Tag Archives: Syria

Turkey announced the arrest of slain former Daesh/ISIS ringleader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s sister. “The arrest of al-Baghdadi’s sister is yet another example of the success of our counter-terrorism operations,” said Fahrettin Altun, Turkey’s communications director, on Twitter. “Turkey’s fight against terror regardless of its ideology or origin continues unabated,” he ...

NEW YORK: At least 94,000 civilians have returned to areas liberated by anti-terror operation in northern Syria over the last 10 days, the UN said. At the beginning of Operation Peace Spring, there were over 200,000 people who had left their homes, Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for ...

ANKARA/AMMAN: Syrian army troops clashed with Turkish forces near the border town of Ras al Ain on Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, as Ankara said it reserved the right to launch another cross-border offensive against the Kurdish YPG militia. The state media gave no details but Turkish-backed rebels said similar, ...

BRUSSELS: Turkey is “heading in the wrong direction” with its incursion into Syria and its deal with Russia to jointly patrol a “safe zone” there, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned Thursday. “Turkey put us all in a very terrible situation” by sweeping into northern Syria this month to fight ...

ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan put US President Donald Trump’s letter “in the bin”, the BBC has been told. In the letter dated 9 October, and sent after US troops were pulled out of Syria, Mr Trump told Erdogan: “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!” President ...

RAS AL-AIN: Kurdish fighters battled to defend a key Syrian border town from Turkish-backed forces in a flare-up of violence as US President Donald Trump sent his vice president and top diplomat to Ankara to demand a ceasefire. Russia, already the key foreign power in Syria, stepped into the void ...

NEW YORK: The US on Sunday withdrew its forces from military observation post south of Ayn Al-Arab in northern Syria, according to security sources. The US started to withdraw from Ayn Al-Arab, also known as Kobani, at 15:00 p.m. local time [1200GMT]. Earlier, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said ...

ISTANBUL/ANKARA: Turkey pressed its military offensive against US-allied Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria, shelling towns and bombing targets from the air in an operation that has forced thousands of people to flee their homes. At least 23 fighters with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and eight civilians, two them ...

LONDON: British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt told his Iranian counterpart on Saturday that Britain would facilitate the release of the detained Grace 1 oil tanker if Tehran gave guarantees it would not go to Syria. The tanker was seized last week by British Royal Marines off the coast of the ...

BEIRUT: The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah said Friday that US ally Israel would not be “neutral” if a war broke out between the United States and Iran. And “Iran is able to bombard Israel with ferocity and force,” Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview broadcast on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television. His ...