Turkey sees in the battle for Qusayr a strategy to create an Alawite mini-state within Syria, purged of Sunni Muslims, to which the ruling elite can withdraw for a last stand.
Turkey will build a 2.5-kilometer wall along the Cilvegözü post on the border with Syria, near where a twin bomb attack killed 51 and wounded more than 100 earlier this month.
Israeli missiles struck a research center near Damascus, as massacres of Sunni families by pro-government militias are reported from Syria’s coastal Alawite stronghold.
Egyptian “Black Bloc” protesters continue to clash with police as 22 of their comrades have been detained in a “terrorism” investigation.
An alliance between the Free Syrian Army and the People’s Protection Committees (YPG), the country’s main Kurdish militia, broke down amid internecine clashes in Aleppo.
Israel's claim that Syria has used chemical weapons comes as rebel militias have assumed positions near the line of control in the Golan Heights.
As the Friends of Syria summit opened in Istanbul, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced $100 million in new “non-lethal” aid to the Syrian opposition.
Opposition activists from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Alawite sect publicly broke ranks with the regime at a meeting in Cairo, and urged their fellow Alawites in the army to rebel.
Approximately 250 Yemeni demonstrators gathered in front of the US embassy in Sanna to demand the release of Yemeni detainees held at Guantánamo Bay.
Two Bahraini human rights activists have intensified their hunger strike and are refusing fluids, according to a report by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR).
Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced that the UN will initiate a probe into the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria following an attack on a village near Aleppo.
In a new massacre near Homs—one of several in Syria over the past weeks—the regime blames the Nusra Front rebels, while the opposition blames the pro-regime Shabiha militia.
