Bashar al-Assad - Page 6

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin during the annual BRICS summit in South Africa to discuss the ongoing conflict in Syria, he announced on Wednesday.

In 2007, shortly after becoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi traveled to Syria to meet with dictator Bashar al-Assad, to show that the U.S. was capable of using diplomacy and not merely war as a tool of foreign policy in the Middle East.

Incoming rocket sirens blared across the Israeli Golan Heights in the predawn hours of Wednesday morning, sending residents of the area scrambling to bomb shelters in what was later determined to have been a false alarm, the army said.

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.

The Iranian government claimed Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will “soon” head to Tehran to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the status of Syria’s civil war.

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.

A deal on the pullback of pro-Iranian militias from Syria’s border with Israel is being pushed by Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of his upcoming summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.

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.

An “unprecedented” nearly 24-hour bombing offensive by Russian forces that began Wednesday in support of Iran’s narco-terrorist proxy Hezbollah and other ground forces fighting on behalf of dictator Bashar al-Assad in southern Syria has reportedly prompted rebel fighters to resume peace talks and surrender more than 30 towns.

Contents: Syria and Russia resume full-scale assault on Daraa; Jordan fears repercussions from Syria’s military offensive in Daraa; Israel concerned about infiltration from Iran and Hezbollah

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.”

Sweden, which holds the United Nations Security Council’s rotating presidency, and Kuwait requested an emergency, closed-door meeting at the UN Security Council on Tuesday to complain that Israel and Jordan will not accept hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees displaced by Russian-backed bombings in southern Daraa, Syria.

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.

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.

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. 

Contents: Syria and Russia create humanitarian catastrophe in Daraa; Number displaced by Syrian and Russian bombing in Daara triples to 160,000

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.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu blamed Syrian regime allies Russia and Iran, as well as the United States, on Friday for dictator Bashar al-Assad’s bombardment of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel forces in southern Syria in violation of the de-escalation zone established by Moscow and Washington.

President Donald Trump will demand that Russian leader Vladimir Putin forces Iran to pull out their military presence from Syria, an unnamed source told the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat.

GENEVA –  Civilians fleeing attacks on rebel-held towns in southern Syria are being used as “pawns”, the UN rights chief said, lamenting reported demands for payment at government checkpoints and jihadist’s blocking movement.

Israel is preparing for the possibility that an onslaught by the forces of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad could see tens of thousands of Syrian refugees heading for the Israel border. The IDF is gearing up to prevent a mass breach of the frontier, but also to provide humanitarian aid to the displaced, military sources said Thursday.

Iran’s Supreme Leader and head of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, demanded judicial punishment on Wednesday for anyone who “disrupt[s]” Iran’s “economic security” in the aftermath of protests over the tumbling value of the rial against the U.S. dollar.

Iranian Member of Parliament Behrouz Bonyadi criticized Tehran’s allies Russia and Syria in unusually harsh terms during a speech on Wednesday, essentially agreeing with the Iranian protest movement that the nation has spent too many resources in propping up Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Fighters supporting dictator Bashar al-Assad have displaced up to 50,000 and shut down at least three hospitals in a siege to retake a rebel-held region in southwest Syria that borders Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the United Nations and a monitor group report this week.

Russia reportedly breached a ceasefire deal late Saturday night that it had brokered with the United States and Jordan last July by carrying out airstrikes on in rebel-held Daraa, Syria, against forces opposed to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, leaving at least five civilians dead and destroying a hospital and emergency rescue center during the process.

Contents: Russian bombers join Syrian military assaulting Daraa province; Jordan says it can’t host a new wave of refugees from Syria; Concerns grow in Israel over Syrian and Russian assaults on Daraa and Quneitra provinces.

Forces loyal to the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad took control of an abandoned UN post in the no-man’s land between the Israeli and Syrian areas of the Golan Heights, Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported on Sunday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Russia bombed rebel-held parts of southern Syria late Saturday for the first time since brokering a ceasefire there nearly a year ago, a monitor group said, as allied regime troops prepare a ground assault.

Dictator Bashar Assad ramped up his assault against rebel positions in southwestern Syria on Friday, deploying his infamous “barrel bombs” despite warnings from the United States that he is violating a “deconfliction zone,” jeopardizing civilian lives, and threatening the security of neighboring Israel.

Contents: Thousands of Syrians flee into Jordan to escape bombing in Daraa; Fears grow of Syrian army advance into Quneitra province

The Turkish military announced Monday that Turkish soldiers, accompanied by American counterparts, began “independent patrols” in Manbij, Syrian Kurdistan, where Ankara spent months threatening an invasion against local Kurdish forces.

Contents: Israeli airstrike on Syria-Iraq border kills dozens of Shia militia fighters; Russia-Israel alliance grows, while Russia-Iran alliance frays in Syria

Syrian state media on Monday claimed that a U.S.-led coalition aircraft bombed a Syrian army position in al-Harra, near the Iraqi border, causing an unspecified number of deaths of injuries.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration abandoned its decision this week to suspend funding for the Syria Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue force widely known as the White Helmets, releasing millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding for the group, according to the State Department.

A report published Thursday alleges that Turkey-backed fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are seizing, looting, and destroying property in the predominantly Kurdish region of Afrin, further fueling fears that Ankara is quietly forcing a demographic change along its border with Syria.

A Syrian human rights monitoring group reported on Thursday that the Hezbollah terror group’s leadership has refused to accede to a Russian request that its forces vacate a number of locations in southwest Syria near the Lebanese border.