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American and Russian fighter jets had a tense showdown in the skies above Syria as the Russians dropped bombs on U.S.-backed rebels. U.S. and Russian fighter jets bloodlessly tangled in the air over Syria on June 16 as the American pilots tried and failed to stop the Russians from bombing U.S.-backed rebels in southern Syria near the border with Jordan. The aerial close encounter underscores just how chaotic Syria’s skies have become as Russia and the U.S.-led coalition work at cross-purposes, each dropping bombs in support of separate factions in the five-year-old civil war. The near-clash also highlights the escalating...

Multiple Syrian and other media outlets are reporting that Alaa Makhlouf-the personal bodyguard to Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad-was killed via a car bomb on Saturday, June 4th by members of the Free Alawite Movement. Syria Mubasher and Baladi appear to have been the first outlets to break the story, citing regime sources and the Free Alawite Movement’s Facebook page respectively. “We’ve killed Alaa Makhlouf, bodyguard to the wife of Bashar the beast,” the group declared coldly on Facebook after the attack. The attack took place in central Damascus. Rumors of a possible assassination against Makhlouf had been circulating for...

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with Philip Gordon, who held the Middle East portfolio at the National Security Council from 2013 to 2015 (and before that, served as assistant secretary of state for European affairs) about my Atlantic article, “The Obama Doctrine.” The piece tried to explain how the president understands the world, and America’s role in it. (This week, the president is on a tour of the some of the countries he discussed in the article.) Gordon, a loyal Obama man, is, like his ex-boss, somewhat-to-very fatalistic about the ability of the U.S. to direct the...

Are North Koreans fighting in Syria? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. By Adam Taylor March 25 This week, representatives of Western-backed Syrian opposition delegation in Geneva told Russian state media that President Bashar al-Assad had a surprising new ally on the Syrian battlefield: militia units from North Korea. "Two North Korean units are there, which are Chalma-1 and Chalma-7," Asaad az-Zoubi, head of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) to Syrian peace talks in the Swiss city, reportedly told Tass news agency on Tuesday. In any other context, the presence of soldiers from the internationally isolated and geographically distant...

North Korean Soldiers Assist Assad in the War Against the Syrian People. 7/20/2015 At 09:21 AM Activists and eyewitnesses confirmed that 5 buses full of fully armed Korean soldiers were seen in the capital Damascus, heading towards Jobar and Eastern Ghouta. It's not the first time Assad has used korean, not to mention the Shiite and Asian militias, fo fight in his side, Many media sources confirmed that korean soldiers from what is called Tshulima units has been assigned as Assad's personal details two years ago, after the large advance opposition forces achieved inside the capital Damascus. Tshulima special unit...

The military base that was hit by the car bomb is considered one of the most important military centers of the Russian forces on the Syrian coast, located some 15 kilometers from Latakia.

Assad has done some bad things in his day. There is no doubt about that. What choice did he have? The Alawaites are a tiny minority group (12%) surrounded by a sea of intolerant radical Sunni Arabs. He has made deals with horrible people. As an Israeli, I know this all too well. At the same time, I can take a step back and understand that the Middle East is a tough place and tough places call for tough measures. As I mentioned above the Alawites are a 12% minority. Most of their neighbors consider them pagans who worship the...

Turkey's nationalist 'Gray Wolves' enter Syrian fray Author Fehim TaÅŸtekin Summary: Turkish ultranationalists have joined the fight in Syria as what some observers view as their government's secret weapon, one that could backfire as the group mingles with Islamists along with the Turkmens they're defending. Posted February 3, 2016 Turkish involvement in the Syrian war has been heavily dominated by Islamist fighters, but the conflict has also drawn in an unlikely quarter -- Turkish nationalists. The far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and its youth branch, the Idealist Hearths, have recently come into the spotlight with high-profile losses on the Syrian...

Baku - APA. Russia could give asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he has to leave his country, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview published on January 12, according to RFE/RL. "It was surely more difficult to grant [U.S. national security contractor Edward] Snowden asylum in Russia than it would be in the case of Assad," Putin told the German tabloid Bild, referring to the American leaker of classified U.S. documents who was given asylum in Russia in 2013. Putin said it was too early to say whether Russia would have to give shelter to Assad as...

Senior US Security Sources: Syria's Main Missile and Chemical Weapons Facility at Homs Blown up in Mysterious Explosions on March 24. North Koreans Among Tens of Engineers and Technicians Killed in Underground Plant. Factory Manufactured Scud-C and Scud-D, Liquid and Solid Fuels, Chemical Warheads, Oxidizers. Syrians Suspect Israeli Undercover Saboteurs Struck in Reprisal for Syrian Military Intelligence Aid in Terrorist Hit against Galilee Highway on March 12 - Or US Reprisal for Free al Qaeda Transit through Syria. Israeli Air Force Chief Halutz: Odds on Second Front Opening up in North Higher than Contemplated Few Months Back. Continuing Shelling and...

Hamas and Islamic State in Sinai have been cooperating in the smuggling of weapons, demonstrating that while Hamas is a nationalist Islamist movement, it also has common roots from which to build a functioning relationship with jihadists. "Over the past two years, IS Sinai helped Hamas move weapons from Iran and Libya through the peninsula, taking a generous cut from each shipment," according to a Washington Institute for Near East Policy report on Tuesday by Ehud Yaari, a Lafer International Fellow at the think tank. [...] Both Hamas and Islamic State trace their origins back to the Egypt Muslim Brotherhood,...

Bush Refuses To Meet Syrian Minister, Report Says By Julie Stahl CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - President Bush refused to meet with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara following last week's deadly car bombing in Israel, and that has prompted Shara to cancel his trip to Washington, Israel Radio reported on Friday. Islamic Jihad, which is headquartered in Damascus, claimed responsibility for the attack a few days before Syria was due to take up the rotating presidency of the U.N. Security Council. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Israel knew that the attack at Megiddo junction had been carried...

The US Didn’t Create ISIS -- Assad and Saddam Did Dictators pay a price for allying with Islamic terrorism November 4, 2015 Daniel Greenfield 314 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. The Russia-Iran-Assad axis and its useful idiots in the West claim that the United States created ISIS. Some of the loonier conspiracy sites that gleefully repost Russian propaganda allege that the Caliph of ISIS is a Jewish Mossad agent named Elliot Shimon or a CIA agent named Simon Elliot.  Elliot doesn’t exist, but ISIS’ Deputy Caliph...

Syria's regime killed at least 28 people, mostly civilians, on Saturday when its warplanes dropped massive makeshift bombs on a town held by the Islamic State (ISIS) group, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bombs used in the attacks on Al-Bab, in the northern province of Aleppo, were three times more destructive than so-called barrel bombs, which have already drawn widespread international condemnation. "The army used 'container bombs' which are three times more powerful than 'barrel bombs'," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. The barrel bomb was previously joined by the elephant rocket, another crude...

DAMASCUS, Syria, June 9 (UPI) -- A human rights observer group says more than 320,000 people have been killed in the Syrian Civil War since 2011. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it documented 230,618 deaths in the Syrian Civil War between March 2011, when the conflict began, and June 8, 2015.

The parents and children of this Syrian family sleep on the streets of Istanbul in Turkey. They are among the 3 million refugees from Syria, many of whom live in desperate conditions. Photo: UNHCR/S. Baldwin 29 August 2014 – Three million Syrians will have registered as refugees outside of their country today, the UN refugee agency reported, amid accounts of increasingly horrifying conditions inside their homeland – cities where populations are surrounded, people are going hungry and civilians are being targeted or indiscriminately killed. A news release issued by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that a further...

More than 700 people were killed in Syria over the course of Thursday and Friday, in what activists say were the bloodiest 48 hours of fighting in the conflict to date. ... Abdul Rahman said the death toll of Thursday’s clashes was 396 people, while Friday’s total reached 314, adding that 90 more people were still unaccounted for, although they were also expected to have been killed.

The death toll in Syria’s three-year war has eclipsed 170,000 people, one-third of them civilians, a monitoring group said in a new toll released on Thursday. “Ever since the first casualty of the Syrian revolution was registered on March 18, 2011 in Daraa province, the deaths of 171,509 people have been documented,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Among the dead were 56,495 civilians, including 9,092 children, according to the toll, which included casualties documented up to July 8 this year. Another 65,803 were regime troops and pro-regime militiamen, while 46,301 were rebels seeking President Bashar Al Assad’s ouster...

The leader of a Syrian rebel group feted as an alternative to the tide of Islamism which dominates most other rebel brigades has said he has no interest in fighting Al Qaeda. Jamal Maarouf's Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) had received cautious support from western powers for its prominent role in fighting Al Qaeda-breakaway group ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), but speaking to Britain's The Independent he clarified that as far as he was concerned the wider fight against Al Qaeda is "not our problem". Moreover, Maarouf - who has been forced to flee the front lines...

Over 150,000 people have lost their lives since the March 2011 outbreak of the devastating civil war in Syria, according to new figures. The London based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which closely monitors the conflict using a network of activists and medical staff in Syria, has documented the deaths of 150,344 people. More than a third of those killed in Syria – by shellfire, air strikes and bullets – are civilians, the rights group said. Now in its third year, the war, which continues, unabated, has ravaged entire cities, leaving whole civilian neighbourhoods flattened by shell fire and...