Category: Syria

BEIRUT — A surge of rebel gains in Syria is overturning long-held assumptions about the durability of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which now appears in greater peril than at any time in the past three years. The capture Saturday of the town of Jisr al-Shughour in northern Idlib province was just the latest in a string of battlefield victories by rebel forces, which have made significant advances in both the north and the south of the country. As was the case in the capital of Idlib province last month, government defenses in Jisr al-Shughour crumbled after just a few days of fighting, pointing as much to the growing weakness of regime forces as the revival of the opposition. The battlefield shifts come at a time when the Obama administration has set aside the crisis in Syria to focus on its chief priorities: defeating the Islamic State militant group in […]

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JERUSALEM — An Israeli airstrike killed members of an armed squad that was preparing to bomb Israeli forces on Sunday along the Israeli-Syrian frontier in the Golan Heights , the Israeli military said. The Israeli news media said that three or four men were killed in the missile strike. A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said the armed squad had crossed from the Syrian side into the Israeli-controlled part of the contested territory, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war. Israel did not immediately identify the men, and it was not clear if they were Syrians or belonged to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. This latest flare-up along the increasingly tense cease-fire line came after reports in the Arabic news media of Israeli airstrikes in recent days. One was reported to be against Syrian Army bases in the Qalamoun region near Syria’s border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah […]

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Fighters from a coalition of rebel forces stand on a tank in the Syrian city of Idlib on March 29.(ZEIN AL-RIFAI/AFP/Getty Images) Summary Syrian rebels launched one of the largest and most ambitious operations of the Syrian civil war April 22. Around 9,000-12,000 fighters from 40 rebel groups assembled for a wide-scale offensive stretching across the northwestern provinces of Idlib and Hama. The operation brings together rebel factions with extremely diverse ideologies and strengths, ranging from the powerful jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra faction to smaller units affiliated with the Free Syrian Army. While determined and daring, the offensive — labeled "The Battle of Victory" — is risky: The rebels are going up against significant loyalist forces, including a number of highly trained and motivated elite units. Analysis The roots of the offensive lie in the rebels’ successful capture of the city of Idlib on March 28. As Stratfor previously noted, the capture […]

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Photo A man climbed a staircase inside a demolished building in the Yarmuk refugee camp near the Syrian capital of Damascus on Monday. Credit Youssef Karwashan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images UNITED NATIONS — Relief officials at the United Nations expressed growing alarm on Monday about a deepening humanitarian disaster in Syria’s Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, which was invaded last week by Islamic State militants and their allies. Roughly 18,000 people, including 3,500 children, have been trapped by fighting in Yarmouk, which is on the southern outskirts of the capital, Damascus, and is less than 10 miles from the presidential palace. Pierre Krähenbühl, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which administers aid to Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, said the residents are slowly starving. He gave an emergency briefing on the crisis Monday to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council via video link from […]

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Residents wait in line to receive food aid distributed in the Yarmouk refugee camp on January 31, 2014 in Damascus. This month, Islamic State and al-Nusra Front militants took over much of the camp. Source: United Nation Relief and Works Agency via Getty Images Mohammad Deen, a Syrian refugee and father of six, struggles to find the money to meet his children’s needs and worries who else might step in with an offer to help. “If Daesh approaches my son and gives him $300 to fight with them, he would do it,” he said, using Islamic State’s Arabic acronym. Deen lives in a dilapidated house in northern Lebanon, and has no access to the dwindling international aid available to millions of displaced Syrians. Three of his children are disabled, while the son he’s especially concerned about is 18, in the target age group for jihadist recruiters. As Syria’s war […]

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BEIRUT (AP) — Activists say Syrian rebels and members of al-Qaida’s local affiliate have captured the only functioning border crossing with Jordan and three nearby military posts. Ahmad al-Masalmeh, a Syrian opposition activist based in the southern city of Daraa, says militants completed "combing" operations in the area early Thursday, adding that government forces withdrew in the direction of the nearby Sweida province. Syrian state TV quoted an unnamed military official as saying that government forces have regrouped near the Nasib border crossing and taken "positions in new military points." The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says helicopter gunships attacked rebel positions in the area early Thursday. The Nasib crossing is considered a crucial gateway for Syria’s government and for Syrian, Lebanese and Jordanian merchants.

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LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview broadcast Sunday that he still believed it was important to achieve a diplomatic solution for the conflict in Syria and that the negotiations should involve President Bashar al-Assad. “We are working very hard with other interested parties to see if we can reignite a diplomatic outcome,” Mr. Kerry said on the CBS show “Face the Nation.” “We have to negotiate in the end,” Mr. Kerry added. But Mr. Kerry’s comments seemed to be more a reflection of his determination to try to bring about an end to the bloody war than a change of American strategy. State Department officials later said that the United States was not open to direct talks with Mr. Assad, despite what Mr. Kerry appeared to suggest in his television appearance. And it remained unclear how the Obama administration planned to put enough […]

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BEIRUT (AP) — Airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition have hit a Syrian oil refinery held by the Islamic State group, activists said Monday. The strikes targeted a refinery near the Turkish-Syrian border outside the town of Tel Abyad. Video from the Turkish Dogan News Agency showed the strikes Sunday night, which saw an enormous fireball engulf the refinery. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated the strikes killed about 30 people, including Islamic State militants and refinery workers. The Syrian activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently also reported the strikes, but offered no casualty figure. The Islamic State group, which controls a self-declared caliphate on captured territory covering about a third of Syria and Iraq, partially funds its conquests through the sale of black market oil. The U.S.-led coalition did not immediately acknowledge launching the strike.

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