President Bashar al-Assad - Page 2

Uncertainty spread across the Middle East following Donald Trump’s US election win, with questions hanging over the war against the Islamic State group, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran’s nuclear deal.

President Bashar al-Assad claimed Western powers are “becoming much weaker” in Syria, in a confident interview published in The Sunday Times.

Saudi Arabia has congratulated Lebanon’s new President Michel Aoun on his election despite the support he received from the kingdom’s regional foes.

The Russian and Syrian bombing raids in Aleppo have had horrific results with nearly 500 dead, while food rations are expected to run out by the end of the month, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad said on Friday that the Syrian army’s capture of Aleppo, which has come under renewed bombardment in an effort to seize its rebel-held sector, would be “a very important springboard” to pushing “terrorists” back to Turkey.

The Lebanese Shi’ite movement Hezbollah vowed to maintain its “jihad” in neighboring Syria at a huge rally in Beirut on Wednesday, a day after its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the war was in a phase of escalation.

Russia will create a permanent naval base in Syria to expand its military footprint in its closest Middle East ally, a government official said on Monday, a week after Moscow said it was considering reopening Soviet-era bases in Vietnam and Cuba.

The implementation of a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers is still fragile, the head of the UN agency that polices Iran’s side of the deal has said, warning that small mistakes could have grave consequences.

Rebels said on Tuesday they repelled a Syrian army offensive in southern Aleppo as Russian and Syrian warplanes continued to pound residential areas in besieged parts of the city where thousands of civilians are trapped.

President Bashar al-Assad on Monday described the deadly US-led coalition raid on his forces in eastern Syria at the weekend as “flagrant American aggression”.

A Syria ceasefire billed as the “last chance” for peace appeared to be holding on its first full day Tuesday, with residents across the country reporting a quiet night and anxious for aid.

A ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia and the United States is due to begin at sundown Monday, after scores of civilians were killed in a bloody weekend of strikes.

Syrian government forces advanced on Sunday south of Aleppo city, a military source and state media said, as they pushed to once again encircle rebel neighbourhoods and reimpose a siege.

Syrian regime jets pounded US-backed Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria for a second day, even after the US-led coalition scrambled jets to protect its military advisers working on the ground.

Iran’s foreign ministry condemned this week’s killing of a French priest, drawing a parallel with the recent decapitation of a young boy by jihadists in Syria, state media said Thursday.

MISGAV AM, Israel — When Israeli army commanders describe how the next war against Hezbollah could unfold, they often search for words not used in military manuals. The future conflict, they warn, will be “ferocious” and “terrible.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu met in Damascus on Saturday with President Bashar al-Assad to discuss anti-terrorist “cooperation” in Syria’s conflict, a bone of contention between Moscow and Washington.

Tehran on Sunday dismissed its renewed blacklisting by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism charging that it was US allies including Riyadh that were the real culprits.

Bomb blasts killed scores of people in Jableh and Tartous on Syria’s Mediterranean coast on Monday and wounded many others in the government-controlled territory that hosts Russian military bases, monitors and state media said. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the

The United States said on Thursday it was concerned about reports that Russia is moving more military equipment into Syria to bolster President Bashar al-Assad, with a truce in tatters and peace talks in meltdown.

WASHINGTON — President Obama had “an intense conversation” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday in which he expressed concern on the eve of his visit to the Middle East and Europe about the fragile Syrian peace talks and increased violence in Ukraine, White House officials said.

Iran has sent commandos to Syria as advisers, a military official said on Monday, suggesting it is using its army as well as paramilitary forces to help President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the country’s civil war. Tehran is Assad’s main

Syrian government forces backed by heavy Russian air support drove Islamic State out of Palmyra on Sunday, inflicting what the army called a “mortal blow” to militants who seized the city last year and dynamited its ancient temples. The loss

TEL AVIV – In the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels, the Egyptian press claimed that European support for the Muslim Brotherhood is the reason terror has struck the continent. The editorial in the official Egyptian daily Al-Ahram asserted that Europe has maintained ties

TEL AVIV – Russia has exploited the United States’ near-complete absence in Syria to wield its influence beyond President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, including to the heretofore Western-backed Syrian opposition, an Arab intelligence source told Breitbart Jerusalem. The Russian-controlled Hmeimim airbase,

At least 46 people were killed in twin car bomb blasts that hit Syria’s Homs on Sunday in one of the deadliest such attacks in the city in five years of civil war, a monitoring group said, and state media

Airstrikes hit four hospitals and a school building in northern Syria Monday, killing at least 50 people, according to various media reports.

JAFFA, Israel – The Islamic State released photos of the public punishment of a Syrian man convicted of theft, which included chopping off his hand with a machete. The punishment was carried out in Raqqa, Syria, the so-called Syrian capital

JAFFA, Israel – Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has delivered a significant blow to the Lebanese militia’s popularity in the Arab world. Pan-Arab adulation for Hezbollah culminated in the wake of its 2006 war with Israel, when it was

An Islamic State terror attack in Europe is being planned by a dying woman intent on disguising herself as a Syrian refugee, security sources have revealed. Anti-terror police are desperately searching for the 21-year-old, identified only as Oygul M, after