$re = '/{{flag\|[a-z|A-Z\s]+}}/m';
$str = '| 152||data-sort-value="4"|{{Increase}} 4||{{flag|Syria}}||3.462||data-sort-value="0.393"|{{increase}} 0.393||0.777||0.396||0.501||0.082||0.494||0.151||1.062
| 153||data-sort-value="-4"|{{decrease}} -4||{{flag|Tanzania}}||3.349||data-sort-value="-0.317"|{{decrease}} -0.317||0.511||1.042||0.365||0.390||0.354||0.066||0.621
| 154||data-sort-value="3"|{{Increase}} 3||{{flag|Burundi}}||2.905||data-sort-value="0.000"|{{steady}} 0.000||0.092||0.630||0.152||0.060||0.204||0.084||1.683
| 155||NA||{{flag|Central African Republic}}||2.693||NA||0.000||0.000||0.019||0.271||0.281||0.057||2.066
|{{flagicon|Kosovo}} \'\'[[Kosovo]]\'\' <ref name="KOS" group=Note>{{Kosovo-note}}</ref>
|{{flagicon|Somaliland}} [[Somaliland|Somaliland region]]
|{{flagicon|Palestine}} \'\'[[Palestinian Territories]]\'\'{{refn|See the following on statehood criteria:';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php