Middle East, Wars | featured news

Syrian state television said Wednesday that a bombing in Damascus killed Defense Minister Daoud Rajha and his deputy, Asef Shawkat, who was the brother-in-law and close confidante of President Bashar al-Assad.

The interior minister says the initial investigation into a bombing at a wedding hall suggests the Taliban and terrorists were responsible.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a wedding reception in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least 22 people including a prominent politician, and wounding 40 others, police said.

The U.S. designation Saturday of Afghanistan as its newest "major non-NATO ally" amounts to a political statement of support for the country's long-term stability and solidifies close defense cooperation after American combat troops withdraw in 2014....

The Syrian army pressed its offensive against rebels, bombarding the city of Douma near Damascus, and Turkey said it had scrambled warplanes after Syrian helicopters flew near its border.

An Afghan policeman shot dead three British soldiers at a checkpoint in southern Helmand province on Sunday, Afghan officials said, the latest in a chain of increasingly frequent rogue killings.

As the war in Afghanistan winds down, the impact on the nation’s employment picture goes beyond veterans returning home who are looking for work.

The acknowledgment that United States military forces have taken “direct action” in those countries opens the window further into the president’s secret war on terrorists.

Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year - the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war....

The top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan offered a somber apology on Friday in an eastern province where officials say 18 civilians — half of them children — were killed in a coalition airstrike this week.