Alawites

CAIRO, July 3 (Reuters) - A son of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in the city of Homs in Syria, the group's news channel reported on Tuesday.

The former leader of Turkey's main opposition party has lent support to the government's shelling of Kurdish and Syrian positions in northern Syria, while underlining the "Sunni" identity of the rebel stronghold of Aleppo and arguing that the city should not be handed over to "Shiite/Nusayri" forces.

The images of bodies of Syrian refugees washing up on Turkey's Aegean coast have become etched in people's hearts and minds. Seeking refuge from war at home cannot be considered a voluntary trip that might be regulated with visa regulations of any sort.

Syrian authorities have arrested Suleiman al-Assad, a cousin of the president accused of killing a military officer in a road rage incident, official news agency SANA said on August 10.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu has strictly denied reports that Turkey was preparing to directly intervene in the Syrian crisis.

Speaking to a group of reporters on the plane returning from election rallies in the eastern provinces of Bingöl and Elaz?? on May 6, Davuto?lu also denied recent media reports claiming a new deal between Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Jihadist fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are holding hostage at least 50 civilians seized in a raid on a village in central Syria, a monitor said.
      
They were kidnapped from the village of Mabujeh in Hama province on March 31, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
      

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters killed at least 30 people in a Syrian village near the city of Hama overnight, a group monitoring the war said, part of a pattern of attacks by the ultra-radical force in government-held areas of western Syria.
   

‘Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present’ by Christian C. Sahner (Hurst, £20, 240 pages)