Syrians have been the world’s largest refugee population. More than 6 million Syrians have fled the country since 2011, when an uprising against the regime of Bashar Assad transformed into a 13-year civil war.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi called Thursday for cooperation between Syria's new authorities, host countries and donors to secure the return of 6.2 million Syrian refugees to their country.

He had been dreaming of going back home ever since arriving in Turkey in the summer of 2014. To soothe his panic attacks in his exile, he would walk Gaziantep’s old streets, which resembled Aleppo’s,

Geopolitics abhors a power vacuum. One country’s loss is another’s gain, and the space left by Iran is being occupied, for now, by Turkey. This should come as no surprise: the history of the Middle East between the 16th and 18th centuries was that of struggle between the Ottoman and Persian empires, and it seems to be reviving in the 21st century.

It already appears evident that the days of Russia serving as its leading arms supplier have come to an ignominious end.

Exile Coffee and Wine sits on a busy downtown street. The coffee bar and seating area occupy the first and second floor of a corner building that in its former life housed an online betting shop, and before that a fish market. Keating says it needed “a lot of work.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested Friday that his county’s military might not withdraw all of its forces from Lebanon by this weekend’s deadline set in its ceasefire with Hezbollah

The United Nations refugee chief says some 200,000 refugees have returned to Syria from neighboring countries since the government of Bashar Assad was overthrown last month.

Paramilitary forces in the Middle East are some of the largest in the world. They work in a region where traditional military operations are often tied in with internal security or even tribal affiliations.

Turkish authorities are investigating a fire at a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort in northwestern Turkey that killed 76 people, including children.

Under the terms of the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal , fighting will be halted in Gaza for at least six weeks. Dozens of Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be freed, while more aid flows in .

(AP) — Hamas announced Friday the names of the next four hostages it plans to release this weekend as part of a fragile ceasefire deal with Israel that has paused the war in Gaza. There was no immediate confirmation of the names from Israel.