Syrian civil war

Plans by U.S.-backed YPG to conduct local elections in northern Syria are "unacceptable" and a threat to Türkiye's national security, Defense Minister Yaşar Güler said on June 3.

Türkiye considers the move as a step toward the creation of a separate Kurdish entity across its borders.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday announced $1 billion in aid for Lebanon during a visit to the crisis-hit country and urged it to tackle illegal migration to the bloc.

The European Union has already agreed deals with Tunisia, Mauritania and other countries to stem flows of irregular migrants.

European Union auditors said on Wednesday that they are unable to establish whether some of the billions of euros the bloc has given to Turkey to help it cope with Syrian refugees is actually having any impact.

A week after Cyprus suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrians due to a sharp increase in arrivals, the president of the Mediterranean island, Nikos Christodoulides, warned that the EU country cannot accommodate more refugees from the war-torn country.

The United Nations' refugee agency said Friday that Cypriot efforts at sea to stop numerous Syrian refugee-laden boats departing Lebanon from reaching the European Union-member island nation mustn't contravene international human rights laws or put passengers at risk.

US Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) released a statement on Friday saying he will not seek to block the sale of F-16s to Turkey after receiving assurances from the Biden Administration that it will monitor Turkey's behavior on a number of sensitive issues including its actions towards Greece.

An Israeli strike on Damascus killed five people in a building where "Iran-aligned leaders" were meeting on Saturday, a war monitor said, as regional tensions soar over the Israel-Hamas war.

Greece rescued 30 migrants and recovered the bodies of two people, a woman and a man, close to a rocky shore on the island of Lesvos on Wednesday, the coastguard said.

As record numbers of Syrian refugees reach the shores of Cyprus, the Nicosia government wants the European Union to consider declaring parts of their war-torn homeland safe to repatriate them to, the Cypriot interior minister said.

"Starting a discussion to re-evaluate the issue of Syria is crucial for us," Minister Constantinos Ioannou told Reuters in an interview.

Greece's coastguard rescued 18 migrants and recovered the body of one dead woman on Friday after their boat capsized off an island in the Aegean Sea.

Coastguard vessels and a military helicopter carried out the rescue operation off the island of Agathonissi after the migrants sent a distress signal earlier on Friday, a coastguard official said.