Unknown individuals assassinated the commander of the Baath Brigades, a close figure to the Lebanese Hezbollah party, in the countryside of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Monday. The official was assassinated in recent Israeli shelling in the Damascus countryside, said the Observatory.

One year after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan ended America’s nation-building project in the “graveyard of empires,” the Taliban-led country faces mass starvation and state collapse. Amidst that cauldron of human misery is what remains of al Qaeda, the terrorist group whose jihadist violence led the U.S. into Afghanistan way …

As a result of the clashes, Zirak Zahir, a Kurdish shepherd, and a militant were killed, he said. The other assailant fled the scene. A Kurdish shepherd was killed in southeast Kirkuk on Sunday by suspected ISIS militants, a security source told Kurdistan 24.