A disillusioned former member of Islamic State has passed a stolen memory stick of documents identifying 22,000 supporters in over 50 countries to a British journalist, a leak that could help the West target Islamist fighters planning attacks.

Raqia Hassan risked her life by openly criticising ISIS on Facebook. Her friends, family, and fellow activists remember her determination to tell the world the grim truth about life in Syria. 

Vladimir Putin has warned that the Russian military will “immediately destroy” any targets threatening its forces in Syria.

A Russian airman who survived the downing of his military jet has said Turkish jets did not issue any warnings before the incident.

Here’s a briefing on some of the stories and issues highlighted on irishexaminer.com today.

It is the Western powers’ strategy of training, funding, and arming ‘moderate’ jihadists to fight against the ‘radicals’ that is now backfiring with deadly consequences, writes Brahma Chellaney

An Irish parish has reached out to help besieged residents in the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo.

Three years of carnage has turned the city mentioned by Shakespeare in Macbeth into a Stalingrad, writes JAMES HARKIN

The unfolding refugee crisis is become the biggest humanitarian tragedy in Europe since the Yugoslav wars.

Syrians are not leaving their homeland because of IS beheadings, but because they’re victims of unforseen circumstances, writes Donna O’Regan

Russian Tu-95 bombers with a nuclear weapons payload flying along the Irish coastline should be a wake-up call that “neutral” Ireland is seen by Russia as a de facto member of Nato. EU leaders attend Nato meetings and, by EU membership, Ireland is no longer seen as a neutral country. 

Militant leaders from Islamic State (IS) and al Qaida have agreed on a plan to stop fighting each other and work together against their opponents, a high-level Syrian opposition official and a rebel commander have said.

Ten Iraqi peshmerga fighters have entered Kobani, the first of a group of 150 Kurdish troops on their way into the embattled Syrian border town, activists said.

For the first time since the Islamic State group launched an offensive on the Syrian border town of Kobani last month, a small group of Syrian rebels yesterday entered the town from Turkey in a push to help Kurdish fighters there battle the militants, activists and Kurdish officials said.

A small group of Syrian rebels have entered the embattled border town of Kobani to help Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State (IS) extremists, according to reports.

Turkey is to allow hundreds of Syrian rebels to head to the embattled town of Kobani along the Syrian-Turkish border to help Kurdish fighters in the battle against Islamic State militants.

More than 12,000 foreigners from 74 countries have gone to fight with rebels in Syria, a leading terrorism expert has said.

Syrian rebels, including fighters from an al Qaida-linked group, have seized control of a border crossing with Israel in the Golan Heights after heavy clashes with President Bashar Assad’s forces, activists and rebels said.

In June, 2012, the New York Times reported that arms were being "funnelled" across the Turkish border into Syria in a covert operation aided by CIA officers.

At least 65 journalists have been killed since the Syrian conflict began and kidnappings are rife. Former war reporter Janine di Giovanni writes about the risks involved in filing from the frontline.

Syrian government forces have reached an agreement with local officials of a vulnerable Sunni village in a region dominated by President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect to end hours of deadly shelling in exchange for the surrender of dozens of opposition fighters, an activist group said today.

The US, Britain and France have said they believe that the Assad regime was responsible for a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last month.

THE crisis over chemical weapons in Syria has underlined a central dilemma for the West as it tries to deal with the country’s civil war — the lack of attractive alternatives to President Bashar Assad.

US secretary of state John Kerry said yesterday that the evidence of a massive deadly chemical attack last week was “undeniable” and accused the Syrian government of trying to cover it up, signalling the United States was edging closer to a possible military response.

A senior US intelligence official has warned that the Syrian conflict is set to run for 'many years to come'.

Bombs struck Sunni areas in Baghdad and surrounding areas today, killing at least 76 people in the deadliest day in Iraq in more than eight months, officials said today.

The Obama administration is rethinking its opposition to arming the rebels who have been locked in a civil war with the Syrian regime for more than two years, defence secretary Chuck Hagel said last night, becoming the first top US official to publicly acknowledge the reassessment.

Syrian opposition groups called yesterday for international action after the Obama administration said US intelligence indicates President Bashar Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons.

The US said today that it will double its assistance to Syria’s opposition as the rebels vowed to step up their two-year battle to oust President Bashar Assad’s regime.

A top rebel military leader has been injured and possibly killed by a bomb attached to his car, Syrian activists said today.

One of the most prominent supporters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has been killed in a blast at a mosque in the capital, Damascus.

A Ukrainian journalist who was kidnapped in Syria is free after more than 150 days in captivity, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry confirmed today.

Several United Nations peacekeepers from the Philippines who were abducted by Syrian rebels said in videos posted online today that they are safe and sound.

The chief of Syrian rebel forces says his fighters are in “desperate” need of weapons and ammunition rather than the food supplies and bandages that the US now plans to provide.

The United States will provide the Syrian opposition with an additional $60m (€45.8m) in assistance and will for the first time provide non-lethal aid like food and medical supplies to rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad.

Iran has lashed out at Turkey for requesting Nato to supply it with Patriot surface-to-air missiles to deploy along the border with Syria, denouncing the step by Ankara as counterproductive.

A bomb blast in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus killed four people and seriously wounded a member of a faction that has backed Syrian President Bashar Assad in the country’s bitter civil war, activists said today.

Syrian rebels made a new push into Damascus today, clashing heavily with troops in the rebellious suburbs of the capital and firing mortars at a presidential palace and a Palestinian refugee camp, activists said.

ON Oct 3, a mortar shell crossed from Syria into Turkey and smashed into Zeliha Timucin’s home, killing Timucin, her sister, and three of her kids.