Alice Fordham

At least 19 people died Friday in a round of Syrian government air strikes on the city of Aleppo, human rights observers said. Fighting in Syria has intensified in recent weeks.

In one corner of Syria, a town is split between Kurdish control and the Syrian regime. Residents navigate between the competing powers from street to street.

There are growing signs that a cease-fire that's largely held since the end of February is fraying. Over the weekend, there were reports of fighting around the city of Aleppo.

In northeastern Syria, Christians are mourning those killed by ISIS when the militants tore through a band of Assyrian villages a year ago. The towns were recaptured, but the community is scarred.

Iraqi forces with U.S. help are making preparations for an attempt — weeks or months away — to push ISIS out of Mosul. The tentative progress shows how tough the battle might be.

In northeastern Syria, local residents are watching the comings and goings from a rural airstrip they say is America's Syria footprint in the anti-ISIS war.

With help from U.S. special forces, Kurdish and Arab troops recently forced ISIS out of Shadadi, a key crossroads town. Now comes the challenge of running the place.

In the eastern part of Syria, forces backed by the U.S. and its allies say they are pushing ISIS back. And U.S. officials say those forces are becoming more cohesive, and it turn more successful.

The Free Syrian Army was a key player in the early days of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. But many members are now feeling lost in a war that's become a morass of factions.

The cease-fire in Syria is mostly holding, and the United Nations hopes to get more aid to people under siege.

The U.S. and Russia have brokered a partial truce in the fighting in Syria. NPR's Alice Fordham has an update on its prospects and how it's affecting people on the ground.

A whistle shrills, and a dozen boys tear across a gray schoolyard. Some are in sneakers, others have bare feet slapping the concrete. "This is a physical education class," announces Metin Yildiz, the director of education at Elbeyli refugee camp in southern Turkey.

About 24,000 Syrians have been living in ...

Perhaps the biggest question about the efforts to bring a pause in the fighting in Syria is: Have Russian air strikes emboldened the Syrian regime so much that it doesn't want to stop fighting?

Syrians making their way into Turkey say the intensification of regime and Russian airstrikes has forced them out of Syria after hanging on for years. Now they worry the regime is going to win.

Several Syrian hospitals were hit by airstrikes and missile attacks, throwing more doubts on the chances for a truce plan made by world powers last week.

Iraq's war against the Islamic State is gaining momentum. Intensified U.S. airstrikes and more than a year of U.S. training of Iraqi soldiers seem to be paying off. ISIS supply lines have been cut and its access to oil has been reduced. When Iraqi forces with coalition airstrikes retook the ...

Conditions are worsening in one ISIS-controlled area of Iraq. In pursuit of safety and stability, thousands of civilians are walking for days over the Hamrin Mountains, often without water or sleep.

ISIS has been driven out of Tikrit and most residents have returned. But armed Shiite groups are becoming entrenched in the Sunni city, an arrangement that's led to trouble elsewhere in Iraq.

Let's start on the front line of every faltering economy: the grocery store. In a Baghdad shop lined with baskets of spices and rose petal tea, owner Osama al-Hassani is measuring out roasted, salted beans.

"Is that enough?" he says to a customer.

It's not very much. ...

The United Nations says about 20,000 people have been killed in Iraq since the Islamic State began pushing into that country in 2014. NPR takes a look at the report and the devastation it describes.