The US and five Arab states have launched the first air strikes against Islamic State (IS) targets within Syria.
Thousands of families have been forced to flee from Iraq’s second city of Mosul after al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists gained control of the northern city.
Britons arriving back into the UK after joining the armed conflict in Syria are posing questions to the British authorities about “terrorist training”.
On Monday, a suicide bomber from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) drove a car laden with 1.5 tons of explosives into a Syrian military checkpoint at the busy eastern entrance to the government-controlled city of Hama. More than 30 people died, including civilians. The audacity of the attack signalled a shift in al-Qaeda’s Syrian military tactics, and its rising confidence in an increasingly fragmented rebel state.
Al-Qaeda-linked groups including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Jabhat al-Nusra have consolidated their power in Syria in recent weeks, particularly in the country’s north, but have they overshadowed moderate elements of the opposition?