The recapture of Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra from IS has brought new revelations of the destruction wreaked by the extremists, who decapitated priceless statues and smashed or looted artifacts in the city’s museum.

Nato’s secretary-general has rejected Moscow’s claim that its military incursion into alliance airspace over Turkey was not intentional or important.

Refugees from Syria are hoping against hope for a helping hand from other countries, the former president has said, as she recalled her own experience fleeing conflict at the beginning of the Troubles.

Hungary is to send a fleet of buses to the main Keleti train station in Budapest and to the M1 highway heading to Vienna after hundreds of migrants decided to stop waiting for permission to get on trains and set off for Austria on foot.

15 Irish charities are demanding the Government recall the Dáil to deal with the refugee crisis.

A missing mother from London and her four children are feared to be travelling to war-torn Syria, Scotland Yard has said.

The Turkish army reports that it has arrested nine UK nationals who are suspected of trying to cross into Syria.

About one million Syrians are going short of food, most of them in conflict zones, due to government restrictions on aid distribution, the UN said.

It is a characteristic of despots whose time as a supreme leader, unquestioned and all-powerful, nears an inevitable and bloody end that they grow ever more careless of the welfare of the people they once imagined loyal, happy citizens of their autocracy.