War monitor, rescue groups blame gov’t for attacks; death toll one of the highest since ceasefire came into force in March last year.
At least eight civilians, including six children, were killed in shelling and artillery fire by Russian-backed Syrian government forces in Idlib on Saturday, a war monitor said and a rescue group said.
Few have heard of it. Even fewer know how it will work. But a newly launched body could revolutionise how Saudi Arabia gives hundreds of millions of dollars of emergency aid every year.
In 2014, the Gulf state was the world’s eighth largest humanitarian donor, spending more than $736 million. Yet its funding patterns have historically been highly unpredictable, hard to navigate, and – some argued – incoherent.
After Hayat Tahrir al-Sham told the Chechen jihadi group Jund al-Sham it could either join its ranks or leave Idlib, the group’s members evacuated their military positions in the countryside of Latakia.
Well-informed sources among jihadi groups told Al-Monitor that the Chechen Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant) group has given in to pressure from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and evacuated its military positions in the Latakia mountains.
Although Turkish authorities have increased security operations against Islamic State cells in the country, Ankara’s anti-IS strategy remains riddled with gaping holes.
Increasing security operations against Islamic State (IS) cells across Turkey since June have raised the question whether Ankara is changing its oft-criticized anti-IS strategy as the latest operations indicate an increasing risk of terrorist attack in parallel with the group’s rebuilding attempts in Syria and Iraq.
Sometimes, as I consider America’s never-ending wars of this century, I can’t help thinking of those lyrics from the Edwin Starr song, “(War, huh) Yeah! (What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing!” I mean, remind me, what good have those disastrous, failed, still largely ongoing conflicts done for this country? Or for you? Or for me?
The outgoing president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, said Wednesday in a meeting of his cabinet that Tehran could choose to enrich uranium to weapons-grade 90% purity, but that it still wanted to revive its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. “Even if one day there is a need for 90% enrichment for a reactor, we do not have any problem and we are able,” Rouhani said, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. Rouhani also criticized the hard-line religious establishment in Iran for not letting his government reach a deal earlier. The new president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi, is a hard-liner who, when he takes office next month, could make the negotiation of a renewed deal more difficult. According to the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran could only enrich up to a limit of 3.67% purity, which is required to fuel a civilian nuclear power reactor. After the US, under the Trump administration, withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran cranked up its centrifuges, enriching small amounts of uranium to 60%, a short technical step from the 90% level required to build a bomb.
Iran’s government spokesman, Ali Rabiei said that the gathering of the MKO (Mojahedin-e-Khalq) terrorist group was an opportunity to identify and expose hypocritical American politicians who, despite repeated slogans, have not paid little attention to the principles and history of terrorism and human rights abuses in other countries.
If Europeans are honest in their human rights claims, why do they support the MKO terrorists? says Iran’s judiciary spokesman.
Gholamhossein Esmaeili, the spokesman for the Judiciary Branch in his weekly press conference, in reaction to the European Parliament’s request to the Council of Europe for imposing sanctions against Iranian officials for alleged human rights violations, said: “Nowadays, we are witnessing that the terrorist group MKO (Mojahedin-e-Khalq) who have assassinated thousands of people in Iran holding conferences in European capitals, with officials from those countries taking part.”
With the support of Russia, Syrian government forces are besieging 11,000 Syrian families in the neighborhoods of Daraa al-Balad in southern Syria, after former Free Syrian Army fighters refused to hand over their light weapons.
Daraa al-Balad markets in Syria’s southern province of Daraa are witnessing a shortage in various basic materials and commodities, including medicines, fuel, bread and drinking water, while prices of goods have significantly increased, amid an almost complete power outage due to the siege imposed by the Syrian government in mid-June.
The sum which was seized reportedly included funds meant for, but not limited to, the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades (the Hamas military wing).
Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) last week released information regarding the seizure of cryptocurrencies which had been transferred to the Hamas organization.