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.

Clashes between Kurdish fighters and Turkey-backed opposition gunmen in northern Syria left at least 11 fighters dead in some of the most intense fighting in weeks between the two sides, an opposition war monitor and a Kurdish spokesman said Tuesday.

Exchange of fire and shelling between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and Turkey-backed opposition gunmen who identify as the Syrian National Army have not been uncommon since Turkish troops invaded parts of northern Syria in October of last year.

Britain's Supreme Court will on Monday hear the case of a woman stripped of her UK citizenship after joining the Islamic State in Syria, who wants to return to appeal the ruling.

When the Arab revolts that were sweeping the region and toppling autocrats like dominoes reached Syria, Bashar al-Assad's days at the helm looked numbered.

Nurses hover over a patient to insert a breathing tube as his condition suddenly deteriorates. ICU beds fill up almost overnight. As one patient dies of the coronavirus and is wheeled out, another is whisked in to take his place. An exhausted doctor leans against a wheelchair for a breather.

The pace is dizzying at the largest isolation hospital in Syria's northwestern city of Idlib. There are no bombs falling outside and the wounded don't crowd bloodstained corridors amid a shaky cease-fire in the country's decade old civil war. Still, the intensive care unit staff is overwhelmed with beds full of elderly patients gasping for air.

Israeli warplanes struck Syria Wednesday, hitting Iranian targets and killing 10 Syrian and foreign fighters in what the Israeli army called a retaliatory attack after explosive devices were found near one of its bases on the occupied Golan Heights.

The air strikes came hours before U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was to land in Israel for talks including on Iran, in what was likely to be his last visit to the staunch American ally before President Donald Trump leaves office.

On Nov. 13, 1970, a young air force officer from the coastal hills of Syria launched a bloodless coup. It was the latest in a succession of military takeovers since independence from France in 1946, and there was no reason to think it would be the last.

Yet 50 years later, Hafez Assad's family still rules Syria.

The Syrian government is working to secure the return of millions of refugees who fled war in their country, but Western sanctions are hindering the work of state institutions, complicating those plans, President Bashar Assad said Wednesday.

His comments came at the opening session of a controversial two-day international conference in Damascus on the return of refugees. The event, organized by Russia, is being boycotted by many Arab and Western countries and has been criticized by the U.N. and the U.S. Critics say the time is not ripe yet for the return of refugees, insisting the first priority should be to make it safe for people to go back to the war-torn country.