The five-year-old's eyes are glassy with shock and he seems hardly aware of the blood seeping from a wound in his forehead.

An Islamic State insider has revealed the never-before-told story of the shadowy meeting that spawned the bloodthirsty terror group.

At least two people have been killed and several, including babies, were injured in an air strike on a maternity hospital in Syria's Idlib province.

An offer of amnesty by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been met with scepticism by rebel fighters and residents.

US-backed Syrian fighters have found evidence that the Islamic State has rewritten school textbooks to promote its violent ideology.

In NZ Herald Focus this morning - a boy has been pulled from the rubble of a building destroyed in Aleppo.

Isis fighters shot down a Russian helicopter above Syria, killing both pilots on board.

Relatives of Marie Colvin, a Sunday Times journalist, have filed a lawsuit claiming that Syrian government officials killed her.

It might be embroiled in a bloody civil war, but Syria has big plans to woo tourists back.

Syria has used sarin nerve gas for the first time since 2013, dropping bombs laden with the chemical agent on Isis fighters outside Damascus.

Nearly 15 years ago, a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, was forced by Syrian prison guards to live in a dark, three-foot-wide, six-foot-deep underground cell.

Syrians voted in a parliamentary election in government-held areas of the country yesterday in a show of support for President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria's democratic opposition is combing through this week's release of the "Panama Papers" to revitalise efforts to identify and freeze billions of dollars amassed by the family and friends of their country's dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, with his sudden move to withdraw Russian forces from Syria, once more caught international observers by surprise.

COMMENT: The announcement makes it explicit that Putin has no interest in giving Assad the support he'd need to take on the forces of Isis.

Putin's announcement that Russia will begin withdrawing the "main part" of its military from Syria is a surprise potential end to a six-month intervention.

For five years Syria has suffered through a civil war that has tortured its people and destroyed the country, writes World Vision's Chris Clarke. For five years too long children have witnessed things no one should ever see.

As the Syrian conflict approaches its fifth anniversary, not far across the border in Jordan an altogether more hopeful milestone is being celebrated.

Across Syria's battered and blasted landscape, the relief was palpable as an unlikely truce actually took hold.

A cessation of hostilities in Syria has come into effect under a ceasefire warring sides in the five-year conflict have committed to.

The Turkish government, in league with Saudi Arabia, made a tentative decision to enter the war on the ground in Syria, writes Gwynne Dyer.

An airstrike in Syrian destroyed a makeshift clinic supported by Doctors Without Borders, in a series of attacks that hit hospitals and schools killing at least 50.

A cessation is the most basic good-faith requirement as a first step towards discussions about what peace may look like, writes Alexander Gillespie.

Ceasefire means little as rebels hold various factions at bay and children typically become the victims.

Up to 70,000 Syrians are heading for Turkey, threatening to send a new wave of refugees into Europe as Syria's civil war intensifies.

Abdel Razzak had to be carried on a chair in agony for two months to reach Lebanon after he was shot in the abdomen in Syria's civil war.

Children waved small photocopied Syrian flags as New Zealand welcomed its first extra intake of refugees from the war-torn nation at Mangere today.

NZ is leading urgent talks at the UN on a desperate humanitarian crisis in the Syrian town of Madaya, where besieged residents are reported to be dying of starvation.

Thousands of Syrian families are starving to death as Bashar al-Assad's regime imposes a siege on two mountain towns, despite a United Nations-brokered ceasefire designed to allow in aid.