Rachel Smalley is set to return to the Middle East this year as she continues to spread awareness and raise money for the growing refugee crisis.

The United States has blocked attempts by its Middle East allies to fly heavy weapons directly to the Kurds fighting Isis jihadists in Iraq.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully is quite blunt about the Security Council and the Middle East peace process.

Eye-witnesses say streets of Palmyra are strewn with hundreds of bodies – the latest victims of terrorists's savagery.

A 9-year-old girl who was taken as a sex slave by Isis was raped by 10 militants and is now pregnant, it has been reported.

Abducted, locked away, all but starved, raped... then, a dramatic escape. How one Yazidi girl escaped the clutches of her Isis captors.

Many Syrians in refugee camps across the border in Lebanon were lawyers, teachers, dentists, accountants. As the conflict enters its fifth year they have become the forgotten millions.

Political unrest. Conflict. The collapse of the country's social infrastructure. And then a daily struggle just to stay alive. An artists has imagined what it would look like in NZ.

Asim Qureshi has caused outrage by saying the murderer Jihadi John was 'beautiful' adding that he 'wouldn't hurt a fly'.

The Isis executioner known as 'Jihadi John' was today named as a graduate from London who was able to flee to Syria despite being on a terror watch list.

Prime Minister John Key has defended his angry counter-attack in Parliament after Opposition parties' criticised the decision to send troops to the Middle East.

NZ soldiers training Iraqi troops near Baghdad will not be taking a "them-and-us" view of the Iraqis but a partnership approach.

No New Zealand government should commit troops to a war zone without a clear awareness of the ramifications. In the case of the fight against the Islamic State.

The deployment of 106 Defence Force personnel to a military base in Iraq will include just 16 trainers, the New Zealand Defence Force chief confirmed yesterday.

Lieutenant General Tim Keating, says New Zealand troops deployed to Iraq will have force protection for self defence and and all forces will be armed.

Sending troops to Iraq not unethical but duplicity, anger and hatred in Middle East may crush New Zealand's efforts, writes law professor Alexander Gillespie.

Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand is not considering an Iraq deployment to “wave its flag” or please its American allies, but to play an important role in forcing back the “reprehensible” Islamic State.

Intelligence agencies believe a teenager and her 20-year-old friend have become the first Australian women to join terrorists in Syria and offer themselves as jihadi brides.

Parliament has just passed legislation aimed at stopping would-be foreign fighters from leaving New Zealand to join Islamic State in Iraq.

The father of a teenager from Cardiff is thought to be the first Briton to have rescued his son from the jihadist group Islamic State.

Urgent changes to the law introduced to combat the threat of "foreign fighters" had been flagged by the Prime Minister as for short-term only.

The Islamic State militant known as Jihadi John has threatened to bring slaughter to the streets of Britain and the West in a new video announcing the murder of an American aid worker.

Three NZ Defence Force personnel have already left for the Middle East to scope out a role for New Zealand forces to help train Iraqi forces fight ISIS.

The Prime Minister's landmark speech on national security has two messages for New Zealanders, but they are somewhat discordant.

John Key says any NZ commitment to the campaign against Isis in the Middle East would be for a long time, pointing to the 10-year deployment of troops to Bamiyan.

Isis is a nasty, brutish group that uses terror in parts of the globe, but it doesn't threaten the entire world. So Kiwis don't need to fight, says David Shearer.

New Zealand's contribution to the fight against Isis is set to be discussed at Cabinet today.

The second of three brothers who travelled to Syria to join forces seeking the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad has been killed in fighting, his father has confirmed.