OPCW Chemical Probe Gets Under Way In Syria
The OPCW declared that the Syrian government’s chemical weapons stockpile had been removed in 2014, only to confirm later that sarin was used in a 2017 attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhun.
The OPCW declared that the Syrian government’s chemical weapons stockpile had been removed in 2014, only to confirm later that sarin was used in a 2017 attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhun.
“Iran believes that the presence of foreign forces in Syria without authorization of the Syrian government is illegal and must be halted,” Iranian state television quoted Rouhani as saying in Tehran on Tuesday night.
Eastern Ghouta, an early centre of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, was until last month the biggest and most populous remaining rebel stronghold near the capital.
Syrian state media and an opposition monitoring group said government forces have laid siege on the rebel-held town of Harasta, cutting it off from the rest of the suburbs known as eastern Ghouta. READ MORE.
With its Ghouta offensive, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad is drawing on the military methods it has used to crush its opponents in other parts of Syria, including eastern Aleppo in late 2016.
Yevgeny Shabayev, leader of a local chapter of a paramilitary Cossack organisation who has ties to Russian military contractors, said he had visited acquaintances injured in Syria at the defence ministry’s Central Hospital in Khimki, on the outskirts of Moscow, on Wednesday.
The northwestern province of Idlib, which borders Turkey and is largely under the control of al-Nusra Front militants, is one of the last main strongholds of Takfiri militants opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who have been driven from most of their bastions across Syria in recent years.
“The whole world knows Daesh (Islamic State) is not present in Afrin,” Redur Xelil, a senior SDF official, told Reuters. He said the Turkish military had greatly exaggerated SDF casualties, though he declined to say how many had been killed.
“If the terrorists in Afrin don’t surrender we will tear them down,” President of Turkey Tayyip Erdogan told a congress of his ruling AK Party in the eastern Turkish city of Elazig.
“In Syria, the liberation came from Russia, and from the government troops with the support of Iran. And now it’s very difficult for such a power as the United States to recognize its failure. That is the reason why, I think, they are trying again and again to give support to jihadists.”