Louisa Loveluck The Washington Post

The woman told aid workers it was an accident. Her 14-year-old daughter had slipped and fallen, she said. There was nothing they could have done.

The walk to freedom lasted 53 hours, and the little boy cried all the way. It wasn't their first escape attempt - she'd tried five times before to flee the Islamic State - but they would be shot on the spot if the militants caught them now.

Turkey's top prosecutor on Wednesday laid out the most detailed description yet of how the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed, saying Saudi agents strangled him to death almost immediately after he after entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and then dismembered him.

The Israeli military said it struck dozens of Iran-linked military targets in Syria on Thursday in response to rocket fire, marking a significant escalation in regional hostilities a little more than a day after the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.

Syria, Russia and Iran shrugged off strikes on Saturday by the United States and its allies against three Syrian chemical weapons facilities, which drew angry condemnations but no indication that there would be a wider escalation.

A surge in Syrian government airstrikes has killed at least 200 people over the past two days on the outskirts of Damascus, aid agencies said Tuesday, as the Syrian war ramps up and civilians again pay the price for the failure of international efforts to resolve it.

Syria's former al-Qaida affiliate claimed responsibility Saturday for the downing of a Russian warplane in northern Syria, apparently using a surface-to-air missile.

Every day for more than three years, the U.S.-led coalition bombed ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria, for a total of nearly 30,000 strikes. But on Nov. 26, not a single airstrike was launched.

Lebanon's prime minister insisted Sunday on television from Saudi Arabia that he is "free" to move as he pleases, and, in his first interview since his unexpected resignation while in the Saudi capital, he rejected suggestions by his political allies that he was coerced into leaving his post.

In the final days of Sahar Devdeh's life, her parents feared their hugs might break her. She barely moved. She was too weak to cry. At times, her doctor thought, she looked more like a skeleton than a month-old baby.

The Islamic State group on Thursday released what appeared to be a rare recording of its cloistered leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, vowing to continue the group's fight across Syria and Iraq as its self-proclaimed caliphate there crumbles.

A United Nations inquiry said Wednesday that it collected enough evidence to accuse Syrian government forces of a deadly chemical weapons attack in April that left dozens of civilians dead and hundreds more wounded.

Fleeing terror in the Islamic State's last Syrian strongholds, tens of thousands of civilians have become stranded in harrowing conditions across barely functional displacement camps.

A car bomb in northern Syria killed more than 100 people Saturday when it ripped through buses evacuating residents from a town besieged by rebels for more than two years.

Scores of Syrians, many of them women and young children, were killed Tuesday in one of the deadliest chemical attacks of the country's six-year war, according to doctors, rescue workers and witnesses.

The woman told aid workers it was an accident. Her 14-year-old daughter had slipped and fallen, she said. There was nothing they could have done.

The walk to freedom lasted 53 hours, and the little boy cried all the way. It wasn't their first escape attempt - she'd tried five times before to flee the Islamic State - but they would be shot on the spot if the militants caught them now.

Turkey's top prosecutor on Wednesday laid out the most detailed description yet of how the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed, saying Saudi agents strangled him to death almost immediately after he after entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and then dismembered him.

The Israeli military said it struck dozens of Iran-linked military targets in Syria on Thursday in response to rocket fire, marking a significant escalation in regional hostilities a little more than a day after the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.

Syria, Russia and Iran shrugged off strikes on Saturday by the United States and its allies against three Syrian chemical weapons facilities, which drew angry condemnations but no indication that there would be a wider escalation.

A surge in Syrian government airstrikes has killed at least 200 people over the past two days on the outskirts of Damascus, aid agencies said Tuesday, as the Syrian war ramps up and civilians again pay the price for the failure of international efforts to resolve it.

Syria's former al-Qaida affiliate claimed responsibility Saturday for the downing of a Russian warplane in northern Syria, apparently using a surface-to-air missile.

Every day for more than three years, the U.S.-led coalition bombed ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria, for a total of nearly 30,000 strikes. But on Nov. 26, not a single airstrike was launched.

Lebanon's prime minister insisted Sunday on television from Saudi Arabia that he is "free" to move as he pleases, and, in his first interview since his unexpected resignation while in the Saudi capital, he rejected suggestions by his political allies that he was coerced into leaving his post.

In the final days of Sahar Devdeh's life, her parents feared their hugs might break her. She barely moved. She was too weak to cry. At times, her doctor thought, she looked more like a skeleton than a month-old baby.

The Islamic State group on Thursday released what appeared to be a rare recording of its cloistered leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, vowing to continue the group's fight across Syria and Iraq as its self-proclaimed caliphate there crumbles.

A United Nations inquiry said Wednesday that it collected enough evidence to accuse Syrian government forces of a deadly chemical weapons attack in April that left dozens of civilians dead and hundreds more wounded.

Fleeing terror in the Islamic State's last Syrian strongholds, tens of thousands of civilians have become stranded in harrowing conditions across barely functional displacement camps.

A car bomb in northern Syria killed more than 100 people Saturday when it ripped through buses evacuating residents from a town besieged by rebels for more than two years.

Scores of Syrians, many of them women and young children, were killed Tuesday in one of the deadliest chemical attacks of the country's six-year war, according to doctors, rescue workers and witnesses.