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Post by Admin on Jun 23, 2017 18:33:45 GMT
A U.S. strike aircraft shot down a Syrian government fighter jet Sunday shortly after the Syrians bombed U.S.-backed fighters in northern Syria, the Pentagon said in a statement. The Pentagon said the downing of the aircraft came hours after Syrian loyalist forces attacked U.S.-backed fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, in the village of Ja’Din, southwest of Raqqa. The rare attack was the first time a U.S. jet has shot down a manned hostile aircraft in more than a decade, and signaled the United States’ sharply intensifying role in Syria’s war. “The attack stresses coordination between the US and ISIS, and it reveals the evil intentions of the US in administrating terrorism and investing it to pass the US-Zionist project in the region,” the Syrian statement said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. Before it downed the Syrian plane, the U.S. military used a deconfliction channel to communicate with Russia, Syria’s main ally, to prevent the situation from escalating, the Pentagon said.
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Post by Admin on Feb 2, 2018 18:32:51 GMT
The Syrian government may be developing new types of chemical weapons, and U.S. President Donald Trump is prepared to consider further military action if necessary to deter chemical attacks, senior U.S. officials said on Thursday.
President Bashar al-Assad is believed to have secretly kept part of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile despite a U.S.-Russian deal under which Damascus was supposed to have handed over all such weapons for destruction in 2014, the officials said.
Assad’s forces have instead “evolved” their chemical weapons and made continued occasional use of them in smaller amounts since a deadly attack last April that drew a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base, the officials told reporters in a briefing.
Characteristics of some of those recent attacks suggest that Syria may be developing new weapons and methods for delivering poison chemicals, possibly to make it harder to trace their origin, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity, but they declined to provide specifics.
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Post by Admin on Feb 12, 2018 18:20:06 GMT
Hassan Hassan, a Syrian analyst and author, said the Americans repeatedly had broken promises to Turkey about the alliance: They said the Syrian Democratic Forces would not cross the Euphrates River. It did. They said it would withdraw. It stayed. The Americans also said the YPG would refrain from promoting PKK ideology outside Kurdish areas. Yet YPG fighters hoisted a huge poster of Ocalan in the centre of the city of Raqqa after wresting it from Islamic State last year, a huge embarrassment to the US. Hassan said the local councils are vetted by the YPG and cannot be seen as fully democratic. But he said that in some areas Arab residents nonetheless had welcomed the Syrian Democratic Forces, particularly in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, the area of Hassan’s family roots. US officials have told the Kurds that the US will not fight Turkey for them. With a diminished need to fight Islamic State in Syria, Hassan said, US support for the Kurds could dwindle. But Xelil, the Kurdish analyst, said the Americans would need the Kurds for their other objectives in Syria, like pushing back on Iranian influence. “We think that it is surely possible that the Americans will find real reasons to deepen their relationship with the Kurds in a strategic sense,” he said. – New York Times
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Post by Admin on Feb 25, 2018 18:21:34 GMT
The United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution calling for a 30-day cease-fire in Syria, following one of the bloodiest weeks of aerial bombardment in the war that has devastated the country. In the eastern suburbs of Damascus, a region called Eastern Ghouta, nearly 500 people have been killed in a deadly escalation by the Syrian government that began Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Associated Press. More than 120 of the dead are children, the group says. The Security Council resolution aims to get humanitarian aid to Eastern Ghouta and other areas under siege. The resolution was delayed several times in an effort to get Russia's approval. "Airstrikes, artillery shells and barrels filled with TNT are being dropped on neighborhoods that are heavily populated by civilians who have no way to escape," NPR's Lama Al-Arian reports. "They're being forced into bunkers, and many of them can't even find the time to bury their dead."
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Post by Admin on Apr 11, 2018 18:19:57 GMT
Syrian state TV said on Monday the United States was suspected of striking an air base hours after U.S. President Donald Trump warned of a “big price to pay” as aid groups said dozens of people were killed by poison gas in a rebel-held town.
The United States denied attacking the Syrian base.
“At this time, the Department of Defense is not conducting air strikes in Syria,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
“However, we continue to closely watch the situation and support the ongoing diplomatic efforts to hold those who use chemical weapons, in Syria and otherwise, accountable.”
When asked about the explosions, an Israeli spokeswoman declined to comment. Israel has struck Syrian army locations many times in the course of the conflict, hitting convoys and bases of Iranian-backed militias that fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s forces.
Syrian state TV said there were casualties in what it said was a suspected U.S. missile attack on the T-4 airfield near Homs, which is close to the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria.
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