Syria

In Syria, critically ill patients have been allowed to leave the rebel held area of eastern Ghouta to get medical care. Four hundred thousand people have been under siege for months and many are in desperate need of treatment available just minutes away in the capital Damascus. The deal to get a limited number out…

It’s a year since rebels lost the city of Aleppo to Syrian and Russian forces – a turning point in the war, and a decisive win for President Assad. This programme reported extensively from inside the besieged city with reports by filmmaker Waad Al-Khateab – but it was the fate of one man – who…

They are under siege. They are under constant bombardment. Now shocking new pictures reveal the agony of life in the Damascus suburb of east Ghouta, under government blockade, where activists say 19 civilians died in a wave of attacks by Syrian forces yesterday. Rebels fired several mortars into a Damascus neighbourhood in response.

The UN’s humanitarian advisor on Syria has warned of a “complete catastrophe”  and a return to “the bleakest days of this conflict”,  as the regime refuses to let hundreds of injured women and children leave an area it is bombing. The UN advisor, Jan Egeland, said around 400 people needed urgent medical evacuation from Eastern…

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…

A Briton who had been fighting against so-called Islamic State in Syria has been killed while clearing landmines in Raqqa just days after it was liberated. 24 year old Jac Holmes, who was a former IT worker from Bournemouth, had no prior military training before he joined up with the Kurdish militia, the YPG, two…

Juliette Touma, the director of communications in the Middle East for Unicef, discusses the humanitarian crisis in Syria.

The headlines about the demise of IS forces in Syria have taken attention away from the ongoing humanitarian crisis. About 3.5 million people in Syria are thought to live in besieged areas, surrounded and trapped by troops loyal to the Assad government. A warning: there are extremely distressing images of sick children from the very…

As Britain pledges £10 million in aid for the ruined Syrian city of Raqqa, we hear from several families who’ve lived there since the so-called Islamic State proclaimed it their political capital and survived the brutal battle to drive the jihadists out. Their home was liberated by the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. Film-maker Gabriel Chaim…

Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, chair of the foreign affairs committee, and journalist Rania Abouzeid discuss the fall of Raqqa.

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…

Idlib province in north-west Syria has faced an intensive bombing campaign conducted by President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies. Yesterday an airstrike on a market reportedly killed ten people, including two children. Following a military push by President Assad, backed by Russian airstrikes, he has regained control of half the country. The people 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 report from Raqqa: It was the capital of their self-styled caliphate for three years, the base from where the Islamic State terrorised the Middle East and planned violent atrocities across Europe. But now Isis may finally be about to be driven out.

Syria has accused Israel of conducting an overnight strike on a military base in Hama province, in the west of the country. A Syrian monitoring group claims missiles may also have targeted a chemical weapons manufacturing facility there.