Like other Western nations, Australia has been grappling with the challenge of how to deal with radicalised Muslims who travel to Iraq or Syria to fight with Isis, writes Kathy Marks.

The Syrian Air Force dropped barrel bombs on a market and another civilian area of Aleppo province, killing 71 people.

The news that Islamic State (Isis) fighters have advanced to within 100km of Camp Taji where New Zealand's 143 military advisers are based wasn't the only bulletin from the war zone.

Five Sydney children trying to return from Syria have every chance of being reintegrated into Australian society, an expert says.

Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand could not follow suit if Australia moves to strip a New Zealand-Australian woman of citizenship to prevent her returning from Syria.

US Defence Secretary Carter warned that Iraqi troops would not be able to defeat Isis until they developed a "will to fight", reflecting surprise after the collapse in Ramadi.

Isis has used its propaganda magazine Dabiq to suggest the group is expanding so rapidly it could buy its first nuclear weapon within a year.

America claimed a significant blow against Isis when Delta Force commandos launched a rare night-time strike inside eastern Syria, killing a commander.

At the Istanbul Peace Summit last month, Prime Minister John Key rejected Turkish pleas for others to share the burden of the flood of refugees from the Iraqi-Syria bloodbath next door.

A young Isis doctor identified as Tareq Kamleh has been revealed to be an Australian doctor who trained in Adelaide.

Actress attacks UN paralysis on Syrian refugees. The Syrian ambassador's response? "She's beautiful."

A Kiwi jihadist who claims to be fighting in Syria with the Islamic State has called for terror attacks in New Zealand.

Up to 25 New Zealanders want to travel to the Middle East to fight against Isis, local Iraqi and Kurdish leaders say.

A former New Zealander now living in Denmark says her son was killed when he travelled to Syria to fight with Isis after authorities failed to stop him.

The Syrian Government has been accused of again using chemical weapons against civilians as fighting intensifies with fresh rebel attacks in the north of the country.

Islamic State militants in the northern Syrian province of Raqqa have threatened to jail any young man wearing skinny jeans, smoking or with music on his mobile phone.

Previous experience has been positive and benefits would outweigh the costs.

It is an image that challenges me emotionally every time I look at it, and the more I look, the more it challenges me.

Ralph Baydoun is a 23-year-old Lebanese videographer based in World Vision's Beirut office and last month we travelled together to some of the more challenging areas of the Middle East - the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and the Lebanon-Syrian border.

"As I write to you, I feel so much sadness because you stayed behind in Syria on your own. You are far away and the war in Syria has grown distance between us."

Sometimes Fatma's granddaughters want to talk about their old life in Syria. They lived in a nice house in Aleppo and went to school every day.

I first met Reverend Harold Good eight years ago in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Spare a thought for our Prime Minister. The price of "club" membership is to take New Zealand into a war not of our making, training troops who were once our enemy.

He looks downwards and shakes his head in response to my question, "What do you hope for?"

World Vision chief executive Chris Clarke travelled with broadcaster Rachel Smalley to the Middle East to meet some of the millions affected by the Syrian conflict, and was struck by the number of fathers having to make impossible choices for their families.

Nareen and her daughter almost died after jihadists trapped Yazidi refugees.

The school bus lurches to a halt outside a Bekaa Valley primary school in the east of Lebanon.

Canada's mysterious and small operation has become a lot bigger and more costly since it began, writes Dita De Boni. Which could be our fate, too.