The Pentagon identified two U.S. Army soldiers killed last week in combat in Afghanistan as Spc. Joseph P. Collette, 29, of Ohio, who was out of the 71st Ordnance Group, and Sgt. 1st Class Will D. Lindsay, 33, of Colorado, who was with the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Both men were out of Fort Carson, Colo. The Pentagon said only that the two men died of wounds sustained during combat operations in Kunduz province. Four U.S.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) liberated the last area in Syria controlled by Islamic State (ISIS) on Saturday. ISIS militants made their final stand in a tent camp in Baghuz, which was bombed to shreds. “Baghuz is free and the military victory against [ISIS] has been achieved,” tweeted Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led SDF. Saturday’s bombing ended weeks of heavy fighting in Baghuz and brings to a close a caliphate ISIS established in large areas of Syria and in Iraq in 2014.

Israeli warplanes on Friday struck Hamas militant targets in the southern Gaza Strip in response to a rocket attack hours earlier on the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. The Israeli military said in a statement it hit about 100 Hamas targets, and Palestinian media reported the strikes hit the group’s naval bases. Rockets from Gaza struck Tel Aviv on Thursday for the first time since 2014. Sirens blared, warning civilians to seek shelter. Neither side reported casualties. Hamas denied responsibility for the initial strikes, saying they went against Palestinian interests.

One thing you notice, interviewing the survivors, is they all sit the same way: knees pulled to their chests, arms encircling their knees, hugging themselves tightly as they talk, wanting to share but also recoil from violent memories of their captivity at the hands of Islamic State.

The United States destroyed an Afghan army base with airstrikes Wednesday in what a U.S. official called the “fog of war.” A unit of U.S. and Afghan forces were patrolling near a national army base on the outskirts of Tirin Kot, the capital of southern Uruzgan province, when fighting broke out between the base and the patrol due to mistaken identities, The New York Times reported. The fighting continued for hours until the U.S.

Even on a day of biting February wind, the fields are lush with grass across the Khabur River Valley and so brilliantly green it hurts the eyes to look at them. A boy hurries sheep up a muddy path, while two women in bright headscarves bend over a plot of chard, picking.

Near the entrance to the village of Tel Hormizd, a bombed-out water tower, lying sideways near the riverbank, signals visitors that this is no rural idyll. ISIS fighters destroyed the tank when they captured this area in 2015, and no one has returned to repair it or a vast landscape of surrounding destruction.

QAMESHLI, Syria—Gabriel Moshe is the sort of gentleman whose coat and tie look morning-fresh though it’s nearing midnight, and we are talking by the last light and heat before the electricity shuts down. Rationing the power grid is just one routine part of life in a war zone. 

Moshe’s dignified profile shouldn’t fool anyone: He’s actually an enemy of the state. President Bashar al-Assad’s regime arrested him in 2013 and held him for 2½ years, a man of peace caught in the politics of war.