Rights group says Lebanon, which has taken in one million refugees from Syria, is arbitrarily refusing entry for some arrivals Human Rights Watch and a UN refugee agency have expressed concern that Lebanon is blocking Palestinians fleeing Syria from entering the country. UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said it was "concerned about the increased restrictions on Palestine refugees...
Riyadh announces arrest of 62 suspected members of jihadi group that had planned 'large-scale assassinations' Saudi Arabia has broken up a "major terrorist network" linked to al-Qaida groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen that was plotting attacks against government installations and foreign interests, authorities in Riyadh said. The Saudi interior ministry said security forces had arrested 62...
World Health Organisation says all residents must show proof of vaccination before they can leave the country Pakistan's failure to stem the spread of polio has triggered global emergency health measures , with the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommending all residents must show proof of vaccination before they can leave the country. The emergency measures also apply to Syria and Cameroon, which...
'Despite the suffering, children have an amazing ability to recover,' says Unicef as some of the 400,000 child refugees in Lebanon begin to receive education Each morning at 8am, Ahmed stirs from his blanket on the soil and walks about a mile to the morning shift. Sometimes his two sisters go with him. More children soon join him from nearby potato fields and tents, on their way to the first of the...
Main opposition group conferred new quasi-diplomatic status, as opposition figures arrived in Washington for meetings The US is giving Syrian opposition groups foreign mission status to bolster those challenging president Bashar al-Assad as he tightens his already firm military grip over Syria. The State Department said on Monday the Syrian Opposition Coalition's offices in Washington and New York...
The Brisbane woman, who will face court in June, was arrested as she prepared to board a flight in Sydney with her four children An Australian woman with four children has been charged for allegedly supporting incursions into Syria. The woman was preparing to board an international flight at Sydney airport with her children when she was arrested. Continue reading... ...
Damascus Zenobians pull together three teams to play each other but cannot afford to accept invitations to Cyprus and Dubai While most rugby fans and players tend to focus on trophies and cup finals or promotion and relegation during the season, for a small group of amateur players in Syria, just keeping their club alive as war rages all around them is the principal concern. On a recent Friday, players...
Agreement, brokered after months of fighting, leaves military in control of most of Syria's third city Rebels in Homs are to abandon their stronghold in the Old City area in a deal that means the Syrian military will control of all but one neighbourhood of the country's third city. The agreement, brokered after months of brutal fighting, calls for opposition forces to withdraw from their bastions during...
48-hour ceasefire will allow hundreds of rebel fighters blockaded in old quarters of city to flee north, activists say Syria's government and rebels have agreed to a ceasefire in Homs to allow hundreds of fighters holed up in the old quarters of the city to leave a deal that will bring the country's third-largest city under the control of forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad. If the agreement holds, the...
Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd and British veteran of UN emerge as leading candidates for key diplomatic post Urgent efforts are under way to find a replacement for the UN's special envoy on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, who is expected to resign his post by the end of this month. After the failure of the Geneva peace talks and President Bashar al-Assad's confident decision to stand for re-election,...
Steve Bell's If ... on William Hague's invitation to young Muslims Comment is free The Guardian Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off Jump to content [s] Jump to comments [c] Jump to site navigation [0] Jump to search [4] Terms and conditions [8] Edition: UK US AU Your activity Email subscriptions Account details Linked services Sign out Profile Beta...
Steve Bell's If ... on a Home Office warning for William Hague Comment is free The Guardian Turn autoplay off Turn autoplay on Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off Jump to content [s] Jump to comments [c] Jump to site navigation [0] Jump to search [4] Terms and conditions [8] Edition: UK US AU Your activity Email subscriptions Account details Linked services Sign out Profile Beta About...
Camp near town of Azraq has been designed to expand to 130,000 capacity if necessary The Jordanian government and the UN have officially opened a new camp for refugees from the war in Syria with the potential to become one of the world's largest refugee camps. Although the first refugees began arriving on Monday 437 so far the camp, which currently has shelters for 25,000 and infrastructure for 50,000,...
State Department says 16 Americans killed out of 17,891 total Surge complicates sprawling counter-terrorism efforts led by US Terrorist attacks rose 43% worldwide in 2013 despite a splintering of al-Qaidas leadership and a sprawling global counter-terrorism campaign, according to new statistics released by the State Department on Wednesday. The exposure of Americans to terrorism abroad remained minimal...
Sweden is the place in Europe most friendly to Syrian asylum seekers but the reality of life there is tough. Here, some talk about their lives 'My life in Syria was amazing, I had everything," says Salah Debas, 23, with a mix of nostalgia and desperation. Until two years ago, Debas worked for a radio station belonging to Maher Assad, the brother of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. As a DJ,...
US and France believe gas has been used at least nine times since February, killing scores and wounding hundreds The global body supervising the surrender of Syria's chemical weapons is to investigate fresh claims that a less dangerous but still lethal chlorine gas has been used in recent attacks on opposition areas. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has announced it will...
Sunnis and Shias are on the brink of civil war, and Islamism is emboldened. Two years after US withdrawal, Iraq is unravelling Iraq holds national elections on Wednesday , its first since the US left in December 2011. Relations between its Sunni and Shia communities have deteriorated and the country is on the brink of civil war as well as territorial disintegration. The elections are likely to sustain...
Thirty-six killed in Homs day after bloody attack in Damascus and Assad announcing candidacy for presidential elections A car bomb has gone off in the central Syrian city of Homs, killing 36 people just hours after a mortar attack on the capital, Damascus, killed 14, according to government officials and state media. The attacks came a day after President Bashar al-Assad announced his candidacy for...
More than three years into the Syrian conflict, 9.3 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance; 3.5 million are in so called "hard to reach" areas. The UN and other humanitarian agencies have long argued that many hundreds of thousands can only be reached effectively from neighbouring countries such as Turkey and Jordan. But the Syrian government continues to refuse consent...
Eminent legal experts argue that UN should ignore Syria's ban on supplying aid directly to areas outside Assad regime's control The lives of hundreds of thousands of Syrians are at stake because of the UN's "overly cautious" interpretation of its mandate to deliver humanitarian aid, a group of more than 30 of the world's top legal experts claims. A letter published in the Guardian on Tuesday,...