Free Republic

Syrians living in Lebanon are proud of their national side but say regime has co-opted its success Minutes after a late equaliser sent the Syrian football team to a World Cup playoff, Tareq – a football fan and regime critic – was unsure about what to feel, or how to react. ..For the underpaid national team and beleaguered government, it could not have been better scripted: a game that could elevate a team of battlers to the biggest event in world sport, while allowing its leaders to claim an even more significant win. The national sport had provided a nation-building...

Syria confirms: Israel targeted military facility killing two-Opposition forces say four Israeli planes hit plant in Masyar-Incident comes amid massive Israeli drill, weeks after outgoing air force chief admits Israel targets Hezbollah convoys. The Israeli military struck Thursday a chemical arms plant in Syria, foreign media reports claimed. The Syrian army general command confirmed in a statement the attack on what they called a military facility, and said that two people were killed and extensive damage was caused. Israel refused to comment on the reports. A Syrian military statement said that at 2:40 A.M. Israeli warplanes struck the site from...

A major United States Holocaust Memorial Museum study of the Obama Administration’s Syria policy was put on hold last night after portions of the study given to Tablet were greeted with shock and harsh criticism by prominent Jewish communal leaders and thinkers. According to a publicity email sent by the Museum, the study was set to be launched at an event at the US Institute for Peace in Washington, D.C., on September 11 and was overseen by a former US intelligence and national security official under Obama, Cameron Hudson, now director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide....

Nine hundred and thirteen refugees were admitted to the United States during August, the first time the monthly intake has dropped below one thousand in 15 years, and the smallest number of monthly admissions since October 2002. August’s arrivals followed a pattern evident since the start of the Trump administration – a declining proportion of Muslims in comparison to Christians and adherents of other faiths. Of the 913 refugees admitted during the month, 551 (60.3 percent) were Christians, with the biggest groups including 185 Pentecostalists from Ukraine and 53 Baptists, also from Ukraine. A significantly smaller group, 220 (24.1 percent)...

SDF commander Clara Raqqa announced that the greater proportion of the city is under their control. Since the start of Raqqa operation, SDF forces have liberated 14 of the 23 neighbourhoods from ISIS gangs, and control 65 percent of the city, SDF commander Clara Raqqa said. Within 90 days the 'Great Battle' campaign to capture Raqqa, 14 of the 23 neighbourhoods are liberated by SDF. There are 9 neighbourhoods under ISIS control. As the battles intensify in the neighbourhoods of al-Barid, Mirûr and Nehda, commander of the operation, Clara Raqqa, shared details on the current situation. THE BATTLE FOR RAQQA...

A convoy of 17 buses loaded with at least 300 armed ISIS fighters, their families and other civilians is stuck in the Syrian desert, unable to continue on its approved retreat into Iraq since the US-led coalition air forces have been target practicing on them since Tuesday. A commander in the Syrian regime’s military alliance – which includes Hezbollah and Iran – one Saturday told Reuters “Work is under way to change the course of the convoy for a second time.”

Syrian troops are now at the gates of the Islamic State-besieged city of Deir ez-Zor, the governor of the province said, as the government forces continue to press forward, obliterating terrorist positions in the vicinity and on the outskirts of the city. “The heroes of the army will arrive at Deir ez-Zor in 24-48 hours at the most,” the governor of Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province, Mohammed Ibrahim Samra, told Reuters, adding that the Syrian Army was only 18-20 kilometers (11-12 miles) away from the city. Earlier, an elite unit of the Syrian Army, called the Tiger Forces, came within 18...

YPG Press Office released a report on results of YPG operations, Turkish and ISIS attacks against Syrian people between 1-31 August. People's Defence Units (YPG) Press Office released the balance sheet of war for the month of August. YPG statement read as follows: "Our Rojava defence forces -People's Defence Units (YPG) and Women's Defence Units (YPJ)- led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the struggle against ISIS. 'Liberation Operation for Raqqa', disrupted plans of the enemies in August 2017. - The occupying Turkish army and Turkish supported gangs targeted YPG/YPJ military positions, homes and fields of civilians 158 times.  Turkish army...

US-backed fighters in Syria say they have removed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) from Raqqa’s Old City, bringing them closer than ever to the armed group’s most well-defended positions. “Our forces today seized full control of the Old City in Raqqa after clashes with Daesh,” Talal Sello, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), told AFP news agency on Friday, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL. Sello said the SDF was now on the edges of ISIL’s “security quarter in the city centre, where most of its main bases are”. Most...

The US-led coalition says it will keep blocking a convoy of evacuated Islamic State militants in Syria from reaching IS-held territory on the Iraq border. The hundreds of fighters recently surrendered an enclave on Syria's border with Lebanon. They agreed with Hezbollah and the Syrian government that they would leave with their families and head eastwards. But the coalition says it and Iraq were not part of the deal and on Tuesday bombed the road ahead of the convoy. The buses are now stranded in an area of desert under Syrian government control between the towns of Humayma and al-Sukhnah....

The leader of the Islamic State (IS) group is probably still alive, a senior US general has said, contradicting a claim by Russia that it probably killed him in a raid in Syria in May. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may be hiding in a remote border area between Iraq and Syria, said Gen Stephen Townsend, commander of the anti-IS coalition. He may have fled as IS strongholds have been under attack in both countries. In June, Russia said there was a "high probability" that Baghdadi had been killed a month earlier in a Russian air strike on Raqqa, IS's de facto...

A survey commissioned by Bild newspaper published on Tuesday reveals that the majority of Germans reject the idea of refugees legally reuniting with their families in Germany. Over 58 percent of interviewees rejected the notion of refugee family reunification whereas around 42 percent supported it, the survey showed. People granted full asylum have a right to reunite with their close family as stipulated by the Geneva Convention. According to the Bild report, there has been an increase in the number of family reunion visas Germany has issued in recent years. From January 2015 to the end of June 2017, around...

The German government expects that by 2018 there will be around 390,000 Syrians with approved refugee status making them eligible to make advantage of family reunification rules. Currently, there are around 267,500 Syrians with approved asylum status who are candidates for the family reunification scheme but the number could rise to as many as 390,000 by next year Focus Online reports.

Iraqi politicians condemn agreement allowing ISIS fighters to leave besieged Qalamoun. In 2009, before the Syrian civil war, a bus ride from Homs to Deir al-Zor on the Euphrates River would take around five or six hours. There was a stop for refreshments just outside of the historic city of Palmyra. Now fighters from Islamic State are taking that bus route. Under an agreement with the Syrian regime they are being evacuated from the pocket they have held on the Lebanese-Syrian border for several years to areas ISIS controls near the Euphrates Valley between Deir al-Zor and Albukamal on the...

U.S. MILITARY FACILITY IN MIDDLE EAST (Reuters) - U.S. Air Force pilot Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Renken knew that whatever happened next might escalate the war in Syria. The 40-year-old father of four was flying his F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet in “a race track” pattern around an Iranian-made drone, which had just tried to kill U.S.-backed forces and their advisers on the ground. After the drone’s first shot failed to detonate on impact, it was positioning to strike again. So, on June 8, in what was an unprecedented move in the U.S. air war over Syria to that point, Renken...

The Obama administration likely hid information about Iran illicitly ferrying militants into Syria on commercial aircraft in order to promote the landmark nuclear deal and foster multi-billion dollar business deals with Tehran's state-controlled airline sector, according to lawmakers and other sources familiar with the matter. The Washington Free Beacon first disclosed last week that congressional leaders are calling for an investigation into Iran for using its state-controlled air carrier, Iran Air, to ferry militant fighters into Syria, where they are taking up arms in defense of embattled President Bashar al-Assad. Photographs provided to Congress show Iran using Iran Air to...

Less of a timeline than a prediction, this commander’s ETA on victory over the capital of ISIS may seem overly optimistic. After all, the battle for ISIS’ other prominent urban center, Mosul, took nearly nine months, and killed more than 40,000 civilians and perhaps nearly as many combatants (depending on sources), most of those ISIS fighters. The top-ranking Kurdish commander in Syria believes that the coalition bearing down on Raqqa could take the city in just two more months of fighting. Maybe: The battle to oust Islamic State from its stronghold in the Syrian city of Raqqa should end...

George Joseph of the Syriac family that has been rescued by the SDF in Raqqa summarized the ISIS atrocity, saying: “They tried to destroy everything we had.”. The Great Battle, which was launched by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the ISIS gangs in Raqqa, is in its 81st day. The fighters of the SDF are conducting operations against ISIS and advancing on the northern, southern and eastern fronts. Amid the ongoing battle, SDF fighters are also rescuing Raqqan civilians from the clutches of the ISIS gangs. The Raqqan civilians are being rescued via corridors, which have been opened on...

We will act when necessary according to our red lines,’ PM says he told Russian president during 3-hour meeting in Sochi Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel was willing to act to prevent a continued Iranian military presence in Syria, during a three-hour meeting between the two leaders in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. “Most of the discussion dealt with Iran’s attempt to establish a foothold in Syria in the places where ISIS was defeated and is leaving,” Netanyahu said following the meeting. “The victory over ISIS is welcome. Iran’s...

Report based on images from Israeli satellite seem to reveal Scud missile factory identical to one seen in Iran An Israeli television report said on Tuesday that Iran is building a facility in northwest Syria to manufacture long-range rockets, and showed satellite images it said were of the site under construction. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned last week that Iran was strengthening its foothold in its ally Syria as Islamic State fighters were being displaced, and said Israel was watching developments and would act against any threat. "Our policy is clear: We vehemently oppose the military buildup by Iran and...