Syria’s opposition will decide this week whether to attend forthcoming peace talks in Geneva and has complained to the United Nations that Russian air strikes have carried on despite a truce, opposition co-ordinator Riad Hijab said.

George Soros says Russian President Vladimir Putin is out to to foster disintegration of the EU by flooding it with Syrian refugees fleeing his bombing campaign

’Extermination’ of Syrian civilian population, UN investigators claim.

Aid trucks and ambulances entered Syria from Turkey yesterday to deliver food and supplies to tens of thousands of people fleeing an escalating government assault on Aleppo, as air strikes targeted villages on the road north to the Turkish border.

Sectarian split deepens across Middle East in wake of executions

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, a further sign of the rapid internationalisation of a civil war in which every major country in the region has a stake.

Russian military jets have carried out air strikes in Syria for the first time, targeting what Moscow said were IS positions.

A judge has ruled that Derry man accused of having a grenade and being trained in weapons and explosives in Syria is to be released on bail.

The Islamic State militant group has killed 1,878 people in Syria during the past six months, the majority of them civilians, a British-based Syrian monitoring organisation said.

Satellite images indicate that 290 cultural heritage sites in Syria, whose history stretches back to the dawn of civilisation, have been damaged by its ongoing civil war, the United Nations’ training and research arm (UNITAR) said.

Material damage of benefit to al Qaeda, says Syrian military

The bitter civil war in Syria has forced more than 2m people to flee their homes and seek refuge in neighbouring countries. The conflict’s death toll has reached something around 130,000 souls already.

Regime warplanes pounded Syria’s second city Aleppo for a fourth straight day in air raids that have killedat least 135 people, many of them children, a monitor said.

Syria’s government hailed as a “victory” a Russian-brokered deal that has averted US strikes, while President Barack Obama defended a chemical weapons pact that the rebels fear has bolstered their enemy in the civil war.

The US Secretary of State John Kerry appears to have trumped his boss, President Barack Obama, by having taken seriously his proposal that Syria avert American military action by abandoning its chemical weapons.

The United Nations yesterday demanded Syria give its chemical weapons experts immediate access to rebel-held Damascus suburbs where poison gas appears to have killed hundreds just a few miles from the UN team’s hotel.

David Cameron will today meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks on the Syrian crisis amid fears that differences between Moscow and the West are pushing the two sides towards a new Cold War.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was still seeking a formal Syrian response to its request for urgent access to the besieged town of Qusair after a minister said aid efforts should wait until the fighting was over.

THE EU weapons embargo against Syrian rebels was controversially withdrawn, following lengthy talks on Monday night, but it’s doubtful the policy change will make a blind bit of difference.

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.

Saudi Arabia has been supplying Syrian rebels with arms bought from Croatia, according to The New York Times.

More than 100 civilians have been killed in a new “massacre” in Syria, a watchdog said, as Russia slammed the United States for blaming deadly blasts at a university campus on the Damascus regime.

The Opposition in Syrian has rejected President Bashar al-Assad's call for a 'national dialogue', made in a rare speech today.

At least 60,000 people have been killed in Syria’s civil war, with monthly casualty figures steadily increasing since the conflict began almost two years ago, according to a new analysis released by the UN.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Shi’ite militant movement Hezbollah, said yesterday the rebels in Syria could not emerge victorious from the 21-month-long uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

A Syrian jet has resumed bombing a rebel-held region near the border with Turkey, officials and witnesses said today.

Syrian army shelling and helicopter attacks on suburbs of the capital Damascus killed at least 62 people yesterday, opposition activists said.

Syrian opposition activists accused President Bashar al-Assad’s army yesterday of massacring hundreds of people in a town close to the capital that government forces recaptured from rebels.

Troops and tanks swept into a restive town near Damascus yesterday in an assault aimed at crushing opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, whose struggle for survival has dragged Syria into an increasingly bloody war.

Government forces stormed a rebel-held town outside Damascus yesterday after days of fighting, killing at least 23 fighters, according to an activist group and a rebel spokesman.

Refugees are fleeing Syria in ever greater numbers, UN agencies said yesterday, as the conflict between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels intensifies.

Reports from Syria indicate that 30 people have been killed in an air strike over a rebel stronghold in the city of Aleppo.

Leaders of Muslim countries are expected to suspend Syria's membership of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation at a summit in Mecca, despite the vocal objections of President Bashar al-Assad's main ally Iran.

A Syrian warplane crashed in flames in eastern Syria in disputed circumstances yesterday as President Bashar al-Assad’s forces pursued their drive to quell rebels in Aleppo and elsewhere.

Syria’s prime minister has defected to the opposition seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, marking one of the highest profile desertions from the Damascus government.

The United Nations envoy Kofi Annan will hold talks on Syria later with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Syria’s army deployed armoured vehicles near central Damascus as troops battled rebels around the capital in what activists said could be a turning point in the 16-month uprising.

The International Red Cross has declared Syria’s 16-month bloodbath a civil war, a status with implications for potential war crimes prosecutions.

About 220 Syrians, mostly civilians, were killed in a village in the rebellious Hama region when it was bombarded by helicopter gunships and tanks then stormed by militiamen who slaughtered some families, opposition sources said.

Fierce fighting broke out between Syrian troops and rebel forces in the suburbs of the capital Damascus yesterday as Turkey issued a stark warning to its neighbour over the downing of a jet last week.

Nato’s governing body will meet tomorrow to discuss the Syrian downing of a Turkish plane.

The new head of Syria’s main opposition group has called for mass defections from a regime struggling to survive by carrying out massacres, as the death toll in the uprising topped 14,000.