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by Maher al-Mounes with Maya Gebeily in Beirut Agence France-Presse DAMASCUS, Syria – Syrian government forces clashed with rebels and hammered opposition-held areas of east Damascus on Monday, before calm returned to the capital after a surprise assault. In the north of the country, meanwhile, a Kurdish militia said the Russian military is to train Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State group. Rebels and allied jihadists, led by former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front, early […]
by Layal Abou Rahal with Rim Haddad in Damascus Agence France-Presse BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) – The United Nations warned Thursday that sabotaging water supplies was a war crime after the main source for Syria’s capital was cut, leaving more than five million people facing shortages. Water supplies from the rebel-held area of Wadi Barada near Damascus have been severed since December 22, with the regime and rebels trading blame. The head of a UN-backed humanitarian […]
by Rana Moussaoui with Dave Clark in Geneva BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — A barrage of airstrikes on rebel-held areas in Syria have killed scores of people, just hours after the government in Damascus approved a US-Russian plan to halt fighting in the country’s suppurating civil war. It was not immediately clear who carried out the raids, which hit the key northern cities of Idlib and Aleppo. But they came as a new ceasefire, agreed […]
DARAYA, Syria (AFP) — Ambulances and Red Crescent vehicles entered Syria’s besieged town of Daraya as thousands of rebels and civilians prepared to evacuate on Friday ahead of its takeover by government forces. It was unclear exactly when residents and fighters would start leaving the devastated town near the capital Damascus that has been under rebel control since 2012. An estimated 8,000 people remain in the town, despite a government siege lasting four years and […]
(United Nations/UNICEF) The heart breaking photograph of Omran Daqneesh, the little boy sitting alone in an ambulance with his face and body covered in blood and dirt after being pulled from a destroyed building has reminded the world, yet again, of the unimaginable horrors that Syrian children face every day, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said today. “No child in Syria [is] safe while the conflict drags on,” Christophe Boulierac, […]
DARAYA, Syria (Reuters) — Air strikes by the Syrian government or its Russian allies hit rebel territories in the Damascus suburbs on Monday (August 8), resulting in “many” casualties, a monitoring group has said. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported warplanes and helicopters launched raids across Damacus’s east and western suburbs, known as the Ghouta. The exact number of those killed or injured is unknown, but at least one man was killed in […]
by Marisol RIFAI ISTANBUL, Turkey (AFP) — Receptionist, waiter, hairdresser, pastry-seller: these are the jobs of the ambitious young Syrians who abandoned their dreams in Damascus to start from scratch in Istanbul. In Fatih, a densely-packed neighborhood that serves as a hub for Arabs in Turkey’s biggest city, the traces of home are everywhere. The delicate scent of Aleppo’s famous soap floats out of storefronts, mingling with the enticing aromas of the pistachio and almond […]
(Reuters) Nearly 50 air strikes hit rebel-held areas in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday in some of the heaviest recent raids by Russian and Syrian government aircraft, residents and a monitoring group said. The group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said an unidentified war plane had crashed in countryside south of Aleppo, in an area where Islamist rebel fighters are battling the Syrian army and Iranian-backed forces. It […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President Barack Obama put the onus for upholding a ceasefire in Syria firmly on the regime and its Russian ally Thursday, warning Moscow and Damascus that the “world will be watching.” Hours before the Saturday cessation of hostilities comes into force, Obama huddled with his top national security advisors to plot the way forward and discuss the campaign against the Islamic State group. “Everybody knows what needs to happen,” Obama […]
Hundreds of Syrian families displaced by armed conflicts returned to their homes in south Damascus on Wednesday as part of a truce between the government and local rebels reached last year. About 4,000 residents of Qadam Municipality, who fled the fighting in the last three years, returned to their hometown on the buses provided by the government. “I feel so happy. How I wish that all Syrians could go back to their homes and that […]
