About 800 Syrian refugees are returning to their country from Turkey each week, according to the Turkey representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). But Philippe Leclerc, speaking to Reuters from Istanbul, said that the conditions in Syria are not suitable for “a mass voluntary return movement these days.”
The death of an Iranian Defense Ministry engineer last month at Iran’s Parchin military complex, located about 30 kilometers, or 19 miles, southeast of Tehran was caused by “industrial sabotage,” an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander told an Iranian media outlet.
Syrian President Bashar Assad accepted the credentials of Bahrain’s new ambassador to Damascus. Assad “exchanged discussions with him on a number of topics and issues of concern to the two brotherly countries, wishing him success in his mission,” according to the state news agency SANA. Waheed Mubarak Sayyar was appointed as Bahrain’s ambassador to Syria more than six months ago, but reportedly just took up his post more than a week ago when he was received in Damascus by Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, who also attended Sunday’s ceremony.
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.
At the latest Astana Group meeting on Syria, Russia and Iran tried to soothe Turkey by rejecting the Kurdish-led self-rule in northern Syria in a joint declaration this week.
Turkey failed to garner Russian and Iranian backing for a fresh military intervention against Syrian Kurdish forces at the meeting of the Astana platform this week.
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.