Fertile Crescent

A bomb-laden vehicle driven by a suicide bomber from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has exploded in mid-air, moments after being hit by a roadside bomb near Kirkuk, a newly-released video purportedly shows.

Sweden will send up to 120 troops to northern Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish fighters as part of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, foreign minister Margot Wallstroem said April 9.    

A local politician in Britain has stated that his son is one of nine Britons arrested in Turkey for allegedly trying to enter Syria.

Shakil Ahmed, a Labour Party councilor in Rochdale, northwest England, said on April 2 that he had thought his university student son was in Birmingham, England. Ahmed said he was "shocked, worried and extremely upset" to learn that he was in Turkey.

Syrian rebels fought fierce clashes with regime forces on April 1 over the last border crossing with Jordan still in government hands, a monitor said.

A coalition of Syrian rebels including Islamists launched an attack on the southern border crossing of Nasib in Daraa province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

The Iraqi government should gain the support the country's Sunnis to regain their confidence in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu has said, stressing an armed struggle against the jihadist group would not be sufficient without the support of all Iraqi people, especially its Sunnis.

Turkey will provide a military facility in the southern province of Hatay, along with the Hirfanl? military base in the central Anatolian province of K?r?ehir, for the training-equip program with the U.S. in the struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a Turkish official has told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Turkey?s government cannot take further steps in the peace process unless the outlawed Kurdistan Workers? Party (PKK) lays down its arms and takes concrete steps to foster peace, President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has said.

The commemoration of the centenary of the Dardanelles' victory started as a show of nationalism in the wake of a coming election.

Police in Thessaloniki on Tuesday said they had arrested a man suspected of carrying out at least nine violent muggings against women in the northern port city over the past few months.

The suspect, a 25-year-old Syrian national, was taken into custody after allegedly stealing the handbag of a woman at a coffee shop in the city center.

More than 20 human rights groups issued a joint plea on March 12 for the international community to take responsibility for suffering civilians as Syria's war approaches its fifth year.
      
In a report entitled "Failing Syria", the organisations criticised world powers for not implementing a series of UN Security Council resolutions on the conflict.