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A large Turkish military convoy rumbled into rebel-held areas of northwest Syria on Sunday, witnesses on the ground and activists said. Separately, airstrikes on a rebel-held village in Syria’s northwest killed at least seven people, opposition activists said. Elsewhere, rebel shelling killed a woman and wounded at least three journalists, Syrian state TV reported. The violence and troop movements came amid a Syrian government offensive into the country’s last rebel stronghold, located in Idlib province and parts of the nearby Aleppo region. Turkish troops are deployed in some of those rebel-held areas to monitor a cease-fire that has since collapsed....

235,000 people who have fled air strikes and shelling elsewhere in Idlib province in recent weeks. The exodus was triggered by ramped-up Syrian and Russian attacks on some of the most densely populated areas of the country’s last-remaining rebel bastion... Earlier this month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, told the EU to prepare for a “new wave” of Syrian refugees, saying his country “will not carry the migration burden alone.” Civilians in Idlib say they feel abandoned by Turkey, which has been the opposition’s main backer during the uprising against the government. Turkey has been strengthening its alliance with Russia,...

Maaret al-Numan (Syria) (AFP) - Thin mattresses, children's toys, a gas heater: Abu Ismail packed a pick-up truck with scant belongings before fleeing a northwest Syria town nearly emptied of residents by recent regime attacks. "I don't know where I am going, if I will find a house for my family, or what will happen to us," the 42-year-old father of seven told AFP, plumes of smoke rising around him. Tens of thousands of people like Abu Ismail have fled the Maaret al-Numan region, located in jihadist-held Idlib province, since December 16, following a rise in air strikes, according to...

US forces reportedly conducted an airstrike on a minivan in a north-western Syrian city on Tuesday, killing two targets just 10 miles away from where former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid in October. The targeted strike was said to have involved the use of a secret ‘Ninja’ missile, known as the AGM-114R9X, which substitutes the explosive warhead found on standard missiles for a set of six folding sword-like blades, designed to smash through buildings and vehicles with minimal civilian casualties. According to The Warzone, the hit was carried out in Atmeh, located in Syria’s Idlib...

The United States took two prisoners during the raid on the compound of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, officials said on Oct. 28. The Oct. 26 raid left al-Baghdadi and several top ISIS members dead, as well as several children who were killed when al-Baghdadi detonated a blast in a dead-end tunnel, President Donald Trump said over the weekend. In an update during a briefing at the Pentagon on Oct. 28, military leaders said two men were taken prisoner. “There were two adult males taken off the objective, alive,” Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said...

US forces attacked jihadist leaders in northwestern (Idlib Province) Syria on Saturday, the Pentagon said, in what a battlefield monitor called a missile strike that left at least 40 dead... The US Central Command said in a statement that the attack targeted leaders of Al-Qaeda in Syria (AQ-S) "responsible for attacks threatening US citizens, our partners and innocent civilians"... The Idlib region is supposed to be protected from a massive government offensive by a Turkish-Russian deal struck in September 2018 that was never fully implemented as jihadists refused to withdraw from a planned demilitarised cordon. Turkey backs rebels in northwestern...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Moscow on Tuesday for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the Turkish presidency has said, days after a Turkish convoy was nearly hit by air raids in the Syrian province of Idlib. Friday's announcement came as Syrian forces, backed by Russia, continue to make advances into the last rebel stronghold in Syria's northwest region that borders Turkey. Since late April, Syria and Russia have escalated their bombardment of Idlib, with more than 500 civilians being killed in the hostilities, according to the United Nations.

Syrian army advances in northwest Syria are putting Turkish troops in the firing line and threaten Ankara's hopes of preventing a new wave of refugees on its southern border. The offensive around Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria, has already forced tens of thousands of civilians to flee towards Turkey. It has also cut off a Turkish military post deep inside Syria as the deal to limit fighting in the region, which the Turkish troops were supposed to be monitoring, collapses. The breakdown of that deal would be a significant blow to President Tayyip Erdogan, who has steered...

Syrian government forces have captured a village deep within the last rebel stronghold in the northwest province of Idlib, after intense clashes with militants. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said on Monday that the troops had reached the village of Qassaibyeh. The pro-government Syrian Central Military Media also confirmed that Syrian troops have captured the village. Human rights and war monitor groups say the government campaign to retake Idlib over the past month, supported by airstrikes, has killed dozens of civilians. The area is overcrowded with refugees and displaced persons from the war.

Idlib province, the Syrian opposition’s last stronghold, is a major source of dispute between seemingly staunch allies within the conflict, Turkey and Russia.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on May 15 that by conducting air strikes and ground operations in Idlib, Syrian President Bashar Assad “sought to sabotage Turkish-Russian cooperation” and violate the ceasefire agreement. Not being able to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin directly, Erdoğan instead chose to criticise Assad. But it seems that Putin got the message and responded to Erdoğan with another wave of air strikes on Idlib on May 17 that was followed by a unilateral...

Syria regime plans to open new front to regain momentum Amman - Turkey has equipped an array of mainstream Syrian rebels it backs with fresh supplies of weaponry to help them try to repel a major Russian-backed assault, senior opposition officials and rebel sources said on Saturday. Russia is backing the Syrian army’s large aerial and ground assault as it seeks to gain control of the last big stretch of rebel-held territory in the northwest of the country. Syrian President Bashar Al Assad launched the assault last month, saying rebels had breached an existing ceasefire, triggering a civilian exodus by...

BEIRUT/ANKARA (Reuters) - Syrian government forces and their Russian allies pounded the rebel-held northwest of Syria with air strikes on Saturday, sources in the area said, as artillery hit a Turkish military position there, underlining the risk of wider escalation. The upsurge in violence in Idlib and nearby areas in the last five days has strained a Russian-Turkish deal that has staved off a government offensive since September. The area is part of the last major foothold of the Syrian rebellion.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) “knowingly” siphoned off millions in American taxpayer-funded humanitarian assistance into the coffers of the al-Qaeda wing in Syria, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) reported this week. In post-Islamic State (ISIS) caliphate Syria, the al-Qaeda-linked Ha’yat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group has surfaced as the strongest jihadi group in the region. On Tuesday, the Pentagon OIG’s Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the official name of the U.S. mission against ISIS, revealed: Since late 2017, USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] OIG investigations have uncovered numerous instances of...

Syrian rebel fighters have pulled the last of their heavy weapons from front-line positions in Idlib Province, meeting the deadline for a truce negotiated by Russia and Turkey — and possibly sparing the civilian population from a bloody government offensive. It was a rare act of unity for the ordinarily fractious rebel forces, who on Monday drove trucks carrying a tank, artillery and missile batteries out of their base in this small town, as a small group of international journalists looked on. “We are now standing in the demilitarized zone,” said Saif al-Raad, a spokesman for the National Liberation Front,...

Xelil Åžirvan, a commander of a group of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, told Sputnik that a US military base had been detected near the town of Al-Qa'im in northwest Iraq on the border with Syria. "According to our data, the United States has set up a new military base in the strategically important region of Al-Qa'im in Anbar province on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Americans are building up their military presence in the region, which is why Iraqi government forces have sent more military reinforcements to Al-Qa'im to boost border protection," he said. A spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led...

Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, told the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday that the country was ready for the voluntary return of refugees who fled during the more than seven-year conflict. ... We welcome any assistance with reconstruction from those countries that were not part of the aggression on Syria

Russian officials said Syria's outdated S-200 systems weren't sophisticated enough to identify the Russian plane as a friendly one. Monday's statement from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia will send the newer S-300 missile defense systems to Syria within the next two weeks. Earlier in the war, Russia suspended a supply of S-300, which Israel feared Syria could use against it. Shoigu said Russia is now going to go ahead with the shipment because "the situation has changed, and it's not our fault." The supply of S-300s to Syria will "calm down some hotheads" whose actions "pose a threat...

The U.S. military Tuesday said it supported a plan to establish a demilitarized zone in northern Syria that would separate rebels in their last stronghold from advancing government forces. The agreement to create a buffer zone was worked out Monday in a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held in Sochi, Russia. Russia’s defense minister said that under the agreement, Syria would refrain from launching an offensive on Idlib Province, the last major rebel stronghold.

Much of the world focused its attention on the Tehran summit last week between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in the hope that the three “Astana partners” could prevent a bloodbath in Idlib, in northwestern Syria.Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu issued promising statements before the Sept. 7 summit, expressing his belief that a crisis would be averted in the last opposition stronghold. The summit not only failed to achieve this, but also highlighted Turkish and Russian differences over Syria. This comes at a time when Ankara and Moscow are keen to highlight their burgeoning...

The trilateral summit in Tehran between the presidents of Turkey, Iran and Russia was one of the most unusual parades of international diplomacy yet. It was televised live. Let’s remember the scenes: All who watched it saw how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blundered and how Russian President Vladimir Putin ridiculed him. Then it was a rare — if not unique — case of international diplomacy where a trilateral partnership considered detrimental to the interests of the West displayed signs of failure on a burning international issue.What has had the West — the transatlantic security system — worried for some time is NATO-member Turkey’s partnership...