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A U.S. warplane shot down a Syrian army jet on Sunday in the southern Raqqa countryside with Washington saying the jet had dropped bombs near U.S. backed forces and Damascus saying the plane was downed while flying a mission against Islamic State militants. A Syrian army statement released on Syrian state television said the plane crashed and the pilot was missing. It said the incident took place on Sunday afternoon near a village called Rasafah. The "flagrant attack was an attempt to undermine the efforts of the army as the only effective force capable with its allies ... in fighting...

Kurdish citizens in Serekaniye town, northeast Syria, bidding farewell to several YPG fighters who were killed in clashes with ISIS. Photo: ARA News Kurdish leadership of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) announced on Sunday the death of 111 of its fighters during offensives by the Turkish Army and Turkey-backed Islamist groups in northern Syria.According to the YPG media office, the Turkish Army and allied Islamist rebels launched more than 80 attacks on Kurdish areas held by the YPG in May. “Turkey’s military used heavy artillery and mortar shells in its offensives against the YPG-held areas in Rojava-Northern Syria,” YPG officer...

“We continue to see massing [of forces] and we are concerned about that,” Capt. Davis told reporters at the Pentagon Tuesday. “These patrols are unacceptable and threaten coalition forces” operating within the deconfliction zones, he said, adding that American forces would defend themselves, should regime troops attempt to breach the zone. American and coalition aircraft have dropped leaflets onto regime positions near At Tanf, in an effort to encourage those forces to cease their patrols and move away from the zone, Capt. Davis said. His comments came amid reports that U.S. weapons and vehicles have been shipped to Syrian Kurds,...

Syria Civil Defense, popularly known as the White Helmets, can be seen in a new video assisting in a public execution in a rebel-held town in Syria. It is at least the second such execution video featuring members of the Nobel Prize-nominated group. The White Helmets have received at least $23 million in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a wing of the State Department. The British Foreign Office and other European governments have pitched in as well. Frequently cited as an invaluable source of information by major Western media outlets, the group was the subject of...

Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem on Monday said there had been an apparent change of attitude towards Syria by the US administration following the Russian plan for “de-escalation” zones. “It seems the United States, where (President Donald) Trump has said the Syrian crisis has dragged on too long, might have come to the conclusion that there must be an understanding with Russia on a solution.” Asked about US backing for Kurdish groups fighting Islamic State in northeast Syria, Moualem said that what Syrian Kurds were doing against the jihadist group was “legitimate” at this stage and fell within the framework...

ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi Spotted in Iraq’s Mosul So-called Islamic State (IS) leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has called on his followers to “head towards” the group’s stronghold in Syria, Raqqa, as the city comes under continued pressure from US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a war monitor has said.The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Monday that jihadists have confiscated boats used by civilians between the north and south banks of the Euphrates River and prevented tens of families from crossing into areas controlled by the SDF.According to SOHR, militants have also fortified positions in the north...

Map of the planned Turkish Stream (Wikipedia). Russia’s Gazprom has begun constructing the first stage of the Turkish Stream pipeline that will run gas from southern Russia across the Black Sea to Turkey, Reuters reported on Sunday.Switzerland’s Allseas Group S.A has begun laying pipes on the Russian shore of Black Sea. The pipeline will when completed by the end of 2019 allow the state-owned Gazprom company to send gas direct to southern Europe through the Turkish Stream while bypassing Ukraine.The Turkish Stream intergovernmental agreement was signed in October 2016 after having been halted for almost a year following the shootdown...

<p>US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday the United States would closely examine proposed de-escalation zones aimed at easing Syria’s civil war but warned “the devil’s in the details” and that much needed to be worked out.</p> <p>The deal to create “de-escalation” zones in the major areas of conflict in western Syria took effect on Saturday.</p>

Full text of the agreement reached between Iran, Russia and Turkey in Astana on May 4 on the creation of de-escalation areas in Syria has been released. The memorandum released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation stated that the aim was “to put a prompt end to violence, improve the humanitarian situation and create favorable conditions to advance political settlement of the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic”. Full text of the agreement made between Iran, Russia and Turkey in Astane on May 4 is as follows: “The Islamic Republic of Iran, the Russian Federation...

Israel was seriously dismayed when first reports reached Jerusalem about the telephone conversation between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin Tuesday, during which Trump agreed to consider Putin’s plan for “de-escalation zones” in Syria, in place of the American security zones proposal. The Russian president’s plan includes the posting of Iranian military officers as co-monitors for those zones, one of which is to be located on the Syrian-Israeli border. President Trump described the conversation as “Very good.” The four “de-escalation zones” proposed would be situated at: 1. The northwestern province of Idlib up to the Turkish border; 2. The central...

BEIRUT — Many don’t speak Arabic and their role in Syria is little known to the outside world, but the Chinese fighters of the Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria are organized, battled-hardened and have been instrumental in ground offensives against President Bashar Assad’s forces in the country’s northern regions. Thousands of Chinese jihadis have come to Syria since the country’s civil war began in March 2011 to fight against government forces and their allies. Some have joined the al-Qaida’s branch in the country previously known as Nusra Front. Others paid allegiance to the Islamic State group and a smaller number...

Oh noes, how is the U.S. media going to find a way to spin this? It was only a matter of time. President Trump and Secretary Tillerson played out the global strategy perfectly. By assembling international allies in a coalition of influence, specifically by pulling China into a close relationship with President Trump, Russia has been cast into a brutally diminished role. Secretary Tillerson’s exceptionally well received visit to the U.N. Security Council yesterday appears to have been the final straw. The international diplomacy of President Trump, Vice-President Pence, Secretary T-Rex and even Ambassador Nikki Haley has been incredibly well...

It appears that Mike Cernovich, who earlier this week wrote that Trump's national security advisor, Gen. H.R.McMaster, was planning on sending as many as 150,000 troops to Syria, may have been right again. According to Bloomberg commentator Eli Lake, who has now made a habit of confirming Cernovich "conspiracy theories" (he did so previously with the Susan Rice scoop), Trump may be on the verge of escalating the proxy war in Syria by sending anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 troops on the ground, and - if Cernovich is indeed correct - as much as three times more. Per Lake, after...

Five years of political capital, over a million tonnes of weapons, tens of billions of dollars, Russia’s role as both dominant regional presence and rising global force – these are all at stake if Vladimir Putin abandons Syria’s leader. This is the reckoning faced by the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, as he travels to Moscow to try to prise the Russian president away from his support of Bashar al-Assad in the aftermath of last week’s nerve agent attack on Khan Sheikhun. [snip] There is little reason to think the Wednesday summit will lead to an escalation in tensions....

Before we send the IDF’s 36th Armor Division to occupy Damascus, we should stop and examine the Israeli interest regarding the situation in Syria in light of recent events. Since the devastating images from the battles in the town of Idlib were published Monday, Israel is once again facing a moral dilemma regarding the required action in such a situation. With all the grief over the loss of lives, especially of innocent children, Israel should weigh its options carefully and responsibly and ask itself whether its strategic and tactical situation changed on Tuesday, and whether it requires a ground invasion...

This is from last year but pertains to the recent Syria situation. Gives a little credence to what some people have said about the sarin gas thing being either a false flag or rebels being the source of the sarin. Either way, Trump's being duped.In April of 2013, Britain and France informed the United Nations that there was credible evidence that Syria used chemical weapons against rebel forces. Only two months later, in June of 2013, the United States concluded that the Syrian government did, in fact, use chemical weapons in its fight against opposition forces. President Obama immediately used...

H. R. McMaster Manipulating Intelligence Reports to Trump, Wants 150,000 Ground Soldiers in Syria Current National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond “H. R.” McMaster is manipulating intelligence reports given to President Donald Trump, Cernovich Media can now report. McMaster is plotting how to sell a massive ground war in Syria to President Trump with the help of disgraced former CIA director and convicted criminal David Petraeus, who mishandled classified information by sharing documents with his mistress. As NSA, McMaster’s job is to synthesize intellience reports from all other agencies. President Trump is being given an inaccurate picture of the situation in...

The so-called Arab Spring was started by people who were inspired by universal ideals to put an end to authoritarian rule and corruption and to demand liberty, dignity and social justice. Although these demands have transcended the borders of various Arab countries, their trajectories and outcome have differed because Arab regimes are diverse among themselves in terms of their ruling mechanisms, domestic power structures, international relations, and the societies they have ruled. The ‘Syrian Spring’ began gradually in March 2011 but escalated into a violent conflict that drew in regional and international actors and various competing opposition and regime forces....

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said Thursday that Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar Assad is not unconditional, but that the country demands a full investigation of the suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held province in Syria before the United Nations takes any action.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday confronted Russia directly in an impassioned address to the United Nations following a reported chemical attack in Syria on Tuesday. Haley gave a horrific and vivid account of the reported chemical attack, holding up photos of child victims for the U.N. Security Council to see. “Men, women, the elderly, and children gasping for their very last breath,” she said. “And as first responders, doctors, and nurses rushed to help the victims, a second round of bombs rained down. They died in the same slow, horrendous manner as the civilians they were trying to save.”...