Syria civil war - Page 4

BEIRUT — The Syrian government regained control of the frontier with the Golan Heights for the first time in seven years on Monday, after Islamic State-linked militants gave up their last pocket of territory in the area.

BEIRUT – The death toll in coordinated Islamic State group attacks in Syria’s Sweida neared 250 on Thursday, the Druze-majority province’s heaviest loss of life of the seven-year civil war.

TEL AVIV – The Islamic State released footage on Wednesday alleged showing the Syrian fighter jet shot down by Israel. According to Syrian officials, IS fighters captured the body of one of the Syrian pilots.

WASHINGTON — The Islamic State group in Syria now controls only a small pocket of terrain, a French military official said Tuesday, though he cautioned fighting there could take several more months.

Israel and Russia have an understanding regarding what southwestern Syria will look like after President Bashar Assad retakes complete control over the area bordering Israel, Russia’s ambassador to Israel said in a recent interview.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it activated its aerial defense system in response to incoming rockets from the fighting in neighboring Syria.

AMMAN (AFP) – Israel has evacuated 800 White Helmets rescuers and their family members threatened by advancing Syrian regime forces to Jordan for resettlement in Britain, Canada and Germany, the kingdom said Sunday.

DAMASCUS, Syria — When the first Syrian soldier reached Lod street in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Syria’s capital, four sisters who survived the seven-year conflict hiding in their ground floor apartment emerged hesitantly and asked: “Are you a soldier or a militant?”

WASHINGTON — US officials say the United States is finalizing plans to evacuate several hundred Syrian civil defense workers and their families from southwest Syria as Russian-backed government forces close in on the area.

SUWAGHIYA, Syria – Buses began evacuating fighters and civilians from two besieged pro-regime towns in Syria early on Thursday morning under a deal that will allow thousands to leave after three years of encirclement.

Israel and Russia are reportedly holding talks regarding the imminent return of Syrian regime forces to the border region on the Golan Heights, with a view to reestablishing demarcation lines drawn up in 1974.

TEL AVIV – Satellite images released by an Israeli company Tuesday showed the destruction of a building in a deadly airstrike said to have been carried out by Israel on a Syrian airfield earlier this week.

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.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian rebels in the southern city of Daraa were surrendering their heavy weapons to government forces on Saturday, state media said, under a deal brokered by regime ally Russia.

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.

The IDF on Tuesday transfered aid and care packages donated by Israeli residents of the Golan Heights to Syrians displaced by fighting on the other side of border, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced Wednesday.

MOSCOW — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday for talks focusing on Iranian presence in Syria — an issue that is expected to top the agenda of the upcoming U.S.-Russian summit.

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.

TEL AVIV – A defense official on Wednesday warned the Assad regime that any Syrian forces entering the demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries will be considered a legitimate target.

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.”

BEIRUT — The Syrian government on Tuesday called on refugees to return, saying it has successfully cleared large areas of “terrorists.”

NEW YORK — The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss the Syrian army’s Russia-backed offensive against rebel groups in southern Syria that has forced some 300,000 people to flee ot the Jordanian and Israeli borders, diplomats said.

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.

Jordan will hold talks with Russia this week over a ceasefire in southwestern Syria and alleviating the humanitarian situation there, the Jordanian foreign minister said on Monday.

On Monday elements of the Iranian-backed Liwa Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas and the Syrian regime’s Republican Guard were reported to be leading the Syrian regime’s offensive near the Golan, attempting to cut the Syrian rebels territory in half.

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.

Six wounded Syrians — including four orphaned children who lost their families in the ongoing fighting in their country — were transported to Israel on Friday night for medical treatment.

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. 

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.

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.

Fadi Masalmeh is having to make decisions a nurse should never have to make. As southern Syria is battered by air strikes, the latest front in a devastating civil war, his hospital is overwhelmed.

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.

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.