The
number of US troops in Syria can be up to tens of thousands, rather
than 500-600 that Pentagon officials claim, Syrian President Bashar
Assad said on December 15 in an interview to Chinese Phoenix TV
channel.
The
US is sending mostly private security firms like Blackwater to Syria,
claims President Assad. The number of US troops is greatly
underestimated when it is reported that only a few thousands are in
Syria.
In
the meantime, there can be tens of thousands of them in Syria because
it is impossible to determine the actual number of the US troops.
And, the Pentagon has different statistics depending on which social
group it addresses.
The
officials claim 500-600 US troops to the opponents of the war, and
several thousands to the War Hawks to keep them happy. The actual
number of the US troops is hidden.
In
October 2019, US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of
the US troops from Syria, except for the oil-producing areas of the
country.
On
November 22, the US Special Representative for Syria James Jeffrey
stated that the US troops were helping the Kurds to protect the
Syrian oil fields from terrorists.
Iranian
FM Zarif submitted his resignation in the middle of the night
yesterday, via Instagram. Officially, it has not been accepted –
yet.
It
all depends on what Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will say.
Zarif,
quoted by Iranian media, blamed it all on the – significant –
fact that he was not invited to meet Bashar al-Assad, who was in
Tehran yesterday. As FM, he had to be there, of course. Apparently he
was not even informed of the visit.
This
is extremely serious. The Syria dossier is run by the IRGC. For the
IRGC, the Iran nuclear deal is as good as dead. Zarif was
instrumental in negotiating the JCPOA. Not hard to do the math.
If
Zarif goes, Rouhani is extremely weakened. This is a developing
story. I hope to have more in the hours ahead. Stay tuned.
As
the United States is reportedly "slowing things down" on
Trump's announced full troop withdrawal, Syria's President Assad is
apparently speeding things up in terms of reasserting sovereign
control over all parts of the country, as he's long promised to
"liberate every inch" of natural Syria.
On
Sunday Assad took the
controversial step of authorizing Iraqi forcesto
attack terror targets inside Syria at will, according to state-run
SANA "without
waiting for permission from authorities in Damascus" while
the two allies coordinate action against remaining ISIS pockets in
the country's east.
Quickly
on the heels of that decision, Iraqi
fighters jets bombed ISIS positions across the Syrian border on
Monday.
According to official
reports,
"Iraq's Joint Operations Command said F-16s struck a two-storey
house in Souseh, close to the border, that was being used as a
meeting place for ISIS leaders."
Unconfirmed reports say
up to two dozen or more ISIS commanders were taken out in the air
strikes as a high level meeting had been taking place at one of the
locations targeted.
Since
Trump's Syria pullout announcement, Pentagon leaders have expressed
concern over who will fill the remaining power vacuum in Syria's
north and east, and have especially feared Iranian entrenchment as a
result, as well as the
potential of Iraqi Shia pro-Iran militias to fill the gap.
Indeed
Monday's Iraqi air strikes suggest it is precisely Baghdad — which
is ironically
an ally of both Iran and the United States, and increasingly of
Damascus— which
is already stepping up operations while the US is set to move out.
According
to the Dubai-based The
National,
Iraqi leaders hope for even closer cooperation with the Assad
government in counter-terror efforts, something sure to trigger
alarm bells in Washington and Tel Aviv:
Prime
Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said Iraq is seeking to move beyond its
current arrangement with Damascus —
under which it launches air strikes against ISIS militants in the
neighbouring country after getting approval — but did not offer
further details.
“There
are groups operating in Syria, and Iraq
is the best way to deal with this,”
he told reporters in reference to ISIS remnants.
Thus Baghdad
is eyeing a larger role in the neighboring war-torn country even
beyond having been given carte blanche for cross border air strikes.
This
will be met with a desire for active and extreme push back in
Washington, resulting in further tensions with Baghdad, as the
entirety of America's Syria policy throughout the war has been
driven by fears of the so-called "Shia crescent" or Iranian
land bridgewhich
would conceivably connect Tehran
with the Mediterranean in a continuous arch of influence via Baghdad,
Damascus, and Lebanon, where Iran-backed Hezbollah exercises
unrivaled power and influence.
Indeed
with the Iraqi Air Force now fully operational over eastern Syria,
this feared "land bridge" is already a reality, and
will give greater impetus to neocons like Senator Lindsey
Graham currently
trying to persuade President
Trump to walk back or at least greatly slow down the planned US troop
withdrawal.
Bashar
Al-Assad announced that he was ready to intervene to help Macron to
calm the violent demonstrations that have rocked France for the past
days. It was during a press conference in Damascus that Bashar
Al-Assad has said that the violence terrible pro-palestinian
demonstrations should stop immediately, before the entire region was
engulfed in a fireball. He told the journalists present to be very
worried for the French people, and find the attitude of Macron
particularly flippant in the face of risk of civil war hangs over
France.
Excerpt
from his press conference:
FRANCE
IS PRESENTLY PREY TO MANY VIOLENT ACTS THAT CANNOT BE TOLERATED. IN
SYRIA, SUCH ACTS WOULD ALREADY HAVE BEEN PUNISHED WITH CALM AND
SERENITY. IT IS TIME THAT FRANCE ADOPTS A DOMESTIC POLICY MORE
CIVILIZED AND PROTECTS ITS CITIZENS. MY COLLEAGUES in THE MIDDLE EAST
Are ALSO CONCERNED about A FLARE up OF The COMPLETE WESTERN EUROPE.
FRANCE NEEDS to live up TO ITS STATUS as a COUNTRY OF HUMAN RIGHTS
AND to STOP THESE BEHAVIORS of the middle ages. WE ARE PREPARED TO
OFFER ASYLUM IN SYRIA, ANY FRENCH CITIZEN WITH FEAR FOR HIS LIFE OR
THAT OF HIS FAMILY.
US
President Donald Trump has warned Syrian leader Bashar Assad not to
attack Idlib province, one of the last terrorist hideouts in the
country, also advising Iran and Russia against taking part in the
“potential human tragedy.”
Expressing
concern that hundreds of thousands of lives might be at risk in the
Syrian Army’s looming operations to clear the Idlib province of
militants, Trump cautioned Damascus, as well as Moscow and Iran,
against “making a grave humanitarian mistake.”
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!
“President
Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib
Province,” Trump
tweeted on Monday afternoon. “The
Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to
take part in this potential human tragedy.”
Russia,
which has yet to comment on the latest statement from the US leader,
has been working for weeks to establish humanitarian corridors in
Idlib province. Shortly before Trump’s tweet, Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov noted that Russia, Turkey, and Iran are working to
separate armed opposition and terrorists in the area so that any
potential military operation spares civilian lives. At the same time,
Lavrov stressed that terrorists in Syria are still being supplied
with weapons and munitions.
For
the past couple of weeks, the Russian military has been warning that
militants are preparing to stage a fake chemical weapon attack in
Idlib in order to frame Damascus. Moscow has repeatedly raised
concerns that a false flag attack could serve as a pretext for the US
and its allies to carry out airstrikes on Syrian government targets,
which would further jeopardize the reconciliation process in the
country.
The
US earlier stated that it would “retaliate” to any chemical
attacks by the Syrian government, using more firepower than it did
back in April. Trump’s latest warning comes amid Russian military
exercises in the Mediterranean involving 25 ships and strategic
bombers, which the Kremlin hinted was linked to the situation in
Idlib. Earlier, the US Navy deployed guided missile destroyers USS
Ross and USS The Sullivans to the region. That battle group also
includes B-1B Lancer bombers that were redeployed to an air base in
Qatar.
President
Assad was just interviewed by an RT correspondent, wherein he stated
that he wanted to liberate the entirety of Syria’s territory.
Towards that end, he indicated that America was opposing this goal
and backs the SDF against Assad, refusing to return Syrian territory
as long as Assad remains in power. Assad declared that he would work
with them as much as possible to achieve the liberation of Syrian
territory through diplomacy, if possible, but where the SDF and
American forces refuse to negotiate or compromise, that he would oust
the Americans by force, if necessary.
US
troops are not leaving Syria and any attempt to remove them by force
will be met with an armed response, a top Pentagon official said,
reacting to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s RT interview
“Any
interested party in Syria should understand that attacking US forces
or our coalition partners will be a bad policy,” Director of Joint
Staff Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon press
briefing on Thursday.
Over
2,000 US troops in Syria are embedded with the SDF in the northeast
as well as in the enclave of At-Tanf in the south, along the
Jordanian border. McKenzie said the US troops and their local militia
allies were staying in Tanf, quashing rumors of their impending
withdrawal.
“We
are there. Nothing has changed,” he said. “The maintenance of
that deconfliction zone is important and we would view very gravely
any actions that tended to change that.”
Unlike
the Russian military mission, which was invited by the Syrian
government in 2015, the US presence in Syria is not sanctioned under
international law. Both the Obama and the Trump administrations have
argued that the US-led coalition against Islamic State (IS, formerly
ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria is legal under the congressional
authorizations to use military force against Al-Qaeda dating back to
2001.
However,
the US at one point ended up effectively allied with Al-Qaeda’s
affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front), President Assad
told RT. After it became clear that Nusra was an Al-Qaeda offshoot
rather than “moderate rebels,” the US established the SDF, Assad
said.
After
each Syrian military victory or successful reconciliation effort, the
US and its partners attempted to counteract these gains by
“supporting more terrorism, bringing more terrorists to Syria, or
by hindering the political process,” Assad said, blaming the US for
prolonging the seven-year war.
Damascus
is willing to negotiate with the SDF, as it regards the Kurdish-led
militias as fellow Syrians who love their country. “We all don’t
trust the Americans, [so] the one option is to live with each other
as Syrians,” Assad said.
Every
attempt would be made to negotiate with the SDF, he told RT, but if
negotiations fail, “the Syrian army will be forced to liberate
areas occupied by the SDF, with the Americans or without the
Americans.”
While
US President Donald Trump has floated the idea of withdrawing
American troops from Syria, multiple officials from the Pentagon and
the State Department have said the US troops are going nowhere, and
that territories liberated from IS by SDF will not be returned to the
Syrian government unless Assad leaves power.
The
Syrian president, however, believes he will outlast the Americans.
“This
is our land, it’s our right, it’s our duty to liberate [these
areas], and the Americans should leave,” Assad told RT. “Somehow,
they’re going to leave. They came to Iraq with no legal basis. And
look what happened to them. They have to learn their lesson.”
The
Pentagon has, as indicated above, declared that they will respond
with military force to any attempt by the democratically elected
Syrian government to liberate their own territory. Over 2,000
American boots are illegally on the ground in Syria and they intend
to stay there until a change of regime can be secured in Syria.
This
was a revelation for me to see CNN’s Amanpour warn Assad in an
interview that the “rhetoric of rhetoric change” was coming to
Syria; that the Americans wanted to overthrow him.
How
did this woman become a shill for Empire?
In
2005 Interview CNN Told Assad the U.S. "Rhetoric of Regime
Change Was Coming"
[T]he
Trump Administration is now prepared to accept President Bashar
al-Assad’s continued rule until Syria’s next scheduled
Presidential election, in 2021, according to U.S. and European
officials. The decision reverses repeated U.S. statements that Assad
must step down as part of a peace process. ... The Trump
Administration says it still wants a political process that holds the
prospect of Assad’s departure. But it has concluded that it may
take until 2021, when the next election is scheduled, to pull it
off. ... U.S. officials worry that Assad could win the 2021
Syrian election, one way or the other, and remain in power for years
to come.
The
U.S. "lets Assad stay" because there is simply nothing else
it can do without waging a large scale war. It has tried everything
else - and lost. In 2012 it attempted to
assassinate Assad, but he wasn't at the security meeting that the CIA
blew up. It send 100,000 Takfiri fighters from all over the world to
Syria and shipped in ten-thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition.
The global anti-Syrian propaganda campaign in favor of the Takfiris
was unprecedented. It tried to build a political opposition and
sponsored it with hundreds of millions. It lastly invaded the country
and tried to split it by force. It failed on all fronts.
The
U.S. decision reflects the Administration’s limited options, the
military reality on the ground, and the success of Syria’s Russian,
Iranian, and Hezbollah allies in propping up the beleaguered Assad
regime. ... The Syrian opposition groups backed by the United
States have been ineffectual. They have squabbled among themselves
and split into factions. ... Diplomatically, Washington has
been marginalized by the powerful troika of Russia, Iran, and Turkey,
which now dominates the peace process.
In
2013 the author of the piece, Robin Wright, presented the
Israeli dream of a split up Middle East.
It
was a remake of the "Blood Borders" map peddled
in 2006 by
the neoconservatives Col. Ralph Peters. That gain was an updated
version of a map of a "New Middle East" by Bernhard
Lewis published
in Foreign
Affairs.
Those maps went into the trash-bin when the U.S. had to leave Iraq.
Wrigth's cartographic expression of imperial arrogance will end there
too.
Wright
is heavily wired in Washington. She is part of the *borg* and
held/holds positions at the U.S. Institute of Peace (which plans
wars), the Wilson Center, Brookings and Carnegie Endowment. That she
has now given up on her ludicrous map likely reflects the leading
opinions within those institutions.
One
wonders if the military junta in the White House is on board with
this. It continues to dream of
keeping Syria and Iraq under its thumb:
Col.
John Thomas, spokesman for the US Central Command (CENTCOM), said
that the international coalition forces would remain in Syria to
support the operations of the Arab-Kurdish “Syrian Democratic
Forces” until the conclusion of negotiations on a political
solution in Geneva.
He
added that the US forces would continue to fight terrorist
organizations close to “al-Qaeda” in Syria, including al-Nusra
Front, “regardless of ISIS presence.”
Dream
on.
Yesterday
Putin visited Syria. He declared victory and announced that part of
the Russian troops in Syria would return home. He made sure that
everyone, the U.S., the Turks, the Saudis and the Israelis,
understood that the troops would
be back in
no-time if they try to reignite the war:
"If
terrorists again raise head, we will deliver such strikes on them
that they haven’t seen so far," Putin told the Russian
military.
Another
member of the Syrian alliance, the Lebanese party Hizbullah, is
now refocusing on
Israel. Trump's hail-Mary pass of illegally
recognizing Jerusalem
as Israel's capital came just in time to give
new impetus to
the resistance:
Mr
Nasrallah called on the “resistance axis” — a reference to
Hizbollah and its Syrian and Iranian allies and patrons — to
“devote all its power and time to the Palestinians. I call on all
the resistance factions in the region to unite and put one common
strategy and practical plan to face this threat,” he said.
It
was Israel that was behind (pdf)
the campaign to dismantle Syria and Iraq. It utterly failed and the
revenge will be harsh. Hizbullah is better armed and trained than
ever. Battle experienced Iraqi and Iranian groups stand ready. The
Syrian army is much better trained and equipped than before the war.
The Iraqi resistance leader Qais Al Khazali
recently visited south-Lebanon
and took a look over the border into Israel. He was surveying the new
battlefield.
Israel's
great new alliance with Saudi Arabia has not helped its position. The
Salman tyrant and his son are in an insecure position and their great
relations with Trump have
tanked,
allegedly over the issue of Jerusalem.
The
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahoo is under pressure at home. The
corruption accusation accumulate and his time in office is now
limited.
Who
will replace him? What is the new plan the Zionists will come up with
to react to the changed situation?
I
have yet to go through this broadcast in its entirety but I have come
to regard this as serious and generally-reliable commentary from a
particular point-of-view.
Trump
Change On Russia may Suggest Briefings On A Military Strike
Israeli
News
Opinion
Peace:
Why
the sudden change by Presidential nominee Donald Trump on the cease
fire agreement between Russia and the United States. Trump who once
stood firm with President Putin saying that he was a better leader
that President Obama has taken a sudden change accusing Russia of
breaking the ceasefire agreement in Syria.
Is
the tone of the nominee reflecting possible briefings of the US
possible intervention in the conflict to remove Assad?
Republican
presidential nominee Donald Trump said that Russia "broke the
deal" with the United States for a ceasefire in Syria and that
the country did not respect US leaders.
The United States broke off
talks this week with Russia on implementing a ceasefire agreement in
Syria and accused Moscow of not living up to its commitments under a
September agreement to halt fighting there.
The breakdown tamped down
hopes of an emerging diplomatic solution to end a 5-1/2-year-old
civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and
displaced 11 million.
"Russia broke the deal, and now they're
shooting, they're bombing, something like that," Trump told a
rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona. "It should end and it should
end fast."
Trump has been accused by critics of being too
complimentary of Russia during his campaign for the Nov. 8 election
against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
He has said Russian President
Vladimir Putin was a stronger leader than US President Barack Obama,
and invited Russia, in comments he later said were sarcastic, to dig
up emails of Clinton from her time as secretary of state that have
not been released publicly.
Trump has brushed off the criticism,
saying he has never met Putin. Yesterday, he said, however, the
Russian leader "has no respect" for Obama or Clinton.
The messages coming from Kerry and the Administration are totally Orwellian and inversions of the truth that it is impossible to make out any coherent policy other than preparation for war. "Why Bashar Assad Won’t Fight ISIS" !!!! To say that ousting Bashar Assad while pretending to wage war against an ISIS that was given birth to and succoured by America and its allies it is necessary to pretend that he is not fighting ISIS. Next, we will hear that Assad and ISIS are the same?! This is doing my head in. Meanwhile the neo-cons prepare for war with Russia in Ukraine as well as pushing for a state coup in Moscow. Tell me otherwise.
John
Kerry: "Military Pressure May Be Needed To Oust Syria's
President "
Last
week, after reading a Time article titled "Why
Bashar Assad Won’t Fight ISIS"
written by a journalist whose recent work includes "The
YouTube War",
and who sourced two unnamed,
anonymous sources
to reach the conclusion that Syria's president Assad is in cahoots
with ISIS, we made a simple conclusion: "The
Stage Is Set For The Syrian Invasion." Barely a week has gone by and the wheels for the Syrian invasion are
indeed turning: earlier today, US Secretary of State John Kerry (who
one hopes doesn't use kerryemails.com as a work email server) who is
on a trip to Saudi Arabia unveiled the next steps when he said
that "military
pressure may be needed to oust Syria's President Bashar al-Assad."
US
Secretary of State John Kerry attends a meeting of Gulf foreign
ministers at
Riyadh
Air Base, on March 5, 2015 in the Saudi capital (AFP Photo/Evan Vcci)
But
wait, wasn't Obama's war in Iraq, authorized by Congress, solely a
means to fight the stateless Islamic State of Syria and Iraq
"scourge"? Or was all of that merely a pretext to do what
the US tried once already in 2013 and failed?
AFP quotes
Kerry:
"He's
lost any semblance of legitimacy, but we have no higher priority than
disrupting and defeating Daesh and other terror networks",
he told reporters, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State
group which has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq.
Actually,
the highest priority is not "Daesh" which is a populist
distraction aided by some truly Hollywood-grade video editing and
YouTube clips, but who controls the ground under Assad's feet: that
all important gateway from the middle east into Turkey, and then,
Europe. A gateway that is critical to the one nation that has all the
natural gas in the world, and no end market to sell it to: Qatar.
Of
course, Assad knows all of this: late last year, Assad told
French reporters,
“let’s
be honest: Had Qatar not paid money to those terrorists at that time,
and had Turkey not supported them logistically, and had not the West
supported them politically, things would have been different. If
we in Syria had problems and mistakes before the crisis, which is
normal, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the events had internal
causes”.
Assad
continued, daring to call the staged US spade precisely what it was:
he called its air strikes "merely cosmetic" and said that
“terrorism cannot be destroyed from the air.” Assad added that
“saying that the alliance’s airstrikes are helping us is not
true." Which is why Time had to spin an unsourced article to
"prove" that there was in fact a connection between the
two.
Finally,
Syria's president explained that Syria was fighting against “not
only gangs”, but also states that support them with “billions of
dollars.”
All
of that is, of course, irrelevant to the top diplomat of one of these
"supporting countries", and fast forwarding to today, Kerry
told reporters in Saudi Arabia that "ultimately
a combination of diplomacy and pressure will be needed to bring about
a political transition. Military
pressure particularly may be necessary given President Assad's
reluctance to negotiate seriously."
Negotiate
what exactly: how to hand himself over to the US? And since the
answer doesn't matter, whatever it is what the US wants will have to
be achieved in the same way that the staged Syrian war of 2013 was
presented to the world: using false flag video clips, which resulted
in a near-global confrontation involving Assad's close ally over at
the Kremlin.
Which
brings us to the most important variable: Russia's response to any
"military pressure" applied against Assad. Again.
As RT
reports,
last November, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on
the issue, saying that: “Russia
condemns the use of extremist groups in efforts to change the regime
[in Syria].”
Clear, concise and the the point.
Today
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich added some
more insight into how it feels about constant Western efforts to
provoke a war with Syria:
That
last assumes the west is interested in peace in Syria, when the
entire point of introducing the ISIS "element" is precisely
to destabilize the region and bring it to all out war.
The
US-led coalition started air strikes in Syria last September as a
part of a joint effort to battle the jihadist group, which had seized
Syrian and Iraqi territories. Despite carrying out airstrikes in
Syria, Washington has refused to work with the country’s
government, stating that it wants to see Bashar Assad ousted.
Turkey
backs the position of the US, and in March the two NATO allies began
training “moderate” Syrian rebels to battle against the Islamic
State militants.
This
April, Moscow is set to host a meeting between the Syrian opposition
and representatives of the government.
One
can be confident that said meeting will achieve nothing, after the US
makes it clear that no Moscow-brokered agreement is acceptable. Just
as one can be confident that the ISIS "campaign" will
continue and get ever closer to Damascus until yet another
appropriately-framed YouTube clip appears and leads to another war
with Assad. Because when petrodollar interests talk, mere innocent
people are always expendable.
‘Military
pressure’ may be needed to oust Syrian President – John Kerry
US
Secretary of State John Kerry has declared that military pressure may
be needed to oust Syria’s President Bashar Assad. It comes as
knowledge has emerged that the US, along with Turkey, has started
training Syrian rebels.
“Ultimately
a combination of diplomacy and pressure will be needed to bring about
a political transition. Military pressure particularly may be
necessary given President Assad's reluctance to negotiate
seriously,” Kerry
said at a Thursday meeting of Gulf foreign ministers at Riyadh Air
Base, according to AFP.
“He’s
lost any semblance of legitimacy, but we have no higher priority than
disrupting and defeating Daesh and other terror networks,” he
added, using “Daesh” –
an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group (formerly known as
ISIS/ISIL) that has seized large territories in Syria and Iraq.
Last
December, President Assad told French
reporters, “let’s
be honest: Had Qatar not paid money to those terrorists at that time,
and had Turkey not supported them logistically, and had not the West
supported them politically, things would have been different. If we
in Syria had problems and mistakes before the crisis, which is
normal, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the events had internal
causes”.
Syria’s
president criticized the actions of the US-led coalition targeting
the militants in Syria. He called its air strikes “merely
cosmetic” and
said that “terrorism
cannot be destroyed from the air.” Assad
added that“saying
that the alliance’s airstrikes are helping us is not true.”
What’s
more, he explained that Syria was fighting against “not
only gangs”,
but also states that support them with “billions
of dollars.”
Last
November, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on the
issue, saying that: “Russia
condemns the use of extremist groups in efforts to change the regime
[in Syria].”
The
US-led coalition started air strikes in Syria last September as a
part of a joint effort to battle the jihadist group, which had seized
Syrian and Iraqi territories. Despite carrying out airstrikes in
Syria, Washington has refused to work with the country’s
government, stating that it wants to see Bashar Assad ousted.
Turkey
backs the position of the US, and in March the two NATO allies began
training“moderate” Syrian
rebels to battle against the Islamic State militants.
A
civil uprising in Syria broke out in the spring of 2011, falling in
line with Arab Spring protests and composing high-profile nationwide
protests against the government of President Bashar Assad. The
conflict which grew into a war has taken lives of 210,278-295,278
people, according to February estimates by the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights.
This
April, Moscow is set to host a meeting between the Syrian opposition
and representatives of the government.
Exclusive:
Syrian armys gains more grounds in fight against militants
Slowly
but steadily the Syrian military units are pressing ahead in south of
the country gaining more grounds in their fight against the
militants.The battle against foreign back insurgents in this area
echoes far beyond these little towns that connects three Syrian
regions: Qunaiter , Dara’ and Damascus countryside.
Exclusive:
Syrian army, Hezbollah fighters purge militants from more areas
This
road leads to south of Syria, where clashes are intensifying by day.
Today Press TV’s team headed to a front line where Syrian army
troops have made significant advances. A string of towns and their
overlooking hills are the newly-secured areas around Damascus and
Dara’a.
Press
TV has obtained photos showing al-Qaeda-linked militants next to
Israeli soldiers in the occupied Golan Heights.
New
photos from the Golan Heights further prove Tel Aviv’s support for
al-Qaeda-linked militants, especially al-Nusra Front, that have been
wreaking havoc in Syria.
The
photos obtained by Press TV show Takfiri militants from the terrorist
al-Nusra Front next to Israeli soldiers.
Israel
is known to have been providing medical, intelligence and military
support for militants fighting to topple the government of President
Bashar al-Assad in Syria. A number of militant commanders wounded in
government attacks on terrorist have reportedly been hospitalized in
the occupied territories.
The
images obtained by Press TV shows Israeli soldiers speaking
face-to-face with militants in Golan.
Cooperation
aimed at targeting resistance
The
Israeli military’s close cooperation with the militants also
assisted the regime’s bombing of a convoy belonging to Lebanese
resistance group Hezbollah on January 17. The attack led to the
killing of six Hezbollah members as well as an Iranian general.
Hezbollah later announced that the attack was coordinated between Tel
Aviv and the al-Nusra militants.
“The
assault has revealed the degree of cooperation between Takfiris and
Israel,” Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah deputy leader, said during a
ceremony seven days after the Israeli attack in Qunaitra, an area
close to the Syrian Israeli border.
Late
last year, a UN report confirmed contact between militants in Syria
and the Israeli army across the Golan cease-fire line, especially
during heavy clashes between the terrorists and the Syrian troops.
The
report also confirmed that militants had been taking their wounded
comrades into the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights for
treatment. The UN also confirmed the delivery of boxes by the Israeli
army to militants on the Syrian side of the ceasefire line.
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