An Iraqi soldier survived a mass execution carried out by Islamic State militants (Isis) by dropping to the floor and pretending to be dead.

A Briton will be the next hostage murdered by Islamist terrorists, the British extremist known as "Jihadi John" threatened in a beheading video released yesterday.

The video showing the killing of Steven Sotloff is a mirror image of that two weeks ago carrying the last words of his colleague James Foley.

The civil war in Syria has forced a record three million people out of the country as more than a million people fled in the past year, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday.

At some stage, a vigorous and viable response to the threat posed by the Islamic State was always going to be necessary.

A British extremist who is one of the suspects in the murder of James Foley is the son of an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist awaiting trial.

This weekend large numbers of Isis jihadists were trying to secure the border area, pushing northwards in armoured trucks looted from abandoned Iraqi military bases.

British and US counterterrorism analysts believe one of the Britons bears a resemblance to the jihadist who beheaded Foley.

David Cameron has said that it is "increasingly likely" that a British jihadist beheaded American journalist James Foley

Hundreds of Yazidi women who were captured by Islamic extremists are being subjected to deliberate attempts to co-opt them into service as the wives of fighters.

The people of the mountain can see their villages, and the headlights of the jihadi patrols snaking through the streets they have abandoned, and know they cannot return.

US air strikes are boosting Kurdish morale as they hit Isis fighters, and a road is now open for thousands of Yazidis cut off in the mountains.

Isis has used military equipment seized from Iraq in its biggest challenge yet to Assad regime forces.

ISIS has launched a series of attacks across Syria, using military equipment seized from Iraq in its biggest concerted challenge yet to Assad regime forces.

A Kiwi with links to al-Qaeda has taken up arms in Syria and says he will fight until he becomes a martyr.

Twin sisters have fled their UK home in the middle of the night and flown to Istanbul to join ISIS fighters in Syria, it's feared.

This winter was not a good one for farmers in the Fertile Crescent.

Prime Minister John Key says the Government "lost contact" with a New Zealander who is believed to have been killed fighting in Syria.

A New Zealander has been killed while fighting in Syria - the first Kiwi casualty in the civil war.

"Pathetically few" nations in Europe have stepped forward to offer a safe haven to desperate Syrian refugees, the European Union's Home Affairs chief says.

Syrian rebels reverted to the tactics of the World War I yesterday when they tunnelled underneath a luxury hotel being used by government troops in Aleppo to plant explosives that destroyed the building.

Why would anyone believe Seymour Hersh?

The Syrian conflict encroached threateningly on Nato's eastern frontiers yesterday when Turkey shot down an Assad regime fighter jet it said had crossed into its territory.

Imagine you have a young child whose legs were amputated because the hospital didn't have the proper equipment to treat them.

Behind a closed curtain a Syrian man in his mid-30s is preparing himself and his 3-year-old daughter for an onslaught.

Syrian Government troops have seized the last rebel stronghold on the border with Lebanon.

A disturbing video put out by Save The Children has shown what Syria's civil war and refugee crisis would look like if it was set in the West.