Photographs of the bloodied face of a 14-year-old boy executed in front of his parents by jihadists in northern Syria show the extreme justice meted out in rebel-held areas.

Al-Qaeda's high command staked its interest in the outcome of Syria's civil war yesterday as its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called on jihadist fighters to build an anti-Western state after toppling President Bashar al-Assad.

Sometimes, in diplomacy, a translator is not enough. You need a code-breaker.

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.

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

President Barack Obama said he doesn't foresee any circumstance requiring the US to send ground troops into Syria, even as Washington pursues more evidence about the regime's purported use of chemical weapons.

The bodies of the Syrian boys and young men in jeans and casual shirts were strewn along a blood-stained pavement, dying apparently where they fell. Weeping women moved among the dead, and one of them screamed, "Where are you, people of the village?"

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.

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 United Nations yesterday said it was struggling to cope with an "unrelenting flow" of families fleeing Syria, as the number of documented refugees topped 700,000.

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.