The 17-nation group backing Syria peace talks will meet next week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday, a day after he and his Russian counterpart agreed to work to revive a "cessation of hostilities" agreement reached in February.

• May 10, 2016

Syrian government forces and their allies fought insurgents near Aleppo on Monday and jets carried out raids around a nearby town seized by Islamist rebels, a monitoring group said, despite international efforts to reduce the violence.

• May 9, 2016

Syria's opposition is hopeful of a return to peace talks in Geneva if a U.S.-Russian deal on reviving a failed truce is swiftly implemented, a member of the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) said on Monday.

• May 9, 2016

Turkish warplanes hit targets belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq on Sunday, military sources said, as three soldiers and 12 militants were reported killed in separate clashes over the weekend.

• May 8, 2016

The U.S. military said on Friday it had deployed a very small number of forces to Yemen to offer intelligence support for the United Arab Emirate's so far successful push on the ground against al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate.

• May 6, 2016

Turkey is ready to send ground forces into Syria to tackle Islamic State militants if need be, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, as two more rockets fired by the group struck a border town.

• May 4, 2016

The Russian Defence Ministry on Wednesday said an upsurge in violence by Nusra Front militants had thwarted plans to extend a truce to the Syrian city of Aleppo the previous day, Russian news agencies reported.

• May 4, 2016

Hundreds of millions of hacked usernames and passwords for email accounts and other websites are being traded in Russia's criminal underworld, a security expert told Reuters.

• May 4, 2016