Syrian Observatory for Human Rights - Page 2

Israeli strikes hit a weapons depot by Damascus airport overnight, targeting a warehouse belonging to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is allied with the Syrian government, a monitor said Friday.

TEL AVIV — The Islamic State has already lost control of the strategic city of Tal Afar in Iraq and the Syrian army is expected to enter the second-most-important city held by the organization Dir az-Zor, even as Kurdish forces battle IS fighters in their de-facto capital of Raqqa.

Thousands of Iranian-backed fighters in Syria’s central desert region are advancing east, bringing Tehran closer to its goal of securing a corridor from its border, through Iraq and all the way to the Mediterranean and providing it unhindered land access to its allies in Syria and Lebanon for the first time.

Unidentified assailants shot dead seven members of Syria’s White Helmets rescue service early Saturday during a raid on their base in a jihadist-held northwestern town, the group said.

A U.S.-backed Syrian opposition force said Sunday it has captured a northwestern neighborhood of the Islamic State group’s de-facto capital of Raqqa the second district to fall in their hands in days after the group launched a wide offensive to gain control of the extremists’ de facto capital.

An Israeli attack on a Syrian camp for pro-government forces killed three fighters near the Golan Heights on Sunday, an official from the forces said.

A suicide car bombing killed at least 24 people Saturday in an attack near buses for Syrians evacuated from two besieged government-held towns, a monitor said.

Syrian opposition activists are saying there have been several people killed in a suspected chemical attack in a town in the northern Idlib province.

Residents of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa live in terror, trapped as a massive human shield in the Islamic State’s de facto capital ahead of the final battle with US-backed opposition forces for the militant group’s last major urban stronghold.

Syria’s main opposition camp on said Saturday it condemned “terrorism” after the Syrian government demanded all delegations at Geneva peace talks reject terrorist acts or be branded accomplices.

The Islamic State group launched a ferocious assault Saturday on a city in eastern Syria, leaving more than 30 jihadists and regime fighters dead, a monitoring group said.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to retake an area that supplies Damascus with water and rejected any negotiations on his departure at upcoming talks in Kazakhstan.

Syrian pro-government forces clashed with rebels around the main water source for Damascus on Thursday, a monitor said, threatening a fragile ceasefire as it entered its seventh day.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov claimed on Monday that “mass graves of several dozens of Syrians who suffered atrocious torture and massacre” have been found near Aleppo.

More than 1,000 people were evacuated from the last rebel-held pocket of the eastern area of the war-ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo early on Monday after hours of delay, a medical official told AFP.

Convoys of evacuees travelled from a rebel-held area of Aleppo and two Shiite villages besieged by insurgents on Monday, a war monitor and rebels said, as a deal enabling evacuations held after a tense, days-long stand-off and before a UN vote.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Syrian army’s advance into rebel-held east Aleppo has deprived families of anywhere to hide and left shredded bodies of men, women and children strewn in the streets.

Syrian government forces have retaken “full control” of the rebel-held district of Masaken Hanano in northern battlefield city Aleppo, state media said on Saturday.

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.

Syria’s regime and rebels were locked in fierce clashes Sunday on the western edges of Aleppo, where 38 civilians have been killed in two days of opposition rocket fire, a monitor said.

Syrian state media and opposition activists say government forces and their allies have captured a high point in the city of Aleppo where fighting with rebel groups resumed over the weekend.

Syrian rebels dealt a major symbolic blow to the Islamic State group on Sunday by capturing the town of Dabiq where the jihadists had promised an apocalyptic battle.

Syrian and Russian warplanes carried out dozens of air strikes on rebel-held districts of Aleppo on Friday, a monitor said, as world powers prepared for new talks on a ceasefire.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet his Russian counterpart in Switzerland on Saturday to discuss Syria, officials said on Wednesday, as a devastating bombing campaign of the city of Aleppo intensified.

At least eight civilians were killed on Tuesday in the heaviest Russian bombardment in days of rebel-held areas of Syria’s second city Aleppo, a monitoring group said.