On any given day, Yemen, Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, the Kurds, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, and the US are involved in armed conflicts in the Middle East, writes Carlos Pascual

Operation Euphrates Wrath aims to surround and capture Raqqa, the de facto capital of the IS extremists’ self-declared caliphate.

The Russian military has said it is ready to resume contacts with its US counterparts over the situation in Syria.

A string of bombings, blamed on Kurdish rebels and targeting Turkey’s security forces, killed at least 11 people and wounded 226 others.

Pope Francis has said it is "unacceptable" that civilian victims of Syria's civil war are paying the price for the "the lack of desire for peace by the powerful".

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have pushed into the outskirts of the Islamic State group's stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria.

Government had prohibited help for opposition-held Daraya.

France’s president said yesterday that spiralling Middle East upheaval since the collapse of the round of Israel-Palestinian peace talks has complicated the process and makes it even more urgent to bring the two sides back to the table.

An aid agency has said 27.8m people around the world were internally displaced by conflicts and natural disasters last year, calling it a global crisis.

French President Francois Hollande has described the suspension of Syrian peace talks as "very worrying".

The death toll from a mortar attack on a checkpoint near northern Sinai's provincial capital of el-Arish has risen to 15 policemen.

This haunting video features a poem written by a 15-year-old Syrian boy, Omar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a partial pullout of the Russian military from Syria, voicing hope that the move will contribute to the success of peace talks that began on Monday.

It is unclear whether peace talks aimed at resolving the Syrian conflict will go ahead today.

Rebels entrenched in an eastern suburb of Damascus have fired volleys of mortar shells into the Syrian capital, killing three people, including a child, and wounding 33, Syria’s state-run news agency and residents said.

A Russian proposal to end Syria’s conflict that would include early presidential elections is facing opposition from both sides, as deep divisions remain over the fate of Bashar Assad.

South Sudan’s president is expected to sign a peace deal today to end a 20-month-old conflict but will list his reservations in an annex to the pact, his foreign minister said.

The doom and gloom predictions of increasing battles around the world over water are a myth, with only a handful of disagreements over shared waters leading to armed conflict, an expert said.

The UN political chief has said the risk of escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "is palpable".

Two women opened fire yesterday at the heavily protected US consulate in Istanbul, while assailants exploded a car bomb at a police station then fired on police inspecting the scene.

Yemen’s pro-government troops have fought pockets of resistance outside a key military base in the country’s south, a day after they seized it from Shiite rebels, military officials said.

Almost 60m people worldwide were forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution at the end of last year, the highest ever recorded number, the UN refugee agency said.

Yemen’s Shiite rebels and their allies in the country’s armed forces have said they would accept a five-day humanitarian ceasefire to allow aid to reach civilians after more than a month of daily Saudi-led airstrikes.

Pope Francis, in his Easter address before a huge crowd, denounced the “immense wastefulness” in the world while many go hungry and called for an end to conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and Africa.

Syria’s army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah seized full control of the rebel bastion Yabrud yesterday, dealing the opposition a heavy symbolic and strategic blow in the Qalamoun region along the Lebanese border.

An Irish pharmacist has stepped in to help a Syrian chemist who fled war-torn Homs for Ireland after his business was destroyed by a car bomb.

Syria’s exiled opposition will be barred from a presidential vote to be held before July, virtually ensuring Bashar al-Assad’s re-election three years into an uprising against his family’s four-decade rule.