Bashar al-Assad - Page 21

Contents: Egypt to send troops to Syria to aid Bashar al-Assad and Russia; Egypt rejects its former benefactor, Saudi Arabia, in favor of Russia and Iran

Contents: Turkey, Syria, Kurds, ISIS converging on a major military confrontation in al-Bab; Syrian airstrike on Turkish forces threatens wider war

While the world watches America’s Cuban exile community celebrate the death of dictator Fidel Castro, those who have governed their own countries similarly have issued official statements of condolences for the communist caudillo, describing him as a “giant” among repressive autocrats who “resisted” the beacon of freedom 90 miles to his north.

The Turkish military reported Thursday that three of its soldiers died and ten others were wounded in an airstrike believed to have been executed by the troops of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the first such incident in the five-year-old Syrian Civil War.

The death toll among Iranian-recruited Shiite troops, including many Afghan citizens, fighting on behalf of dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria has surpassed 1,000, according to an official from the Shiite Islamic Republic.

A new study finds that the Islamic State has used chemical weapons 52 times in its “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, following reports that fighters seeking to liberate the city of Mosul fear increased use of such weapons the closer the jihadists get to defeat.

Syrian government forces advanced quickly inside rebel-held east Aleppo on Monday, as the UN raised the alarm for nearly one million people living under siege in the war-wracked country

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, in an interview published Tuesday, issued his first remarks since the United States elected Donald Trump its next president. Assad told the Portuguese outlet RTP TV Trump’s attitude towards Syria was “promising” and suggesting Trump may be a “natural ally” to Syria, Iran, and Russia.

Contents: Communal violence grows in Myanmar (Burma) between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims; Syria and Russia resume bombings of women and children in Aleppo

Russia has launched a major air offensive in Syria as part of a joint operation with Bashar al Assad’s regime.

The residents of Syria’s besieged city of Aleppo received a text Sunday, believed to have come from the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, demanding they leave the city or perish when a “strategically planned assault using high precision weapons occurs within 24 hours.”

Syrian insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border on Monday as inter-rebel tensions spilled over, playing to President Bashar al-Assad’s advantage with the government tightening its grip on rebel-held eastern Aleppo.

Contents: Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) forced to close emergency rooms; Syrian regime sending ‘leave or die’ text messages to Aleppo residents

Britain’s Foreign Office will spend the next three months trying to convince senior figures in Donald Trump’s team not to prioritise fighting Islamic terrorists in Syria. Since becoming president-elect Trump has reaffirmed his intention to cut support to Islamist rebels and instead

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad, told NPR the Assad regime was ready to cooperate with President-Elect Donald Trump, although the Syrians want to “wait and see” what his policies look like, “particularly toward terrorism.”

The Russian government issued a statement accusing assorted anti-Syrian government rebels of using chemical weapons in Aleppo, hours after refusing to participate in an international condemnation of both Damascus and the Islamic State for the same crime.

Contents: Hundreds of Australian migrants to be resettled in the United States; As winter approaches, Syria’s east Aleppo faces mass starvation

The Russian military said Friday it has evidence of the use of chemical weapons by rebels in Syria’s besieged eastern city of Aleppo.

Syria’s main opposition group has urged US president-elect Donald Trump to protect civilians and help end the bloodshed in the country, devastated by five years of war.

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.

Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president on Wednesday drew concern among Syrian rebel groups and a degree of optimism in Damascus, where his victory was seen as a better outcome than a Hillary Clinton win.

The Sunday Times of London scored an interview with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad over the weekend and found him utterly devoid of regret for his brutal actions in the Syrian civil war, which has killed some 400,000 Syrians and driven millions more out of the country.

The Unified Medical Bureau of Eastern Ghouta, an activist organization opposed to the regime of President Bashar Assad, claims that an artillery barrage from government forces struck a nursery in an opposition-controlled suburb of Damascus on Sunday, killing at least six children.

U.S. government and military leaders have begun the mission to convince the government of Turkey that cooperating with Syrian Kurdish militias, which Ankara considers terrorist elements, is the only way to defeat the Islamic State in its self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa.

Contents: US-backed Kurdish militias in Syria make surprise announcement of Raqqa operation; Is Syria’s Bashar al-Assad a ‘necessary evil’?

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

Iran now commands a force of around 25,000 Shi’ite Muslim militants in Syria, mostly made up of recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the former head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency has told a visiting Swiss delegation.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad insisted that Syrian society was “much better than before” as far as diversity and inter-ethnic cohesion, according to a New York Times report.

A Pentagon spokesman has confirmed that the United States is seeking to begin the operation to liberate Raqqa, Syria, of the Islamic State terrorist group as soon as a parallel operation in Mosul, Iraq, is complete.

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

Russia seeks “honest cooperation” for a political solution in Syria, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday as Moscow declared a brief truce in the war-ravaged city of Aleppo.

The United Nations has employed many friends, relatives, and political associates of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to work on relief operations in Syria, a move that has resulted in more aid being delivered to government-held territories than areas controlled by the opposition, reveal leaked UN documents obtained by The Guardian.

Nearly half of Russians fear that Moscow’s bombing campaign in Syria could spark World War III, a poll showed Monday.

The IDF is in a panic about the Russian military’s presence and deployment of sophisticated weaponry in the region, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Sunday.

A pro-Palestinian group funded a 2009 visit by Jeremy Corbyn, the current leader of the U.K. Labour Party, to Syria, where he met with President Bashar Assad, English-language reports said this week.

Rebel factions, backed by the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, have reportedly launched a major offensive to break the siege east of Syria’s Aleppo city by forces loyal to the Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad.