The nation of Turkey has recently announced its call for a ceasefire in Syria, asking Bashar Assad to resolve the disputes with his people and speak with his adversaries. At a joint news conference in Ankara which included Hakan Fidan and his Iranian counterpart, Hakan said that Turkey and Iran would be continuing diplomatic efforts, despite the fact that the… Read more »
11 February 2020 Syrian civil war Turkey’s president has warned the Syrian government that it will “pay a very, very heavy price” for attacks on Turkish soldiers in north-west Syria. Five troops were killed in opposition-held Idlib province on Monday, as the Syrian army continued an offensive. Turkish forces struck dozens of targets in response, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan… Read more »
Damascus has much to gain from deal with Kurds, but its ability to halt Turkey’s push depends on Russia, say analysts. In a major shift in alliances, the Kurdish-led administration in northern Syria announced on Sunday a deal with President Bashar al-Assad‘s government to allow Syrian troops to deploy along the border with Turkey to stave off a military offensive by Ankara. The pact, brokered by… Read more »
A US-backed alliance of Syrian fighters has announced that the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) has lost the last pocket of territory in Syria it controlled, bringing a formal end to the “caliphate” it proclaimed in 2014. IS once controlled 88,000 sq km (34,000 sq miles) of territory stretching from western Syria to eastern Iraq. It imposed its brutal rule… Read more »
An explosion in the opposition-held Syrian province of Idlib has killed at least 15 people, rescue workers say. Three buildings in the town of Jisr al-Shughour were destroyed by the blast, the cause of which was not known. A monitoring group said it happened in front of an office belonging to the jihadist alliance that largely controls the province, Hayat… Read more »
More than 1,600 civilians were killed in US-led coalition air and artillery strikes during the offensive to oust the Islamic State group from the Syrian city of Raqqa in 2017, activists say. Amnesty International and monitoring group Airwars said they had carried out investigations at 200 strike locations and identified 1,000 of the victims. They urged the coalition to “end… Read more »
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Ankara on Saturday rejected American plans to install military observation posts along its border with Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), a fledgling US-allied de facto entity whose destruction it has long sought. “We have stated that the observation points to be established by US troops on the Syrian border will have a very negative impact,” Turkish Defense Minister… Read more »
AFRIN (Kurdistan 24) – At least 25 militants have been killed and dozens more wounded on Sunday in heavy clashes between Turkish-backed insurgent factions in the northwestern Syrian city of Afrin, a war monitor said. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said fighting in several districts of Afrin erupted between the Olive Branch groups, backed by the Turkish… Read more »
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – US forces have deployed along the border between Rojava and Turkey to deter Turkish aggression against Kurdish forces, according to multiple sources. On Friday, US forces started “patrolling on the border… to ease tensions and stop Turkey from launching attacks,” Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) media representative Mustafa Bali stated. This week, Turkish forces have targeted Kurdish… Read more »
A massive convoy of buses carrying thousands of opposition fighters and their families from the besieged city of Homs arrived in Syria’s northern rebel-held district of al-Bad. Sixty-six buses carrying 3,194 people arrived on Tuesday a day after leaving the town of Rastan, located roughly halfway between Homs and Hama, media reports said. The evacuation was a part of an… Read more »