Israel has ordered troops to prepare to remain throughout winter on Mount Hermon — a strategic peak inside a buffer zone that has existed for decades with Syria but which Israeli forces have seized in the wake of the Assad regime's collapse.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan discussed on Friday the need for continued efforts to counter any resurgence of Islamic State in Syria following the fall of Bashar-al Assad.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday told Turkey it was "imperative" to work against a resurgence of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

As a rebel alliance with a tenuous hold on power struggles to assert control of the fractured country, Israel, Turkey and the United States are trying to influence what Syria will become.

For Syria’s Kurdish minority, America’s closest ally in the country, the struggle for a new order is entering a potentially even more challenging phase. Over the course of Syria’s civil war, Kurdish fighters have fended off an array of armed factions,