Orientul Mijlociu

Eleven soldiers and two civilians were killed in an attack on a bus in northern Syria on Monday, the Syrian military said in a statement. The bus was ambushed at 6:30 am local time while en route from the Ar Raqqah Governorate to the central province of Homs in an area called al-Jireh, said the statement. Three soldiers were wounded in the attack. The military did not say who perpetrated the attack, which called it an act of terrorism, nor has anyone claimed responsibility for it.

Discussions between Turkey, Finland and Sweden about the Nordic countries’ proposed NATO membership have ended inconclusively as Ankara showed no signs of abandoning its hardline position.

Discussions between Turkey, Finland and Sweden about the Nordic countries’ NATO membership held in Brussels today ended inconclusively as Ankara showed no signs of abandoning its maximalist position, sources said.

The United States and Iran had their latest near miss Monday, after three vessels controlled by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps buzzed two American ships at what the U.S. military called “dangerously high speed.”

The USS Sirocco, a Cyclone-class patrol ship, and the USNS Choctaw County, a fast transport vessel, were in routine transit through international waters in the Persian Gulf when three Iranian boats designed for fast attack approached the Sirocco head on, according to a U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the encounter. They diverted only after the Sirocco issued an audible warning signal. The Iranian boats also came within 50 yards of the Choctaw County, prompting the Sirocco to deploy a warning flare.

More than 30 Islamic State prisoners escaped from a Kurdish-run prison in Syria’s northern province of Raqqa on Sunday, the pro-government Al-Watan newspaper reported. The inmates escaped from the central prison in northern Raqqa at dawn, Al-Watan reported.

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will begin a tour of countries in the region beginning on Monday. The crown prince, known as MBS, will start his tour with Egypt and a meeting with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday and then travel to Jordan for a meeting with King Abdullah in Amman on Tuesday, before a visit to Turkey on Wednesday.

Kurdish units and Iranian-affiliated factions in Syria have formed a joint operations room under Russian supervision to counter a possible Turkish military operation in northern Syria.

Several Syrian groups and battalions with different affiliations announced on May 25 the formation of a joint operations room ahead of an imminent Turkish operation in northern Syria.

While it is true that Zionism is a modern political ideology that has exploited religion to achieve specific colonial objectives in Palestine, prophecies continue to be a critical component of Israel’s perception of itself, and of the state’s relationship to other groups, especially Christian messianic groups in the United States and worldwide.

The raid on the village came after the Hamas-controlled Land Authority in the Gaza Strip ruled that the residents must be evacuated because they had built their homes on “state-owned” lands.

Sources in the Gaza Strip said that there are 28 more villages slated for demolition by Hamas on the pretext that they were illegally built on public lands.

On May 16–17, with much of the attention in Eurasia still fixated on the Russian-Ukrainian war, the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, paid a visit to Tajikistan, where he met with President Emomali Rahmon and senior military officials. In the most important event of this trip, General Bagheri and his hosts inaugurated the opening of an Iranian Ababil-2 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) factory in the Tajikistani capital of Dushanbe (Tasnim News, May 17).