The bodies of 3 additional Lebanese soldiers had been discovered Saturday in a battlefield close to the Syrian border, bringing to eight the quantity killed in the newest clashes with Syrian Islamist rebels, authorities said.

The intense gun battles have once again dramatized how violence from the Syrian war, now approaching its fourth year, has migrated into neighboring Lebanon.

[Read more…]

Government air strikes on a rebel-held village east of Damascus today killed 32 civilians, including six children, a monitoring group said, denouncing what it called a massacre.

[Read more…]

Yemen’s information minister says Shiite Houthi rebels are shelling the residence of the country’s president as they also swept into the presidential palace in the capital, Sanaa.

The minister, Nadia al-Sakkaf posted on her Twitter account on Tuesday that President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi home in downtown Sanaa has come under “heavy shelling since 3:00 PM by armed forces positioned over rooftops facing his house.”

[Read more…]

Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State militant group in Syria’s Kobane have captured a strategic hilltop, giving them line of fire over the town, a monitor said Monday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish People’s People Units (YPG) had seized the Mishtenur hilltop after fierce clashes overnight. “The military operation led to the deaths of at least 11 Islamic State fighters, and the seizure of large quantities of weapons and ammunition,” the Observatory said.

[Read more…]

Yemeni authorities say a ceasefire deal has been reached following fierce clashes between army forces and Houthi Shia fighters near the presidential palace in capital Sanaa.

Gunfire and explosions were heard in the region around the palace for several hours.

[Read more…]