New Zealand would back United States airstrikes against Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, Prime Minister John Key and Labour leader David Cunliffe say.

American drones are being flown over the Syrian stronghold of Isis (Islamic State) for the first time, in an effort to target the jihadi group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

As the Nato summit in Wales ends, Simon Tisdall assesses their choices.

A ceasefire between Ukraine and separatist rebels began last night and appears to still be in place following a five-month bloody conflict left more than 2,000 dead.

The Ukrainian government and separatist rebels agreed to a ceasefire amid flickering hopes of peace.

Few experts disagree with David Cameron and Barack Obama's assertion that by paying ransoms Western governments end up bankrolling the very terrorism groups they seek to combat.

The Prince of Wales has written an impassioned letter to Christians in Iraq speaking of his "heartbreak" at their suffering at the hands of Jihadists.

An Iraqi soldier survived a mass execution carried out by Islamic State militants (Isis) by dropping to the floor and pretending to be dead.

A Briton will be the next hostage murdered by Islamist terrorists, the British extremist known as "Jihadi John" threatened in a beheading video released yesterday.

The video showing the killing of Steven Sotloff is a mirror image of that two weeks ago carrying the last words of his colleague James Foley.

Vladimir Putin has boasted to European leaders his forces could sweep into Kiev in two weeks if he wanted.

The US security services recruited Alaskan fishermen, trappers and bush pilots as "stay-behind agents" to form a secret American resistance network if the Soviet Union staged a widely feared air invasion of the territory.

Islamic radicals returning from Iraq and Syria will be forced on to "deradicalisation" programmes to reverse any brainwashing.

Russia is "practically in a state of war against Europe", with the crisis in Ukraine rapidly approaching "the point of no return", warn EU leaders.

25: In the studio photograph Lieutenant Kenneth Thomson wears the splendid military dress of a British officer in the Indian Army.

Britain faces the "greatest and deepest" terror threat in the country's history, Prime Minister David Cameron warned yesterday as he pledged emergency measures to tackle extremists.

The civil war in Syria has forced a record three million people out of the country as more than a million people fled in the past year, the United Nations refugee agency said yesterday.

A British extremist who is one of the suspects in the murder of James Foley is the son of an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist awaiting trial.

An Israeli air strike hit a house in central Gaza before dawn yesterday, fatally injuring five family members, including two women and two preschoolers.

Israel said it would call up 10,000 reservists as Palestinians vowed to avenge Israel's killing of three Hamas commanders in Gaza.

A leading war historian believes millions being spent on World War I commemorations will be wasted if it fails to focus on education rather than remembrance.

Obama undeterred as air strikes continue even though jihadists say they will execute more US journalists

A secret, failed mission by the United States military to rescue American hostages, including the murdered journalist James Foley, has been described in full to the Daily Telegraph.

David Cameron has said that it is "increasingly likely" that a British jihadist beheaded American journalist James Foley

The headstone, its inscription concealed for decades under a coat of lichen, bears witness to the past.

A young soldier who died exactly 100 years ago has been officially acknowledged as the first New Zealand casualty of WWI.

Up to 80 Yazidis have been reported killed by Isis (Islamic State) fighters in the biggest massacre so far of the Iraqi minority.