Latest Syria News

A total of 32 children under the age of 10 are among 92 people confirmed killed in fighting on a town near the city of Homs.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) claimed responsibility on Saturday for a suicide car bomb attack in central Turkey that killed one policeman, and media reports said the bombers had entered Turkey from Syria. Four suspects have been detained in connection with the attack, Interior Minister …

The head of a UN mission warned on Saturday of "civil war" in Syria after his observers counted more than 92 bodies, 32 of them children, in the town of Houla following reports of a massacre there.

Britain said Saturday it was in urgent talks with allied countries on "a strong international response" after the bodies of more than 90 people including children were found in a Syrian town.

Hundreds of Kuwaitis including several MPs rallied outside the Syrian embassy on Saturday to condemn a reported massacre in the Syrian town of Houla and to demand the arming of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

A group of Lebanese Shiite pilgrims kidnapped in Syria and said by Lebanese authorities to have reached Turkey are not in the country after all, a Turkish diplomatic source said on Saturday.

Syrian regime forces on Saturday pounded rebel positions in central Homs province, with 18 people killed in violence across the country, including 13 civilians, a monitoring group reported.

CANNES, France (Reuters) - The "Arab Spring" is the focus of two movies at Cannes this year as film makers present tentative steps towards democracy on the big screen, one year after political upheaval in Libya and Egypt. While both films deal with contemporary events in the Middle East, "The Oath of Tobruk" ("Le Serment …

PARIS (Reuters) - France called for immediate implementation of Kofi Annan's peace plan for Syria on Saturday and said it would summon a meeting of the Friends of Syria group after activists said 90 people were killed in Syrian shelling. Condemning the violence on Friday as a "massacre", French Foreign Minister Laurent …

A team of UN observers deployed in Syria to monitor a shaky truce arrived on Saturday in the town of Houla, site of a "massacre" by regime forces in which at least 90 people died, monitors said.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The death toll has risen to at least 90 from Syrian shelling on the town of Houla on Friday, an opposition group said on Saturday. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said residents continued to flee the town, in central Homs province, in fear that artillery fire would resume. There was no …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves next week on an eight-day trip to Scandinavia, the Caucasus and Turkey that will cover security issues such as Iran and Syria as well as the environment and health. The State Department said Clinton begins her May 31-June 7 trip with visits to Denmark, …

BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - Lebanon said on Friday that a group of Lebanese Shi'ites kidnapped in Syria had been freed and were safe in Turkey, but produced no sign of the hostages at the centre of a kidnap drama heightening tensions over the conflict in neighbouring Syria. The twist in a hostage drama that has inflamed political …

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A Russian cargo ship loaded with weapons is en route to Syria and due to arrive at a Syrian port this weekend, Al Arabiya television said in a report that Western diplomats in New York described on Friday as credible. Syria is one of Russia's top weapons customers. The United States and European …

GENEVA (Reuters) - International peace mediator Kofi Annan will visit Syria "soon," his spokesman told Reuters on Friday, in what would be the former U.N. Secretary-General's first visit since he presented his peace plan to Syria's government in early March. Ahmad Fawzi declined to give details or specify the date, citing …

(Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council in a letter on Friday there has been little progress toward peace in the 14-month-old conflict between Syrian government forces and an increasingly militarized opposition. Ban assessed progress in international peace envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace …

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The size and sophistication of some recent bomb attacks in Syria suggest that "established terrorist groups" may have been behind them, the U.N. chief said on Friday, in a letter in which he urged states not to supply arms to government or rebel forces. "The overall situation in Syria remains …

More than 70 people were killed across Syria on Friday, monitors said, as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets and tanks were deployed in the country's second largest city.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said on Friday that freed Lebanese hostages in Syria had crossed safely into Turkey. "The latest information that we have received is that they are in good health and now crossed into Turkey," he told reporters at the airport who were waiting for the plane carrying …

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's revolutionaries did not take to the streets to replace Hosni Mubarak with another military strongman or to put an Islamist ideologue in charge, but that is the choice they woke up to after a first-round vote for the presidency. The youths who put national pride before religion when they protested …

A group of Lebanese Shiite pilgrims kidnapped in Syria were freed on Friday and arrived in Turkey, Lebanese Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters on Friday, killing at least four people in different parts of the country, activists said. They said three people were killed in the northern city of Aleppo and a teenager was killed in the Damascus suburb of Irbin following Friday prayers. …

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese hostages kidnapped in northern Syria were set free on Friday and were on their way to Beirut, Lebanon's prime minister and an Islamist cleric who brokered their release said. The Lebanese Shi'ite men were among a group of pilgrims returning to Lebanon from Iran on Tuesday when gunmen stopped …