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Mr Assad's comment reportedly came as he met the North's new ambassador to Syria. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad plans to make a state visit to North Korea, the North's state news agency says. It would be the first time North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has hosted a head of state since assuming power in 2011. He has undertaken a flurry of diplomatic activity recently, meeting China's president in May, and is expected to attend a summit with Donald Trump this month. Syria, an ally of the North, has made no comment on the reported plan. The two countries have been...

<p>Remarks came after Assad told Russian broadcaster RT he would not hesitate to use force to retake the third of the country held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).</p> <p>The SDF, dominated by the militia of a self-proclaimed Kurdish autonomous administration, has air support from the US-led coalition against Daesh and backing from US and French special forces on the ground.</p>

The Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has been accused of using chemical weapons, barrel bombs and torture against its own people during a seven-year civil war. On Monday, it took up the rotating presidency of the United Nations-backed Conference on Disarmament. The move was met with outrage from Western governments, but there was little they could do to prevent Syria from taking over the world’s only permanent multilateral body for negotiating arms control agreements for four weeks.

Lebanon held on Sunday its first parliamentary elections in nine years, as citizens expressed cautious optimism that the country's rigid, oft-deadlocked sectarian political system could be swayed. Behind the scenes, however, one of the world's leading powers has quietly eyed the small state as a potential ground to project its power in the Middle East and into the Mediterranean. But it won't be easy. With Syrian rebels and jihadis at bay, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government set to further extend its comeback, Russia has pursued a cautious overture across the border into Lebanon—a $1 billion dollar arms deal, including...

AMMAN (Reuters) - U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said they expelled had Syrian troops that briefly took control of a string of villages in oil rich areas east of the Euphrates river near the Iraqi border on Sunday. SDF forces led by the Kurdish YPG militia said they had waged a counter-attack against Syrian troops it said were backed by Russian forces, adding they were driven “far away” from four villages they had seized earlier in the day. “Our forces regained the initiative,” they said in a statement.

Last week, the fact-finding mission of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) visited a site in the Damascus suburb of Douma to collect samples in connection with the alleged April 7 chemical attack. Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff Col. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy has announced that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had confirmed that there were no chemical weapons found at the Barzeh research center in Damascus despite the US officials' claims. The official further noted that thousands of people could have died if there was any chemical...

Dr. Assim Rahaibani, a Syrian doctor, has told journalist Robert Fisk, writing for the British publication, The Independent, that last week’s alleged chemical gas attack by the Assad government on civilians in Douma did not happen. The alleged chemical attack was the pretext for a combined bombing raid by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. “I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred meters from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened,” Rahaibani told Fisk. “There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over...

Dr. Assim Rahaibani, a Syrian doctor, has told journalist Robert Fisk, writing for the British publication, The Independent, that last week’s alleged chemical gas attack by the Assad government on civilians in Douma did not happen. The alleged chemical attack was the pretext for a combined bombing raid by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. “I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred meters from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened,” Rahaibani told Fisk. “There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over...

“The Turkish state is playing on a few tables at the same time. There is no politics that is so solid and primal. Turkey tries to protect its interests by building relationships with one of the other depending on the day.” After the accusation made by the US, England and France against the Syrian regime which, they said, had used chemical weapons in Duma, there was a new turn in the Syrian crisis, which saw new attacks carried out by US-UK and France while the Turkish state has been siding with Russia and Iran for the last two years. Aldar...

At least three civilians were killed and several others wounded on Monday night when two cars expoloded in the Syrian town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, the site of a suspected chemical attack last Saturday. "Two cars exploded in Douma, which have killed three civilians and injured a number of others," local sources told al-Araby al-Jadeed The sources accused Syrian regime forces, who have now taken full control of the town, of carrying out the attack in order to delay the international investigation into the suspected use of chemical weapons by the Russian-backed Syrian regime which killed at least 49 civilians...

Revenues from oil and gas sold to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are now the largest source of funds for the Islamic State (ISIS), as the militant group faces mounting military pressure in both Iraq and Syria. The Wall Street Journal reports that officials from the U.S. and Europe said the Assad regime, despite pronouncements that it is fighting the extremist group, is directly supporting ISIS through the purchase of energy, needed to power the Syrian capital Damascus and other parts of the country. Amos Hochstein of the U.S. State Department told the Journal that the group’s “revenue...

Pink Floyd founder, Roger Waters, a vocal advocate for boycotts of Israel, came under heavy criticism for promoting “Russian propaganda” after asserting that the rescue organization, White Helmets, that operates in Syria, were “fake” and encouraged terrorists, The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday. In a video posted by a group called Hands Off Syria, Waters spoke of an audience member who wanted to come up on stage and speak about the chemical weapons that had been used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad against civilians earlier this month in the Damascus suburb of Douma. “He is one voice, I personally think...

Israel's Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef on Sunday condemned a Syrian regime-suspected chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta's Douma district which left at least 70 civilians dead and hundreds wounded. "I've said it before and I’ll say it again: there is a cruel genocide happening in Syria against women and children with weapons of mass destruction," Yosef said. Recalling the genocide Jews were subjected to, Yosef went on to say that it was a "moral obligation not to remain silent and to try to stop the massacre".

FULL TITLE: Russian reinforcements head for Syria: Warships laden with tanks, military trucks and armoured patrol boats sail towards the Middle East as the world awaits Putin's response to airstrikes Project 117 Alligator-class landing ship was spotted at Bosphorus, Turkey en-route to Syria on Sunday The Russian vessel was laden with tanks, ambulances and IED radar after Friday's US-led Syrian air strikes A RoRo Alexandr Tkachenko was also seen carrying high-speed patrol boats, temporary bridge and trucks US, UK and French forces backed strikes that obliterated three targets in response to chemical weapon attack Vladimir Putin warned there would be...

One America News’ Pearson Sharp visited the war-torn town of Douma outside the capital of Damascus, looking for evidence of a chemical attack. However, residents there deny the claims of an attack, and say it was staged to help the rebels escape.

Posted on Drudge Report US training Syria militants for false flag chemical attack as basis for airstrikes – Russian MoDhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmYCgK2zHCI

London, Jan 30 (ANI): The Obama administration gave green signal to a chemical weapons attack plan in Syria that could be blamed on President Bashar al Assad's regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country, leaked documents have shown. A new report, that contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence, showed a scheme 'approved by Washington'. As per the scheme 'Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons,' the Daily Mail reports. Barack Obama made it clear to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad last month that the U.S....

When the United States — along with France and Britain — launched military strikes on sites designed to destroy Assad’s chemical weapons program in Syria on Friday, critics blamed Bolton. The liberal group People’s Action described him as “John ‘Bomb ‘em all’ Bolton” in a fundraising appeal to supporters Saturday.

In Defense of Christians (IDC), the nation's leading advocacy organization for Christians and religious minorities in the Middle East, condemns the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. On Saturday, April 6th, Syrian opposition activists, rescue workers and medics reported that more than 40 people were killed in a chemical attack on Douma, a rebel-stronghold in the Eastern Ghouta region of Damascus. "Attacking innocent civilians in Syria with chemical weapons is a gross violation of humanity and utterly immoral," stated IDC's Executive Director Philippe Nassif on April 12th. "All parties who were involved must be...

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Sunday voiced alarm over the growing “alienation” between Russia and the West, stressing the need for dialogue as post-Cold War tensions peak. Speaking to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Steinmeier said last month’s poisoning of a former Russian spy in England, which Britain and its allies blame on Moscow, was “a very serious incident”. “But we should be at least as worried about the galloping alienation between Russia and the West, the consequences of which stretch far beyond this case,” the former foreign minister said. Moscow vehemently denies involvement in the nerve agent poisoning of...