Damascus - Page 3

TEL AVIV – In comments that appeared to refer to the Syria missile strike attributed to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the Jewish state will retaliate against anyone harboring aspirations to harm his country.

BEIRUT — Syrian activists, rescuers and medics said Sunday that a poison gas attack on a rebel-held town near the capital has killed at least 40 people, allegations denied by the Syrian government.

BEIRUT — The most powerful Syrian rebel faction on the fringes of Damascus began abandoning its stronghold in the once rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta on Monday, opening the way for government forces to secure full control of the area, after seven years of revolt.

Rockets fired on a market in a government-controlled neighborhood of Damascus on Tuesday killed 35 people and wounded more than 20 others, Syrian state-run media said, marking one of the highest death tolls in a single attack targeting the capital.

BEIRUT — Syrian government and Russian airstrikes killed at least 46 people in a besieged town outside of Damascus on Friday, while Turkish shelling and attacks on a Kurdish-held town in northern Syria left at least 22 dead there, monitors and officials said.

TEL AVIV — The Islamic State has released propaganda photos showing the execution of a man south of Damascus named Moussa Badawi, who was accused of cooperating with a rival organization called Ahrar al-Sham.

A Russia-ordered “humanitarian pause” has gone into effect to allow civilians to leave a rebel-held enclave near Damascus, giving a brief respite to the residents of the besieged area that has been under intense attack by the Syrian government for weeks.

HAMOURIA, Syria — A heavy bombardment killed at least 100 civilians, 20 of them children, in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta on Monday, as regime forces appeared to be preparing for an imminent ground assault.

Syria’s ruling Assad dictatorship has announced it is developing closer ties with North Korea based on based on “solid and deep-rooted foundations of friendship and cooperation.”

“France will strike” if chemical weapons are found to have been used against civilians in the Syrian conflict in violation of international treaties, French President Emmanuel Macron has warned.

The Israeli military shot down an Iranian drone that infiltrated the country early Saturday before launching a “large-scale attack” on at least a dozen Iranian and Syrian targets in Syria. Israel called it a “severe and irregular violation of Israeli sovereignty” and warned of further action against the unprecedented Iranian aggression.

Syrian air defense systems intercepted an Israeli air attack on a military position near the capital Damascus early Wednesday, the Syria army said.

Syrian state media on Friday cited field commanders as saying Turkey helped anti-government rebels launch a counterattack against the Syrian army and its allies in the northwest this week, underlining recent regional tensions over the fighting.

The Israeli army overnight carried out air strikes and fired rockets at targets in Syria, causing damage near a “military position”, the Syrian army said in a statement on Tuesday.

Dozens of Syrian rebels and their families departed aboard buses from an area besieged by government forces bordering the Israeli Golan Heights early Saturday in part of a deal to clear yet another district of anti-regime insurgents.

Over the past several months, Israel struck Iranian military factories in Syria, including factories located within civilian industrial areas, according to a report published Saturday by Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

IRGC-Quds Force Commander General Qasem Soleimani, in a recent video, told a group of Iranian soldiers in Al-Bukamal, Syria, that the United States forces are “cowards” and that their soldiers wore diapers in the battlefield so they could urinate when scared.

Iranian state-run television has broadcast a report showcasing a 13-year-old sent to Syria to fight on behalf of dictator Bashar al-Assad, allegedly under the guidance of Iran’s terror chief, General Qasem Soleimani.

TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader has praised his country’s contribution to the fight against the Islamic State group, saying it had helped destroy a “tumor” created by the United States and its allies.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — At least 14 civilians including a young girl were killed by Syrian regime bombardment of the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region near Damascus on Saturday, a monitor said.

Iran is building a permanent military base in Syria just south of Damascus, the BBC reported Friday, citing a Western intelligence official. The British broadcaster commissioned a series of satellite pictures that indicate widespread construction at the site.

Islamic State militants, routed from one urban stronghold after another in Syria, have recently been moving deeper into Syria’s remote desert, where experts say they are regrouping and preparing their next incarnation.

UNITED NATIONS — Russia vetoed Tuesday a US-drafted resolution that would have extended by a year an investigation of who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the Syrian conflict in a phone call Wednesday afternoon, two days after Israeli jets bombed an anti-aircraft battery near Damascus which had fired on an Israeli plane, the Kremlin said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday warned Syria that Israel would continue to carry out airstrikes “as needed” after the Israeli Air Force destroyed a Syrian anti-aircraft battery in response to the firing of an interceptor missile at Israeli reconnaissance planes.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said on Monday that it struck and destroyed an anti-aircraft battery deep in Syria after it had opened fire on Israeli jets flying over Lebanon — the first such incident of Syrian forces targeting Israeli planes since the civil war began in 2011.

American intelligence reports suggesting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime was cremating the bodies of hundreds of prisoners in a facility near Damascus prompted Israel to examine the possibility of bombing the area, but the plan was eventually shelved over the defense establishment’s concerns that the move would lead to a rapid security escalation on the northern border.

Ynetnews reports: Two rockets hit near Damascus airport at dawn on Friday, Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen reported, in an attack it said had probably been carried out by Israeli warplanes from outside Syria’s borders.

Russia on Thursday clashed with the European Union over Syria, accusing the bloc of politicizing aid by linking reconstruction funds to a political transition that would end the war.

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.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman vowed to prevent Iran from establishing a “Shi’a corridor” in the Middle East. He made the statement just hours after Israel purportedly struck a Syrian military center believed to be producing chemical weapons and precision missiles.

United Nations war crimes investigators on Wednesday said they had evidence that Syrian government forces were behind the chemical attack that killed dozens of people in Khan Sheikhun in April.

A senior Israeli official warned the Russian government that if Iran continues to extend its reach in Syria, Israel will bomb Syrian President Bashar Assad’s palace in Damascus, according to reports in Arab media.

TEL AVIV – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday thanked allies Iran, Hezbollah and Russia for helping him overcome Western attempts for his ouster and added that he would not be restoring diplomatic ties with countries that support “terrorist” opposition groups in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday refused any security cooperation with Western nations or the reopening of their embassies, until they cut ties with opposition and insurgent groups.

TEL AVIV – In recent weeks, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have advanced in critical pockets of territory directly adjacent to ceasefire zones agreed upon in a number of areas, an Arab intelligence source told Breitbart Jerusalem.