Rebels on a lightning advance through Syria yesterday said they have begun to encircle Damascus as government forces denied they had withdrawn from areas near the capital.

Turkey's foreign minister will meet with his Russian and Iranian counterparts in Doha on Saturday to try to find a solution to the renewed fighting in Syria and avoid chaos on its doorstep

Rebel forces pressing a lightning offensive in Syria aim to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, their Islamist leader said in an interview published yesterday.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 29 people were killed by Israeli strikes around a major hospital in the northern city of Beit Lahia yesterday.

Amnesty International yesterday accused Israel of “committing genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war last year, saying its new report was a “wake-up call” for the world.

The United Nations said yesterday that Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world, after more than a year of Israeli offensive in the Palestinian enclave.

Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo has fallen from government control for the first time since the country’s conflict began more than a decade ago, a war monitor said yesterday, after a surprise advance by rebels.

A monitor of Syria’s war said yesterday that rebels controlled most of Aleppo, reporting Russian air strikes on parts of Syria’s second city for the first time since 2016.

At least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza overnight and into yesterday, Gaza medics said.

Jihadists and allied factions have taken control of "half of the city of Aleppo", the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said

Jihadists and their Turkish-backed allies reached Syria’s second city of Aleppo yesterday, as they pressed a lightning offensive against forces of the Iranian- and Russian-backed government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel would do “everything” to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon after Iran’s top diplomat warned it could end its ban on developing one if Western sanctions are reimposed.

The Gaza Strip has descended into anarchy, with hunger soaring, looting rampant and rising numbers of rapes in shelters as public order falls apart, the United Nations said yesterday.

Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians overnight and yesterday in the Gaza Strip, many of them in the Nuseirat refugee camp at the centre of the enclave, medics said, after Israeli tanks pulled back from parts of the camp.

A general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was killed in Syria yesterday during fighting between Syrian government forces and jihadists, an Iranian news agency reported.

Hezbollah and Israel traded accusations that their ceasefire had been breached yesterday, a day after a truce went into effect halting more than a year of fighting in Lebanon.

Israeli military strikes killed at least 21 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip yesterday, medics said, as forces stepped up their bombardment of central areas and tanks pushed deeper into the north and south of the enclave.

After almost 14 months of fighting, a ceasefire agreement brokered by France and the US has been accepted by both Hezbollah and Israel. But is this the end of the conflict?

A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah held yesterday after both sides accepted an agreement brokered by the US and France, a rare victory for diplomacy in the Middle East wracked by two wars for over a year.

Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed 15 people yesterday, some of them in a school housing displaced people, medics in Gaza said, adding that the fatalities included two sons of a former Hamas spokesman.