ARTICLES RELATING TO
SYRIA CONFLICT
Dozens of people, mostly combatants, have been killed in ongoing battles for the Syrian town of Qusayr, a watchdog says, as Hezbollah sent new elite fighters to the rebel stronghold.
Israeli soldiers patrolling the disputed Golan Heights along the border with Syria have fired back after coming under fire overnight, an Israeli Defense Forces statement says.
An opposition leader, rights activist and long-time dissident in Syria's rebel-held city of Raqa has been abducted, a watchdog says.
At least 43 people have been killed in car bomb explosions targeting Shi'ite Muslims in the Iraqi capital and the southern oil hub of Basra, police and medics say.
Syrian troops backed by Lebanon's Hezbollah have entered Qusayr, a strategic rebel stronghold linking Damascus to the coast, a day after Bashar Assad insisted he would not step aside.
Shots fired from Syria have hit the central Israeli-occupied Golan Heights overnight, a military spokesperson says, causing no harm or damage.
Western claims that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people are a pretext for waging a war against Syria, President Bashar Assad says.
Any decision on an eventual no-fly zone over Syria would have to be made by the United Nations, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted.
Torture equipment found in Syrian security buildings in rebel-held Raqa show detainees have been tortured when President Bashar Assad's regime held sway over the city.
Syrian rebels have seized three UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights in the third abduction in two months in the ceasefire zone between Syria and Israel, says the UN.
US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have insisted Bashar Assad must step down amid a flurry of moves to organise peace talks.
A video distributed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, shows a jihadist in the east of the country executing supporters of the regime of President Bashar Assad.
Turkey's President Abdullah Gul has criticised the world's response to the Syria conflict as limited to "rhetoric", saying his country had received little help in coping with an influx of Syrian refugees.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has now documented the deaths of at least 145 people in a "sectarian massacre" earlier in May in the coastal city of Banias, the watchdog says.
Fighters of the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in Syria executed 11 men they accused of taking part in massacres by President Bashar Assad's forces, a video has showed.
