Middle East, Bashar Assad | featured news

Governments around the world expelled Syrian ambassadors and diplomats Tuesday, an unusual, coordinated blow to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime following a gruesome massacre that the United Nations said involved close-range shootings of scores of children and parents in their homes.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is tightening his grip on the country during the decrease in violence brought on by U.N. demands, experts on the region say.

A Gulf plan to funnel millions of dollars a month to Syrian rebels - payments earmarked for salaries for the fighters - could amount to a blank check for the opposition to build up an arsenal against President Bashar Assad's forces, analysts say....

Syria says the year-long revolt to topple President Bashar al-Assad is now over, but it will keep its forces in cities to "maintain security" until it is safe to withdraw in keeping with a U.N.-backed peace deal.

Syria has accepted a U.N.-sponsored peace plan, international envoy Kofi Annan said on Tuesday, as troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad raided rebel forces who have taken refuge across the border in Lebanon.

Emboldened by faltering diplomacy and a Russian pledge to keep supplying weapons, Syria’s armed forces assaulted insurgent enclaves in the northern part of the country on Tuesday, invading the city of Idlib in an expanded campaign to crush the year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

President Bashar al-Assad told U.N./Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on Saturday that no political solution was possible in Syria while "terrorist" groups were destabilizing the country.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry says the violent crackdown by Bashar Assad's regime in Syria shouldn't be tolerated, but the United States and the international community must respond "in a responsible way."...

As bloody month after bloody month goes by, the United States grows ever more committed to overthrowing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The cause is undoubtedly a just one: Avaaz, the human rights group that has been most deeply involved in the Syria crisis, reported Thursday morning that "17 civilians were beheaded or partially beheaded by regime security forces" outside of Baba Amro, the besieged Homs district that will likely soon fall to al-Assad's tanks, if it hasn't already.

Syrian artillery pounded rebel-held areas of Homs as President Bashar al-Assad's government announced that voters had overwhelmingly approved a new constitution in a referendum derided as a sham by his critics at home and abroad.