Iran on Sunday welcomed the proposed ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia and the United States, but said a monitoring system was needed to stop it being exploited by “terrorists”.
A day of intense airstrikes Saturday on and around the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 45 people, according to opposition activists.
Contents: Turkey presses to establish a ‘no-fly zone’ in northern Syria; Turkey’s forces and Kurdish forces set to clash in Manbij; US and Russia once again announced a peace deal in Syria
73 humanitarian aid groups are dropping out of the United Nations “Whole of Syria” program, accusing the UN of cooperating too closely with the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. The move comes shortly after an exposé in The Guardian revealed deep financial ties between Assad and UN humanitarian projects in Syria.
Trying to understand the different players and factions fighting in Syria currently is like trying to get through Tolstoy’s War and Peace – though the title aptly refers to the ongoing war, but there is no peace.
Hillary Clinton’s “hawkish foreign policy” was questioned during NBC’s “Commander in Chief Forum” by a progressive female voter who served as an intelligence analyst specializing in counter-violence extremism.
Northern Syria’s Aleppo province, which has been at the epicenter of the nearly five-year-old war in the country, is a place where the Syrian regime has blatantly and repeatedly crossed President Barack Obama’s “red line” by using chemical weapons on citizens amid the ongoing carnage and chaos that has left tens of thousands of people dead and wounded.
Russian and Iran-backed Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad is using warplanes to drop suspected chlorine-laden bombs on a nearby suburb, wounding at least 80 people, most of them women and children.
Turkey is seeking a greater role in fighting the Islamic State in Syria, even hoping to collaborate with the U.S. military to liberate Raqqa, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The declaration has alarmed Russia, which is expressing “concern” at an expansion of Turkey’s military action in the region.
Contents: Syrian regime drops chlorine-laded barrel bomb on Aleppo market; From 2013: The history of how Syria’s Bashar al-Assad created ISIS
President Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit on Monday morning to discuss the Syrian crisis, in what the UK Sun described as a “tense standoff,” with Obama “stony-faced” after a humiliating snub by the Chinese hosts.
Contents: Turkey sends more tanks into Syria in ‘New Phase’ of military action; Syrian rebels capture 14 villages near Hama in four days; Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army once again close to collapse
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.
Turkey, which patched up strained ties with Israel and Russia, aims to normalize relations with Egypt and even rebuild ties in future with Syria, where it has launched a cross-border offensive, the prime minister said on Friday.
Contents: Fault lines: Saudi Arabia-China-Pakistan and India-U.S. continue to harden; Saudi Arabia and China sign economic and military agreements; Saudi Arabia and Pakistan discuss economic and military ties; U.S. and India sign a landmark defense agreement
“The UN has awarded contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to people closely associated with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, as part of an aid program that critics fear is increasingly at the whim of the government in Damascus,” reported the UK Guardian on Monday.
Contents: Uzbekistan’s dictator president Karimov suffers stroke, threatening Central Asia stability; Brief generational history of Uzbekistan
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the official spokesman for the Islamic State (IS) group who gained notoriety for his frequent calls for jihad, has been killed in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, the militant group’s media outlet announced Tuesday.
The US Department of State travel warning to Turkey, reissued Tuesday, relies on concrete evidence of imminent large-scale terror attacks to be carried out by Kurdish as well as Islamic militants, an Arab intelligence official told Breitbart Jerusalem.
Contents: Turkey’s invasion of Syria continues, bombing Kurdish targets; America may be forced to choose between Turkey and Kurds
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad still has the capability to launch chemical weapon attacks, according to a summary of a confidential watchdog report provided to the United Nations.
The battle going on inside Iraq is intensifying between Iraqi forces and Islamic State jihadists. On Tuesday, Iraqi forces reported making major progress in their fight against ISIS by taking Iraq city of Qayyarah.
After a scathing UN investigation, the White House said Wednesday it was “impossible to deny” that Syria had launched chemical weapon attacks, while calling for President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to be held accountable.
Syria’s civil war claimed 470,000 lives since it started in March 2011, the Syrian Centre for Policy Research announced in February. That’s an average of about 262 deaths per day and 7,860 per month. The carnage has continued unabated, so, applying the same death rate nearly 200 days after the February estimate, the death toll is over 520,000.
JAFFA, Israel – Iran is actively trying to bring Turkey and Syria closer together, according to a report in the international Saudi publication Asharq Al-Awsat, headquartered in London.
Turkey’s operation “Euphrates Shield,” intended to curb the expansion of both the Islamic State and Kurdish militias in Syria, follows rumors spread by Russian officials that Turkey offered them the use of its Incirlik Airbase, also home to U.S. military assets.
Contents: Kurds, Assad forces, US and ISIS converge in Hasaka, alarming Turkey; Turkey launches rebel army to fight both ISIS and Kurds in Syria
Iran and Russia are both claiming Russia’s withdrawal from Iran’s Hamadan Airbase has occurred because Russia’s operations in Syria from the base have concluded, but the timing follows some harsh words from Iranian officials accusing the Russians of “ungentlemanly” boasting about their operations in Iran.
Contents: International Criminal Court gets conviction for ‘cultural genocide’ in Timbuktu Mali; In an embarrassing turnaround, Russia removes its bombers from Iran; Turkey begins to fully enter the war in Syria militarily
Contents: Turkey’s downward spiral continues with massive wedding terror attack; Report: US military moving nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania; Turkey’s Erdogan announces a complete U-turn on Syria policy
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Saturday his country is willing to accept a role for Syrian President Bashar Assad during a transitional period, but insisted he has no place in Syria’s future.
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.
Chinese Rear Admiral Guan Youfei paid a visit to Damascus this week, meeting with Syrian Defense Minister Lt. General Fahd Jassem al-Frejj in a bid to “strengthen cooperation” between the military commands of the two nations, as China’s Xinhua news agency put it.
Contents: Stephen K. Bannon is named chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign; Furious UN envoy Staffan de Mistura excoriates Syria’s Bashar al-Assad; Six years of UN envoys and Syrian peace talks
Iran continues to expand its influence in Iraq through at least 80,000 Shiite militia fighters, prompting concerns that the Shiite country may replace the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) should it be defeated, reports Fox News.
TEL AVIV – Russia’s decision to use Iran as a base for bombers striking Syria came as a surprise to the U.S. and Israel, officials in both countries have said.
The Turkish government, a longtime firm opponent to the Assad regime in Syria, has accepted a role for the “existing political leadership” in peace talks.
Russia is secretly using mercenaries to combat rebels and U.S. forces on the ground in Syria on behalf of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Sky News reveals, citing young Russians who claim they were hired to fight in the Middle Eastern country by a private military company ran by a Nazi aficionado.
Russia said on Wednesday there would be daily three-hour ceasefires in Syria’s Aleppo starting Thursday to allow humanitarian convoys to enter the city safely, a proposal which the United Nations said it would consider.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on his first trip abroad since last month’s aborted coup attempt for a scheduled Tuesday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
