Damascus - Page 2

TEL AVIV – News that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is in critical condition after suffering a heart attack is a lie fabricated by the Zionists, a senior Iranian official said Sunday. 

BEIRUT — He has survived eight years of war and billions of dollars in money and weapons aimed at toppling him. Now Syrian President Bashar Assad is poised to be readmitted to the fold of Arab nations, a feat once deemed unthinkable as he forcefully crushed the uprising against his family’s rule.

Syria on Saturday said it filed complaints with the UN Security Council and with UN Secretary-General Antonia Guterres over alleged Israeli airstrikes on Friday near Damascus.

Syria says the United Arab Emirates will reopen its embassy in Damascus for the first time in seven years.

TEL AVIV – Iranian cargo planes linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were reportedly sighted at an airport in Damascus around the time of an alleged Israeli airstrike that may have targeted several senior Hezbollah terror leaders.

Israel said Tuesday night it had deployed its air defenses against a missile shot from Syria as Damascus attempted to repel an alleged Israeli airstrike against Hezbollah or Iranian targets near the capital.

DAMASCUS – Syria reopened a wing of the capital’s famed antiquities museum on Sunday after six years of closure to protect its exhibits and visitors from rebel rocket fire in the civil war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he told Russia’s vice premier in talks on Tuesday that Israel must continue to hit hostile targets in neighboring Syria, despite Moscow’s decision to equip Damascus with advanced air defense missiles.

The Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday released footage showing delivery of the S-300 advanced anti-aircraft system to Syria, weeks after it blamed Israel for the downing of one of its spy planes by a less-sophisticated Syrian air defense missile.

BEIRUT — Israel should think carefully before attacking Syria again once it obtains the sophisticated S-300 defense system from Russia, a Damascus official said.

Hours after an alleged Israeli airstrike on the Damascus airport in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed the country’s policy of employing military action to prevent weapons transfers to the enemies that pose an immediate threat.

Jerusalem – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday his country is taking action to stop its foes from acquiring sophisticated arms, hours after Damascus said Israeli missiles targeted its airport.

An Israeli missile attack targeted the Syrian capital’s airport late Saturday, activating air defenses which shot down a number of the projectiles, state news agency SANA reported.

DAMASCUS, Syria — A string of powerful blasts from the direction of a military airport in Damascus lit up the skies and shook the capital city in the early morning hours on Sunday, residents and state TV reported.

RIYADH – Saudi Arabia on Friday announced a $100 million contribution to a US-backed campaign to “stabilise” northeastern Syria, once a bastion of the radical Islamic State group.

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump’s administration believes missing US journalist Austin Tice is still alive, six years after he is thought to have been taken captive in Syria.

Syrian military air defences struck an Israeli warplane and shot down Israeli missiles targeting the T4 air base in Homs province in response to an act of “aggression” on Sunday night, Syrian state media said.

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.

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.

BEIRUT — A barrage of airstrikes hit rebel-held areas in southwestern Syria on Thursday, killing at least 17 civilians hiding in an underground shelter as government forces pressed their offensive to reclaim a region that was until recently part of a U.S.-backed and negotiated truce.

Syrian state TV said late Monday night that two Israeli missiles struck near Damascus international airport, without giving further details.

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.

Jewish artifacts, including ancient parchment Torahs from one of the world’s oldest synagogues, have gone missing from the Syrian capital amid the tumult of ongoing civil war, with some precious items reportedly surfacing abroad.

The Islamic State group may have lost most of its territory in Syria but recent deadly attacks against pro-regime fighters are a foretaste of more to come, analysts say.

Jerusalem and Damascus rejected reports that a deal had been reached under which foreign forces, including Iran and Hezbollah, would withdraw from southern Syria near Israel’s border. “Israel denies reports that an understanding has been reached,” a diplomatic source said on Saturday.

The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad created diplomatic uproar Tuesday as it assumed the rotating presidency of the UN-backed Conference on Disarmament (CD) at a time when Damascus is widely accused of using chemical weapons against its own people.

BEIRUT — A Syrian state-run newspaper says Damascus will keep fighting the country’s rebels — or “terrorists” as the government calls opposition fighters — despite U.S. warnings against a new offensive in southern Daraa province.

Explosions rocked an area thought to house an Iranian facility near Damascus early Monday morning, according to a report in Sky News Arabia.

BEIRUT — A Syrian war monitoring group said Sunday a cease-fire between government forces and Islamic State militants in the southern neighborhoods of Damascus has held for 24 hours, and that some of the fighters have been allowed to leave.

MOSCOW — The Kremlin said Syrian President Bashar Assad met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at his summer residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Fresh satellite photos released Sunday show the damage caused to Syria’s airport in Damascus by the series of Israeli airstrikes last week, when the IAF hit over 50 Iranian targets in the war-torn country.

Russia’s defense ministry said on Thursday that Syria had shot down more than half of the missiles fired at it overnight by Israel, RIA news agency reported.

TEL AVIV – Israel has thwarted several possible Iranian missile attacks over the past few days launched from the  Syrian based that was targeted in an airstrike attributed to the Israel Air Force Tuesday evening, Hebrew-language media outlets reported. 

JERUSALEM – Syria’s state-run SANA news agency reported an Israeli attack targeting a military base south of Damascus about two hours after President Trump announced a decision to withdraw from the international nuclear agreement with Iran.

The Syrian army and its allies engaged in a fierce battle on Saturday with Islamic State fighters in an enclave south of Damascus held by the jihadist group.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday presented an aerial photograph of an alleged Iranian base outside Damascus that he said Tehran was using to bring in and train tens of thousands of fighters for the militias it backs in Syria.