Syria, Syrian Uprising | featured news

Syrian jets bombarded Sunni Muslim regions in Damascus and around the country on Sunday, activists said, as President Bashar al-Assad kept up air strikes against rebels despite a U.N.-brokered truce that now appears to be in tatters.

Protests emerged onto the streets across Syria on Friday as a temporary cease-fire marking the most important Muslim holiday of the year largely held at the start of its first day.

As his camcorder scanned the charred walls and partially collapsed roof of the mosque on the outskirts of town, Adnan Sheikh began his narration like he had dozens of other times: "Moadamyeh al Sham, 8-30-2012, the remnants of the damage and destruction that Assad's gangs inflicted when they stormed the city," he said. "Even the houses of worship were not spared."

Lakhdar Brahimi’s plan calls for guns to be silent on the main Muslim holiday of the year, but numerous do-it-yourself aspects of the plan immediately called into question whether it would quiet any fighting.

The U.N. refugee agency said Thursday the number of Syrian refugees who have fled their country's civil war and found shelter in Egypt has now topped 150,000 — a significant jump from last month's figure of 95,000. The director of UNHCR in Egypt, Mohamed Dayri, said that despite the growing number of refugees in Egypt, only 4,800 Syrians have registered with the agency in Cairo. He called on Egyptian authorities to help UNHCR deal with the "rising emergency" of Syrian refugees here.

The turrets of Turkish armored vehicles rise from the cotton fields outside this border village, guns trained toward Syria. Infantry units flank the banks of the Orontes River as Syrians escaping the fighting in their homeland maneuver across its muddy waters in rowboats. Overhead, Turkish fighter jets periodically buzz the skies.

A journey through the borderlands found that the slow-boiling resentment over the troubles wrought by Syria’s war may be a mere prologue to the danger that lies ahead.

There are growing fears that the regime could shut down the Internet across the country, similar to what was done in Egypt during its January 2011 uprising, which brought communication in Cairo to a near standstill.

Hours after world leaders painted a grim picture of the Syrian war, a new wave of attacks erupted Sunday. The bloody conflict rages -- and a solution continues to be elusive. Here is the latest in the Syrian uprising...

Syrian authorities on Thursday sent text messages over cell phones nationwide with a message for rebels fighting President Bashar Assad's regime: "Game over." The messages signed by the Syrian Arab Army also urged the rebels to surrender their weapons and warned the countdown to evict foreign fighters has begun. The texts appear to be part of the regime's psychological battle against the rebels, but are highly unlikely to have any effect on fighters intent on toppling Assad.