Iran's top diplomat on Wednesday welcomed efforts to "normalize relations" between some Arab countries and Syria, days after President Bashar al-Assad made a surprise visit to the UAE. Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks on a visit to Damascus during which he met Assad.

A surprise visit by Syria's Bashar al-Assad to the oil-rich United Arab Emirates opens the door to his isolated regime's return to the embrace of the Arab world, analysts say. The president's trip also showed that a more assertive UAE is willing to upset its ally Washington with a rapprochement...

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

Moscow is currently recruiting thousands of fighters in Syria, from the regular army and from militia groups, to be put on standby for possible deployment in Ukraine.

Russia has drawn up lists of 40,000 fighters from Syrian army and allied militia ranks to be put on standby for deployment in Ukraine, a war monitor reported Tuesday.

Russia on Thursday accused the United States of funding research into the development of biological weapons in Ukraine.

Russia's offer of "humanitarian corridors" for civilians to flee the Ukrainian cities it has besieged is a well-tried approach Moscow adopted during Syria's devastating civil war.

Both Iran and Russia have provided financial and military support to President Bashar al-Assad's regime since Syria's conflict began in 2011.

Eight hundred Iraqi refugees returned home from northeast Syria on Thursday and hundreds more are to follow, a Syrian official in the region's Kurdish semi-autonomous administration said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the first group left on buses via the Al-Yarubiyah border crossing. The Iraqi government has "agreed...

In Ottoman-ruled Baghdad, Jews made up 40 percent of city inhabitants. By the time of Israel's creation in 1948 they numbered 150,000.

Lebanese families are lobbying authorities to return their relatives held in Syria.

Arabs noted that while the toll of war may be similar in the respective conflicts, the media treatment is not. Many also drew a comparison between Europe's welcoming of Ukrainian refugees and the influx of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans.

A number of Arab countries are heavily dependent on wheat supplies from both Ukraine and Russia.

Syrian authorities on Monday granted a rare license to a new telecommunications company that will start operating in nine months, the communications minister said.

Syrian mother of four Maryam al-Hussein was relieved to have a roof over her head as she moved from a tent camp into a housing complex built with Turkish support.

Syrian authorities on Monday granted a rare license to a new telecommunications company that will start operating in nine months, the communications minister said.

The Qatar Through Syrian Lens Exhibition was inaugurated in Building 19 of the Cultural Village Foundation (Katara), in cooperation with the Syrian Embassy.

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

Hundreds took to the streets of a southern Syrian city on Friday to demand better living conditions and democracy in a rare protest inside regime-held areas, a war monitor said.

Syrian state television reported an Israeli strike around Damascus.

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.

Turkey has launched deadly strikes against Kurdish targets in Iraq and Syria, where Kurdish forces were still reeling from the largest Islamic State group attack in nearly three years. 

The foreign ministers of Syria and Oman have held discussions on how to promote cooperation between the two countries on issues of common concern.

Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian territory since 2011, targeting government positions as well as Hezbollah fighters.

More than 330 people have been killed in heavy fighting since Islamic State group militants first attacked a prison in northeast Syria, a war monitor said on Sunday.

Snow carpeted Jerusalem and the eastern Mediterranean as a rare storm turned the Holy City into a winter wonderland but brought misery to the region's Syrian refugees.

The agreement signed by Energy Minister Walid Fayad with his Jordanian and Syrian counterparts is expected to give Lebanon two extra hours of mains electricity a day, doubling the supply currently provided by the cash-strapped government.

Artist Khaled Dawwa, a Syrian exile and prison survivor who now works in France, is recreating vistas from back home.

Sharjah and Syria are looking at ways to increase economic relations and enhance partnership between businessmen and traders.

A fierce battle raged in Syria for a fourth day Sunday between US-backed Kurdish forces and Islamic State group fighters who have attacked a prison, killing at least 120 people including seven civilians, a war monitor said.

Fighting raged for a third day Saturday between the Islamic State group and Kurdish forces in Syria after IS attacked a prison housing jihadists, in violence that has claimed over 70 lives, a monitor said.

The Islamic State group on Friday attacked a Syria prison housing fellow jihadists and a military base in Iraq in near simultaneous deadly operations that revived fears of a IS resurgence.

Crisis-hit Lebanon will sign a deal with Jordan next week to bring in electricity via Syria to help ease grueling power cuts, the energy minister has told AFP.

The crowded hospital in Darkush in Syria's rebel-held northwest treats around 30,000 patients every month, for free -- but now foreign aid cuts are threatening its future. Already dwindling funds have caused dire shortages of medicine and equipment in this and other clinics in the Idlib region, the last Syrian...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will host his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow on Wednesday, the Kremlin said, amid talks aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal. The meeting will be Raisi's most important official visit abroad since he took office, and the first visit by an Iranian president to Russia since...

Qasemi, who headed a high-ranking delegation to Syria, met with senior officials from Syria.

Anwar Raslan, 58, was found guilty of overseeing the murder of 27 people at the Al-Khatib detention center in Damascus, also known as "Branch 251", in 2011 and 2012. He sought refuge in Germany after deserting the Syrian regime in 2012.

Lebanon, a country of around 6 million people, is grappling with an unprecedented financial crisis that the World Bank says is on a scale usually associated with wars. The currency has crashed, people's purchasing power has plummeted, and the monthly minimum wage is now worth $22.

For the West, the renewal to July had been interpreted as automatic, while Russia had raised the possibility of requesting a new Security Council vote, though it has not taken that step. In his December report, UN chief Antonio Guterres had stressed the impossibility of replacing at this stage the...

More than 70 families gathered in the rebel-held Syrian town of Azaz on Friday to highlight the plight of loved ones missing in the government's feared jail system.

The possible reason for the strikes is that Iranian militias may have been planning an attack on US forces to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani.

None of the three attacks in less than 48 hours resulted in casualties but came as Iraq marked the second anniversary of the US assassination of Soleimani.

An exhibition of Jordan’s trade and services is scheduled to start next Tuesday in the Syrian capital, Damascus. The event is jointly organized by the Jordan Chamber of Commerce (JCC) and the Federation of Syrian Chambers of Commerce (FSCC). JCC said that the three-day exhibition will be held at Damascus...

France detained a 60-year-old French-Syrian man on suspicion of conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity.

Around 25,000 Israeli settlers live in the Golan Heights, along with some 23,000 Druze, who remained on the land after it was seized by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel annexed the territory on December 14, 1981, in a move not recognized by most of the international community.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has acknowledged that stagnating donor funding for close to a decade remained below the amount needed to provide quality services. At the same time, as the refugee population continued to grow, poverty and vulnerabilities skyrocketed.

The brutal occupation of the Homs province by the Islamic State group has left the local Christian community devastated.

Poor or inadequate surveillance footage often contributed to deadly targeting failures.

The cross-border mechanism has been operating since 2020 through Bab al-Hawa, after the Russian-imposed removal in 2019 of three other access points in Syria.

Syrian lawmakers have approved a draft budget for 2022 of $5.3 billion, down from $6.8 billion this year, as a spiraling economic crisis hits public finances and threatens subsidies on essential goods. A decade of war, Western sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic have devastated the Syrian economy, pushing most of...