DAMASCUS, March 23 -- U.S.-backed forces said they had captured Islamic State's last shred of territory in eastern Syria at Baghouz on Saturday, ending the group's self-proclaimed caliphate after years of fighting. "Baghouz has been liberated. The military victory against Daesh has been accomplished," Mustafa Bali, a Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokesman, wrote on Twitter, declaring the "total elimination of (the) so-called caliphate". However, a Reuters journalist at Baghouz said there were still some sounds of shooting and mortar fire. The final battle lasted weeks as huge numbers of civilians poured out, and for many Kurdish fighters in the SDF, victory was sweeter as it coincided with their "Now Ruz" new year. Though the defeat of Islamic State in Baghouz ends the group's grip over the jihadist quasi-state straddling Syria and Iraq that it declared in 2014, it remains a threat. Some of its fighters still hold out in Syria's remote central desert and in Iraqi cities they have slipped into the shadows, staging sudden shootings or kidnappings and awaiting a chance to rise again. The United States believes the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is in Iraq. He stood at the pulpit of the great medieval mosque in Mosul in 2014 to declare himself caliph, sovereign over all Muslims. Further afield, jihadists in Afghanistan, Nigeria and elsewhere have shown no sign of recanting their allegiance to Islamic State, and intelligence services say its devotees in the West might plot new attacks. Still, the fall of Baghouz is a big milestone in a fight against the jihadist group waged by numerous local and global forces - some of them sworn enemies - over more than four years. It also marks a big moment in Syria's eight-year war, wiping out the territory of one of the main contestants, with the rest split between President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey-backed rebels and the Kurdish-led SDF. Assad and his Iranian allies have sworn to recapture all Syria, and Turkey has threatened to drive out the SDF, which it sees as a terrorist group, by force. The continued presence of U.S. troops in northeast Syria might avert this. Islamic State originated as an al Qaeda faction in Iraq, but it took advantage of Syria's civil war to seize land there and split from the global jihadist organisation. In 2014, it suddenly grabbed Iraq's Mosul, one of the region's great historic cities, as well as Syria's Raqqa, and swathes of land each side of the border. It declared an end to modern countries and called on supporters to leave their homes and join the jihadist utopia it claimed to be erecting, trumpeting its currency, flag, passports and military parades. Oil production, extortion and stolen antiquities financed its agenda, which included slaughtering some minorities, public slave auctions of captured women, grotesque punishments for minor crimes and the choreographed killing of hostages. Those excesses brought an array of forces against it, forcing it from Mosul and Raqqa in a year of heavy defeats in 2017 and driving it, eventually, down the Euphrates to Baghouz. Over the past two months some 60,000 people poured out of that dwindling enclave, fleeing SDF bombardment and a shortage of food so severe that some said they were reduced to cooking grass. Intense air strikes throughout the campaign have levelled entire districts and rights groups have said they killed many civilians, allegations the coalition has often disputed. A mass grave the SDF discovered last month showed there were other dangers in the enclave, though it has released no details on the identities of the victims or how they died. Civilians made up more than half the people leaving Baghouz, the SDF said, including Islamic State victims such as women from the Iraqi Yazidi sect whom the jihadists had sexually enslaved. Thousands of the group's unbending supporters also abandoned the enclave while still vowing their allegiance to a ruined caliphate and showing no remorse for its victims. At displacement camps in northeast Syria where they were sent by the SDF, the hardliners, including many foreign women who came to Syria and Iraq to marry jihadists, had to be kept away from other, often traumatized, residents. Their fate has befuddled foreign governments, who see them as a security threat and are loath to accede to SDF entreaties to take them back home. As the fighting progressed, the convoys of trucks from Baghouz started to include hundreds, and then thousands, of surrendering jihadist fighters, many hobbling from their wounds. The SDF said it captured hundreds more in recent weeks who tried to slip through its cordon and escape into Iraq or across the Euphrates and into the Syrian desert. At the end, they were besieged in a tiny camp full of rusting vehicles and makeshift shelters, pinned against the Euphrates and overlooked by hills held by the SDF. Islamic State released video from inside that squalid, shell-pounded enclave, showing its last fighters still shooting at the SDF as smoke billowed overhead. It was an attempt to shape the narrative of its defeat, portraying it as a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds and a call to arms for future jihadists. But in Baghouz in recent weeks long lines of abject, surrendering fighters sat or squatted in a desolate landscape, their dream of world domination in tatters.
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WASHINGTON, March 22 -- US President Donald Trump’s statement Washington should recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights may destabilize the situation in the Middle East. "Such calls may considerably destabilize the already strained situation in the Middle East," he said. "In any case the idea as such by no means works for the tasks and goals of the Middle East settlement. It’s the other way round." "At the moment it’s just a call. May it remain so". Earlier, Trump tweeted that the US should recognize Israel’s full sovereignty over the Golan Heights. This plateau, which belonged to Syria since 1944 were seized by Israel during the six-day war in 1967. In 1981, the Israeli parliament passed a law to unilaterally declare sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The UN Security Council declared the annexation null and void in its Resolution 497 of December 17, 1981. BANGKOK, March 15 -- Countries are grappling with what to do with women who left to join ISIS. Now, as the organization is driven from its last strongholds in Syria, many of these women have sought to return to their home countries. Shamima Begum, of Britain, was stripped of her citizenship on security grounds last month, leaving her in a detention camp in Syria. Her three-week-old baby died on March 9, the third of the 19-year-old's infant children to die since she traveled to Syria in 2015. Found in a refugee camp in February, an unrepentant Begum sparked a debate in Britain and other European capitals as to whether a teenager with a jihadist fighter's child should be left in a war zone to fend for herself. Iranian-American journalist and writer Azadeh Moaveni works as a gender analyst for the International Crisis Center. She's an expert on gender and Islamic insurgencies and she spoke with Marco Werman about the role women have played in ISIS as many try to re-enter the countries they left when they went to join the militant group. Marco Werman: Writer Azadeh Moaveni has been considering the case of Shamima Begum. Let me just start with your concerns over how to refer to these young women who joined ISIS. What is the problem with calling them jihadi brides or ISIS brides? Azadeh Moaveni: Well I think "bride" suggests that their only relationship to this insurgent movement or this militant group was a civilian spouse, whereas many young women joined before they were even married. They joined up as members. They were voluntary recruits because they believed in the ideology and the politics of the organization. So, I think "brides" strips away that agency and that motivation. It doesn't really help us understand the way that recruitment worked. "I think 'brides' strips away that agency and that motivation." Is there a better terminology that you can think of? To me, "member" is more clear. It suggests some agency and voluntary affiliation. It doesn't immediately read as operational involvement because in a great many cases, women were not operationally involved or they didn't participate in direct violence, but it reflects that they were part of the organization. They lent their support to it in ways that made it stronger and that helped to recruit. And why is it important what we call these women? I mean, some people might say they joined a terrorist organization. In the case of Shamima Begum, she's got no remorse about joining. Why should we pay attention to the words we use to describe them?Well, I think in lots of conflicts around the world, whether it's Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIS in Syria, or Al-Shabab in Somalia, we are increasingly seeing or are ready to see, prepared to see, and understand how actively women are involved. I think it's really hard to read the deep social base, how the contexts of state collapse affect men and women and bring women to the centers of these insurgencies. So I don't really think we get these conflicts unless we can also map the involvement of women onto them. So there are the semantics and then perhaps more troubling issues like how should a young woman like Shamima Begum be judged? Certainly, there is a problem of intelligence and there's really no good solutions when it comes to prosecuting women or men who are coming out of these kinds of conflict zones because some of the evidence against them is inadmissible. There are retroactive ways or new laws that have been instituted, for example, that could lead to higher sentences simply for joining a prescribed organization or for going to a zone where there was this kind of violence going on. I think something that is being turned to in the UK is the stripping of citizenship, which essentially — and this has happened in the case of Shamima — renders her stateless and then foists the problem of all of these jihadists or women militants onto the very vulnerable fragile states like Iraq or Syria itself, which can't be the best solution. So, I think a case-by-case basis, maybe tribunals. I think there certainly are legal systems — like the American legal system, the British, or the European states — that have more robust ways to be able to prosecute. If we leave these women stranded in places like this, they may actually never be punished or see the consequences for what they've done. As you said earlier, "jihadi brides" or "ISIS brides" takes away the agency of these women and what they were doing. What do we know about what these women — like Shamima Begam — were actually doing once they were inside the caliphate? For a lot of women, if they were skilled, educated, or trained in something, they took those skills to Syria. I spent a lot of time in Tunisia where hundreds of women went and there were doctors, language teachers, midwives and graphic designers. They would take their skills and work there because they thought they were building a new society. Less educated and unskilled women either stayed at home or they were involved in these morality police brigades that would essentially terrify and beat into submission the local population by beatings, lashings, fines for little infringements in dress codes. Of course, I think women were active as recruiters as well and were running the infrastructure of women kind of coming in and out of the caliphate. I would say a huge a spectrum of roles; operationally in relation to the group and also the civilian roles of a building society that they believe themselves to be building from scratch. "They would take their skills and work there because they thought they were building a new society." As for Shamima Begum, she's been stripped of her British citizenship, but how do you reconcile Begum's desire to return to the UK and her lack of remorse for what she's done? To me, her lack of remorse is not really surprising. She's highly indoctrinated. This is really the only adult life she has known. But I think she does retain a British socialization, which has taught her that there is a country that has institutions like courts that will follow the rule of law and a healthcare system that will take care of you even if you are jobless. These are great strengths of British society and I think it's quite poignant that she's internalized the fact that a state can provide this in a kind of altruistic way even though she abandoned it. To me, I feel like there's a glimmer of hope that she could be rehabilitated. A glimmer of hope at home, but how worried are you about what someone like Shamima Begum now becomes? I think it's very worrisome, certainly, and I think that this is something that countries across the world are going to have to grapple with: How to rehabilitate these women and how to ensure that they do not continue to spread these kinds of ideas and keep them incubated in a way? Credit: Reuters KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 -- When bombs started falling around her in the ISIS-controlled territory in Syria, Lidia decided it was time to leave. For the first time in more than four years, the 29-year-old Malaysian longed to return home. The Mandarin-speaking medical lab technician disappeared from the Southeast Asian nation with her infant son and husband in October 2014 to travel secretly to Syria. Two weeks ago, she sent a text message to her father in the southern state of Johor to tell him she had fled the territory of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) and asked him to help her return to Malaysia. "I never lost hope that one day Lidia would tell me she wants to come home," her father, a Johor-based businessman who declined to be named. Lidia is one of the 13 Malaysians now wanting to come home as an offensive by the United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) enters its final stage in the last ISIS enclave in the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria, and the authorities are working out how to repatriate them. "We are trying to bring them home … yes, it includes Lidia. But you know, the situation is difficult as it involves many parties from different countries," Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, head of counter terrorism for Special Branch, the intelligence arm of the Malaysian police. Interrogation and rehabilitation While some countries are attempting to strip former fighters and their families of citizenship and prevent them from returning, Malaysia says citizens will be allowed to come back, provided they comply with checks and enforcement and complete a one-month government-run rehabilitation programme. "Not everyone will be detained but all returnees will be interrogated," Ayob said. "We will conduct thorough checks and investigation on each returnee. We bring in clerics and psychologists to evaluate their ideology and psychological make-up. "We will compare intelligence which we received from friendly foreign services. If there is evidence that a returnee was involved in ISIS's militant activities, he or she would be charged in court," Ayob added. To date, 11 Malaysians have returned to the country. Eight were charged in court and convicted, all of them men. The other three were one woman and two children aged three and five. "The woman underwent a rehabilitation programme and has now returned to her kampung village," Ayob said. "She continues to be monitored." Even though ISIS has all but collapsed in Iraq and Syria, there are Malaysians who are still willing to fight for the group, according to police. "We are keeping an eye on them," Ayob said. "Those who cannot go to Syria are now setting their sights on Mindanao in southern Philippines where militant groups there have links to ISIS." Meanwhile, 51 Malaysians remain in Syria, including 17 children, according to Ayob. IDLIB, February 28 -- Terrorists of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (terror group) pose a threat to Syria’s stability by conducting events for building up their offensive potential. "A threat to security and stability in Syria is coming from terrorists of the Nusra-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance, which controls almost the entire Idlib de-escalation zone. Field commanders are carrying out events on reshaping allied groups with the goals of increasing their offensive capabilities in the directions of Aleppo, Hama and mountainous Latakia," the diplomat stressed. "The militants plan to expand the sphere of their influence and establish full control of Idlib." It's also noted a growing number of ceasefire violations. "Only over the past four days nearly 40 such cases have been recorded, when people died or were wounded," she said. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres drew attention to the deplorable situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone in his recent report on the humanitarian situation in Syria. Besides concerns over the growing activity of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the report details atrocities of terrorists against civilians, including suppressing ethnic and religious minorities, illegal detentions of civilians and cases when people have gone missing, she noted. ANKARA, February 18 -- The US may continue to have a military presence in Syria after the withdrawal of troops, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News circulated on Monday. "Where will they pull out to, will someone else replace them, who will they leave the arms, will their presence continue? When they pull out, their presence will most probably not end, it will continue in some way," Peskov said. "All these questions are on the agenda, the presidents are talking about them. The general attitude is the same, there is no reason for optimism, and uncertainty is troubling. And this situation is not helping the crisis in Syria and hope for a solution at all," the spokesman emphasized. On December 19, 2018, US President Donald Trump said that the United States had defeated ISIS (Islamic State, a terrorist organization banned in Russia) in Syria, which was the only reason for the US troops being there, so all US troops would be pulled out of Syria. According to US officials, the US would withdraw its entire force of 2,000 service members from Syria within 60 to 100 days. BEIRUT, February 7 -- Syrian civilians and family members of ISIS jihadists are continuing to flee the last area held by the so-called Islamic State in Syria. The area is under attack from Kurdish-Syrian forces, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports. According to the NGO, hundreds of people are fleeing towards the refugee camp of al Hold in eastern Syria but are in very difficult humanitarian conditions. Kurdish forces and American soldiers on the ground are separating men from women to try to identify ISIS affiliates among the civilians, including foreign militants from Iraq, other Arab countries as well as Caucasians, Russians and Europeans. (ANSAmed). ANKARA, January 28 -- Turkey is aiming to form safe zones in northern Syria so that Syrian refugees hosted by Turkey could return to their home country, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. Speaking in Istanbul on Monday, Erdogan also said nearly 300,000 Syrians had already returned to areas controlled by Turkish-backed rebels in northern Syria, adding that he expected millions of Syrian nationals to return to the proposed safe zones. Turkey hosts about four million Syrian refugees. US President Donald Trump announced in December the withdrawal of the 2,000 US troops from Syria and Erdogan subsequently said they had discussed setting up a 32km-deep safe zone in Syria along the border with Turkey. On Friday, Erdogan said that Turkey expected the safe zone to be set up within a few months, otherwise, it would establish a buffer zone without the help of other nations. He added that the zone will aim to protect Turkey from "terrorists", referring to the US-backed Syrian Kurdish militia that controls areas in northeastern Syria along the Turkish border. Ankara wants the zone to contain the fighters of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which the United States has armed and trained to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). The YPG is seen as an effective ground force by the US in the fight against ISIL, but Turkey says it is linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara and Washington list as a terrorist group. Turkey's foreign minister said on Thursday that Turkey has the capacity to create a safe zone in Syria on its own, but will not exclude the US, Russia, or others if they want to cooperate. "Turkey has not forced refugees to go back to Turkey for years. However, around 300,000 refugees returned to areas held by Turkey and Turkey-backed rebels in northern Syria, such as Jarablus and Al-Bab," Al Jazeera's Osama Bin Javid, reporting from Gaziantep on Turkey-Syria border, said. "And more refugee returns are only possible, according to Erdogan, if Turkey can have some sort of control from the west side of the Euphrates River until the Iraqi border." CARACAS, January 25 -- Wednesday saw violent protests in Venezuela's capital Caracas against President Nicolas Maduro, who accused Washington of attempting to stage a coup in his country and moved to cut off diplomatic ties with the United States. Venezuelan ambassador to Syria Jose Gregorio Biomorgi Muzzatiz has compared the current events in his country with the situation in Syria in 2011, referring to the "same scenario". He noted that although the Venezuelan opposition uses such terms as democracy, it nevertheless does not recognise the legitimately elected president and has nominated an "unknown" candidate. He added that all state institutions in Venezuela are working in a routine mode and that the situation on the whole is "normal" and that the authorities have everything under under control. Muzzatiz was echoed by Chargé d'Affaires of the Venezuelan embassy in Serbia Dia Nader de El-Andari, who argued that the current crisis in Venezuela has been endorsed by the United States, with the support of the European Union, in line with the model of Libya and Syria. The Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, in turn, said in a statement that it "strongly condemns the US intervention and is totally against a coup attempt against the legitimate government [of Venezuela] initiated by the United States". The group stressed that the decision by several nations, including the United States, to recognise opposition leader Guaido as the Venezuelan President does not make him the legitimate head of the country. Earlier, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro cut off diplomatic ties with the United States, accusing it of attempting to stage a coup in Caracas, while Washington, in turn, urged him to step down. On Wednesday, at least two people reportedly died in Wednesday's violent protests against Maduro, which came amid the opposition's support for self-proclaimed interim President Juan Guaido. Apart from the US, Guaido was recognised by a number of countries, including Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Georgia, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, for his part, stressed that recent events in Venezuela were a gross violation of the country's sovereignty and blamed the United States for interfering. Bahram Qassemi, spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, in turn pointed out that "Iran opposes any interference into the internal affairs of Venezuela, as well as illegal and unconstitutional steps, such as an attempted coup, and supports the government and people of this country." BEIRUT, January 23 -- Kurdish-led fighters overran the last village held by the Islamic State group in Syria on Wednesday, confining its once vast cross-border “caliphate” to two small hamlets. It is the culmination of a broad offensive launched by the Syrian Democratic Forces last September with U.S.-led coalition support in which they have reduced the jihadis’ last enclave on the north bank of the Euphrates valley near the Iraqi border to a tiny rump. The capture of the village of Baghouz leaves the few remaining diehard IS fighters holed up in scattered farmhouses among the irrigated fields and orchards on the north bank of the Euphrates River. “Search operations are continuing in Baghouz to find any IS fighters who are still hiding,” the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, said. “The SDF will now have to push on into the farmland around Baghouz.” The Observatory said late on Tuesday that around 4,900 people, mostly women and children but including 470 IS fighters, had fled the jihadis’ fast dwindling enclave in two days. Of those 3,500 surrendered to the advancing SDF on Tuesday alone. They were evacuated on dozens of trucks chartered by the SDF. The fall of Baghouz follows the SDF’s capture of the enclave’s sole town of Hajin and the villages of Al-Shaafa and Sousa in recent weeks. The new wave of departures means that nearly 27,000 people have left former IS areas since early December, including almost 1,800 jihadis who have surrendered, the Observatory said. The whereabouts of the ultra-elusive IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has made just one public appearance — in Iraq’s then IS-held second city Mosul in 2014 — are unknown. The U.S.-led coalition declined to be drawn on when it expected its SDF allies to overrun the final sliver of territory still under IS control. It stressed the operation’s bigger goal was to minimize the continuing threat the jihadis could pose from underground. “It is difficult to say how much longer, despite the progress,” coalition spokesman Colonel Sean Ryan said. “We try to stay away from timelines as it is more about degrading the enemy’s capabilities. “We are seeing a lot of enemy fighters fleeing. The Syrian forces are less than 10 kilometers (six miles) from the Iraqi border but still fighting against a resistance of diehard fighters.” The remaining jihadis are well within artillery range of Iraqi forces stationed along the border, who are determined to prevent fugitive IS fighters from slipping across. On Saturday, Iraqi shelling and airstrikes on IS positions in an around Baghouz killed at least 20 jihadis, according to the Observatory. The coalition has stepped up its own airstrikes against IS since the jihadis killed four Americans and 15 other people in a suicide bombing on a restaurant in the flash point northern town of Manbij on Jan. 16. The U.S. losses were the biggest since Washington deployed troops in Syria in 2014 in support of the SDF. Previously it had reported just two combat losses in separate incidents. The Manbij bombing rekindled controversy triggered by President Donald Trump last month with his surprise announcement of a full withdrawal from Syria. The U.S. president justified the order with the assertion that the jihadis had now been “largely defeated” in Syria, a claim that the attack threw into renewed question. It is a far cry from the jihadis’ peak in 2014, when they overran large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq, and IS proclaimed a “caliphate” in areas under their control. The gains have come at the cost of heavy losses for the mainly Kurdish fighters of the SDF and despite their sense of betrayal by their U.S. ally after Trump’s withdrawal announcement. Neighboring Turkey has threatened repeatedly to launch a cross-border operation to crush the Kurdish fighters of the SDF and the autonomous region they have set up in areas of northern and northeastern Syria under their control. Turkish troops had been held at bay by the intervention of U.S. troops who set up observation posts along the border and mounted joint patrols with Kurdish fighters. But with those troops gone, the Kurds fear they will be exposed to the full might of the Turkish military. January 21 -- Kurdish communities in Europe send out a message and recalled that the Leyla Guven’s hunger strike is on the 75th day. The Kurdish groups noted that Leyla Guven’s life is at grave risk, her demands should immediately be met. The co-chair of the DTK and MP for HDP, Leyla Guven, political prisoners in North Kurdistan, Kurdish activists in South Kurdistan, Europe and Canada are on a hunger strike campaign to protest the strict isolation imposed on the Kurdish People’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan and demand his freedom. Kurdish youth community in Europe has also initiated a social media campaign, and continue to express their solidarity with Leyla Guven. The youths emphasized that Leyla Guven’s life is at risk, and they strongly criticized the silence of the international organizations. BEIRUT, January 20 -- Lebanon used an Arab economic summit on Sunday to call for the return of Syrian refugees to safe areas of their war-torn country, where the nearly eight-year civil war is still underway despite a recent series of government victories. President Michel Aoun told the opening session that Lebanon is overwhelmed by the presence of Syrian and Palestinian refugees, who make about half the population of the tiny country, which is struggling with an economic crisis. The meeting is the first economic and development summit to be held since 2013, and comes as Syria, Yemen and Libya remain gripped by violence and Iraq confronts a massive reconstruction challenge after its costly victory over the Islamic State group. Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said nearly half of all refugees “come from our Arab world.” Qatar’s ruler attended the summit, which has been marred by divisions over readmitting Syria to the Arab League. But Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani arrived shortly before the summit and left minutes after it began. Qatar has been one of the main backers of Syrian insurgents trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have reopened their embassies in Damascus, and the visit by Qatar’s ruler is widely seen as a first step to restoring relations with Syria. Sheikh Tamim and the president of Mauritania were the only heads of state from the 22-member Arab League who came to Beirut to attend the summit. Other countries sent lower-level delegations. The other leaders’ absence appeared to be a snub to Lebanon, where groups led by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah had insisted that Assad should be invited. “We regret the absences of some brotherly kings and presidents who have their justified excuses,” Aoun said without elaborating. “We call for a safe return of Syrian refugees to their country, especially to stable areas that can be reached and areas of low levels of violence,” Aoun said in his opening address. “This should not be linked to reaching a political solution.” Lebanon is home to some 1 million Syrian refugees, or a quarter of the country’s population. DAMASCUS, January 20 -- A "huge explosion" near a military intelligence office in Damascus Sunday left a number of dead and wounded, a war monitor said, after state TV said early reports suggested a "terrorist act". "The explosion took place near a security branch in the south of the city. There are some people killed and injured but we could not verify the toll immediately," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP. It was unclear if the blast was caused by a bomb that was planted or a suicide attack, the monitor said, adding that shooting followed the explosion. A preliminary report by Syria's state broadcaster suggested it was a "terrorist act". "Explosion heard around the southern highway in Damascus area, first reports suggest a terrorist act," the state outlet said, without providing further information on the incident. Syria is locked in a civil war that has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions since a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011 spiralled into full conflict. With key military backing from Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's forces have retaken large parts of Syria from rebels and jihadists, and now control almost two-thirds of the country. The Syrian regime in May reclaimed a final scrap of territory held by the Islamic State group in southern Damascus, cementing its total control over the capital for the first time in six years. DAMASCUS, January 16 -- American servicemen were killed in a suicide attack that targeted the northern Syrian city of Manbij on Wednesday, the US-led coalition said. It did not specify how many soldiers were killed in the blast which was claimed by ISIS but unidentified US officials told Reuters and Bloomberg that up to four Americans may have been killed. The US troops were conducting a "routine patrol" in Manbij at the time of the attack, the coalition said in a statement on Twitter. The White House said President Donald Trump has been fully briefed. "We will continue to monitor the ongoing situation in Syria," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters during a briefing. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 16 people have died, including five US-backed fighters as well as nine civilians. The war monitor and the Kurdish-run Hawar News Agency reported that at least two US troops died in the blast. Amaq – ISIS's media wing – claimed that the attacker used a suicide vest to strike at coalition forces near a resteraunt in the flashpoint Kurdish-held city. A video posted on social media networks purported to show the moment the attacker detonated his suicide vest. The National could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage. The attack came one day after coalition forces and US-backed fighters captured a key village from ISIS in their last holdout east of the Euphrates River, leaving just 15 square kilometres of land under the militants' control.
It is the first major attack that explicitly targets US forces in Syria since Mr Trump announced that he would be withdrawing troops from the country. Sharfan Darwish, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Manbij Military Council (MMC), said the blast took place on a crowded street. He said there were casualties but did not specify how many people died. ANKARA, January 15 -- After talks with US President Donald Trump Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed his country’s intention to create a buffer zone in northern Syria. Erdogan was speaking on Tuesday at a meeting with parliament members from the Justice and Development Party he leads. "In yesterday’s telephone conversation US President Donald Trump reaffirmed his decision to pull troops out of Syria. We’ve decided to go ahead with our contacts on all issues involving Syria, including the security zone Turkey will create," the daily Sabah quotes Erdogan as saying. |
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