Syria | featured news

Internet access disappeared across Syria on Thursday, and airports were closed, prompting antigovernment activists to warn that the authorities might be planning to escalate their crackdown.

Syrian hospital officials say twin car bombs have killed at least 34 people in a Damascus suburb.

Before the civil war, Ramiz Moussa was a middle class civil servant who processed fines for littering, illegal construction and disturbing the peace in Aleppo, Syria's largest city....

Syria on Friday condemned Turkey's request for NATO to deploy Patriot defense missiles near their common border, calling it "provocative", after a spate of fighting there that has raised fears of the Syrian civil war embroiling the wider region.

In Damascus, two mortar shells struck the upscale neighborhood of Mazzeh during the morning rush hour Thursday.

France's foreign minister raised the prospect Thursday of sending "defensive weapons" to Syrian rebels, saying his country will ask the European Union to consider lifting its arms embargo on the Middle East nation....

The United States declined to follow France in fully recognizing a fledgling Syrian opposition coalition on Wednesday, saying the body must prove its worth, after its predecessor was dogged by feuding and accusations of Islamist domination.

France on Tuesday became the first European country to recognize the newly formed Syrian rebel coalition, going beyond other Western pledges of support.

Israel faced the prospect of stepped-up military action on two fronts Monday as rockets fired from Gaza hit southern communities for the third straight day, and the army said it shelled a Syrian artillery battery after a stray shell landed near one of its posts in the Golan Heights.

For a second consecutive day, Israel confronted fire along its border with Syria on Monday as the Israeli army said it fired shells toward the source of a mortar shell, hitting Syrian artillery units.