Syria civil war - Page 4

Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz on Tuesday welcomed the killing of a leading Syrian chemical weapons scientist but refused to comment on speculation that intelligence agency Mossad was involved.

TEL AVIV – The IDF on Tuesday released a video showing Israel’s raid on Syria in May that destroyed more than 50 Iranian targets in the most extensive military strike in the country since 1974.

Israel claimed Syria’s long-running civil war had effectively come to an end Thursday and predicted the Golan Heights frontier between the two countries would be much quieter over the coming months.

TEL AVIV – Israel has asked Russia to ensure that Syrian troops refrain from massacring civilians in the south of the country while the Assad regime continues its takeover of the area near Israel’s border from rebel groups, Channel 2 news reported.

BEIRUT — The Syrian government regained control of the frontier with the Golan Heights for the first time in seven years on Monday, after Islamic State-linked militants gave up their last pocket of territory in the area.

The former head of the IDF’s military intelligence said Thursday that the firing of a pair of missiles from Syria into the Sea of Galilee a day earlier was likely an effort by the Islamic State group to draw Israel into a confrontation with the Syrian regime.

BEIRUT – The death toll in coordinated Islamic State group attacks in Syria’s Sweida neared 250 on Thursday, the Druze-majority province’s heaviest loss of life of the seven-year civil war.

WASHINGTON — The Islamic State group in Syria now controls only a small pocket of terrain, a French military official said Tuesday, though he cautioned fighting there could take several more months.

TEL AVIV – The IDF on Sunday helped 422 Syrians and their families from the “White Helmets” rescue organization cross over the border into Israel, with the Israeli commander of the project describing their eyes as “twinkling from happiness” from having escaped the brutal Assad reg

Israel and Russia have an understanding regarding what southwestern Syria will look like after President Bashar Assad retakes complete control over the area bordering Israel, Russia’s ambassador to Israel said in a recent interview.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it activated its aerial defense system in response to incoming rockets from the fighting in neighboring Syria.

AMMAN (AFP) – Israel has evacuated 800 White Helmets rescuers and their family members threatened by advancing Syrian regime forces to Jordan for resettlement in Britain, Canada and Germany, the kingdom said Sunday.

Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip spotlights the dangers of Israel giving up strategic territory to the Palestinians, contended Breitbart Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein.

DAMASCUS, Syria — When the first Syrian soldier reached Lod street in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Syria’s capital, four sisters who survived the seven-year conflict hiding in their ground floor apartment emerged hesitantly and asked: “Are you a soldier or a militant?”

WASHINGTON — US officials say the United States is finalizing plans to evacuate several hundred Syrian civil defense workers and their families from southwest Syria as Russian-backed government forces close in on the area.

SUWAGHIYA, Syria – Buses began evacuating fighters and civilians from two besieged pro-regime towns in Syria early on Thursday morning under a deal that will allow thousands to leave after three years of encirclement.

Israel and Russia are reportedly holding talks regarding the imminent return of Syrian regime forces to the border region on the Golan Heights, with a view to reestablishing demarcation lines drawn up in 1974.

TEL AVIV – Satellite images released by an Israeli company Tuesday showed the destruction of a building in a deadly airstrike said to have been carried out by Israel on a Syrian airfield earlier this week.

Some 200 displaced Syrians approached the Israeli border on Tuesday, some of them waving white flags, in an apparent effort to reach out to the Jewish state for assistance as forces loyal to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad moved into the area as part of a military operation against rebel-held areas in the country’s southwest.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian rebels in the southern city of Daraa were surrendering their heavy weapons to government forces on Saturday, state media said, under a deal brokered by regime ally Russia.

Syria’s army entered rebel-held parts of Daraa city on Thursday, state media said, raising the national flag in the cradle of the uprising that sparked the country’s seven-year war.

The IDF on Tuesday transfered aid and care packages donated by Israeli residents of the Golan Heights to Syrians displaced by fighting on the other side of border, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced Wednesday.

MOSCOW — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday for talks focusing on Iranian presence in Syria — an issue that is expected to top the agenda of the upcoming U.S.-Russian summit.

The Israeli military attacked a Syrian position on Friday after a mortar shell exploded in the buffer zone between the two countries, in what the military said was a violation of a 1974 ceasefire agreement.

TEL AVIV – A defense official on Wednesday warned the Assad regime that any Syrian forces entering the demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries will be considered a legitimate target.

Syria’s regime and its ally Russia resumed air strikes on the south of the country on Wednesday after rebels said talks over a government takeover had “failed.”

BEIRUT — The Syrian government on Tuesday called on refugees to return, saying it has successfully cleared large areas of “terrorists.”

NEW YORK — The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss the Syrian army’s Russia-backed offensive against rebel groups in southern Syria that has forced some 300,000 people to flee ot the Jordanian and Israeli borders, diplomats said.

Large explosions were heard in the Deraa district of south Syria on Tuesday in an area in which ammunition warehouses belonging to the Assad regime and pro-Assad militias are located, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Jordan will hold talks with Russia this week over a ceasefire in southwestern Syria and alleviating the humanitarian situation there, the Jordanian foreign minister said on Monday.

On Monday elements of the Iranian-backed Liwa Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas and the Syrian regime’s Republican Guard were reported to be leading the Syrian regime’s offensive near the Golan, attempting to cut the Syrian rebels territory in half.

The Israeli military sent additional tanks and artillery cannons to the Syrian border on Sunday in light of a renewed offensive by dictator Bashar Assad and the Russian military against the remaining rebel holdouts in the country’s southwest, the army said.

Six wounded Syrians — including four orphaned children who lost their families in the ongoing fighting in their country — were transported to Israel on Friday night for medical treatment.

TEL AVIV – Tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing a major offensive in the country’s south have pitched tents on the border with Israel over recent days, with the IDF responding by sending several tons of medical supplies and food over the border and even bringing in six wounded refugees – including four children – into Israeli territory to receive treatment in a local hospital.

JERUSALEM – Civilians fleeing Syria’s war will not be allowed to enter Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday adding however that his government will continue providing them with humanitarian aid.

At least eight battered rebel-held towns in southern Syria returned to regime control under Russian-brokered deals on Saturday as air strikes killed at least 15 civilians, a monitor said.