BARTELLA, Iraq: Iraqi special forces battling to clear Daesh from eastern Mosul have killed nearly 1,000 militants but fighting has slowed as troops face a mobile enemy hidden among thousands of civilians in the city, a top commander said. Six weeks into a major offensive, Iraqi forces have captured nearly half of eastern Mosul, moving from district to district against militant snipers, suicide attackers and car bombs.Elite […]
By Josh Smith | KABUL KABUL The U.S. military wants to replace Afghanistan’s well-worn fleet of Russian helicopters with American-made aircraft, according to a new budget proposal, a decision aimed at reducing the Afghan air force’s decades-long reliance on Russian equipment. The Afghan air force, trained and assisted by NATO advisers, has slowly gained strength, but remains too small to meet the needs of security forces struggling […]
By Idrees Ali | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON A small Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard vessel pointed its weapon at a U.S. military helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, two U.S. defence officials told Reuters on Monday, an action they described as “unsafe and unprofessional.” The incident is the latest in a series of similar actions by Iranian vessels this year, but the first reported since Republican Donald […]
President Bashar al-Assad’s forces seized a wide swath of rebel territory in the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo, spurring the flight of tens of thousands of civilians amid intense fighting that threatens the collapse of the opposition’s last major urban stronghold. Activists and rebel leaders said pro-Assad forces on Monday recaptured the northern districts of the city, which has been divided between opposition forces on the east […]
Photo Syrians fleeing rebel-held parts of eastern Aleppo moved on Sunday toward an area controlled by Kurdish fighters. Credit Rumaf, via Associated Press BEIRUT, Lebanon — Thousands of people were sent fleeing for their lives on Monday as rebel fighters lost a large stretch of territory in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo to government forces and Kurdish fighters, in what could prove to be a turning […]
By Ulf Laessing | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Islamic State has arrested dozens of Mosul shop owners accused of raising food prices in the nearly besieged city, to tamp down discontent as a U.S.-backed offensive closes in on the group’s last major stronghold in Iraq, residents said on Monday. The arrests took place on Sunday morning in Bursa, a commercial district in the western part of the […]
Syria’s Foreign Ministry on Monday denounced comments by Qatar that it will continue to back rebels against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as merely an attempt “to raise the morale of the terrorist groups” in the face of army advances. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that Doha would continue to arm Syrian rebel groups even if US President-elect […]
BEIRUT Syrian state media said on Monday the army and its allies had captured the al-Sakhour district from rebels in eastern Aleppo, an advance that risks splintering the opposition-held area in two. Rebel sources could not immediately be reached for comment. Citing a military source, state TV said the army and its allies had seized the entire area and were working to clear it of mines. It […]
By Lisa Barrington | BEIRUT BEIRUT Several thousand residents of rebel-held eastern Aleppo fled shifting frontlines, residents and a monitor said on Sunday, after a rapid advance by the Syrian army and allied forces that rebels fear could split their most important urban stronghold in two. The army and its allies took control on Saturday of the large Hanano housing district, on the northeast frontline of the […]
CAIRO: Egypt on Sunday denied Arab media reports claiming that it had a military presence in Syria, days after President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi expressed his support for the Syrian Army.“These claims only exist in the imagination of those who promote them,” the Foreign Ministry said in the statement.On Thursday, the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir said that 18 Egyptian air force pilots had been deployed on a military base […]
By Michael Georgy, Isabel Coles and John Davison | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Iraq’s sectarian political leaders have plunged back into a dispute over the status of Shi’ite armed groups, undermining efforts to reunite the country as its troops press on with the assault of Mosul, Islamic State’s biggest stronghold. Forty days into the biggest ground offensive in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, about a […]
By Isabel Coles | GOGJALI, Iraq GOGJALI, Iraq Until three weeks ago, many of Abu Osama’s customers were Islamic State militants who brought their wives and children to his pharmacy on the eastern edge of Mosul for injections and treatment. Now, most of them are Iraqi security forces who recaptured the Gogjali neighborhood earlier this month and are pushing further into the city, which has been under […]
Not content with arresting or firing any potential source of domestic political opposition, Turkey’s president Erdogan is targeting foreign journalists. Having previously arrested dozens of Turkish journalists after the failed July “coup” attempt led to a nationwide crackdown on the media, overnight the Turkish government detained reporters working for BBC and Voice of America in southeastern Turkey. Turkey media crackdown broadens to foreign outlets. Local BBC & […]
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said it had killed four militants linked to the Islamic State on Sunday after they attacked Israeli forces in the Golan Heights. The confrontation appeared to be the first of its kind between Israel and Islamic State-affiliated forces based in Syria. It was not immediately clear if the militants’ attack was spontaneous or if it signaled a possible change of policy by […]
November 27, 2016 by: Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Paris French voters were heading to the polls on Sunday in a primary run-off contest predicted to give François Fillon the centre-right nomination and a good chance of becoming president of France next year. Mr Fillon, the former prime minister who unexpectedly surged to pole position with 44 per cent of the votes in a first round last Sunday, is […]
Israeli aircraft killed four Islamic State-linked gunmen on Sunday after they fired mortars and shot at troops patrolling along the occupied Golan Heights, the military said. Israel has often responded to errant fire from the Syrian civil war, but exchanges of fire with gunmen on the Golan have been rare since the fighting began more than five years ago. The militants fired at the Israeli soldiers, who […]
DUBAI Iran may seek to set up naval bases in Yemen or Syria in the future, as distant footholds might be more valuable militarily than nuclear technology, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces said in remarks published on Sunday. “We need distant bases, and it may become possible one day to have bases on the shores of Yemen or Syria, or bases on islands […]
KUWAIT CITY: Kuwaitis turned out in large numbers Saturday for the first election contested by the opposition in nearly four years amid fresh disputes over cuts in subsidies due to falling oil revenues.Turnout was high with some polling stations reporting that 80 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballots by the time polls closed at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT), according to Kuwait Television. Vote counting started […]
With violence escalating in Aleppo and elsewhere across war-ravaged Syria, the United Nations said Saturday that the number of children trapped in besieged areas had doubled in less than a year to half a million. A report by Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, said the children were among hundreds of thousands of civilians in 16 areas under siege across the country who had been “almost completely […]
Kuwaitis voted on Saturday in an election energised by the participation of opposition candidates for the first time since 2012 and focused on recent government austerity measures aimed at tackling the oil-rich nation’s deficit. The parliament of Western-allied Kuwait was due to run until July 2017, but the emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, dissolved it in October, saying “security challenges” in the region – an apparent reference […]
As mourners carried the coffin of a slain Hezbollah commander, they moved quickly to wipe away blood still dripping from his body — it had been washed in haste as it was rushed from the battlefields of Aleppo to its final resting place in Lebanon. While Russian war planes and bombs have dominated headlines about outside intervention in Syria’s five-year conflict, thousands of those fighting on the […]
BEIRUT Syrian government and allied forces seized large parts of an important district in rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Saturday but fierce fighting for control of the residential area continued, rebels, pro-government media and a monitor said. Government forces have advanced with a ground and air assault on the edge of the besieged eastern half of the city, a move the rebels say is designed to split their […]
Photo Residents of the Tahir district of Mosul, which had been liberated from the Islamic State a few hours before, on Nov. 16. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times CHICAGO — The ancient Assyrians considered the Tigris River the division between East and West, and the city I come from in Iraq is called Mosul — connection point, in Arabic — because it connects these […]
By Karin Strohecker | LONDON LONDON Turkey’s rapprochement with Russia has not changed Ankara’s position that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go to restore peace in the country, Turkish deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Saturday. Russia is Assad’s main military backer while Turkey backs the rebels fighting to oust him in the six year old conflict. “We are in the same position, Assad has committed […]
