Category:

Turkish Airstrikes Hit ISIS Targets in Syria

ISTANBUL — Turkish fighter jets struck three Islamic State targets inside Syria on Friday in a pre-emptive measure based on intelligence about a planned attack on Turkey , a senior government official said. The airstrikes came a day after Turkish forces engaged in their first direct combat with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, on the border with Syria and gave permission for American warplanes to use two air bases in the fight against the group in Syria. As well as the airstrikes, Turkey also carried out simultaneous raids across 13 provinces on Friday, resulting in the arrests of 250 people suspected to have ties with terrorist organizations. Three F-16 jets launched guided bombs against two command centers and a meeting point for Islamic State fighters across the border from Kilis, in southern Turkey, without entering Syrian airspace, according to the prime minister’s office. “We received […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

UN envoy voices deep concern over Syria barrel bombing

Sunni fighters say the army has now encircled them within a five square kilometre radius inside the city [File: Getty Images] The United Nations envoy for Syria has said government forces have dropped a large number of barrel bombs on Zabadani city, "causing unprecedented levels of destruction". Staffan de Mistura cited local sources on Thursday, saying the air strikes caused many civilian deaths in the city, located about 45km northwest of the capital Damascus, and about 10km from the border with Lebanon. " [The] Army of Fatah (a Sunni rebel alliance), that controls Zabadani, retaliated by firing rockets and mortar bombs on two Shia villages, Al Foua and Kefraya, near Idlib city in the north," de Mistura said. "In both cases, civilians are tragically caught in the middle of the fighting." Syrian state television said the army had destroyed a 70-metre-long tunnel used by the rebels to transport equipment […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

U.N. envoy says deeply concerned by battle at Syria border

A child inspects a site hit by what activists said was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar el-Asaad at Arbin town in Damascus countryside, Syria July 21, 2015. The United Nations envoy for Syria has voiced deep concern about civilians in the city of Zabadani, the focus of an offensive by the Syrian military and Lebanon’s Hezbollah aimed at wresting control of the area from insurgents. Citing local sources in a statement late on Tuesday, Staffan de Mistura said the military had dropped a large number of barrel bombs on Zabadani "causing unprecedented levels of destruction and many deaths among the civilian population." Control of the city, about 45 km (30 miles) northwest of the capital Damascus, is seen as crucial to consolidating President Bashar al-Assad’s control over the border zone between Lebanon and Syria. The Syrian air force has bombarded areas in and around the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Is ISIL running out of oil?

Iraq though has had significant success in taking down ISIL’S smuggling operation [File: ISIL] It has been alleged that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has made millions in Iraq, smuggling oil from various sites that they control around the country. According to the US, the figures could run into millions of dollars a week. While it is true that ISIL had control of Iraq’s largest oil refinery, Beiji, until recently, it also controls a number of oil wells and continues to exploit them. When ISIL fighters arrived in June 2014, they found themselves in possession of rich oil wells in Nineveh province, south of Mosul. This allowed them to establish smuggling operations, following criminal routes long established and join them up with smuggling routes in Syria. A common route came into being. Husham al-Brifkani, the head of the energy committee of Nineveh’s provincial council, said: […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Suspected Islamic State suicide bombing kills 27 in Turkish border town

A wounded man sits on a step following an explosion in Suruc, in the southeastern Sanliurfa province, Turkey, July 20, 2015. An explosion outside a cultural center in the Turkish town of Suruc near the border with Syria killed at least 27 people and wounded many more on Monday, in what senior officials said may have been a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants. Television footage showed bodies lying beneath trees outside the building in the mostly Kurdish town in southeastern Turkey, some 10 km (6 miles) from the Syrian town of Kobani, where Kurdish fighters have been battling Islamic State. "Our initial evidence shows that this was a suicide attack by Islamic State," one senior official in Ankara told Reuters. A second official also said Islamic State appeared to have been responsible and that the attack was a "retaliation for the Turkish government’s efforts to fight terrorism". NATO […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Syria’s army says battles rebels near president’s homeland

Children run as they flee from a makeshift playground after hearing the sound of a Syrian fighter jet hovering over Idlib city, Syria July 18, 2015. Syria’s army said on Sunday it had stepped up air strikes and retaken villages in a new offensive on Islamist insurgents in areas close to President Bashar al Assad’s ancestral homeland in the coastal province of Latakia. Aerial bombardment had intensified over the past 48 hours in a bid to cut rebel supply lines in rugged territory close to Turkey’s border, an army source was quoted as saying on state media. Latakia province – home to Syria’s biggest port and a stronghold of Assad’s Alawite sect – has been a key battleground of the conflict, which is now in its fifth year. Sunni Muslim jihadists, including al Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot the Nusra Front, control many villages in the borderlands north of the government-held […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Number of Syrian Refugees Climbs to More Than 4 Million

GENEVA — The number of Syrians who have fled into neighboring countries to escape the civil war has reached more than four million, the United Nations said Thursday, and with the fighting dragging into its fifth year the number is still rising. More than 24,000 people crossed into Turkey to escape fighting in northern Syria in June, pushing the number now sheltering in neighboring countries past four million, increasing the Syrian refugee population by one million in just 10 months, the United Nations refugee agency reported. International aid agencies say the fighting has driven at least 7.6 million people who remain in the country from their homes. “This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation,” Antonio Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said in a statement. Mr. Guterres, once again, warned that international aid was not keeping pace with the scale of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Syrian army and Hezbollah launch major assault on border city: TV station

AMMAN The Syrian army and its allied militia have launched a major assault on the rebel-held Syrian city of Zabadani, the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah’s television station said on Saturday. It said heavy artillery and aerial bombardment were being deployed to capture the city, located north-west of the Syrian capital near the frontier with Lebanon. The Syrian army has long sought to wrest control of Zabadani from Sunni militants. The city is close to the Beirut-Damascus highway that links the two countries and capturing it would be a major strategic gain for President Bashar al Assad’s government. Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian army in Syria against the militants, has in recent months stepped up its assault on rebel outposts along the Qalamoun mountain region straddling the Lebanese Syrian border. An announcement of the start of a major military campaign by the Syrian army and the Lebanese group […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Britain Hints It May Join U.S. Campaign Against ISIS in Syria

Photo Prime Minister David Cameron, whose spokeswoman said lawmakers should “be thinking” of doing more in Syria. Credit Neil Hall/Reuters LONDON — Jolted by the deaths of 30 British tourists in Tunisia at the hands of a gunman professing allegiance to the Islamic State , Prime Minister David Cameron is considering joining the United States in bombing the group’s forces in Syria . Mr. Cameron’s spokeswoman, Helen Bower, briefing reporters on Thursday, said that the prime minister wanted members of Parliament to “be thinking about” authorizing Britain to do “more in Syria .” Ms. Bower said Mr. Cameron thought that “there has been and continues to be a case for doing more in Syria” against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Britain is already conducting bombing runs against the group in Iraq. “What has changed is the growing evidence that ISIL poses a threat to people […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Turkey Uneasy as U.S. Support of Syrian Kurds Grows

Photo Kurdish fighters on June 15 near Tel Abyad, a strategic Syrian border town near Turkey that the fighters seized from ISIS control. Credit Rodi Said/Reuters ISTANBUL — The United States has stepped up its military support for Syrian Kurdish militias fighting the Islamic State, efforts that have angered Turkey , a longtime ally and NATO member, which is now weighing new measures to contain the ambitions of the Kurds, including a buffer zone within Syria . Ankara sees the Syrian Kurds as a serious national security threat because of their links to Kurdish nationalists in Turkey , who have waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. So it has looked on with growing concern at the expanding cooperation between the Syrian Kurdish militias and the United States military in the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. The United States now maintains extensive […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple