The war in Syria has subjected Turkey’s border regions to terrorist attacks and demographic upheaval on an historic scale, but on the face of it there’s a welcoming feeling to Samanda, a bustling town of 45,000 on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. On a wall by the town’s beachside boardwalk, graffiti proclaims how “Syrians are our brothers”, a sentiment in sharp contrast to the burning of refugees’ […]
President Bashar al-Assad is edging closer to victory in Syria. NYtimes
By Laila Bassam, Lisa Barrington and John Davison | ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT The evacuation of the last opposition-held areas of the Syrian city of Aleppo was suspended on Friday after pro-government militias demanded that wounded people should also be brought out of two Shi’ite villages being besieged by rebel fighters. The second day of the operation to take fighters and civilians out of Aleppo’s rebel enclave […]
Russia said the evacuation of thousands of people trapped for months in the last rebel foothold of Aleppo was finished on Friday, hours after a series of blasts halted the operation. “The Syrian army operation to liberate the militant-controlled eastern districts of Aleppo is complete,” the Russian defence ministry said. “Syrian government forces are liquidating isolated pockets of resistance by radicals.” An agreement for rebels to withdraw […]
WASHINGTON The U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State said on Friday it destroyed 14 tanks, an air defense artillery system and other weaponry near the Syrian city of Palmrya after Islamic State seized the city from Syrian and Russian forces this month. The strikes, which the military said in a statement took place on Thursday, followed a warning from the U.S. military that it could strike weapons it […]
Authored by Carl Bildt, originally posted at Project Syndicate, In August 2015, I tweeted that if Donald Trump were to be elected President of the United States, we would have to “head for the bunkers.” A Trump presidency was considered highly unlikely back then; but here we are. And while heading for the bunkers might not be the most appropriate response (yet), where we are is undoubtedly […]
By Andrew Osborn and Nick Tattersall | MOSCOW/ISTANBUL MOSCOW/ISTANBUL President Vladimir Putin said he and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan are working to organise a new series of Syrian peace talks without the involvement of the United States or the United Nations. In a snub to Washington, Putin made clear on Friday that the initiative was the sole preserve of Moscow and Turkey and that the peace […]
Photo A member of the Syrian government forces watched the evacuation operation of rebel fighters and civilians from Aleppo on Friday. Credit George Ourfalian/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images BEIRUT, Lebanon — The process of evacuating residents from the last rebel-held section of Aleppo broke down on Friday, a day after Syrian government buses and ambulances began taking residents out of the besieged area. The reason for halting […]
ALEPPO, Syria The evacuation of people from eastern Aleppo was suspended on Friday and a Reuters witness heard at least four blasts at a location where buses had been departing. A state-run Syrian TV station reported that rebels had breached an agreement with the government by trying to take prisoners with them during the evacuation. A Syrian official overseeing the evacuation told Reuters it had been obstructed […]
ANKARA A camp to host people evacuated from Syria’s Aleppo will be set up inside Syria near the border, senior Turkish officials told Reuters on Friday, and Turkey will continue to accept sick and wounded coming from the city. Two potential sites, around 3.5 km (2.2 miles) inside Syria, have been identified to set up a camp, which will have the capacity to host up to 80,000 […]
Submitted by Finian Cunningham via Strategic-Culture.org, The US and its terrorist-sponsoring partners are seeing their criminal regime-change project in ruins, as the Syrian army and its allies win a spectacular victory to retake the strategically important city of Aleppo. Western governments and their flunkies at the UN are cynically, perversely decrying a «meltdown of humanity». Closer to the truth is their own «meltdown of sanity». This is […]
By Elizabeth Piper and Alastair Macdonald | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS European Union leaders agreed their plan for Brexit negotiations on Thursday, pledging to move swiftly and stick together to ensure Britain does not cherry pick a sweet deal that might inspire others to unstitch the bloc. Prime Minister Theresa May left before the other 27 leaders met briefly to formalise their plan for how to run Brexit talks. […]
By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Katya Golubkova | TOKYO TOKYO Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a second day of talks on Friday after Abe made little headway a day earlier in his quest to resolve a territorial row that has festered since World War Two. Putin looked set to come away with a slew of economic deals and achieve what experts said […]
To understand Arabs and their culture, one must first understand their language, but with many conflicting theories about its origins, this is no easy task. To celebrate a language used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, December 18 is the designated UN Arabic Language Day. The day was established by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in 2010 to “celebrate multilingualism […]
Convoys of green buses and ambulances ferried several thousand rebels and wounded civilians through the rubble-strewn streets of Aleppo on Thursday as the highly anticipated evacuation of the last opposition enclave of the northern Syrian city finally began. The operation got off to a shaky start after the first ambulances were shot at in the morning, wounding three people and underlining the fragility of a deal brokered […]
By Gabriela Baczynska | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS European Union leaders agreed on Thursday to extend the bloc’s main economic sanctions against Russia over the turmoil in Ukraine for six months until mid-2017, diplomats said. The decision was expected and the formal process to extend the sanctions on Russia’s defence, energy and financial sectors will take place early next week, they said. “We welcome unanimous decision by the EU […]
BEIRUT Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday the world would be different after what he called the “liberation of Aleppo”, describing it as a historic moment. “What is happening today is the writing of a history written by every Syrian citizen. The writing did not start today, it started six years ago when the crisis and war started against Syria,” Assad said in a video statement […]
Thousands of people had gathered outside a hospital in the Mashhad neighborhood, which is still controlled by rebels, hoping that an evacuation deal announced on Tuesday by Turkey, Russia and Syrian rebels would hold. But the constant threat from snipers, bombs and shelling was unsettling. Video Aleppo Activists Say Final Goodbyes as Assad Closes In Syrian government forces had reclaimed most of rebel-held eastern Aleppo by Tuesday, […]
ANKARA The first goal in the evacuation of eastern Aleppo is to get the sick and wounded to hospital, whether in Syria or Turkey, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftugolu said on Thursday. He told a news conference that evacuees need to be put into camps quickly and that work was continuing on establishing camps in Syria. He added that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad […]
By Laila Bassam, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Tom Perry | ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT An attempt to evacuate people in need of medical attention from rebel-held eastern Aleppo stalled on Thursday when fighters loyal to the Syrian government fired on the convoy, wounding three, the head of the ambulance service said. The vehicles had intended to leave under a deal to evacuate people from rebel areas following rapid […]
MOSCOW The International Committee of the Red Cross will help with transporting injured rebels out of the eastern part of Syria’s war-torn city of Aleppo, Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday, Interfax news agency reported. Russian soldiers are now preparing to lead rebels out of Aleppo under orders from President Vladimir Putin, the defence ministry said earlier on Thursday. (Reporting by Alexander Winning; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh; […]
Photo The coffins of victims from Sunday’s bombing of St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral after funeral services in Cairo on Monday. Credit Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images CAIRO — Egypt faced the prospect of a surge in sectarian bloodshed on Tuesday after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Coptic cathedral in Cairo that killed 25 people on Sunday. The group warned of […]
Syrians were still trapped inside the last rebel foothold in eastern Aleppo on Wednesday, hours after an evacuation was set to begin. The reason for the delay was unclear but residents inside the besieged city said they heard several explosions and gunfire, indicating that the shaky deal between the Syrian opposition and Russia is already strained. After weeks of fierce fighting, President Bashar al-Assad looks set to […]
The head of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has told US officials it will invest $10 billion in infrastructure projects inside the United States, sources said, in an apparent boost to the economic plans of president-elect Donald Trump. Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohamed bin Saud al-Thani, chief executive of the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), delivered the message to officials including Charles Rivkin, US assistant secretary of state for economic […]
