the exercises of the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean."

The political groups, now mainly based abroad, have seen their influence wane in recent years as Iran and Russia steadfastly supported the Syrian president after he launched a deadly crackdown on protesters in 2011 that quickly descended into civil war.

The visit is widely seen as a sign of regional efforts to end Assad's diplomatic isolation as Syria grapples with a spiralling economic crisis.

The vote extending Assad's grip on power was the second since the start of a decade-long civil war that has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions and battered the country's infrastructure

Iraq President Barham Salih talked with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to collaborate against common problems, with stress on terrorism

Assad has cast himself as the sole architect of a reconstruction phase for the war-ravaged country Having overseen total destruction of his country in civil war, he is expected to become more autocratic Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is likely to be reelected as the president of the war-scarred Syria in...