BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian soldiers slowly stab a man to death, puncturing his back dozens of times. A rebel commander bites an organ ripped out of an enemy combatant. A young boy hacks the head off a prisoner. A soldier mutilates the genitals of a corpse.

These are the images of Syrian conflict, the first war in which the prevalence of camera phones and Internet access has allowed hundreds of gruesome war crimes to be broadcast, spreading hatred and fear. They are defining the war that is spilling across Syria’s borders and making reconciliation an ever more distant prospect.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian soldiers slowly stab a man to death, puncturing his back dozens of times. A rebel commander bites an organ ripped out of an enemy combatant. A young boy hacks the head off a prisoner. A soldier mutilates the genitals of a corpse.

These are the images of Syrian conflict, the first war in which the prevalence of camera phones and Internet access has allowed hundreds of gruesome war crimes to be broadcast, spreading hatred and fear. They are defining the war that is spilling across Syria’s borders and making reconciliation an ever more distant prospect.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israeli jets devastated Syrian targets near Damascus on Sunday in a heavy overnight air raid that Western and Israeli officials called a new strike on Iranian missiles bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

As Syria’s two-year-old civil war veered into the potentially atomic arena of Iran’s confrontation with Israel and the West over its nuclear program, people were woken in the Syrian capital by explosions that shook the ground like an earthquake and sent pillars of flame high into the night sky.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned against escalating a fraught situation in Syria after Israel struck targets near Damascus on Sunday, targeting what its officials said were Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah militants.

Israeli officials said the raid, the second in 48 hours, was not connected to Syria’s civil war. It was aimed, rather, at stopping Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, acquiring weapons that could be used to strike Tel Aviv if Israel followed through on threats to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israel carried out its second air strike in days on Syria early on Sunday, a Western intelligence source said, in an attack that shook Damascus with a series of powerful blasts and drove columns of fire into the night sky.

Israel declined comment but Syria accused the Jewish state of striking a military facility just north of the capital – one which its jets had first targeted three months ago. Iran, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and an arch-enemy for Israel, urged states in the region to resist the Israeli attack.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A bomb blast in the government-held center of Damascus killed 13 people on Tuesday, state television said, while rebels and loyalists to President Bashar al-Assad traded accusations over what they said was a chemical weapons attack the day before.

Residents described scenes of carnage in Marjeh Square, in a the commercial district in the heart of the capital, with dozens of cars and buildings damaged by the bomb which went off in front of the former Interior Ministry building.

BAALBEK, Lebanon (Reuters) – Along north Lebanon’s highways, the portraits of Hezbollah militants who have died in skirmishes with Israel are fading. But there are glistening photos of those killed in Hezbollah’s new fight.

These men died in Syria, battling alongside the army of Hezbollah’s close ally President Bashar al-Assad against rebel units in a conflict which has killed more than 70,000 people and risks reigniting Lebanon’s 15-year sectarian civil war.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Western-backed Syrian rebels in the province of Aleppo denied on Tuesday that they had kidnapped two prominent Syrian archbishops but said they were working for their release and trying to find out who had taken them.

Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, head of the rebel military council in Aleppo, said in a statement that his group was “ready to negotiate with any entity, even if it is the regime (of President Bashar al-Assad), for their release”.

BEIRUT, April 17 (Reuters) – What happens to a country when
one in 10 of its residents is a refugee?

For the government of Lebanon – a tiny Mediterranean state
of 4 million people that has seen almost half a million Syrians
enter its territory over the past two years – the answer is
clear. But economists say it may be overlooking the
opportunities an influx of refugees can bring.

BEIRUT, April 8 (Reuters) – A suicide car bomb killed at
least 15 people and wounded 53 in the main business district of
Damascus on Monday in what the Syrian prime minister said was a
response to army gains against rebels around the capital.

The bomb near a school in the Sabaa Bahrat district, which
also houses the Central Bank and Finance Ministry, set cars
ablaze and damaged buildings, state television footage showed.