Mazlum Abdi, commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has said he is ready to travel to Turkey and meet with jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founder Abdullah Öcalan, as Turkish lawmakers plan to make the first parliamentary visit to his island prison under a new peace initiative. Abdi …

Under a golden autumn sun, Abdallah Ibrahim harvests fistfuls of hard, green olives with evident delight. “We were denied this pleasure for the last 14 years,” he sighs. Barrel bombs and constant shelling caused his family and most of the residents of his village, Al Ghassaniyeh, to flee during the …

Hezbollah has confirmed senior commander Haitham Ali Tabatabai was killed in an Israeli air strike on a suburban area of Beirut on Sunday. The group said “the great commander” was killed in “a treacherous Israeli attack on the Haret Hreik area in the southern suburbs”. Mr Tabatabai was deputy to …