Raqa

An ancient lake-side fortress once used by ISIL to launch attacks is slowly regaining its status as a key cultural destination, attracting visitors from across war-torn Syria.

Families posed for pictures under the hot June sun, some perched on an ancient brick wall overlooking the banks of Lake Assad, a man-made reservoir in northern Syria's Raqa province.

Four Syrian soldiers were killed and 13 injured when a bombing raid by the US-led coalition hit an army camp in the east of the country, a monitor said on Dec. 7.

Four Russian cruise missiles aimed at targets in Syria crashed in Iran, a US official said Oct. 8, as regime troops backed by Lebanon's Hezbollah pressed a "vast offensive" against rebels in the war-torn country's west.

At least 12 jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have been killed in Russia's first air strikes on the extremist faction's main Syrian bastion, a monitoring group said.  

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants have destroyed an ancient monastery in the central Syrian province of Homs, according to a monitor and pictures published by the jihadist group.

Kurdish fighters advanced June 13 to the outskirts of a key Syrian border town held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as Turkish forces sought to prevent thousands fleeing the fighting from crossing the frontier.

Further west, an Islamist rebel alliance pushed ISIL extremists back from a strategic cross-border supply route.    

Syria's military shot down a U.S. drone over the coastal province of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, state media said March 17.

Jihadists have executed 17 men in recent days in areas they control in eastern and northern Syria to avenge a string of assassinations targeting their fighters, a monitor said Jan. 16.
      

With just blankets to shield them against the icy wind and rain, Abu Ali's family huddles in a flimsy tent in Lebanon - among the thousands of Syrian refugees struggling as winter sets in.

Islamic State fighters have executed "dozens" of Syrian soldiers fleeing Tabqa military airport in the north, a monitor said Aug. 28, with the jihadists boasting on Twitter they had killed 200 troops.