Eye-witnesses say streets of Palmyra are strewn with hundreds of bodies – the latest victims of terrorists's savagery.

Mass graves containing the bodies of 1700 Iraqi military cadets killed by Isis are being opened - TV clips showing skeletal remains still wearing combat boots.

Abducted, locked away, all but starved, raped... then, a dramatic escape. How one Yazidi girl escaped the clutches of her Isis captors.

World Vision chief executive Chris Clarke travelled with broadcaster Rachel Smalley to the Middle East to meet some of the millions affected by the Syrian conflict, and was struck by the number of fathers having to make impossible choices for their families.

Atriumphant Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to be on a new collision course with Barack Obama after the US President bluntly restated his belief in a Palestinian state and criticised the Israeli leader's election campaign tactics.

The Syrian conflict is one of several emergencies World Vision is responding to.

The Independent investigates how Isis jihadis govern every aspect of life within the territories they control.

Many Syrians in refugee camps across the border in Lebanon were lawyers, teachers, dentists, accountants. As the conflict enters its fifth year they have become the forgotten millions.

A decision on whether John Key's deletion of his text messages amounts to a destruction of the country's public records is progressing.

One day, he was a dental surgeon. The next, he was held at gunpoint and thrown in a cell, where he watched the other prisoners shot one by one. Ashour tells his story.

Political unrest. Conflict. The collapse of the country's social infrastructure. And then a daily struggle just to stay alive. An artists has imagined what it would look like in NZ.

Mustafa was standing outside his home in Aleppo when the jet flew over. He has no memory of what happened next but he regained consciousness many days later in Turkey.

For refugees, possessions are few and far between but there is still plenty that they treasure. Photographer Jo Currie captured these precious fragments.

New images have emerged of three men accused of homosexuality and blasphemy being publicly beheaded at a traffic roundabout in northern Iraq.

Pakistan has test-fired a ballistic missile able to carry a nuclear warhead to every part of India. Yesterday's test was another escalation in Islamabad's effort to keep pace with its neighbouring rival's formidable military advancements.

Zeinab is in the throes of puberty. She is 14 years old, Syrian, and a wife.

Today the Herald and World Vision begin a campaign to help the 5.6 million children left homeless by war in Syria. Broadcaster Rachel Smalley tells some of their stories.

In the desert beyond Dubai's glittering and manic metropolis, Ewan McDonald unleashes his inner petrolhead ...

Asim Qureshi has caused outrage by saying the murderer Jihadi John was 'beautiful' adding that he 'wouldn't hurt a fly'.

The Isis executioner known as 'Jihadi John' was today named as a graduate from London who was able to flee to Syria despite being on a terror watch list.

The decision to commit NZ military contingent to Iraq is a case of misguided foreign policy.

A senior US security official will visit New Zealand next month as part of a tour of the Asia-Pacific.

The quality of New Zealand's training contribution to the Iraqi armed forces would be a welcome addition to the fight against Isis (Islamic State), Iraq's ambassador to New Zealand, Mouayed Saleh, said last night.

Passions over the announced deployment of a New Zealand training mission to Iraq spilled over in Parliament again yesterday.

In Dubai, Pamela Wade meets a cranky camel who takes her on a peaceful and relaxing ride.

Buildings lie in waste, reduced to rubble. Others, their faces are shorn clean off. Bullet casings litter the streets, unexploded mortars burrow into pavements.

Kurdish militias claimed to have driven Isis (Islamic State) jihadists from the Syrian town of Kobane, after an intense four-month battle that killed thousands but captured the world's imagination.

He ruled over one of the most repressive regimes in the world - so why were the flags on the Harbour Bridge flying at half mast for the late Saudi King?