Islamic State

A Muslim convert who swore allegiance to the extremist Islamic state group has admitted plotting to kill up to a hundred people in a terror attack in London’s Oxford Street.

A diplomatic effort is underway tonight to avert further bloodshed across southern Syria. President Assad’s army is poised to expel a variety of rebels and Islamist insurgent groups from a swathe of land bordering Jordan and Israel. Tensions are between Israel and Syria are higher than for generations. In particular, where Syria’s Golan Heights –…

  “You have turned it into a death Camp” – the United Nations verdict on the Syrian government. For five years Syrian, Russian and Iranian forces besieged and bombarded Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian camp in Syria. The assault was designed to drive out militant Islamic State fighters holding onto what was to become the last…

The United States has warned the Syrian government not to launch a major new offensive against mostly Islamist insurgents in the southern province of Daraa. With the Syrian government and its Iranian and Russian allies increasingly confident of winning the seven year old war, our Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson has been to a previous battlefield…

The Syrian army says it has recaptured the strategic city of Deir al-Zour. The city had been held by the extremist Islamic State group for the last three years and was its last major position in Syria after recently losing control of Raqqa. Iraqi forces say they’ve also seized control of a crucial border crossing…

After a five-month onslaught backed by US airstrikes, the Syrian Democratic Forces say they have taken full control of Raqqa from the Islamic State. The western backed troops drove IS fighters from their last holdouts this morning, freeing the remaining civilians who had been trapped inside. IS’s capital was one of the final bastions of…

In Northern Syria, Kurdish and Arab forces have made major gains against the Islamic State in Raqqa, the capital of their purported Caliphate. The most significant Arab contingent fighting Isis comes from one of the largest tribes in the Middle East – the Shammar.

We’ve just returned from Syria, where we’ve been spending time with an elite unit of the Syrian army called the Tiger Forces.

Iraqi government forces have closed in on the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul’s old town, where the militant Islamic State group proclaimed its self-styled caliphate three years ago. It is the site of the historic hunchback minaret which was destroyed last week. Retaking the area represents a symbolic victory in the eight month battle for Iraq’s…

The Iraqi army says the battle to liberate Mosul from Islamic State militants will be over in just a “few days”. Despite a desperate counter-attack of suicide bombings, IS fighters are now thought to number just a few hundred and are holed up in a small area of the old city. Over the border in…

At least 31 people have been killed in a series of bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, including one outside a popular ice cream shop in the city centre. Militants from the Islamic State group said they carried out the attacks, which left dozens of other people injured, just days into the holy month…

A Briton who was a leading developer of the online currency Bitcoin and projected as a future billionaire, has been under police investigation for going to Syria to fight against the Islamic State group.

There are conflicting reports from the Iraqi city of Mosul over who carried out an air strike on a building which witnesses say killed 200 people.

US-backed Syrian fighters say they’ve cut the main road south from the city of Raqqa, a stronghold of the extremist Islamic State group.

US-backed Iraqi forces have launched a new offensive on Islamic State militants in the city of Mosul.