APRNEWS - Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar and his Russian counterpart discussed by phone developments in Syria’s Idlib province and measures to reduce tension in the area, the Turkish Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.

APRNEWS - Syrian pro-government media say troops have captured a village and a strategic hill from insurgents in the country's northwest.

The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media says troops captured the village of al-Bani and the nearby Othman hill in the northern countryside of Hama province.

APRNEWS - Russia emerged as a crucial power broker in the crisis in far-away Venezuela this week when Washington accused Moscow of convincing President Nicolas Maduro not to flee to Cuba.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Maduro had a plane on the tarmac ready to fly to Havana when "the Russians indicated that he should stay".

APRNEWS - Russian and Syrian forces intensified air strikes and ground shelling in northwestern Syria overnight in one of the heaviest assaults on the last rebel bastion in recent months, opposition members, rescuers and residents said on Thursday.

APRNEWS - ISIS has tasked one of its terror bosses with moving militants out of Syria and into Europe, newly procured documents show.

Newly obtained documents by The Sunday Times show ISIS has a member tasked with “bringing in migrants and taking out brothers who have been given jobs" as a way to move fighters and money from Syria through Turkey into Europe.

APRNEWS - An Israeli air strike in central Syria wounded three combatants early Saturday, the official SANA news agency reported.

A Britain-based war monitor said the strike killed several Iranian fighters and wounded 17 Syrian troops and their allies.

APRNEWS - Torched tents, a rain of bullets, the thunderous whoosh of warplanes muffling the call to prayer: survivors say life inside the Islamic State group's dying "caliphate" was a bleak catalogue of despair.

APRNEWS - U.S.-backed fighters in Syria are set to capture the Islamic State group’s last enclave, the battle commander said on Saturday, bringing its self-declared caliphate to the brink of defeat as U.S. President Donald Trump spoke of “100 percent victory”.

APRNEWS - Syria’s Kurds on Wednesday rejected a US proposal for a “security zone” under Turkish control along the Syrian side of the two countries’ border.

Senior political leader Aldar Khalil said the Kurds would accept the deployment of UN forces along the separation line between Kurdish fighters and Turkish troops to ward off a threatened offensive.

APRNEWS - U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Turkey with economic devastation if it attacks a U.S.-allied Kurdish militia in Syria, drawing a sharp rebuke from Ankara on Monday and reviving fears of another downturn in ties between the NATO allies.