The security minister, Ben Wallace, has said he would not put officials’ lives at risk to rescue UK citizens who went to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State, insisting “actions have consequences”. “I’m not putting at risk British people’s lives to...
Sudan missed out on the Arab spring, but that may be changing. Protests against Omar al-Bashir, the indicted war criminal who has dominated the country for 29 years, are becoming a daily occurrence. Street-level unrest, sparked by rising bread and f...
We have never been more aware of the appalling events that occur around the world every day. But in the face of so much horror, is there a danger that we become numb to the headlines – and does it matter if we do? How to listen to podcasts: everythi...
Just a kilometre from the Jordanian border, Om Suleiman and her children are sleeping in a small shed they share with five other Syrian families. About 20 people are crowded into this hot, insect-ridden space, and Suleiman worries about the scorpion...
Fears are mounting about the safety of more than 270,000 civilians who have fled recent fighting in southern Syria, with aid groups and local doctors issuing urgent appeals for people stranded in the desert without shelter. Fighting in Deraa provinc...
Bashar al-Assad is to visit North Korea, Pyongyang state media has claimed, in what would be a first state visit to the isolated nation under the leadership of Kim Jong-un. The report by the official Korean Central News Agency did not say when the v...
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said the world is living in dark times reminiscent of the years leading up to the second world war as he lambasted decisions by Donald Trump to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and recognise Jerusale...
An RAF airstrike against three Islamic State fighters in eastern Syria on 26 March “unintentionally” killed a civilian, Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, has said in a written ministerial statement. It is the first time the Ministry of Defenc...
Isolated in the barren sands of central Syria and measuring five miles across in some areas is the country’s largest airbase. A fortress surrounded by hundreds of miles of desert, T-4 consists of dozens of hardened aircraft shelters, hiding Russian...
The UN’s two most senior Syria experts have warned of an Aleppo-style humanitarian catastrophe in Idlib as an EU donor conference aimed to raise up to $6bn (£4bn)to help Syrians displaced both inside and outside the country. Idlib is the last major...
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is one of a crop of present-day political leaders who value the respectability an ostensibly democratic election confers but don’t want to risk actually losing the vote. In this respect, Turkey’s president is no different from R...
The Trump administration is renewing an effort to replace US troops in Syria with an Arab force, but the proposal faces substantial obstacles and could potentially exacerbate the conflict. The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said his governm...
A UN security team doing reconnaissance at the site of an attack in the Syrian town of Douma has come under gunfire, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has said, further delaying the arrival of chemical weapons insp...
Jeremy Corbyn has questioned whether humanitarian intervention can ever be a legal justification for launching military action, and called for a “war powers act” that would force future UK governments to seek approval from parliament. Speaking on BB...
Jeremy Corbyn has questioned whether humanitarian intervention can ever be a legal justification for launching military action, and called for a “war powers act” that would force future UK governments to seek approval from parliament. Speaking on BB...