أرشيف الوسم : syria

On Thursday, Syrian government forces retook the town of Mleiha on the outskirts of Damascus after months of battle against rebel forces. Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights backed up the report. “The army, with the cooperation of the National Defense Forces (militia), has accomplished its mission of restoring stability and security to Mleiha”, the army command in its statement. …

On Wednesday, militants from the extremist group Islamic State (IS) captured several villages in northern Syria, killing 52 people in the process, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The extremists captured eight villages between Aleppo and the Turkish border, bolstered by their success in Iraq, the observatory said. They killed 40 fighters from other rebel groups and capture 50 …

International rights group Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Jordan of forcibly deporting and refusing entry to Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria, and called it a defiance of Jordan’s international obligations. The New York-based group released its report in Amman, and said that Jordan has officially banned the entry of Palestinian refugees since January 2013 and since mid-2012 has forcibly deported …

Kurdish fighters from Turkey, Syria and Iraq joined forces in Northern Iraq on Wednesday in a bid to reclaim territories lost to extremist forces and rescue several thousands of helpless civilians who have no access to water or food in nearby mountainous terrain. The civilians, most of them from the Yazidi minority, escaped to the Sinjar Mountains during the weekend …

Thousands of people on Twitter, both Muslims and Christians, have expressed solidarity for Christians being persecuted in Iraq using #WeAreN. Last week, members of extremist group Islamic State (IS) drove Christians out of the Iraqi city of Mosul – Christians have been living in the city for over 2,000 years. They were given the option of fleeing the city, paying …

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that he is not talking with US President Barack Obama over the phone anymore amid growing anxiety between Washington and Ankara over the conflict in Gaza and the conflict in Syria. Turkey is a fierce opponent of Bashar Assad and is an open supporter of rebel fighters in Syria. It felt betrayed …

The UN’s refugee agency on Friday said that Europe has hosted only a “miniscule” number of Syrian refugees, and needs to do more the help Syria’s neighbors shoulder the refugee burden. “We’re calling on European countries to strengthen their response to the Syrian crisis.We’re urging states to ensure access to their territory, we’re urging states to ensure fair and efficient …

Elite government forces, supported by the Hezbollah converged in the city of Aleppo on Tuesday as rebels boosted their own forces in preparation for a major showdown, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The monitor’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said that it was likely that government forces will lay siege to rebel-controlled parts of Aleppo; rebels, fighting to depose …

On Thursday, the Human Rights Watch said that women in Syria have been victims of unreasonable unrest, discrimination, harassment and torture at the hands of both rebel and government forces during the three-year conflict. The global rights group, in its report, urged international leaders to “hold those responsible for such abuses to account”. Liesl Gerntholtz, women’s rights director at Human …

Extremist forces sweeping through Iraq in a rampage across northern and western parts of the country have declared an “Islamic Caliphate” and ordered Muslims the world over to pledge allegiance to them, in an outrageous bid to stamp their authority. Meanwhile, federal Iraqi forces have pressed their counter-attack on Monday against militants in the city of Tikrit, one of several …