Tag Archives: Syrian army

Kremlin says exit deal for Aleppo rebels still on agenda

A rebel fighter carries food while riding a bicycle and carrying his weapon on his back in rebel-held besieged old Aleppo,

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Wednesday that a potential U.S.-Russia deal to allow Syrian rebels to safely leave Aleppo was still on the agenda, but that no talks were planned between the two countries for now.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call that Russian and U.S. experts were in contact about Syria, but said he was not aware of any talks being planned at a higher level.

“As regards the exit of rebels … there was a proposal for an exit and the theme has been previously discussed, and this question is (still) on the agenda,” said Peskov.

“Unfortunately very few have left so far and the majority are still there.”

Peskov spoke as rebels in besieged eastern Aleppo called for an immediate five-day ceasefire, negotiations about the future of the city, and for medical and civilian evacuations.

Peskov said rebels in eastern Aleppo were rallying around former Nusra Front fighters.

“All these rebels are terrorists,” said Peskov.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due to meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Hamburg later on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe)

Week of renewed Aleppo strikes kills 141 in east, 16 in west

People walk near rubble of damaged buildings, in the rebel-held besieged area of Aleppo, Syria

BEIRUT, Nov 22 (Reuters) – At least 141 civilians, including 18 children, have been killed in a week of renewed bombardment on the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo which has devastated its hospitals, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

The Britain-based war monitor said it had documented hundreds of injuries as a result of Russian and Syrian airstrikes and shelling by government forces and its allies on the besieged eastern half of the divided city.

The assault began last Tuesday after a weeks-long pause in airstrikes and shelling inside east Aleppo, although battles and air strikes did continue along the city’s front lines and in the surrounding countryside.

The monitor said there were another 87 deaths of rebel fighters and people of unknown identity in the eastern sector.

The Observatory also documented 16 civilian deaths, including 10 children, and dozens of injuries as a result of rebel shelling of government-held west Aleppo.

Airstrikes and shelling of east Aleppo last week knocked all the main hospitals in that part of the city out of service, the local health authority and international humanitarian agencies said.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Syrian army says rebel bombardment of Aleppo killed 84 in three days

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s army said on Monday the Nusra Front and what the army called other terrorist groups had killed 84 people, mostly women and children, in Aleppo during the past three days, in a bombardment that included chemical weapons and rocket fire.

The Nusra Front broke allegiance with al Qaeda and changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in July. It is one of the main rebel groups taking part in an offensive against government-held western Aleppo that began on Friday.

Syrian state media reported on Sunday that militants had fired poison gas at the Hamdaniya district of government-held western Aleppo. Rebels called that accusation a lie.

In a statement on Monday, the Army and Armed Forces High Command said rebels had targeted schools and civilians, fired 20 poison gas canisters, 50 Grad rockets and ignited 48 fires.

Human rights groups and Western countries have previously accused Syria’s army, backed by Russia’s air force, of targeting hospitals, bakeries and other civilian areas in their bombardments of rebel areas, including eastern Aleppo.

A U.N. report, attacked by Russia as not having credibility, has also found that the Syrian military has used chemical weapons at least twice, something it denies. Damascus refers to all the rebel groups fighting it as terrorists.

The insurgent offensive against government-held western Aleppo comes more than a month into an operation by the army to retake the city’s rebel-held eastern districts, which it had already put under siege.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Larry King)

Exclusive: Obama, aides expected to weigh Syria military options on Friday

U.S. President Barack Obama arrives aboard the Marine One helicopter to depart O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

By Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama and his top foreign policy advisers are expected to meet on Friday to consider their military and other options in Syria as Syrian and Russian aircraft continue to pummel Aleppo and other targets, U.S. officials said.

Some top officials argue the United States must act more forcefully in Syria or risk losing what influence it still has over moderate rebels and its Arab, Kurdish and Turkish allies in the fight against Islamic State, the officials told Reuters.

One set of options includes direct U.S. military action such as air strikes on Syrian military bases, munitions depots or radar and anti-aircraft bases, said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

This official said one danger of such action is that Russian and Syrian forces are often co-mingled, raising the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia that Obama has been at pains to avoid.

U.S. officials said they consider it unlikely that Obama will order U.S. air strikes on Syrian government targets, and they stressed that he may not make any decisions at the planned meeting of his National Security Council.

One alternative, U.S. officials said, is allowing allies to provide U.S.-vetted rebels with more sophisticated weapons, although not shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, which Washington fears could be used against Western airliners.

The White House declined to comment.

Friday’s planned meeting is the latest in a long series of internal debates about what, if anything, to do to end a 5-1/2 year civil war that has killed at least 300,000 people and displaced half the country’s population.

The ultimate aim of any new action could be to bolster the battered moderate rebels so they can weather what is now widely seen as the inevitable fall of rebel-held eastern Aleppo to the forces of Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

It also might temper a sense of betrayal among moderate rebels who feel Obama encouraged their uprising by calling for Assad to go but then abandoned them, failing even to enforce his own “red line” against Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

This, in turn, might deter them from migrating to Islamist groups such as the Nusra Front, which the United States regards as Syria’s al Qaeda branch. The group in July said it had cut ties to al Qaeda and changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. ANOTHER TRY AT DIPLOMACY

The U.S. and Russian foreign ministers will meet in Lausanne, Switzerland on Saturday to resume their failed effort to find a diplomatic solution, possibly joined by their counterparts from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran, but

U.S. officials voiced little hope for success.

Friday’s planned meeting at the White House and the session in Lausanne occur as Obama, with just 100 days left in office, faces other decisions about whether to deepen U.S. military involvement in the Middle East — notably in Yemen and Iraq — a stance he opposed when he won the White House in 2008.

Earlier Thursday the United States launched cruise missiles  at three coastal radar sites in areas of Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthi forces, retaliating after failed missile attacks this week on a U.S. Navy destroyer, U.S. officials said.

In Iraq, U.S. officials are debating whether government forces will need more U.S. support both during and after their campaign to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s de facto capital in the country.

Some officials argue the Iraqis now cannot retake the city without significant help from Kurdish peshmerga forces, as well as Sunni and Shi’ite militias, and that their participation could trigger religious and ethnic conflict in the city.

In Syria, Washington has turned to the question of whether to take military action after its latest effort to broker a truce with Russia collapsed last month.

The United States has called for Assad to step down, but for years has seemed resigned to his remaining in control of parts of the country as it prosecutes a separate fight against Islamic State militants in Syria and in Iraq.

The U.S. policy is to target Islamic State first, a decision that has opened it to charges that it is doing nothing to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria and particularly in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Renewed bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo has killed more than 150 people this week, rescue workers said, as Syria intensifies its Russian-backed offensive to take the whole city.

Anthony Cordesman of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank suggested the United States’ failure to act earlier in Syria, and in Aleppo in particular, had narrowed Obama’s options.

“There is only so long you can ignore your options before you don’t have any,” Cordesman said.

(Writing By Arshad Mohammed; Additional reporting by John Walcott; editing by Stuart Grudgings)

Half of Aleppo residents want to flee, no food, fuel, no aid

A medic holds a dead child after airstrikes in the rebel held Karam Houmid neighbourhood in Aleppo

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Half of the estimated 275,000 Syrians besieged in eastern Aleppo want to leave, the United Nations said on Wednesday, as food supplies are running thin and people are driven to burning plastic for fuel.

Food prices are rising and supplies are running out. Mothers were reportedly tying ropes around their stomachs or drinking large amounts of water to reduce the feeling of hunger and prioritize food for their children, the U.N. said.

“An assessment conducted in eastern Aleppo city concluded that 50 percent of the inhabitants expressed willingness to leave if they can,” the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an update on the Aleppo situation.

It did not say how many of the other 50 percent were determined to stay.

The United States and other Western countries say Moscow and Damascus are guilty of war crimes in deliberately targeting civilians, hospitals and aid deliveries for more than 250,000 people trapped under siege in Aleppo. The Syrian and Russian governments say they target only militants.

Aid workers in eastern Aleppo have distributed food rations for 13,945 children under 6 years old, but a lack of cooking gas makes it difficult to cook what little food remains.

MENTAL HEALTH

“Reports of civilians rummaging through the rubble of destroyed buildings to salvage any flammable material that can be used for cooking are common,” the report said.

“Poor-quality fuel, which is made from burning plastic, is available in limited amounts.”

A liter of diesel fuel costs about 1,300 Syrian pounds or about $2.25, while a liter of petrol costs 7,000 Syrian pounds or about $13.70.

Psychological health is also suffering, the report said.

“Moreover, arguments among spouses have reportedly increased as many women are blaming their husbands for choosing to stay while it was possible to leave the city.”

Civilians are walking up to 2 km to fetch water, which is available from boreholes, and the water situation across the city is “of grave concern”, the report said.

“Local authorities in charge of the Sulaiman Al-Halabi water station shut off the electrical power to the station to prevent extensive damage should hostilities impact the water station directly,” it said.

(editing by Ralph Boulton)

Fierce air strikes on Aleppo after Syrian army declares offensive

People inspect a damaged site after airstrikes on the rebel held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo

By Ellen Francis and Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Warplanes launched some of the heaviest air strikes yet on rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Friday after the Russian-backed Syrian army declared an offensive to fully capture Syria’s biggest city, killing off any hope of reviving a ceasefire.

Residents said the streets were deserted as the 250,000 people still trapped in the besieged opposition-held sector of Aleppo sought shelter from jets. The army said the operation would include a ground attack, and could last “for some time”.

The rebels and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring body described raids by warplanes they said must belong to Russia. Residents also spoke of attacks by helicopters using bombs made from oil drums, a tactic usually attributed to the Syrian army.

“Can you hear it? The neighborhood is getting hit right now by missiles. We can hear the planes right now,” Mohammad Abu Rajab, a radiologist, told Reuters. “The planes are not leaving the sky, helicopters, barrel bombs, warplanes.”

The intense bombardment left no doubt that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and its Russian allies had spurned a plea from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to halt flights to resurrect the ceasefire, which lasted a week before collapsing on Monday.

A rebel commander said the blasts were the fiercest the city had faced.

“I woke up to a powerful earthquake though I was in a place far away from where the missile landed,” he said in a voice recording sent to Reuters. His group had “martyrs under the rubble” in three locations.

In a late night announcement on Thursday, the Syrian military announced “the start of its operations in the eastern districts of Aleppo”, and warned people to stay away from “the headquarters and positions of the armed terrorist gangs”.

Elaborating on this on Friday, a military source said the offensive would be a “comprehensive one”, with a ground assault following air and artillery bombardment. “With respect to the air or artillery strikes, they may continue for some time,” it said.

There was no immediate comment from the Russian or Syrian militaries detailing Friday’s air strikes.

The Syrian army’s declaration of the offensive coincided with international meetings on Syria in New York, the latest diplomatic efforts officially intended to revive the truce, which was brokered by the United States and Russia.

Its collapse, the same fate as all previous efforts to halt a 5-1/2-year-old war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, has doomed what may be the final bid for a peace breakthrough before President Barack Obama leaves office.

“ANNIHILATION”

The Syrian government, strengthened by Russian air power and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, has been tightening its grip on rebel-held districts of Aleppo this year, and this summer achieved a long-held goal of fully encircling the area.

The government already controls the city’s western half, where fewer people have fled. Before the war, the city held nearly 3 million people and was Syria’s economic hub.

Recovering full control of Aleppo would be the most important victory of the war so far for Assad, who has sought to consolidate his grip over the western cities where the overwhelming majority of Syrians lived before fighting drove half of the nation from their homes.

The Observatory said there were at least 40 air strikes since midnight.

Ammar al Selmo, the head of civil defense rescue service in opposition-held Aleppo, said three of its four centers in Aleppo had been hit. “What’s happening now is annihilation in every sense of the word,” he told Reuters. “Today the bombardment is more violent, with a larger number of planes.”

The U.S.-Russian agreement marked their second attempt this year to halt the war. It was supposed to bring about a nationwide ceasefire, improved humanitarian aid access, and a joint U.S.-Russian effort against jihadist groups including Islamic State and the Nusra Front, long al Qaeda’s Syrian wing.

“LONG, PAINFUL, DIFFICULT”

But the ceasefire collapsed into renewed bombardments on Monday, including an attack on an aid convoy that Washington has blamed on Moscow, which denies involvement.

Assad remains defiant, saying on Thursday he expected the conflict to “drag on” as long as it is part of a global conflict in which the groups fighting him are backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the United States.

On Thursday at the United Nations, the United States and Russia failed to agree on how to revive the ceasefire during what U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura called a “long, painful, difficult and disappointing” meeting.

The International Syria Support Group, including Moscow, Washington and other major powers, met on the sidelines of the annual United Nations gathering of world leaders in New York.

“We have exchanged ideas with the Russians and we plan to consult tomorrow with respect to those ideas,” Kerry said, expressing concern at the reports of the planned new Syrian offensive. “I am no less determined today than I was yesterday but I am even more frustrated.”

Western states have backed Kerry’s call to ground warplanes to create the right conditions for the truce. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault described Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s response to that proposal as “not satisfying.”

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Peter Graff and Peter Millership)

U.S.-led forces strike Syrian troops, prompting emergency U.N. meeting

A civil defence member carries a dead child in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan town in Idlib province, Syria

By Angus McDowall and Andrew Osborn

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) – U.S.-led coalition air strikes reportedly killed dozens of Syrian soldiers on Saturday, endangering a U.S.-Russian brokered ceasefire and prompting an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting as tensions between Moscow and Washington escalated.

The United States military said the coalition stopped the attacks against what it had believed to be Islamic State positions in northeast Syria after Russia informed it that Syrian military personnel and vehicles may have been hit.

The United States relayed its “regret” through the Russian government for what it described as the unintentional loss of life of Syrian forces in the strike, a senior Obama administration official said in an emailed statement.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in an emailed statement that Russian officials did not voice concerns earlier on Saturday when informed that coalition aircraft would be operating in the strike area.

The 15-member Security Council met on Saturday night after Russia demanded an emergency session to discuss the incident and accused the United States of jeopardizing the Syria deal.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, chastised Russia for the move.

“Russia really needs to stop the cheap point scoring and the grandstanding and the stunts and focus on what matters, which is implementation of something we negotiated in good faith with them,” Power told reporters.

She said the United States was investigating the air strikes and “if we determine that we did indeed strike Syrian military personnel, that was not our intention and we of course regret the loss of life.”

When asked if the incident spelled the end of the Syria deal between Moscow and Washington, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said: “This is a very big question mark.”

“I would be very interested to see how Washington is going to react. If what Ambassador Power has done today is any indication of their possible reaction then we are in serious trouble,” Churkin told reporters.

Moscow cited the strikes, which allowed Islamic State fighters to briefly overrun a Syrian army position near Deir al-Zor airport, as evidence that the United States was helping the jihadist militants.

“We are reaching a really terrifying conclusion for the whole world: That the White House is defending Islamic State. Now there can be no doubts about that,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.

Power said Zakharova should be embarrassed by that claim. Churkin said Russia had no “specific evidence” of the United States colluding with Islamic State militants.

Zakharova said the strikes threatened to undermine the ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia, which has been aiding Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war, and the United States, which has backed some rebel groups.

The Russian Defence Ministry said U.S. jets had killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers in four air strikes by two F-16s and two A-10s coming from the direction of Iraq.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group with contacts across Syria, cited a military source at Deir al-Zor airport as saying at least 90 Syrian soldiers had been killed.

Australia also participated in the strikes and the Australian Department of Defence offered its condolences to the families of Syrian soldiers killed or wounded in the incident.

The ceasefire, which took effect on Monday, is the most significant peacemaking effort in Syria for months, but has been undermined by repeated accusations of violations on both sides and by a failure to bring humanitarian aid to besieged areas.

Apart from the U.S. and Russian involvement, Assad is supported by Iran and Arab Shi’ite militias, while Sunni rebels seeking to unseat him are backed by Turkey and Gulf Arab states.

All the warring parties are also sworn enemies of Islamic State, whose territory extends along the Euphrates valley from the Iraqi border, including around Deir al-Zor, up to land near Syria’s frontier with Turkey.

In its sixth year, the conflict has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced half of Syria’s pre-war population, prompted a refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe and inspired a wave of jihadist attacks across the world.

Syria’s army said the U.S.-led strikes, which took place at around 5 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) were “conclusive evidence” of U.S. support for Islamic State, calling them “dangerous and blatant aggression”.

The U.S. military said in its statement that Syria was a “complex situation” but that “coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit”.

Islamic State said via its Amaq news channel it had taken complete control of Jebel Tharda, where the bombed position was located, which would have allowed it to overlook government-held areas of Deir al-Zor.

The city’s airport and some districts have been entirely surrounded by Islamic State since last year, with the airport providing their only external access.

However, Russia and Syrian state media said the Syrian army later recaptured positions it had lost. The Observatory monitoring group said at least 30 Islamic State fighters were killed in heavy Russian air strikes during that fighting.

The incident also threatens to undermine proposed joint targeting by the United States and Russia of Islamic State and some other jihadist groups across Syria.

SHAKY TRUCE

Earlier on Saturday, Russia and Syrian rebels cast doubt over the prospects for the increasingly shaky ceasefire, with Moscow saying the situation was worsening and a senior insurgent warning that the truce “will not hold out”.

While the ceasefire has reduced fighting, some violence has persisted across Syria. Meanwhile, there has been little movement on promised aid deliveries to besieged areas and both sides have accused the other of bad faith.

The U.N. told Reuters aid trucks which had been expected to move to Aleppo on Sunday morning, were once again being delayed.

“Obviously the humanitarian community is very frustrated by this. We have hoped to go today with the convoys,” David Swanson, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. “We stand ready to begin the response effort as soon as we get the green light.”

Russia’s Defence Ministry said conditions in Syria were deteriorating, adding that it believed the ceasefire had been breached 199 times by rebels and saying the United States would be responsible if it were to collapse.

After the Deir al-Zor attack, it said Moscow had told the United States to rein in the Syrian opposition and make sure it did not launch a new offensive, adding that it had informed Washington about a concentration of rebels north of Hama.

Insurgents say they only reluctantly accepted the initial deal, which they believe is skewed against them, because it could relieve the dire humanitarian situation in besieged areas they control, and blamed Russia for undermining the truce.

“The truce, as we have warned, and we told the (U.S.) State Department – will not hold out,” a senior rebel official in Aleppo said, pointing to the continued presence of a U.N. aid convoy at the Turkish border awaiting permission to enter.

Rebels have also accused Russia of using the ceasefire to give the Syrian army and allied Shi’ite militias a chance to regroup and deploy forces ready for their own offensives.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Katya Golubkova and Andrew Osborn in Moscow, Olesya Astakhova in Bishkek, Phil Stewart in Split, Croatia, Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Michelle Nichols in New York, Humeyra Pamuk and Yesim Dikmen in Istanbul and Harry Pearl in Sydney.; Editing by Dominic Evans and Toby Chopra)

Syrian & U.S. backed forces advance separately against IS

Special forces from the Syria Democratic Forces gather in Haj Hussein village, after taking control of it from Islamic State fighters, in the southern rural area of Manbij, in Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian government troops backed by Russian air power moved to within 25 km (15 miles) of an Islamic State-held town in Raqqa province on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as state media reported air strikes against the jihadists in the area.

In a separate simultaneous campaign against Islamic State in Syria, U.S.-backed militias captured more territory from the group near the city of Manbij in Aleppo province, a spokesman for the forces told Reuters. The Observatory said they were now 2 km from the Islamic State-held city.

The offensives both got underway last week and are targeting Islamic State in areas of major strategic importance to its foothold in Syria, where it controls swathes of land up to the Iraqi border.

They are taking place at the same time as an assault by the Iraqi army against Falluja, an Islamic State bastion close to Baghdad. The simultaneous assaults by a myriad of enemies on farflung fronts amount to some of the greatest pressure Islamic State has faced since declaring its caliphate to rule over all Muslims from Iraq and Syria two years ago.

The Syrian army’s advance into Raqqa province, which has not been announced by the military, is initially targeting the Islamic State-held town of Tabqa, according to the Observatory and pro-Damascus media sources.

Raqqa province is a major base of operations for Islamic State and home to its de facto capital, Raqqa city.

Syrian state-run TV station Ikhbariya said on Tuesday the Syrian air force had targeted Islamic State positions south of Tabqa in the Rasafa area, destroying vehicles equipped with machine guns.

The Syrian military could not immediately be reached for comment. A military source told Reuters on Monday the army had advanced to the edge of Raqqa province, from where it could move in several directions against Islamic State.

The Observatory, citing its activists on the ground, said Islamic State had sent weapons and fighters from Raqqa city to Tabqa.

The separate U.S.-backed campaign that got underway last week aims to dislodge Islamic State from its last foothold at the Syrian-Turkish frontier and shut off its main access route to the outside world for material and manpower.

It is being fought on the ground by militias including the Kurdish YPG and allied Arab groups, which together formed an alliance last year known as the Syria Democratic Forces. It has proven to be the first effective fighting force allied to Washington during five years of multi-sided civil war in Syria.

Sharfan Darwish, spokesman for the Manbij Military Council that is part of the U.S.-backed force, said: “We are advancing on all fronts of our assault.”

The United States has consistently rejected the idea of partnering in the fight against Islamic State with President Bashar al-Assad, saying he should leave power. Some of Assad’s opponents have accused the Kurdish YPG of coordinating with his government’s forces, which the Kurds deny.

(Reporting by Tom Perry; editing by Peter Graff)