A former Russian military officer who received a life sentence for leading a 2009 Taliban attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan is not entitled to protections given to prisoners of war, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, upholding his convictions.

Assailants opened fire at a U.N. security team visiting the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria, an official said Wednesday, forcing it to retreat to its base and further delaying a fact-finding mission by outside experts.

The Pentagon debuted one of its newest weapons – a long-range, stealthy missile – in last week's attack on Syria’s suspected chemical weapons sites, a development with implications beyond the regime’s borders.

Belgian authorities are investigating whether three companies might have been involved in the illegal export to Syria of a chemical that could be used in the production of sarin gas.

Israel has a standard of living that rivals Western Europe, without the natural resources. It can boast of scientific achievements and military and technological clout beyond its modest size. It controls most of biblical Israel, and despite widespread criticism of its policies toward the Palestinians, it has cultivated good diplomatic ties with most of the world. But it's also a country that is weary from decades of conflict with the Palestinians.

The Trump administration wants to transfer an American citizen detained in Iraq to a third, unnamed country, according to a court filing unsealed Tuesday. The American Civil Liberties Union said it would challenge the plan.

American troops in Syria have seen no signs of threats from forces backing President Bashar Assad since U.S., Britain and France planes and ships launched more than 100 missiles over the weekend at Syrian chemical weapons facilities, a U.S. military spokesman said Tuesday.

U.S. officials said the eighth annual iteration of the exercise is not directly related to U.S., British and French missile strikes, which targeted Syria in response to a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian city of Douma that killed dozens on April 7.

Saudi Arabia said it is in discussions with the United States about sending troops to Syria as the Trump administration seeks ways to stabilize the country's northeast while winding down its own military presence.

A new report by Amnesty International says an untold number of women and children are being held against their will in camps, accused of ties to the militant group without any semblance of due process. The women are being subjected to sexual assault by camp guards and staff and are being denied many of the basic needs for survival.

A false alarm set off Syrian air defense systems early on Tuesday, the military said, denying earlier reports of an “outside aggression” and incoming airstrikes and underscoring the chaotic nature of the multiple actors in Syria’s theater of war.

Syrian media said international chemical weapons inspectors on Tuesday entered the town of Douma, but a Syrian diplomat said later that only a U.N. security team visited the Damascus suburb.

A nighttime raid on Wednesday in Jowzjan province’s Darzab district killed 22 fighters. The action came less than a week after a U.S. airstrike killed the group’s emir for northern Afghanistan, Qari Hekmatullah, in the same district.

The recent air campaign, paired with additional U.S. military advising, has helped stop the disintegration of security, but it has meant sending U.S. troops back to regions where they once engaged in direct combat with the Taliban during a surge in 2009.

Seaman Anthony Greco thought his hockey days were probably over when the Navy sent him to Bahrain. He was wrong.

Chemical weapons inspectors in Syria said Monday that they suspected the site of an alleged chemical attack had been tampered with, as pro-government media broadcast interviews with doctors from the area saying that no such assault had occurred and that the victims they treated were suffering from asthma.

Two days after Syrian troops declared this town near the capital, Damascus, liberated from rebel fighters and 10 days since a suspected chemical attack, a tour on Monday revealed widespread destruction and traumatized residents who recalled months spent cowering in crowded underground shelters infested with lice, with barely any food or water.

The United States, France and Britain have said their airstrikes on Syria were a response to a reported chemical attack in a rebel-held Damascus suburb. However, none of the three nations have made public the evidence they might have proving a link between the Syrian government and the April 7 attack.

A senior Russian diplomat said on Monday that the mission from the international chemical weapons watchdog cannot access the site of an alleged chemical attack near the Syrian capital without an appropriate U.N. permit.

Hundreds of Syrians have gathered in a landmark square in the capital of Damascus in support of their armed forces, which they say succeeded in confronting the unprecedented joint airstrikes by the West over the weekend.

The leaders of Russia, Iran and the Hezbollah group in Lebanon said Sunday that Western airstrikes on their ally, Syria, have complicated prospects for a political settlement to the country’s seven-year conflict.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad praised Russian weaponry on Sunday as his government celebrated victory over rebels in the town where an alleged chemical attack took place, triggering U.S. airstrikes over the weekend.

The Eager Lion drill started Sunday, a day after the U.S., France and Britain launched missiles at Syrian military targets in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that closely monitors the conflict, says 177,000 people have fled eastern Ghouta since February.

Saudi King Salman told leaders from across the 22-member Arab League that Iran was to blame for instability and meddling in the region.

Pat Gjerde wasn’t old enough to buy a beer by the time he became a disabled veteran. But more than 20 years after his first deployment, he re-enlisted and went to Afghanistan to fight again for his country.

Col. Abdul Hanan, the acting provincial police chief in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province, said the fighting broke out after Pakistani forces crossed into Afghanistan.

Militants opened fire on the checkpoint and then targeted reinforcements with a roadside bomb.

It's the fifth such Hamas tunnel Israel has destroyed in as many months.

The United States, Britain and France opted to strike Syria for its apparent use of chemical weapons without waiting for a report from U.N. inspectors because they were convinced that the Assad government had used chlorine and sarin nerve gas against a rebel-held Damascus suburb, American officials said Saturday.

Three medical students, eight nurses and a lone doctor worked in a basement that passed for an emergency room. "I will never forget the screaming of the children, how afraid they were."

John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, has been pushed for a more aggressive approach to Syria than he did when President Barack Obama mulled a military strike after Syria's use of chemical weapons five years ago.

Iran's state-run IRNA news agency says Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called the U.S.-led airstrikes on Syria a "military crime." Meanwhile, France says more strikes on Syria are possible if Syria uses chemical weapons again.

Photo gallery

For the young people who receive lessons from Abdullah El-Deb'y, music is a refuge from the misery of Yemen's devastating war. El-Deb'y offers free lessons to students eager to escape — at least psychologically — for a time the suffering caused by the war. Amid the bombing, he is seeking to form a national orchestra comprised of young Yemenis.

Hundreds of Syrians poured into the streets of Damascus on Saturday, dancing and chanting in defiance of what they called the West's "failure" to shake their nation's resolve with airstrikes that jolted the capital only hours earlier.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Saturday that the U.S. is ready to launch another military strike if the Syrian government ever uses chemical weapons again.

The United States and the United Arab Emirates are nearing a deal to resolve a years-old spat over alleged government subsidies to Emirati airlines that the major U.S. airlines claim have tilted the competition against them, four individuals familiar with the negotiations said.

The militant Islamic Jihad group said four of its members were killed Saturday in a "work accident" in the southern Gaza Strip along the border with Israel.

ANALYSIS

Analysts say the risk in attacking Syria is that the U.S. would then end up in a cycle of escalation that entangles the U.S. military more deeply in the Syrian conflict than intended.

Analysis

Facing a stark choice between engaging the United States, Britain and France in combat or passively watching them strike his ally, President Vladimir Putin has opted for the peaceful route. That cautious response won't undermine his gains in Syria or erode his authority at home.

The U.N. Security Council overwhelmingly rejected a Russian resolution calling for condemnation of "aggression" by the United States, United Kingdom and France against Syria on Saturday, a vote reflecting support for the allied airstrikes on Syrian chemical sites.

An Afghan official says that at least four young children have been killed after a rocket fired by an insurgent hit their house in southern Helmand province.

Militants wearing explosive belts blew themselves up as they tried to infiltrate a military base in Egypt's central Sinai, killing eight soldiers and wounding 15 others, the military said on Saturday.

Analysis

By and large the people of Gaza — over two-thirds of them descended from refugees who left communities in what is now Israel — cannot leave their tiny strip of arid land along the Mediterranean coast. Anger toward Israel runs deep, yet dependence is great.

As he declares the U.S.-led airstrikes against Syria a success, President Donald Trump is adopting a phrase that a previous president came to regret — "mission accomplished."

As images of sick or dying children flooded global media all week, the U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Winston Churchill was en route to the Mediterranean to join a flotilla of allied warships, including another U.S. destroyer, the USS Donald Cook. It was a ruse.

VIDEO

American, British and French air and sea forces launched 105 missiles at three Syrian facilities late Friday, striking at “the heart” of President Bashar Assad’s ability to produce the chemical weapons that he has used repeatedly against civilians, Pentagon officials said Saturday.

VIDEO

U.S. and allied forces bombarded three Syrian chemical weapons facilities late Friday night with more than 100 missiles, an assault launched in retaliation for a recent chemical weapons attack U.S. officials contend was carried out by President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Authorities in Mosul have buried more than 1,000 bodies in a mass grave in a desert valley outside the city, most of them believed to be Islamic State group militants, according to a provincial official. More remains are being dug out of the rubble of the district where the fighters made their final stand last year.

The suspected chemical weapons attack on Douma was a brutal finale for a town that had haunted Syrian President Bashar Assad for seven years from right on his doorstep.

A transcript of President Donald Trump's April 13, 2018 speech about Syria, as provided by the White House.

Loud explosions ripped through Syria's capital early Saturday and the sky turned orange as Syrian air defense units fired surface-to-air missiles in response to joint airstrikes by the United States, France and Britain.

A war laps at Saudi Arabia's borders, in Yemen, less than 500 miles south of Riyadh. Yet the menace feels distant, the carnage reduced to abstraction by the time it reaches a city riveted by its own dramas — social changes and crackdowns, economic shifts and palace intrigues.

Rights groups have described the Israeli military's open-fire regulations as unlawful, saying they permit soldiers to use potentially lethal force against unarmed protesters. Israel has accused Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers of using the protests as a cover for attacks and says snipers only target the main "instigators."

An unmanned Iranian aircraft shot down in February after infiltrating Israeli airspace was armed with explosives and on a mission to attack the Jewish state, Israel's military said Saturday. Tensions had heighted between the bitter enemies following an airstrike Monday on a Syrian air base that its allies blamed on Israel.

Uganda is "positively considering" Israel's request to take in 500 rejected Eritrean or Sudanese migrants, a government minister said Friday, the first official confirmation of an agreement to accept African migrants whose planned deportations have caused widespread protests in Israel.

Bagram District Gov. Abdul Shukoor Qudusi says the driver was wounded in the explosion late Wednesday night, which set several shops outside the Bagram military base in the area on fire. There were no injuries at the base.

Russia and Britain exchanged sharp accusations Friday over the suspected poison gas attack in Syria, and the U.S. Navy was moving an additional Tomahawk missile-armed ship within striking range as President Donald Trump and his national security aides mulled the scope and timing of an expected military assault.

Civilian casualties have been on the rise since international forces ended combat operations in 2014. This year’s first-quarter numbers are comparable to those of 2016 and 2017.

The fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was expected to head to Douma, where the suspected attack took place and where Russia said rebels had now capitulated to government control. The Syrian government said it would facilitate the mission's investigation, which was to begin Saturday.

The Syrian government is now in full control of the last rebel-held town on the outskirts of Damascus that was the site of a suspected chemical attack over the weekend, according to the Russian military.

An AP look at Gaza's health system found crowded hospital rooms lacking basic supplies, detailed electronic records of gunshot victims and dozens of people still suffering from serious wounds.

The Taliban stormed a government compound in central Afghanistan early Thursday, triggering an hours-long gunbattle that killed 15, including three top local officials, police and government officials said.

Defying Russian warnings against U.S. military strikes in Syria, President Donald Trump said Wednesday that missiles "will be coming" in response to Syria's suspected chemical attack that killed at least 40 people.

As Israel marks its annual Holocaust memorial day, those aging survivors who actively resisted and helped shape the country's fighting spirit are quickly disappearing. Baruch Shub is among perhaps only a handful of remaining Soviet partisan fighters.

Analysis

The red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria has long been blurry - and big questions remain about the nature of the weapons recently used in Douma.

Saudi Arabia faced a flurry of attempted attacks by Yemen's rebels on Wednesday, with the kingdom's defense forces saying they intercepted missiles that targeted Riyadh and another city, and drones targeting an airport and an Aramco oil facility in the country's south.

In a rare move, Europe's air traffic control agency, Eurocontrol, had issued a rapid alert notification Tuesday afternoon, warning that missiles may pose a threat over the three following days.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday warned archenemy Iran not to test Israel amid escalating regional tensions as the country marked its Holocaust Remembrance Day in memory of the 6 million Jews systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.

Syria on Wednesday called U.S. threats to attack it "reckless" and said they display a lack of "wisdom and logic" and endanger international peace and security.

Even as Israel was being criticized for allegedly carrying out an airstrike on a military base in Syria, some security officials have been calling for a more aggressive approach in Syria aimed at preventing Iran and its proxy militia Hezbollah from expanding their influence there and their ability to menace Israel.

Police have requested a travel ban on an American diplomat involved in a vehicle crash that killed one Pakistani man and injured another over the weekend in the capital Islamabad.

War and death have dogged Afghans for the past four decades, giving birth to a project known as the Memory Box Initiative. The project pays tribute to the millions of Afghans killed and wounded in 40 years of relentless war and to help heal the wounds of the living, said Salim Rajabi, project organizer.

Syrian government forces were on high alert and taking precautionary measures Tuesday at military positions across the country amid fears of a U.S. strike in the aftermath of an apparent chemical weapons attack near Damascus.

President Donald Trump vouched publicly on Tuesday for Qatar's efforts to stop the funding of terrorism, reversing his past critique and lending presidential credence to Qatari claims that it's been unfairly maligned by its Persian Gulf rivals.

The international chemical weapons watchdog said Tuesday it was sending a fact-finding team to the Syrian town where a suspected chemical gas attack took place over the weekend, following a request from the Syrian government and its Russian backers that appeared to be aimed at averting punitive Western military action.

International condemnation grew over a suspected poison gas attack in a rebel-held town near Damascus said to have been carried out by the Syrian government, while Syria and its main ally, Russia, blamed Israel for airstrikes on a Syrian air base Monday that reportedly killed 14 people, including four Iranians.

The White House sharply rejected any suggestion that Trump's own words about pulling U.S. troops out of Syria had opened the door for the attack, which killed more than 40 people, including children.

News of an alleged gas attack against civilians in Syria marks the latest grim chapter in fighting that entered its eighth year in March.

The Proper Exit initiative brings post-9/11 combat veterans and families of fallen servicemembers to the theater to get closure from their experiences and to exchange stories with troops currently deployed.

The leader of Gaza's ruling Hamas group and Israel's prime minister staked out tough positions Monday, making de-escalation on the Israel-Gaza border in the near future unlikely.

Saudi Arabia could consider a proposal to dig a maritime canal along the kingdom's border with Qatar, turning the peninsula-nation into an island and transforming its only land border into a military zone and nuclear waste site, state-linked Saudi newspapers reported Monday.

The U.S. military said Monday that it has killed the senior leader of an Islamic State enclave in northern Afghanistan, highlighting an evolving fight that expanded more than a year ago after the militant left the Taliban in a dispute.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that despite many attempts, the U.S. has "failed to destroy" the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court raised concerns Sunday that Israel and Hamas may have committed war crimes during a current flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip.

President Donald Trump on Sunday condemned a "mindless CHEMICAL attack" in Syria that killed women and children, called Syrian President Bashar Assad an "animal" and delivered a rare personal criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for supporting the Damascus government.

President Trump rips Russia, Iran on Twitter for responsible for 'backing Animal Assad' as Syrian doctors and rescue workers said 40 people were killed Saturday evening in the attack in Douma in eastern Ghouta,

Six months after Islamic State's ouster, residents feel they have been abandoned as the world moves on. They are trying to rebuild their lives, but they say they fear everyone around them.

An estimated 15,000 people attended Sunday's rally organized by the Movement for Protection of Pashtuns group.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy, which has said it is aware of the crash and is cooperating with the investigation.

Syrian government forces pressed their offensive against the last rebel-held town in eastern Ghouta near the capital Damascus on Saturday under the cover of airstrikes as shelling of civilian areas on both sides claimed more lives, state media and opposition activists said.

The Pentagon’s mission against Islamic State in Syria remains open-ended despite President Donald Trump’s promise of a quick U.S. withdrawal.

Hundreds attended the funeral of a well-known Palestinian journalist in Gaza on Saturday who was killed while covering mass protests along the Israeli border the previous day.

The work of weather forecasters is vital for ensuring the safety of aircrew and military assets in Afghanistan. To keep up with the demand for air support, a meteorological team of four airmen work 24 hours a day to ensure aircrews have the most up-to-date weather information.

President Donald Trump's hopes for a swift withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria may prove premature, because the Islamic State is showing signs of renewed strength in its last strongholds in the east of the country, Syrian Kurdish officials said Thursday.

Analysis

Thousands of Palestinians on Friday took part in a mass protest along Gaza's volatile border with Israel, the second large-scale demonstration in what is expected to be a steady turnout over the coming weeks.

International donors pledged $11 billion in loans and grants Friday to help debt-ridden Lebanon at a conference in Paris that also sought to ensure the money is well spent in a country hit hard by the Syrian war next door.

Syrian troops began a ground offensive under the cover of airstrikes on rebel-held areas outside the capital Damascus on Friday after a 10-day truce collapsed over disagreement regarding evacuation of opposition fighters. The new wave of violence left at least 36 people dead, including women and children, according to state media and opposition activists.

A $60 million power project overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan couldn’t be powered up for fear it would put Afghan lives at risk, and shoddy work could leave the system structurally unstable, a government watchdog found.

The triple alliance of Russia, Turkey and Iran, now the dominant actors in Syria's war, is stepping up efforts to impose a peace. It may end up presiding over a partition.