MOSCOW, Feb. 4: Russia strongly condemns the U.S. strikes on Syria and Iraq and is seeking an immediate review of the emerging situation through the United Nations (UN) Security Council, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Saturday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Friday, in the opening salvo of retaliation for the drone strike that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan last weekend.

BEIRUT, Feb 6: At least 245 people were killed in Syria on Monday as buildings collapsed after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that had its epicentre in neighbouring Turkey, state media and a medical source said.

Nepali peacekeepers leave for Syria

November 23, 2021 14:30 pm

KATHMANDU, Nov 23: A team of 192 Nepali peacekeepers has left for Syria to participate in the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force.

BAGHDAD/AMMAN, July 8: U.S. diplomats and troops in Iraq and Syria were targeted in three rocket and drone attacks in the past 24 hours, U.S. and Iraq officials said on Wednesday, including at least 14 rockets hitting an Iraqi air base hosting U.S. forces, wounding two American service members.

WASHINGTON, June 29: U.S. President Joe Biden's latest strikes against Iran-backed militia in Syria and Iraq were not the first nor likely the last of his young presidency.

WASHINGTON, June 27: The United States said on Sunday it carried out another round of air strikes against Iran-backed militia in Iraq and Syria, this time in response to drone attacks by the militia against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq.

SYRIA, May 28: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad won a fourth term in office with 95.1% of the votes in an election that will extend his rule over a country ruined by war but which opponents and the West say was marked by fraud.

CAIRO, Dec 30: One person was killed and three soldiers injured as a result of “Israeli aggression” in the Damascus countryside, Syrian state news agency SANA said on Wednesday, quoting a military source.

BEIRUT, Jan 23: Militants in Syria set off car bombs and used heavy gunfire to storm army positions in Idlib on Thursday, state news agency SANA reported.

AZAZ, SYRIA, Jan 17: Syrian teacher Ahmad al Hilal listens to his young pupils sitting on a mat reciting the Arabic alphabet in a makeshift school in a tent on the outskirts of a sprawling refugee camp city along the Turkish border.

TEL AVIV, Jan 10: Israel on Friday released two more prisoners, including one jailed for spying for Syria, in what it called a goodwill gesture for the Russian-assisted repatriation last year of the body of a long-missing Israeli soldier.

BEIRUT, Nov 23: At least 10 people were killed and 25 wounded when a car bomb exploded on Saturday in a Syrian border town seized by Turkish-backed forces last month, witnesses and a rescuer said.

GENEVA Nov 8 :  A U.N. backed panel on Syria will meet again in Geneva later in November, the U.N. Special Envoy said on Friday, after it met for the first time seeking political reconciliation following 8-1/2 years of war.

WASHINGTON, Oct 21: The Pentagon on Wednesday released its first images from last weekend’s commando raid in Syria that led to the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and warned the militant group may attempt to stage a “retribution attack.”

U.S. troop numbers in the Middle East

October 27, 2019 00:00 am

Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated promises to end what he calls America’s “endless wars,” there are now more U.S. troops in the Middle East than when he took office. The United States is estimated to have 60,000 to 80,000 troops stationed across the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, which covers the Middle East and Southwest Asia, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Since President Trump took office in 2017, roughly 3,000 more U.S. troops have been sent to Afghanistan, America’s longest-running war.

Oct 26: 6 things to know by 6 PM today

October 26, 2019 18:00 pm

Your daily dose of missed important news of the day.

MOSCOW, Oct 26: Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday attacked U.S. plans to maintain and boost the American military presence in eastern Syria as “international state banditry” motivated by a desire to protect oil smugglers and not by real security concerns.

MOSCOW/ISTANBUL, Oct 24: Kurdish forces have begun withdrawing from areas near the Turkish frontier in Syria, Russia’s deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying on Thursday, following a deal between Moscow and Ankara that ended Turkey’s cross-border military offensive.

BAGHDAD, Oct 22: U.S. troops leaving Syria and heading to neighboring Iraq do not have permission to stay in the country, Iraq’s military said Tuesday as American forces continued to pull out of northern Syria after Turkey’s invasion of the border region.

BAGHDAD, Oct 22: U.S. forces that crossed into Iraq as part of a pull-out from Syria do not have permission to stay and can only be there in transit, the Iraqi military said on Tuesday.

Price of Trump’s betrayal

October 22, 2019 00:30 am

The abandonment of Kurdish forces in northern Syria has reinforced already existing doubts in the region and around the world that the United States remains a reliable ally

U.S. troops cross into Iraq from Syria

October 21, 2019 09:05 am

DOHUK, Iraq , Oct 21: United States troops have crossed into Iraq from Syria through the Sahela border crossing in the northern province of Dohuk, Reuters witnesses said on Monday.

AKCAKALE, TURKEY, Oct 10: Turkey launched airstrikes, fired artillery and began a ground offensive against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria on Wednesday after U.S. troops pulled back from the area, paving the way for an assault on forces that have long been allied with the United States.

DUBAI, Sept 7: A once-detained Iranian oil tanker pursued by the U.S. appears to be off the coast of Syria, where Tehran reportedly promised the vessel would not go when authorities in Gibraltar agreed to release it several weeks ago, according to satellite images obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.

AMMAN, Aug 21: Ten of thousands of people have fled to Syria’s border with Turkey in the last few days as a Syrian army advance pushed further into the opposition’s last major stronghold, residents, rights groups and opposition sources said on Wednesday.

ISTANBUL, August 3: Turkey will carry out an operation east of the Euphrates river in northern Syria, in an area controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday.

WASHINGTON, Aug 4: The U.S. State Department on Saturday said it welcomed news of a ceasefire in Northwest Syria - the last rebel bastion in the country - and urged for an end to attacks on civilians.

BEIRUT, July 28: A Syrian government airstrike hit a busy open-air market in the country’s northwest on Saturday, killing at least 11 people, most of them children, according to activists. The town of Ariha has been particularly targeted over the last week as the government escalates its offensive against the country’s last rebel stronghold.

BEIRUT, July 27: Syrian activists and a doctor say a government airstrike hit a busy open-air market in a town in the last rebel stronghold in northwestern Syria, killing nine people.

GENEVA, July 26: Airstrikes by the Syrian government and its allies on schools, hospitals, markets and bakeries have killed at least 103 civilians in the past 10 days, including 26 children, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said in a statement on Friday.

BEIRUT, July 22: An airstrike struck a busy market in a rebel-held town in northwestern Syria on Monday, killing at least 16 people, according to opposition activists and a war monitoring group.

AMMAN, July 17: At least 12 people were killed and scores wounded on Tuesday in aerial strikes believed to have been carried out by the Syrian air force on a popular market in a village in opposition-held northwestern Syria, rescuers and residents said.

BEIRUT, July 4: A rigged motorcycle exploded in Syria’s Sweida city, which the government controls, killing three people and injuring seven others on Wednesday night, an official there said.

GENEVA, June 24: U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Monday that 55,000 captured Islamic State fighters, including foreigners, and their families detained in Syria and Iraq should face fair trials or be freed.

ARSAL, June 20: Lebanese authorities are making their most aggressive campaign yet for Syrian refugees to return home and are taking action to ensure they can’t put down roots.

BAGHDAD/BRUSSELS, May 29:  U.S. forces have quietly sent at least 30 suspected foreign Islamic State fighters captured in Syria last year and in late 2017 to stand trial in Iraq, interviews with the men, Iraqi sources and court documents show.

At least 15 civilians, including children, have been killed in Syria's northwest region as Russian-backed government forces continued air raids and shelling in the last rebel-held territory in the country, according to activists and volunteer medics.

After the defeat of the “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, the so-called Islamic State group still poses a security threat in many countries.

BEIRUT, April 26: The U.S.-led coalition killed more than 1,600 civilians in the northern Syria city of Raqqa during months of bombardment that liberated it from the Islamic State group, hundreds more than the number the U.S.-led coalition claims over the entire four-year campaign against IS, Amnesty International and a London-based watchdog group said Thursday.

BEIRUT, April 20: Islamic State attacks on the Syrian army and allied militias in central Syria have killed 35 soldiers over two days, a war monitor said early on Saturday.

CAIRO, April 13: Israeli planes targeted a military position near the province of Hama in Syria on Saturday, but Syrian air defenses intercepted and downed some of the rockets, Syrian state television said on Saturday.

DAMASCUS, March 29: At least 50 Islamic State (IS) militants were killed Thursday by U.S.-led airstrikes on a caves area in eastern Syria, a war monitor reported.

March 23: Islamic State fighters have been defeated at the final shred of territory they held in eastern Syria, marking the end of jihadist rule that once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Saturday.

BEIRUT, March 23: Islamic State has been defeated at its final shred of territory of Baghouz in Syria, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Saturday, announcing the end of its self-declared “caliphate” that once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria.

DAMASCUS, March 19: The military commanders of Syria, Iran and Iraq discussed in the capital Damascus on Monday issues, including the coordination to counter terrorism, opening borders, and restoring all Syrian areas.

MOSCOW, March 17: Around 1.7 million Syrian refugees registered in foreign countries are hoping to return to their homeland, the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides and Refugee Migration Monitoring said Saturday.

BAGHOUZ, March 10: The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) paused military operations against Islamic State (IS) militants holed up in the group’s final enclave in eastern Syria, expecting more civilians to be evacuated from the area on Saturday, an SDF official said.

SYRIA, March 2: The Latest on the conflict in Syria (all times local): 8:50 p.m.Syrian activists and a war monitor say at least seven people have been killed in a suicide bombing inside a restaurant in the northwestern city of Idlib.

WASHINGTON, Feb 22: The United States will leave “a small peacekeeping group” of 200 American troops in Syria for a period of time after a U.S. pullout, the White House said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump pulled back from a complete withdrawal.