Hundreds of Israelis gathered in downtown Tel Aviv on Sunday night to protest the international community’s failure to stop the reported massacres of civilians trapped in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.
An agreement was reached Saturday to allow “humanitarian cases” to leave two besieged government-held Shiite villages in northwestern Syria, a step that would allow the resumption of civilian and rebel evacuations from eastern Aleppo which were suspended a day earlier, Hezbollah’s media arm and a monitoring group said.
The battle for Aleppo has gripped the world, but it is hardly the only active front across war-torn Syria. One of the next targets for the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad will probably be the heartland of rebel territory, the neighboring province of Idlib.
Evacuation buses have started to enter the last insurgent-held enclave of east Aleppo under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Arab Red Cross, Syrian state news agency SANA said.
Hundreds of Israelis are expected to attend a demonstration running between the US and Russian embassies in Tel Aviv on Sunday to denounce the international community’s failure to stop the reported massacres of civilians trapped in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government of carrying out “nothing short of a massacre” in Aleppo, where thousands on Thursday were evacuated under a ceasefire deal from the last rebel enclave in a city besieged by fighting for years.
The evacuation of civilians and opposition fighters from eastern Aleppo have been suspended after rebels opened fire on a convoy at one of the crossing points of the rebel-held enclave, according to Syrian state TV.
More than 50 injured people have been taken to Turkey since thousands of civilians and opposition rebels left Syria’s second city of Aleppo under an evacuation deal, the Turkish Red Crescent said Friday.
An IDF reservist officer published an impassioned Facebook post on Thursday calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dispatch a detachment of Israeli soldiers to Syria to end the bloodshed in Aleppo.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman says Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a ‘butcher’ who should be thrown out of the country along with his Iranian allies.
Hamas issued an unprecedented condemnation of the “massacre” that was perpetrated in Aleppo, as the Syrian regime emerged victorious from a months-long battle against rebel forces.
Ambulances and buses carrying the first evacuees from Aleppo left remaining rebel-held territory in the city on Thursday under a fragile exit deal, an AFP correspondent reported.
Ambulances trying to evacuate people from rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Thursday came under fire from fighters loyal to the Syrian government, who killed at least one person, a rescue service spokesman said.
When rebel fighters launched a last desperate attempt to break the siege of Aleppo in October, they were beaten back – not by the Syrian army but by the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah fighting on its behalf, a senior official in the pro-government alliance said.
The planned evacuation of rebel districts of Aleppo stalled on Wednesday as air strikes and heavy shelling hit the city and Iran was said to have imposed new conditions on the deal.
A coalition drone strike in Syria killed three Islamic State group leaders involved in plotting foreign attacks, including two men who helped facilitate last year’s attacks in Paris, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Syrian pro-government forces have carried out at least 82 execution-style killings of civilians in recent days, including women and children, the UN said Tuesday, citing credible reports from the ground.
A Gaza-based jihadi said he was encouraged by the Islamic State’s recent victories in Iraq and Syria.
The Islamic State organization published pictures of activists celebrating the recapture of Palmyra in central Syria.
Syria’s army seized a major district on Aleppo’s southeastern edges Monday, putting it in control of 90 percent of areas once held by rebels in the city, a monitor said.
Russian air strikes forced Islamic State fighters to retreat to the outskirts of Palmyra on Sunday, a day after they had stormed the ancient city in eastern Syria, a war monitor said.
Some 50,000 civilians have fled eastern Aleppo over the past two days in a “constant stream,” Russia said Saturday, as Syrian government forces close in on the last pocket of opposition control in the northern city.
Drawing the US deeper into the Syria conflict, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Saturday he is sending 200 more troops to accelerate the push on the Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa.
Most jihadi militants who haven’t given up on fighting against the Syrian regime are foreign, a Syrian Information Ministry official claimed to Breitbart Jerusalem.
Syrian government artillery bombarded the fast-shrinking rebel enclave in the heart of Aleppo on Friday despite its ally Russia’s announcement of a new humanitarian pause, a monitor said.
TEL AVIV – While all eyes are set on the battle of Aleppo, there is concern Iran-backed forces could make significant gains in areas close to the Israeli and Jordanian borders, an Arab intelligence official told Breitbart Jerusalem.
President Bashar al-Assad said victory in Aleppo would be a “huge step” towards ending Syria’s five-year civil war, ignoring pleas for a truce as rebels in the city lose more ground.
The Times of Israel reports: Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman acknowledged that Israel was responsible for recent attacks in Syria, saying on Wednesday that they were meant to prevent “advanced weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction” from reaching Hezbollah.
Syrian government forces control all of Aleppo’s historic Old City after rebel fighters withdrew in the face of army advances overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.
Russia said Monday it would hold talks with Washington on a total rebel withdrawal from Syria’s Aleppo, where the army has made sweeping advances, but opposition factions rejected any evacuation.
The Islamic State organization has continued to disseminate “business as usual” pictures from Mosul, as part of a propaganda push against an ongoing campaign by the Iraqi military and the international coalition to liberate the city.
The Russian government said on Monday it would start talks with Washington on a rebel withdrawal from Aleppo this week as Russian-backed Syrian forces fought to seize more territory from rebels who are struggling to avoid a major defeat.
Russia’s defence ministry on Monday said a Sukhoi jet attempting a landing on its Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier crashed after rolling off the deck, making it the second warplane to crash in a month.
The capture of two Turkish soldiers by the Islamic State unleashed expressions of a deep-seated resentment of the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party is affiliated.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday slammed a proposed UN resolution demanding a temporary ceasefire in Aleppo as a “provocative step.”
Airstrikes on a village in the Syrian province of Idlib killed at least 21 civilians on Sunday, among them three children, a monitor said.
Syrian troops and allied forces advanced overnight seizing Aleppo’s Tariq al-Bab neighborhood from rebels as they press an offensive to recapture all of the city, a monitor said on Saturday.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday said Tehran and Moscow would continue to cooperate in the Syrian war “until the ultimate goal of eradicating terrorism and restoring peace and full security to the region is achieved.”
Rebels put up fierce resistance on Friday in a key district of Syria’s battered Aleppo, where a regime offensive has left bodies in the streets and sparked a global outcry.
Rebels in Aleppo have agreed to form a new military alliance to better organize the defense of parts of the city they control from a ferocious assault by the government and its allies, officials in two of the insurgent groups said on Thursday.
