It's a long way from Tauranga - but Janna Hamilton is hoping those back home will listen to the stories she tells about the suffering of the Syrian people.

Syrian soldiers have killed three Westerners, including an American woman and a British man, both Muslims, in northwest Idlib province near the Turkish border, a monitoring group says.

The waiters passed between tables carrying silver platters piled with meat, fruits and elaborate desserts.

European leaders revisit British plan for direct assistance as rebels remain split over leader

Israel launched an airstrike into Syria, apparently targeting a suspected weapons site, US officials said.

The United States is reconsidering its opposition to arming Syrian rebel groups, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said yesterday, as reports emerged of a fresh massacre of up to 50 women and children by government forces in Syria.

Syrian rebels have captured a military base in the south and set their sights on seizing control of a strategically important region along the border with Jordan that would give them a critical gateway to attempt an attack on the capital, Damascus.

A Chinese New Zealander who went to Syria to join rebel fighters has been reunited with his wife in the US.

Anxious to keep Syria's civil war from spiralling into even worse problems, President Barack Obama said yesterday he worried about the country becoming a haven for extremists when - not if - President Bashar Assad was ousted from power.

The United States will give direct assistance to those fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the first time in what was touted as a significant policy shift.

A massive car bomb has exploded near Syria's ruling party headquarters in Damascus, killing at least 53 people and scattering mangled bodies amid the smoldering wreckage.

The most frustrating part of covering the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) was that after a while there was nothing left to say. Syria is starting to feel just the same.

A number of doctors had been killed, some of them deliberately. The burned bodies of three were found a few days after their arrest by the Mukhabarat, Syria's secret police, a month previously in June.

A baby boy joined the ranks of Syria's tens of thousands of war wounded when a missile fired by Bashar Assad's air force slammed into his family home and shrapnel pierced his skull.

A New Zealand Army officer serving as a United Nations military observer was detained and released by armed men in Syria on Monday.

Editorial: The situation in Syria is "bad and getting worse", according to a joint statement released yesterday after talks in Geneva between the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the Arab League.