On Thursday, Turkish-backed Syrian factions intensified their artillery and missile attacks on the positions of Damascus government forces in the Idleb and Hama countryside, while the Syrian government bombed the opposition-held areas.
Meanwhile, sources from Fateh al-Mubin Operations Room, which includes Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other armed groups, bombed government forces’ positions east of Idleb.
The new defense minister of Iran pledged that his ministry will do its utmost to boost the capabilities of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.
In a meeting with IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami in Tehran on Saturday, Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtiani reaffirmed the Defense Ministry’s full support for all armed forces of the country.
Highlighting the need for a revolutionary approach in the military sector coupled with the continuation of the previous efforts, the general said the Defense Ministry will employ all of its capacities to deepen and boost the defense capabilities and fulfill the needs of the armed forces, specifically the IRGC, including by supplying modern and strategic systems and equipment.
Brigadier General Ashtiani stressed that coordination, synergy and convergence among Iranian military units will ensure the fulfillment of the strategic needs of the armed forces and strengthening of the defense power.
“Creating up-to-date defense capacities proportional to the future threats and the developments ahead is a strategy of the Armed Forces and will continue to grow by God’s grace,” the minister added.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has stressed the need for the simultaneous reinforcement of operational military capabilities and spiritual motives of the Armed Forces.
The commander-in-chief of the Iranian military forces has also praised the Armed Forces for employing a combination of military effectiveness and spiritual motivations, urging an incessant push to strengthen those capabilities.
The Armed Forces belong not to a specific individual or faction, but to the nation and country, protecting the national security, Ayatollah Khamenei said in April 2016.
The Taliban claimed Saturday that their forces had seized several districts in the northern Panjshir Valley, the last remaining province in Afghanistan holding out against the Islamist group.
Taliban officials said that overnight advances had brought several days of fighting to Anaba, an area close to the provincial capital, Bazarak.
The Indian government has been faced with a strange dilemma since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan.
On Aug. 31, within hours of US forces departing the war-torn nation, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced that its envoy to Qatar, Deepak Mittal, had met with the head of the Taliban’s political office, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai.
Turkey has risen to the world’s top three in combat drone technology, the Turkish president said on Sunday, reports Anadolu Agency.
“With our unmanned combat aerial vehicle Akinci, Turkey has become one of the three most advanced countries in the world in this technology,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the delivery ceremony for the Bayraktar Akinci combat drone in the northwestern Tekirdag province.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will today call on the US President Joe Biden not to withdraw American forces from Iraq and Syria, Israeli media reported.
Bennett was scheduled to meet with Biden yesterday on his first visit to the White House as prime minister, but the meeting was postponed after an explosion at Kabul airport, Afghanistan, killed ten US service members.
Israeli intelligence officials met privately this month with the son of Libya’s top warlord to discuss his 2021 presidential candidacy, a signal that Israel is supporting his bid, a source familiar with the meeting told the Washington Free Beacon.
Saddam Haftar has been quietly seeking Western backing for his campaign, which is expected to pit him against Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of former strongman Muammar Qaddafi. Haftar is seen as a proxy for his father Khalifa Haftar, a dual U.S.-Libyan citizen and commander of the Libyan National Army.
Thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are pouring into the European Union from Belarus, a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. The surge in illegal immigration is being orchestrated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is accused of trying to blackmail the EU into reversing the sanctions it imposed over his disputed reelection and a crackdown on dissent.
Three people were killed and 20 others wounded in a suicide attack on a security checkpoint in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Sunday.
The suicide bombing targeted a Frontier Constabulary check-post on the Mastung road in Quetta, the provincial capital, a senior police officer said.
Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, arrived in Kabul on Saturday for talks with the Taliban regarding matters related to the safe evacuation of foreign nationals, border management and security in the region, sources said.
Geo News reported that Hameed will also meet with Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Mansoor Ahmed Khan and his team on issues of repatriation and transit through Pakistan and the situation on the border.