The Syrian conflict claimed at least 6,800 people in 2020, the lowest annual death toll since it began nearly a decade ago, a war monitor said Thursday.

Israeli air strikes in Syria targeting the pro-Damascus Lebanese Hizbullah group and Syrian air defence forces killed one Syrian soldier and wounded five others, a war monitor said Wednesday.

Germany said Friday it would allow deportation of Syrians to their war-ravaged homeland from 2021 if they are deemed a security risk, five years after a massive refugee influx.

The EU's biggest economic power and most populous member allowed in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Syria's devastating civil war in 2015-16 but security officials said it was time to lift blanket protections against expulsion.

The overall death toll for Syria's civil war has crept up to 387,000 following the least deadly of 10 years of conflict, a monitor said Wednesday.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday his country will continue to support Syria, urging Damascus to confront Israel in the occupied Golan Heights.

Rouhani's website said the remarks came during a meeting with visiting Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad.

Strolling through the alleyways of war-torn Syria's capital, Rania Kataf snaps photos of the city's famed houses, capturing their nooks and crannies for posterity.

More than 900 pro-Turkish Syrian fighters have returned to Syria after the end of fighting in the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh, a Britain-based Syrian war monitor said Wednesday.

A November 9 truce ended more than a month of fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the ethnic Armenian enclave that broke away from Baku's control in a war in the 1990s.

They may be scarred, but nothing, not even torture, bombing or exile, could break them.

As the Arab Spring revolts swept through the Middle East and North Africa region like a wildfire, thousands of young Syrians joined protests in March 2011 demanding change in a nation ruled by the family of President Bashar al-Assad since 1970.

Social media and smartphones briefly gave youthful Arab Spring protesters a technological edge that helped topple ageing dictatorships a decade ago as their revolutionary spirit went viral.

Israeli air strikes in Syria overnight killed at least eight fighters operating in pro-Iran militias, a war monitoring group said Wednesday.