The Latest Breaking News from Khalil Ashawi

As some Syrians welcomed President Bashar al-Assad's return to the Arab League on Friday, others expressed dismay that Arab states had welcomed back a leader they blame for death and destruction during 12 years of brutal civil war.

Hussein Mankawi has little hope he will ever rebuild his home and food distribution businesses in the north-west Syrian city of Jandaris after they were reduced to rubble by last month's deadly earthquake, wiping out his life's work.

As an excavator claws at the shattered remains of yet another home in Syria's rebel-held northwest, Abdel Qader Abdelrahman surveys the debris in the hope of spotting people who might - against all the odds - still be alive underneath.

Rescue crews saved a 10-day-old baby and his mother trapped in the ruins of a building in Turkey on Friday and dug several people out from other sites as President Tayyip Erdogan said authorities should have reacted faster to this week's huge earthquake.

On one side of Syria's civil war, a man in army fatigues carried a lifeless child's ashen body from the rubble of a shattered building in the government-held city of Hama.

Wailing children, flattened buildings and hospitals full of bodies - a devastating earthquake on Monday looked painfully familiar for Syrian families and rescuers worn down by nearly 12 years of bombardment and displacement.

Humanitarian workers operating in the last opposition-held part of Syria fear a cholera outbreak sweeping the region will deepen further if the United Nations is forced to stop aid deliveries across the border from Turkey.

Rival Syrian rebel groups in northwestern Syria resumed heavy clashes a day after a fragile truce ended five days of bloody fighting in the last remaining opposition enclave, residents and rebels said on Monday.

A cholera outbreak that has claimed 29 lives in Syria is posing a danger across the frontlines of the country's 11-year-long war, stirring fears in crowded camps for the displaced who lack running water or sewage systems.