Big on promises but light on details, the Beirut Municipality unveiled numerous plans to improve the city Wednesday evening at a town hall meeting open to professionals by invitation only. Despite the hand-picked crowd of around 70 people, disputes still arose, but city council members showed little will to back down on two particularly controversial […]

The United States Capitol was placed on lockdown Thursday afternoon after a woman tried to ram a car into the White House gate, was chased by Secret Service and exchanged shots with police, sources said. The suspect — who sources said had a child in the car — was shot and killed, and a shelter-in-place […]

An obligation to the fallen, the survivors and the families involved in the 1983 bombing in Beirut, Lebanon. Tuesday, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Swansboro, Doolittle began a daily 12.5-mile walk in and around Jacksonville — and he will continue over the next 22 days, ending at Lejeune Memorial Gardens on Oct. […]

BEIRUT — Um Ali is one of more than a million Syrians who have fled the country since 2011, when the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began. She left Aleppo with her husband and son four months ago to join her sister, mother and other family in Lebanon. Her son had just turned 18 — […]

By BEN HUBBARD

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fighters from the fastest-growing Qaeda franchise in Syria have repeatedly clashed with other rebel brigades, seizing towns, replacing crosses on churches with black flags and holding classes to teach Syrian children about the importance of battling “infidels,” meaning anyone who is not a Sunni Muslim. Since the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, announced its presence in Syria this year, it has emerged as the leading force for the foreign fighters streaming into the country, exploiting the chaos of the civil war as it tries to lay the groundwork for an Islamic state.

“They want to carve out a jihadi state or a jihadi territory and obviously anything above that is gravy, like overthrowing the Assad regime,” said Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University. “I don’t think they have ambitions of taking over the entire country, although they’d be happy to.”

While the Syrian rebels initially welcomed the group as a powerful ally in the civil war against President Bashar al-Assad, many now resent it for putting its international jihadi agenda ahead of the fight to topple the government. Antigovernment activists say they detest the group’s brutality and imposition of strict social codes, and even other Islamist rebels say the struggle’s focus should remain on leadership change.

The tensions have set off frequent fighting between rebel groups that has undermined the effort to combat the government and could complicate efforts to dispose of Syria’s chemical weapons. An advance team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in Damascus on Tuesday to discuss with Syrian officials the logistics of destroying the country’s chemical arsenal. Officials from the group said keeping its personnel safe during a raging civil war would be extremely difficult.

The rise of extremist groups has exacerbated Syria’s instability. ISIS has attacked rebel bases to capture supplies, and routed rebel groups last month to seize control of Azaz, a strategic city near the Turkish border, leading to a tense cease-fire. Last week, Qaeda fighters tried to storm a village in Idlib Province to kidnap some rebels, leaving 20 dead from both sides, including the jihadis’ Libyan commander.

Security services on Tuesday arrested four Lebanese citizens on suspicion of involvement in the case of people smuggling to Australia via Indonesia and Malaysia, state-run National News Agency reported. “Four Lebanese, some of whom hail from Akkar, have been arrested for interrogation over possible involvement in the activities of people smuggling between Lebanon, Malaysia, Indonesia […]

President Michel Suleiman has said Lebanese authorities would push for the return of some of the Syrian refugees, who have escaped to Lebanon, to safe areas in their country. In remarks to An Nahar newspaper published on Monday, Suleiman said: “Their return would take place through coordination with the local administration.” “Some of the displaced […]

Six weeks ago, a two-man delegation arrived in secret in Damascus: civilians from Aleppo who represented elements of the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group largely composed of fighters who deserted the regime’s army in the first year of the war. They came under a guarantee of safety, and met, so I am told, a […]

Lebanon is trying to redraw its border with Israel. Official Israeli sources say that Lebanon is about to award offshore oil and gas exploration licenses in areas that encroach on Israel’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). It is unclear what Israel plans to do about this matter, which could ignite the border dispute with Lebanon. However, […]

President Michel Suleiman has postponed a visit he planned to make to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks with top officials, his office announced. The statement did not set a new date for the visit. It said Suleiman followed up the security situation in the eastern city of Baalbek and the issue of Lebanese asylum-seekers […]