American Steve Gumaer had only been in Syria for hours when he learned 138 more families had arrived with no place to stay. The residents from the town of Tel Tamer fled Turkish bombardments, piling into open-bed trucks for a 40-mile trip that could mean the difference between life and death.

MEXICO: A shootout between rival gangs may have precipitated the brutal attack on Mormons in Sonora that killed nine members of the LeBarón family, a group of dual Mexican and American citizens.

ALGERIA: “All churches in Algeria are at risk of closure,” reports an officer with the World Evangelical Alliance. In the last seven weeks, authorities have closed 12 evangelical Protestant churches, including two of the country’s largest under a 2006 ordinance that restricts non-Muslim worship.

SYRIA: Turkish troops faced off against President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army in Tel Tamer, a historically Assyrian Christian enclave located outside the so-called “safe zone,” in Turkey’s ongoing violations of its cease-fire agreement reached last week with Russia.

SYRIA: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the 48-year-old leader of ISIS, killed himself and three children, detonating a suicide vest in a tunnel while being pursued by U.S. special operations forces, according to President Donald Trump. Watch and read the president’s full address from Sunday.

SYRIA: On-the-ground sources report on Thursday that Turkey has breached a cease-fire agreement, as Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army units attacked Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces near Tel Tamer. Powerful explosions are reported in Qamishli and Raqqa.

At the end of two weeks of fighting in Syria, the United States has paid a high price to get perhaps 1,000 U.S. military personnel out of harm’s way.

An area in the process of stabilizing under a semi-autonomous constitution aimed at restoring rights to Kurds, Christians, Yazidis, and Arab Muslims has reverted to a turbulent scene of atrocities and jihadist movements.