August 20th, 20170AIN ISSA, SYRIA — Washington's main Syrian ally in the fight against ISIS says the U.S. military will remain in northern Syria long after the jihadists are defeated, predicting enduring ties with the Kurdish-dominated region.
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of militias dominated by the Kurdish YPG,...
August 20th, 20170BEIRUT — Lebanese and Syrian ministers pledged to boost economic ties on Wednesday, part of a visit that has challenged the Lebanese state's policy of neutrality toward Syria's war.
Government ministers from Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Amal party arrived in Syria for a trade fair, a trip that has ignited a political row in...
August 10th, 20170Young men who leave their homes to fight for terrorist groups in Syria mainly come from disadvantaged backgrounds, have low levels of education and “lack any basic understanding of the true meaning of jihad or even the Islamic faith”, according to a study for the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism.
The report, which was...
August 2nd, 20170BEIRUT- George and Amal Clooney said on Monday they would help 3,000 Syrian refugee children go to school this year in Lebanon, where the United Nations says 200,000 children are not receiving an education after fleeing the war in neighboring Syria.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice said it has teamed up with Google and HP Inc to help...
July 28th, 20170Israel, which has played a precarious role in the Syrian war since 2011, is furious to learn that the future of the conflict is not to its liking.
The six-year-old Syria war is moving to a new stage, perhaps its final. The Syrian regime is consolidating its control over most of the populated centers, while ISIS is losing ground fast...
July 27th, 20170WASHINGTON - Questions have once again been raised over President Donald Trump’s grasp on foreign policy after he appeared to misunderstand the political and militery role played by the pwerful Lebanese party of Hezbollah in the Middle East’s complex geopolitics.
During a news conference with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad...
July 24th, 20170BEIRUT – Hezbollah said on Monday its battle with Nusra Front jihadists at the Syria-Lebanon border was almost over and urged remaining insurgents in the area to give up, pressing its campaign to take their last foothold at the frontier.
With the Nusra Front almost beaten in the mountainous area on the outskirts of the Lebanese town...
July 5th, 20170BEIRUT ― Human Rights Watch on Wednesday demanded an independent inquiry into the deaths of four Syrians who died while in Lebanese army custody and said anyone responsible for wrongdoing should be held to account.
The Lebanese army said on Tuesday that the four Syrian men arrested during a raid on a refugee camp on Friday had died...
June 12th, 20170RAQQA —At Raqqa's eastern edge, a handful of Syrian fighters cross a river by foot and car, all the while relaying their coordinates to the U.S.-led coalition so they don't fall victim to friendly fire.
This is their only way into al-Mishlab, the first district the Kurdish and Arab militias have swept into, in what the coalition...
May 24th, 20170SYRIA- A car bomb exploded in Homs on Tuesday morning, Syrian state television said, two days after the city went back under full government control for the first time since 2011.
Authorities destroyed another vehicle rigged with explosives near a Shi'ite Muslim shrine south of Damascus, the broadcaster and other state media...
May 19th, 20171DAMASCUS — The Syrian government on Tuesday denied U.S. accusations that a crematorium had been built at one of its prisons that could be used to dispose of detainees' remains.
A foreign ministry statement published by state news agency SANA said the U.S. administration had come out with "a new Hollywood story detached from reality"...
May 16th, 20170
WASHINGTON, D.C.-The United States has evidence Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government has built a crematorium at a large military prison outside the capital Damascus, a State Department official said on Monday.
Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said U.S. officials believe the...
May 10th, 20170VILNIUS ― Despite fierce opposition from NATO ally Turkey, President Trump has approved supplying arms to Kurdish YPG fighters to support an operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from ISIS, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
Ankara views the Kurdish YPG militia, fighting within a larger U.S.-backed coalition, as the Syrian...
May 5th, 20170SOCHI, RUSSIA — On Wednesday, the leaders of Russia and Turkey publicly re-affirmed their commitment to working together to end the conflict in Syria, despite a gas attack on a Syrian city that tested their fragile alliance
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdogan, have formed a pact on Syria...
April 30th, 20170BEIRUT — Israeli warplanes struck a weapons supply hub operated by Hezbollah near Damascus airport on Thursday, targeting arms sent from Iran in commercial and military cargo aircraft, Syrian rebel and regional intelligence sources told Reuters.
The Israeli military said later that one of its anti-aircraft missiles intercepted a...
April 24th, 20170WASHINGTON ― The Treasury Department sanctioned 271 employees of Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), an agency that Washington says develops chemical weapons for the government of Bashar al-Assad, the Treasury said in a statement.
Some of the people blacklisted had worked on Syria's chemical weapons program for...
April 16th, 20170
DAMASCUS, Syria - The death toll from a bomb attack on a crowded bus convoy outside Aleppo has reached at least 126 in the deadliest such incident in Syria in almost a year, human rights groups reported on Sunday.
Human rights groups and United Nations agencies cited reports that more than 60 children were among the...
April 14th, 20170A CIA document recommended that the "U.S. should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad" through the orchestration of "simultaneous military threats against Syria." Three years later, that same conviction appeared in a memorandum that "explores alternative scenarios that could lead to the ouster of President...al-Assad...
April 14th, 20170MOSCOW - Moscow and Washington have reached an understanding that further US strikes similar to the one carried out against Syria's Shayrat Air Base "should not occur again," the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
Lavrov emphasized that this issue was raised during his discussions with the US Secretary of State on...
April 12th, 20170NEW YORK - Russia blocked a Western effort at the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to condemn last week's deadly gas attack in Syria and push Moscow's ally President Bashar al-Assad to cooperate with international inquiries into the incident.
It was the eighth time during Syria's six-year-old civil war that Moscow has used its veto...
April 9th, 20170DAMASCUS, Syria - A joint command center made up of the forces of Russian, Iran and allied militia alliance supporting Syrian President Bashar al Assad said the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base crossed "red lines" and it would now respond to any new aggression and increase their level of support to their ally.
"What America waged in...
April 8th, 20170The deadliest chemical attack in Syria in years killed dozens of people in the rebel-held northern Idlib province on Tuesday morning, including children, and sickened scores more. The alleged "chemical airstrikes" are said to have taken place in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, about 50km south of the city of Idlib.
Predictably, the...
April 7th, 20170President Trump ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was allegedly launched, declaring he acted in America's "vital national security interest."
The deadliest chemical weapons attack in years in Syria killed dozens of people in the rebel-held northern Idlib province on Tuesday...
April 4th, 20170BEIRUT, Lebanon - The deadliest chemical weapons attack in years in Syria killed dozens of people in northern Idlib province on Tuesday morning, including children, and sickened scores more, according to medics, rescuers and witnesses in the rebel-held province.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack...
March 30th, 20171NEW YORK - The United States is no longer making removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a focus of its policy in the war-torn country, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday.
"Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out," Ambassador Nikki Haley told a small group of reporters. "Our...
March 12th, 20170DAMASCUS- According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the death toll of a double bomb attack targeting Shi'ite pilgrims in Damascus has climbed to 74.
Yesterday, the Iraqi foreign ministry said that the bombs killed at least 40 Iraqis and wounded 120 who were visiting the Sayeda Zeinab shrine.
There was no immediate claim...
RAQQA — Airstrikes pounded northern Raqqa and the eastern province of Deir al-Zor on Thursday, killing 23 and seven civilians, and injuring more than 80 others in both cities, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britain-based war monitoring group said two warplanes, believed to be Russian, dropped nearly two dozen...
March 10th, 20170In a Fox News interview that aired on Sunday, Feb. 5, President Trump defended Russian President Vladimir Putin when host Bill O’Reilly asked him why he respects him so much if he’s a killer.
"There are a lot of killers," Trump replied. "Got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country's so innocent?"
No, our country...
