Aleppo - Page 2

Human Rights Watch is accusing the Syrian government of using chemical weapons at least eight times during the siege of Aleppo and is asking the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on the regime.

A human rights group accused the Syrian government on Monday of conducting at least eight chemical attacks using chlorine gas on opposition-controlled residential areas during the final months in the battle for Aleppo.

Contents: Investigation reveals depraved new atrocities by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad; Epicenter of Syrian conflict moves from Aleppo to Idlib and al-Bab

Actress Lindsay Lohan met Friday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inside the country’s presidential palace, and also met with Bana al-Abed, the 7-year-old social media star who made headlines last year after tweeting about her life in war-torn East Aleppo.

The UN envoy for Syria said Tuesday that a final declaration was close to being achieved at indirect talks between Syrian rebels and their war-torn country’s regime in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana.

Speaking to French reporters this week, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad said he was “ready to negotiate everything” in an upcoming round of peace talks surrounding the six-year-old civil war in his country, including potentially stepping down as head of state.

Thousands of people are starting to return to formerly rebel-held east Aleppo despite freezing weather and destruction “beyond imagination”, a top U.N. official told Reuters from the Syrian city.

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.

Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which purports to speak for American Muslims, spent part of Christmas Day tweeting that he had hoped more people had died in the previous night’s Russian plane crash into the Black Sea.

Turks reacted angrily Friday on social media to a video released by the Islamic State group purportedly showing two captured Turkish soldiers being burned alive, while awaiting an official reaction from the government.

Evacuations from rebel-held parts of Aleppo continued overnight with dozens of vehicles leaving the city and the operation likely to end on Thursday, aid workers said.

The warning from the UN envoy could not have been starker: Pounded by a near-daily barrage of air strikes, Aleppo would be totally destroyed by Christmas unless the United Nations stopped the carnage.

Russian investigators arrived in Turkey on Tuesday to probe the assassination of Moscow’s ambassador at an Ankara art show, as both sides pledged the murder would not damage improving relations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that he instructed his government to find ways to extend medical assistance to Syrians injured in the latest round of fighting, especially those from the embattled city of Aleppo.

JAFFA, Israel — The assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey on Monday highlighted the divisions within the Arab world between Russia’s proponents and detractors.

Syria’s army broadcast messages into the last rebel enclave of Aleppo saying it would enter the area on Tuesday, a military media unit run by the government’s ally Hezbollah reported, urging insurgents to speed up their evacuation of the city.

Actress Lindsay Lohan will reportedly spend the Christmas holidays working and visiting with refugees in Turkey.

The on-again, off-again evacuation of civilians from Aleppo has resumed, despite an attack on evacuation buses blamed on al-Qaeda’s Syrian operation, the Nusra Front.

A leading church figure in the Middle East said Monday Christians across the region were facing a “tragedy,” and accused the international community of failing to act.

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.

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.

Contents: Syria’s Bashar al-Assad calls Aleppo’s ‘liberation’ a historic event; Syria and Russia suffer a big military setback in Palmyra; Syria’s civil war shows similarities to America’s Vietnam war

Hamas’ critical reaction to the bloodshed in Aleppo drew criticism from the pro-Hezbollah media in Lebanon.

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.

Syrian regime allies Russia and Iran are expected to discuss efforts to secure a ceasefire in Aleppo with Turkey, which has supported various armed groups seeking to overthrow dictator Bashar al-Assad, revealed Turkish Foreign Minister (FM) Mevlut Cavusoglu.

(Associated Press) BEIRUT –  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

Celebrities rushed to social media this week to condemn the carnage Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has inflicted on his own people in Aleppo — and some in Hollywood also attacked President-elect Donald Trump over the tragedy.

Recent sweeping gains by the pro-Assad alliance in Aleppo signal the rise of an emboldened Iranian-led radical Shi’ite axis. The more this axis gains strength, territory, weapons, and influence, the more likely it is to threaten regional and global security.

The evacuation of civilians from Aleppo has halted again, only a day after it restarted. Both the Syrian government and rebel forces are accusing each other of firing on civilian convoys.

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.