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by Valérie Leroux Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Diplomats from 29 countries including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meet in Paris on Tuesday pushing for sanctions and criminal charges against the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria. Tillerson and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian will also co-host a meeting of ministers ahead of a new round of peace talks in Vienna later this week and again in Sochi in Russia the week after. The […]
by Diyar Mustefa and Bulent Kilic in Hassa Agence France-Presse AFRIN, Syria – Turkey on Monday intensified its offensive against Kurdish militia targets in Syria as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed there would be no stepping back in a campaign that has stoked concern among Ankara’s allies and neighbours. The Turkish military on Saturday launched operation “Olive Branch,” its second major intervention in Syria’s devastating seven-year civil war. The operation, with Turkish war planes and artillery backing a […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Nearly 100,000 people have been displaced since early December by fighting in northwestern Syria, where the regime is waging an offensive against jihadists, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Russian-backed regime forces launched an offensive at the end of 2017 on the edge of Idlib province, the last in the country still fully outside the government’s control. Idlib province is almost entirely controlled by a jihadist outfit known as Hayat Tahrir […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US troops and their allies will shoot Islamic State jihadists in the face, beat them to death with shovels or drop bombs on them if they don’t surrender, the US military’s most senior enlisted member has said. In an eyebrow-raising set of postings on social media Tuesday, Command Sergeant Major John Troxell warned that IS members who refuse to quit will be dispatched with “extreme prejudice,” including via a small […]
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AFP) – Turkey on Wednesday called on Russia and Iran, the two chief allies of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, to halt an air offensive on the rebel-held Idlib province near the Turkish border. Ankara has been working closely with Russia and Iran to end the Syrian conflict over the last months but has stepped up pressure on Moscow and Tehran as the bombardments on Idlib intensified. “Iran and Russia should fulfil their responsibility. […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law Friday a bill toughening sentences for terrorist recruitment as the country deals with the issue of returning jihadists from Syria. Official publication of the law came two days after a bomb attack on a supermarket in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second city, injured 14 people. The new law, which parliament voted through on December 14 and the upper chamber approved on December 26, immediately raises […]
DOUMA, Syria (AFP) – Aid workers have begun evacuating emergency medical cases from Syria’s besieged rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta, the Red Cross said on Wednesday, after months of waiting during which the United Nations said at least 16 people died. Families waited in the darkness in the rebel-held town of Douma for their loved ones to board ambulances bound for hospitals in the capital Damascus. Under a deal with the government, five workmen detained by the […]
DAMASCUS, Syria (AFP) — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a scathing attack on France on Monday, accusing it of backing “terrorism” and saying it has “no right to talk about peace” in the war-torn country. His comments came days after Paris accused the Damascus regime of obstructing the latest round of failed peace talks for Syria held in Geneva last week. “France has been the standard bearer of support for terrorism in Syria since the […]
by Michel Moutot © Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — An estimated 40,000 people traveled from around the world to take up arms for the Islamic State group as it occupied territory in Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014. A few hundred are believed to still be fighting as IS struggles to survive, having lost most of its territory to campaigns by Western-backed Syrian and Iraqi coalition armies. But what happened to the […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Air strikes by a US-led coalition killed 23 civilians Wednesday in a village held by the Islamic State group in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province, a monitor said. “At least 23 civilians, among them eight children and six women, were killed Wednesday before dawn by air strikes carried out by the US-led coalition, targeting a village controlled by IS on the eastern banks of the Euphrates river,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory […]
by Raziye Akkoc and Anna Smolchenko in Moscow Agence France Presse ANKARA, Turkey (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara on Monday for the last leg of a day-long diplomatic dash, during which he ordered the partial withdrawal of Russia’s troops from the war-torn country. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Putin at his presidential complex in Ankara for a closed-door meeting. This is the eighth face-to-face meeting […]
HAMMURIYEH, Syria (AFP) — A wave of Syrian air strikes on Sunday killed at least 25 civilians and wounded dozens across the besieged rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, a monitor said. The deadliest raids hit the town of Hammuriyeh, killing 17 civilians including six children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Other air strikes on the towns of Arbeen, Beit Sawa, Harasta and Misraba killed eight civilians. The Observatory said at […]
