(bbc.com) At least 15 Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have been killed in clashes with Islamic State militants, as they move on the group’s stronghold of Dabiq. A monitoring group reported that the rebels were killed by landmines that exploded while they attempted to secure the village of Turkman Barih. One rebel commander said he expected to reach Dabiq, which is about… Read more »
(PressTV) Yemeni forces have targeted and destroyed an Emirati military vessel in a rocket attack near the Red Sea port city of Mokha, al-Masirah TV says. A military source said Ansarullah fighters and allied army forces launched rockets at an HSV-2 Swift hybrid catamaran operated by the Emirati navy off the shores of the Red Sea port city of Mokha early on Saturday,… Read more »
(The Guardian) Isis’s minister of information, Wa’il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, killed in Raqqa by US-led coalition airstrike An Islamic State leader who oversaw the militant group’s propaganda has been killed in Syria in an airstrike carried out by the US-led coalition on 7 September, the Pentagon has said. A statement from Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said that the airstrike… Read more »
(The Guardian) At 6am on Saturday 13 August, Ahmad Arfaj, a primary school teacher in Yemen’s Saada governorate, returned home from the local mosque after performing the dawn salah, the first of his five daily prayers. A friend accompanied him to his doorstep. “I went in to see and greet my family and I brought coffee and we preferred to… Read more »
(BBC News) Russia’s military says rebel groups have increased attacks in Syria despite a ceasefire and has urged the US to act or be responsible for its collapse. Russian generals said attacks by rebels, some US-backed, had increased sharply over the past 24 hours. Gen Viktor Poznikhir said the rebel groups had “not met a single obligation” of the truce.
(The Telegraph) The United Nations Security Council has convened at the behest of the Russians after dozens of Syrian soldiers were accidentally killed in a US coalition bombing raid. It met within hours of the Obama administration expressing its regret at the strikes on Jabal Therdeh, southwest of the Deir Ezzor airport in eastern Syria. According to Russian estimates 62… Read more »
(The Independent) Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawaris offers to ‘buy island’ in Mediterranean to help refugees An Egyptian billionaire says he has considered buying an island in the Mediterranean to help house refugees fleeing conflict and instability. Naguib Sawiris tweeted his “crazy idea” earlier this week, offering to purchase one of the empty islands that cluster off the coasts of Italy… Read more »
(Al Jazeera) The United States and Russia hailed a breakthrough deal on Saturday to put Syria’s peace process back on track, including a nationwide ceasefire. The deal, agreed upon by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, aims at halting fighting in Syria and moving towards a political transition after over five years of combat… Read more »
(France 24) With Iranians blocked from this month’s hajj pilgrimage, their supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a furious rebuke to rival Saudi Arabia, saying the Muslim world should challenge its management of Islam’s holiest sites. “Saudi rulers… who have blocked the proud and faithful Iranian pilgrims’ path to the Beloved’s House, are disgraced and misguided people who think their… Read more »
A senior military commander and founding member of the Syrian rebel group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, has been killed by a US air strike that hit a meeting of the group’s leaders, rebels said. Abu Hajer al-Homsi, whose real name was Abu Omar Saraqeb, was killed in a raid on a rural part of Aleppo… Read more »