Tag Archives: Airstrikes

Syrian opposition casts doubt on peace talks after Russian bombing

PARIS (Reuters) – Syria’s opposition co-ordinator Riad Hijab accused Russia of killing dozens of children after a bombing raid on Monday and said such action meant the opposition could not negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Earlier the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that at least 12 Syrian school children had been killed when suspected Russian warplanes hit a classroom in the rebel-held town of Injara in Aleppo province.

Hijab, speaking after talks with French President Francois Hollande in Paris, put the death toll at 35 children and said the Russian strikes had hit three schools in total.

There was no immediate comment from Moscow, which denies any targeting of civilians in the conflict.

“We want to negotiate, but to do that the conditions have to be there,” Hijab told reporters. “We cannot negotiate with the regime when there are foreign forces bombing the Syrian people.”

Hijab is a former prime minister under Assad who defected to the opposition in 2012. He was chosen in December as coordinator of the opposition negotiating body to lead future Syria talks.

Peace talks are scheduled to be held between the government and opposition on Jan. 25 under the auspices of the United Nations. However, opposition officials have already cast doubt on whether the talks will go ahead on schedule, citing a need to see goodwill measures from the government side.

“We do not want to go to negotiations that are condemned to failure before they start. We need to create the right climate,” Hijab said. “How could we negotiate when the Syrian people are dying? Each day there are massacres.”

He said the talks had to lead to a transitional government with the president and prime minister’s full executive powers.

“INADMISSIBLE ATTACKS”

Hijab said Russia was flaunting U.N. Security Council resolutions by bombing civilians and urged the world body to ensure Russia respected its humanitarian obligations.

He also dismissed Syrian government demands that it see a list of opposition members attending the possible talks, saying the opposition would not have choices imposed on them.

Earlier on Monday French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called on Moscow and Damascus to stop “inadmissible” attacks against civilians.

Hollande and Fabius reiterated the Western view that Assad, who has strong backing from Moscow and Tehran, must relinquish power under any peace settlement.

“Bashar al-Assad has no role in the Syria of tomorrow,” Hollande said after his talks with Hijab.

Fabius said images from Madaya showing people suffering from starvation in the besieged rebel-held town underscored why the Syrian leader should step down. On Monday an aid convoy entered the town where thousands have been trapped.

(Additional reporting By Elizabeth Pineau; Editing by Gareth Jones)

France, Russia strike Islamic State in Syria, EU aid invoked

By Chine Labbé and Crispian Balmer

PARIS (Reuters) – France and Russia staged air strikes on Islamic State targets in northern Syria on Tuesday, punishing the group for attacks in Paris and against a Russian airliner that together killed 353 people.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a coordinated onslaught in Paris on Friday and the downing of a Russian charter jet over Sinai on Oct. 31, saying they were in retaliation for French and Russian air raids in Iraq and Syria.

Still reeling from the Paris carnage that killed 129, most of them young people, France formally requested European Union assistance in its fight against the militants and British Prime Minister David Cameron edged closer to extending military action against Islamic State in Syria.

Police investigating the worst atrocity in France since World War Two discovered two safe houses in Paris where they believe the militants launched their assault. Underlining the widening scope of the probe, police in Germany said they arrested five suspects, including two women.

In Moscow, the Kremlin acknowledged that a bomb had destroyed a Russian airliner last month, killing 224 people. President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible and intensify air strikes against Islamists in Syria.

“Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued,” he said. “It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

Western officials said Russia launched a “significant number” of strikes in Syria on Tuesday hitting the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. In a separate action, apparently not coordinated, French warplanes targeted Raqqa for a second day.

French President Francois Hollande has said he will see Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama in the coming days to try to convince them to join a grand coalition against Islamic State which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Russia began air strikes in Syria at the end of September. It has always said its main target is Islamic State, but most of its bombs in the past have hit territory held by other groups opposed to its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

 

MANHUNT

In Brussels, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invoked the EU’s mutual assistance clause for the first time since the 2009 Lisbon Treaty introduced the possibility, saying he expected help with French operations in Syria, Iraq and Africa.

“This is firstly a political act,” Le Drian told a news conference after a meeting of EU defense chiefs.

The 28 EU member states accepted the French request but it was not immediately clear what assistance would be forthcoming.

A manhunt was continuing in France and Belgium on Tuesday for one of the eight attackers in the Paris assault.

French police staged 128 raids overnight in the hunt for accomplices and Islamist militant networks, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. Police found a third Belgian-licensed car believed to have been used by the attackers and sealed off the area around it in Paris’ 18th district.

Cazeneuve told France Info radio police were making rapid progress in their investigation but declined to give details.

One top suspect, Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, 26, remains at large after escaping back to Belgium early on Saturday and eluding a police dragnet in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, where he lived with his two brothers.

One of the brothers blew himself up outside a Paris cafe on Friday, seriously injuring many bystanders.

Hollande, who has declared a state of emergency, met visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday to press his call for the U.S.-led and Russian-led coalitions to join forces.

Kerry told reporters afterwards that Islamic State was losing territory in Syria and Iraq, but said increased co-ordination with Moscow would require progress in a political drive to end the war. That process is complicated by a U.S. demand that Assad steps down as president.

 

“DON’T SCAPEGOAT REFUGEES”

The U.N. refugee agency and Germany’s police chief urged European countries not to demean or reject refugees because one of Friday’s Paris bombers was believed to have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece.

“We are deeply disturbed by language that demonizes refugees as a group,” U.N. spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said after government officials in Poland, Slovakia and the German state of Bavaria cited the Paris attacks as a reason to refuse refugees.

The head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Office said there was no sign that Islamist militants had entered Germany posing as an asylum seeker to commit an attack.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Paris would spare no expense to reinforce and equip its security forces and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism, even though that was bound to involve breaching European budget deficit limits.

“We have to face up to this, and Europe ought to understand,” he told France Inter radio.

The European Commission said it would show understanding to France if additional security spending pushed up its deficit.

As France geared up for a long war, the British prime minister said he would present a “comprehensive strategy” for tackling Islamic State to parliament. British war planes have been bombing the militants in Iraq, but not Syria.

“It is in Syria, in Raqqa, that Isil has its headquarters and it is from Raqqa that some of the main threat against this country are planned and orchestrated,” Cameron said, referring to Islamic State by one of its many acronyms.

“Raqqa, if you like, is the head of the snake.”

French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday night — four Frenchmen and a foreigner fingerprinted in Greece among refugees last month.

In addition to the suspect on the run, police believe at least four other people helped organize the mayhem.

Investigators believe the attacks may have been ordered by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian national now living in Syria where he has become an Internet propagandist for Islamic State under the nom de guerre Abu Omar al-Belgiki — the Belgian.

Belgian media have reported that Salah Abdeslam spent time in jail for robbery five years ago alongside Abaaoud.

Police in France named two of the French attackers as Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris, and Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy.

France believes Mostefai, a petty criminal who never served time in jail, visited Syria in 2013-2014. His radicalization underlined the trouble police face trying to capture an elusive enemy raised in its own cities.

 

(Additional reporting by Laurence Frost, Maya Nikolaeva, Julien Ponthus, Patrick Vignal and David Brunnstrom; Writing by Paul Taylor and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

U.S. Officials Believe ISIS Leader “Jihadi John” Killed in U.S. Airstrikes

Multiple news agencies are reporting today that Islamic State leader “Jihadi John” was possibly killed during an airstrike in northern Syria led by the United States.

According to ABC News, a U.S. official stated that the jihadist, Mohammed Emwazi, was hit after leaving a building in Raqqa, Syria and entering a car. The official added that it was a “clean hit” where Emwazi was basically “evaporated.”

“U.S. forces conducted an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria, on Nov. 12, 2015 targeting Mohammed Emwazi, also known as ‘Jihadi John,'” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.

“Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages,” Cook said. “We are assessing the results of tonight’s operation and will provide additional information as and where appropriate.”

In the ISIS videos, Emwazi always wore all black, covering his entire body except his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He soon became a symbol of the Islamic State’s brutality after being featured many horrific videos where he killed innocent people in various, sadistic ways.

British Prime Minister David Cameron stated that the airstrike was a combined effort between the U.S. and Britain and was an act of self-defense, according to CNN.

“We always said we will do whatever is necessary to track down Emwazi and stop him taking the lives of others,” he said.

He added, “I want to thank the United States, the United Kingdom has no better ally.”

CNN adds that while officials are confident that Emwazi is dead, the Pentagon would not officially confirm his death at this time.

In another blow to ISIS, Reuters reports that Kurdish forces were able to seize back the Iraqi town of Sinjar back from the Islamic State on Friday. The Kurdish troops were able to take several of Sinjar’s public buildings including a cement factory, hospital, and wheat silo. Officials believe this win over the terrorist organization may give the Kurds the momentum needed to take back Mosul.

“The liberation of Sinjar will have a big impact on liberating Mosul,” Iraq Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani told reporters atop Mount Sinjar, overlooking the town.

The operation has not only liberated the town, but has cut off vital trade routes that ISIS used to move weapons, oil, fighters, and other commodities.

Kurdish Forces Battle to Retake Iraq’s Sinjar Town

Kurdish Iraqi fighters, backed by U.S. airstrikes, launched an assault Thursday aimed at retaking the strategic town of Sinjar. ISIS had seized Sinjar last year murdering, raping, and enslaving thousands of Yazidis.

According to Reuters, the Kurds have captured three villages and penetrated parts of Highway 47, a supply route between Raqqa in Syria and the Iraqi city of Mosul, both of them Islamic State base areas.

“The ground assault began in the early morning hours of Nov. 12, when peshmerga units successfully established blocking positions along Highway 47 and began clearing Sinjar,” said the coalition in a statement.

Some 7,500 Kurdish fighters were deployed on a three-pronged front seeking to reclaim Sinjar, Kurdish authorities said.

Another spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, told the Reuters news agency that some U.S. advisers were among the peshmerga ground forces to help with targeting airstrikes. He gave no further details. The Associated Press reported that a small American military team was seen on a hilltop, directing and confirming airstrikes

The Washington Post reported that the capture of Sinjar by Islamic State militants in August 2014 sent tens of thousands of Yazidis fleeing to Mount Sinjar, where they became trapped. Thousands of women were captured by the group and have been used as sex slaves.

Should the Kurds win a victory in Sinjar it may give government forces and Shiite militias the biggest push to increase efforts to defeat the Islamic State. ISIS still controls large areas of Iraq and Syria.

U.S. Prepared to Take More Action in Syria

Days after President Obama announced the deployment of special operations forces in Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said more American soldiers could “absolutely” be sent to Syria if the U.S. can find additional local groups willing to fight ISIS.

Carter told Voice of America News that the key to victory comes from local groups who are capable of winning and keeping the peace.

“Now, those are hard to find in Iraq and Syria. That’s why it’s going to take some time because we have to help develop, enable, encourage those forces,” the defense chief said. Using an acronym for the group, he added that some forces “have shown some effectiveness in fighting ISIL and, if they grow in size, we’ll do more. If we find additional groups that are willing to fight ISIL, and they’re capable and are vetted, we’ll do more. The president has indicated a willingness to do more. I’m certainly prepared to recommend that he do more, but you need to have capable local forces.”

Carter did mention that if more American troops were to go to Syria, their main mission would be to advise and assist rebel groups. However, he did admit that there may be situations in which U.S. troops may be forced into a combat situation, according to ABC News.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post reported yesterday that the United States has intensified their airstrikes against the Islamic State within the last few days.

U.S. military forces reported from October 30 to November 6, coalition forces carried out 56 strikes against ISIS. The strikes were focused on the towns of al Hawl, al Hasakah, Mar’a, and Dayr az Zawr. Comparatively, there were only 3 airstrikes deployed within the 8 days before October 30. On Saturday alone, the U.S. and its allies carried out a dozen strikes, according to the Huffington Post.

Putin uses Assad visit to talk up Kremlin role as Syrian broker

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Moscow on Tuesday evening to thank Russia’s Vladimir Putin personally for his military support, in a surprise visit that underlined how Russia has become a major player in the Middle East.

It was Assad’s first foreign visit since the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011, and came three weeks after Russia launched a campaign of air strikes against Islamist militants in Syria that has also bolstered Assad’s forces.

The Kremlin, which said it had invited Assad to visit Moscow, kept the visit quiet until Wednesday morning, broadcasting a meeting between the two men in the Kremlin and releasing a transcript of an exchange they had.

Putin said he hoped progress on the military front would be followed by moves towards a political solution in Syria, bolstering Western hopes Moscow will use its increased influence on Damascus to cajole Assad into talking to his opponents.

Assad’s confidence is likely to be boosted by the visit, which comes as his forces wage counteroffensives in western Syria against insurgents backed by Assad’s foreign opponent, as well as Islamic State militants.

“First of all I wanted to express my huge gratitude to the whole leadership of the Russian Federation for the help they are giving Syria,” Assad told Putin.

“If it was not for your actions and your decisions the terrorism which is spreading in the region would have swallowed up a much greater area and spread over an even greater territory.”

Russian officials have repeatedly said they have no special loyalty for the Syrian leader, but his audience with Putin will be seen in the West as yet another sign the Kremlin wants Assad to be part of any political solution, at least initially.

The visit also suggests that Russia, and not longtime ally Iran, has now emerged as Assad’s most important foreign friend.

Russian state TV made the meeting its top news item, showing Assad, dressed in a dark blue suit, talking to Putin, together with the Russian foreign and defense ministers.

The Kommersant daily cited unnamed sources saying meetings between the two delegations had lasted over three hours. The Syrian presidency Twitter account said Assad and Putin held three rounds of talks – one of them a closed meeting and the other two including Russia’s foreign and defense ministers.

The Kremlin has cast its intervention in Syria, its biggest in the Middle East since the 1991 Soviet collapse, as a common sense move designed to roll back international terrorism in the face of what it says is ineffective action from Washington.

It is likely to use Assad’s visit to buttress its domestic narrative that its air campaign is just and effective and to underline its assertion that its actions show it has shaken off the Ukraine crisis to become a serious global player.

Russia has a combined force of around 50 jets and helicopters in Latakia protected by Russian marines. It also has military trainers and advisers working with the Syrian army.

Russia’s air force says it has flown over 700 sorties against more than 690 targets in Syria since Sept. 30.

Assad, who looked relaxed, emphasized how Russia was acting according to international law, praising Moscow’s political approach to the Syrian crisis which he said had ensured it had not played out according to “a more tragic scenario.”

Ultimately, he said, the resolution to the crisis was a political one.

“Terrorism is a real obstacle to a political solution,” said Assad. “And of course the whole (Syrian) people want to take part in deciding the fate of their state, and not just the leadership.”

POLITICAL SOLUTION?

Putin said Russia was ready to help find a political solution and hailed the Syrian people for standing up to the militants “almost on their own”, saying the Syrian army had notched up serious battlefield success in recent times.

Sergei Shoigu, his defense minister, said Russia’s air support had helped the Syrian army move from defense to attack, saying Moscow would continue to provide military support.

Putin said Russia had felt compelled to act in Syria because of the threat Islamist militants fighting Assad’s forces there posed to its own security.

“Unfortunately on Syrian territory there are about 4,000 people from the former Soviet Union – at a minimum – fighting government forces with weapons in their hands,” said Putin.

“We, it goes without saying, can not allow them to turn up on Russian territory after they have received battlefield experience and undergone ideological instruction.”

Positive developments on the military front in Syria would provide a basis for a long-term political solution, involving all political forces, ethnic and religious groups, said Putin.

“We are ready to make our contribution not only in the course of military actions in the fight against terrorism, but during the political process,” he said, according to the transcript released by the Kremlin.

“This will, of course, be in close contact with other world powers and with countries of the region which are interested in a peaceful resolution of the conflict,” Putin said.

Interfax news agency said Putin briefed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan by phone about the talks. Turkey, which supports rebels trying to overthrow Assad, said the Syrian leader should have stayed in Moscow for the sake of his country.

When asked whether Assad’s own political future had been discussed, Putin’s spokesman declined to comment.

How Assad got to and back from Moscow remains a mystery.

Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riad Haddad, told Reuters Assad had traveled in a Syrian plane and had safely returned home after the meeting. But publicly available flight tracking data suggested Assad’s hosts may have laid on transport for him.

It showed an IL-76MD Russian military cargo plane flew from Syria to Moscow’s Chkalovsky military airfield on Tuesday, and that an IL-62M plane from Russia’s presidential fleet flew to Latakia, a government controlled Syrian province, that same evening.

(By Andrew Osborn; Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova, Ekaterina Golubkova and Jack Stubbs; Editing by Christian Lowe and Dominic Evans)

International Partners Ask Russia to Stop Airstrikes, Focus on ISIS

Escalating tension continues between the U.S. and Russian over Russian airstrikes that government officials feel are serving to strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad by targeting “moderate” rebels rather than ISIS fighters that it promised to attack.

The Pentagon is wrestling with the question as to whether the U.S. should use military force to protect U.S. trained and equipped Syrian rebels now that they may be the targets of Russian airstrikes. Pentagon leaders have been consistent in saying that the U.S. must take steps to protect the American-trained rebels.
An international coalition is urging Russia to immediately cease attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and focus instead on fighting the ISIS terrorist group.

“We express our deep concern with regard to the Russian military build-up in Syria and especially the attacks by the Russian Air Force on Hama, Homs and Idlib since yesterday which led to civilian casualties and did not target Da’esh,” said the statement, jointly issued late Thursday by the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, France, Germany, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Russia’s defense ministry said that over the past 24 hours it had damaged or destroyed 12 targets in Syria belonging to the ISIS fighters, including a command center and ammunition depots. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Col. Steve Warren, said he had no indication that the Russians had hit Islamic State targets.

Concerns are being raised that this conflict is leading to a new alliance between Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Russia Continues Bombings in Syria -Defends Targets

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addressed reporters outside the U.N. on the second day of Russian bombings in Syria. Russia’s airstrikes in Syria “do not go beyond ISIL (ISIS), al Nusra or other terrorist groups recognized by the United Nations Security Council or Russian law,”

Lavrov defended Russia’s air strikes remarking that the U.S. led coalition was going after the same terror groups as the Russian’s were. Rejecting any comments that their actions were to bolster Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he said that Russia did not consider Assad’s main opposition, the Free Syrian Army to be a terrorist group.

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive to accompany Russian airstrikes. According to defense officials it was always “understood” that the Russians would provide the air force and the Iranians would provide the ground force in Syria.“It has always been understood that the Russians would provide the air force, and the Iranians would provide the ground force in Syria,” one official said.

U.S. officials say that the bombings are not in ISIS held territories. Russian were given only a one hour notice before the bombings and that was more to tell our military to stop our own airstrikes. The U.S. declined that request.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday that the Russian attacks, which the Kremlin said were meant to target terrorists, didn’t appear to hit targets under the control of ISIS, which operates in the north and east of the country.

Sen. John McCain — chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee called the Russian strikes “an incredible flouting of any kind of cooperation or effort to conceal what their first — Putin’s priority is. And that is of course to prop up Bashar al-Assad.”

U.S. Military Airstrike Launched in Attempt to Regain City

In an attempt to regain Kunduz from the Taliban in Afghanistan, military officials announced airstrikes that were launched on Tuesday.  

U.S. Army Col. Brian Tribus, spokesman for the U.S. and NATO missions in Afghanistan, said the strike was carried out “in order to eliminate a threat to the force.”  

Afghanistan troops were amassed outside Kunduz in an effort to take back the city that had fallen to the Taliban on Monday.   

President Ashraf Ghani stated in a televised address to the nation, that the military launched a counter-offensive on the city, with security forces “retaking government buildings … and reinforcements, including special forces and commandos are either there or on their way there.”

“The enemy has sustained heavy casualties,” said Ghani, who marked his first anniversary in office on Tuesday. He urged his nation to trust Afghan troops and not give in to “fear and terror.”

Many analysts and officials predict a very difficult time in the fight ahead.  Taliban have control of many of the roads to the city which make supply runs and reinforcing troops quite challenging as well as the fact that the Taliban has infiltrated residential areas which make airstrikes and the use of heavy weapons quite costly.  

Captured Hamas Terrorist Gives Up Tunnel Locations

Israel’s Shin Bet General Security Service announced Tuesday they had captured a Hamas terrorist who has given up a trove of information on the terrorist group’s tunnel system into Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed much of the terrorist’s information including a tunnel in the area of the Kerem Shalom border crossing.  The IDF says they are working “around the clock” to take care of the threat from the newly discovered tunnels.

The terrorist, Ibraheem Adel Shehadeh Shaer, was a tunnel digger for the terror group.  In addition to the locations of new parts to the Hamas tunnel system, Shaer provided information emergency procedures and how they plan to use the tunnels to attack Israel.

Shaer told Shin Bet that Iran provided cash to Hamas along with advanced weapons and electronic equipment.  Some of the advanced equipment is designed to interfere with the control signals for Israeli drone aircraft.

The fighter detailed the advanced units of Hamas along with the group’s anti-tank and anti-aircraft capabilities.  He also gave up the location of observation posts and photographic capabilities into Israel.

Shaer also confirmed that Hamas commanders keep weapons and explosives in their homes around their families because of fear of Israeli airstrikes.