US-backed Syrian forces thwart suicide bombing endeavor at refugee camp

Mike Brest

September 22, 04:29 PM September 22, 04:29 PM

The Syrian Democratic Forces prevented a suicide bombing at the al Hol refugee camp ensuing in the fatalities of 4 Islamic Point out fighters, U.S. Central Command said Thursday.

7 ISIS associates, some of whom were sporting suicide vests, drove towards the refugee camp in two automobiles soon immediately after midnight early Tuesday early morning. About 12 miles from the camp near the Um Fakik village, just one of the motor vehicles, which was rigged with explosives, detonated prematurely, alerting Syrian Democratic Forces to the other motor vehicle.

PUTIN'S MOBILIZATION Energy IS A Signal 'MANPOWER IS A Dilemma,' KIRBY Says

When confronted, two ISIS fighters sporting suicide vests exited the second car or truck. A single detonated his product, whilst the other was killed right before currently being ready to do so. The second car was strapped with at least 50 kilograms of explosives.

No Syrian Democratic Forces associates ended up wounded in the incident.

Four of the 7 ISIS fighters have been killed, and 1 was apprehended, CENTCOM stated, with no explaining the status of the other two individuals. It also did not give any particulars as to their identities.

"By having fast motion, and exhibiting disregard for their have security, the Syrian Democratic Forces shown their professionalism and motivation to producing and maintaining a safe and sound and prosperous location for the people who make it their house,” Col. Joe Buccino, CENTCOM communications director, reported in a assertion. “The reaction of our partnered forces highlights not only commitment to their persons, but also their tenacity and commitment to the enduring defeat of ISIS."

Previously this month, the SDF arrested “dozens of ISIS operatives” though conducting security operations at the refugee camp.

Buccino explained at the time that the arrests led to the “dissolution of a main ISIS facilitation network both of those within the camp and throughout Syria.”

There is problem from officers that the refugee camp is a breeding floor for terror teams and the radicalization of a new generation.

Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of protection for the Center East, mentioned in July, "The most durable answer to the issues of these detention facilities and the displaced man or woman camps is for nations around the world of origin to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate, and, in which suitable, prosecute their nationals residing in northeast Syria."

Biden orders airstrikes on Iran-backed forces in Syria

Ryan King

August 23, 11:06 PM August 23, 11:06 PM

President Joe Biden ordered a collection of precision strikes on Iran-backed forces in Syria that were being carried out Tuesday, according to armed service officers.

The airstrikes took location in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria and focused infrastructure considered to have been made use of by businesses with ties to Iran's Islamic Groundbreaking Guard Corps, U.S. Central Command stated.

SYRIA DENIES ALLEGATIONS AUSTIN TICE IS Becoming HELD HOSTAGE BY Govt

"These precision strikes are meant to defend and defend U.S. forces from attacks like the ones on Aug. 15 in opposition to U.S. personnel by Iran-backed teams. The U.S. strikes qualified infrastructure facilities applied by groups affiliated with Iran's Islamic Innovative Guard Corps," Col. Joe Buccino, communications director for CENTCOM, claimed in a assertion.

On Aug. 15, the U.S. navy described an attack on 1 of its outposts in Syria in close proximity to its Tanf border but claimed there have been no experiences of casualties. Maj. Gen. John Brennan, who instructions U.S. forces in Syria, stated the foundation did not maintain important injury from the attack. Former assaults in that location have been connected to Iran, the Washington Submit claimed.

Buccino pressured the airstrikes Tuesday were being not supposed to escalate tensions in the location but were rather essential to protect U.S. forces in the area. He did not elaborate on what threat the airstrikes have been supposed to neutralize.

"Present-day strikes have been vital to secure and defend U.S. personnel. The United States took proportionate, deliberate action meant to restrict the hazard of escalation and reduce the danger of casualties," Buccino claimed.

"The United States does not search for conflict but will go on to consider vital actions to guard and defend our people," Buccino continued. "The president gave the path for these strikes pursuant to his Report II authority to defend and defend U.S. staff by disrupting or deterring assaults by Iran-backed groups."

Syria denies allegations Austin Tice is becoming held hostage by government

Cami Mondeaux

August 17, 10:10 AM August 17, 10:10 AM

Syrian officials turned down allegations that the place is holding missing journalist Austin Tice in custody, rather placing the blame for his disappearance on the U.S. govt for allowing for its citizens to enter Syria “illegally.”

Syria’s reaction will come a week soon after President Joe Biden asserted, “We know with certainty” that Tice has been held by the Syrian authorities over the previous 10 yrs. Even so, the Syrian authorities dismissed the accusations as “invalid,” including that Tice entered the country unlawfully.

Ten Yrs Afterwards: AUSTIN TICE’S Relatives SEEKS Solutions ABOUT HIS DISAPPEARANCE

“Syria emphasizes that any official dialogue or conversation with the U.S. govt facet will only be public and dependent on the rule of respecting the sovereignty and independence and unity of the Syrian Arab Republic’s land,” the Syrian International Ministry reported in a statement. “[The U.S.] not only turned a blind eye but encouraged tens of U.S. citizens to travel to Syria and enter its lands illegally and without the need of permission from its government, by nonofficial border crossings or by sneaking into regions that are managed by terrorist armed groups.”

Tice, a freelance journalist for various U.S. information corporations, was reporting on the civil war in Syria when he was taken by unfamiliar captors on Aug. 14, 2012. A couple of months later on, a YouTube video clip was launched showing the journalist blindfolded and surrounded by his captors. The movie, also posted on the Fb website page of supporters of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, was the past time Tice was observed.

No a person has claimed obligation for Tice’s kidnapping, and it is not clear whether he’s however alive. Nonetheless, the Biden administration issued a assertion final 7 days, on the 10-year anniversary of his disappearance, calling on the Syrian government to release him.

“We know with certainty that he has been held by the Authorities of Syria. We have continuously requested the govt of Syria to function with us so that we can bring Austin home,” Biden explained in a statement. “On the tenth anniversary of his abduction, I am calling on Syria to conclude this and enable us bring him property. There is no larger precedence in my Administration than the recovery and return of People in america held hostage or wrongfully detained overseas.”

The FBI in the same way renewed endeavours to provide Tice dwelling, featuring a $1 million reward to any one who can supply details that sales opportunities to his return.

“This yr, we understand the 10-yr anniversary of the disappearance of Austin Tice, and it is time to renew our general public simply call for data that could guide to his whereabouts,” claimed FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Additionally, this week marks Austin’s 41st birthday. For 10 decades, focused FBI personnel have been functioning tirelessly to return him to his relatives. The FBI will proceed to do the job with our authorities companions to convey Austin dwelling and seek solutions for his family.”

Israel strikes Iranian targets in the vicinity of Russian bases in Syria: Studies

Victor I. Nava

August 15, 02:37 AM August 15, 02:37 AM

Israeli fighter jets hit pro-Iranian targets in Syria on Sunday, with some of the targets positioned close to Russia's major military bases in the nation.

The attacks reportedly focused web-sites in the town of Tartus, which is on Syria's Mediterranean coast, about 20 miles north of Lebanon's border, and websites close to the Syrian funds of Damascus. Tartus is the household area of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Three Syrian troopers were being killed and a few other individuals had been injured in the airstrikes, in accordance to Syrian condition media.

Five US CITIZENS Between VICTIMS IN JERUSALEM BUS Shooting

The strikes around Damascus reportedly strike outposts run by Lebanon's professional-Iranian Hezbollah team, in accordance to Reuters.

In the Tartous coastal location, Israeli jets reportedly bombed an Iranian foundation and close by air protection and radar stations.

The port of Tartous is house to Russia's only navy foundation in the Mediterranean region, exactly where Russian warships are now docked, in accordance to Reuters. The strikes exactly where also in close proximity to Russia's Hmeimim air foundation in the Latakia province.

The reported strikes arrive just times immediately after Syrian media claimed that Israeli tanks had qualified Hezbollah observation posts in Syria in close proximity to the border with Israel.

Flyers were also reportedly dropped around Syria on Friday warning the Syrian military from cooperating with Hezbollah and Iranian militias in the region.

The final alleged Israeli airstrikes in Syria were in late July and reportedly targeted pro-Iranian aspects close to Damascus, killing 5 Syrian soldiers and 7 members of Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias, according to the Jerusalem Put up.

Israel has reportedly mostly prevented focusing on Syria's coastal provinces in past strikes owing to Russia's armed forces existence in space.

In May perhaps, Israel claimed its fighter jets came less than Russian anti-aircraft fireplace above Syria but ended up not struck, describing the incident as a "a single-off" confrontation.

Biden requires 'answers' on 10-year anniversary of Maritime journalist's abduction in Syria

Christian Datoc

August 10, 12:26 PM August 10, 12:35 PM

President Joe Biden reiterated phone calls for "solutions" from the Syrian federal government pertaining to the decadelong imprisonment of journalist and previous U.S. Maritime Austin Tice.

Biden's statement was introduced on the 10-12 months anniversary of Tice's abduction in Damascus.

PUTIN Needs TO BE Right Associated WITH BIDEN ON GRINER PRISONER SWAP

"We have consistently questioned the governing administration of Syria to perform with us so that we can provide Austin home. On the tenth anniversary of his abduction, I am calling on Syria to conclusion this and enable us bring him residence," the president wrote. "The Tice relatives warrants solutions, and much more importantly, they are worthy of to be quickly reunited with Austin. We stand with Austin’s lots of loved kinds, and we will not relaxation till we bring Austin residence. 10 a long time is considerably, considerably much too prolonged. So is each further day."

Biden included that "there is no greater precedence in my Administration than the restoration and return of Us citizens held hostage or wrongfully detained overseas."

"We must name them, hold them in our hearts and our minds, and make their recovery and return a precedence," he continued. "That is a pledge I have built to the American men and women and to Austin’s moms and dads, and it is a single that I am decided to uphold."

The Tice spouse and children experienced beforehand pressured the Biden administration to do far more to bring Tice home. His household wrote an open up letter to the White House in October 2021 and identified as the Biden White House a "hurdle" on the street to Tice's secure return in December of that exact 12 months.

In the meantime, the administration has confronted increasing force to secure the releases of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, both of those of whom are presently imprisoned in Russia.

Turkey threatens US allies and partners as Ukraine war gives Erdogan leverage

Joel Gehrke

June 09, 07:00 AM June 09, 07:00 AM

Turkey may soon launch a new military operation against the Kurdish forces that partnered with the United States to dismantle the Islamic State group in Syria despite protests from American officials.

“We are completely unstinting in our efforts with the Turkish government to back them off on this ill-considered venture,” State Department Assistant Secretary Barbara Leaf told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Wednesday hearing. “I couldn’t give you the assurance that they are going to.”

A cross-border assault could upend the U.S. approach to suppressing IS and perhaps even drive the most important American partner in the country into an alliance with Syrian President Bashar Assad, American leaders fear. Yet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who regards the Syrian fighters as terrorist allies of the Kurdish separatist group that has fought the Turkish central government for decades, seems keen to press disputes with the U.S. and other NATO members at a moment when the war in Ukraine has demonstrated Erdogan’s clout within the trans-Atlantic alliance — as evidenced by his Wednesday accusation that the U.S. and Greece have established military bases targeting Turkey.

“Nine American bases — where have those bases been established? In Greece,” Erdogan told reporters, per a Turkish public broadcaster’s interpreter. “And against whom? They answer ‘against Russia,’ but we will not buy into that. Sorry, but no.”

TURKEY REMINDS BLINKEN THAT UKRAINE GIVES ERDOGAN LEVERAGE IN NATO DISPUTE

Erdogan made that comment alongside Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro, who is visiting Ankara after President Joe Biden banned him and other Latin American authoritarians from attending the Summit of the Americas this week in Los Angeles. His press conference renewed some of the most fractious controversies of Erdogan’s relationship with the rest of the trans-Atlantic alliance, as he reiterated his accusation that Sweden and Finland, who have applied to join NATO, give shelter to Kurdish terrorists.

“What we experienced with Greece, what we experienced with France, we do not want to experience the same with them,” Erdogan said.

Greece and Turkey have a fraught history despite their mutual membership in NATO. They entered the alliance together in 1952 during the Cold War, but the modern state of Greece fought a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, which preceded the Republic of Turkey, in the early 19th century that succeeded in part due to the interventions of Great Britain, France, and Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron came to Greece’s aid in 2020 after Turkish and Greek forces nearly came to blows during a dispute about energy exploration rights in the Mediterranean. Turkey reportedly responded by using a cutting-edge Russian anti-aircraft missile system, purchased in defiance of U.S. sanctions law, to track F-16 fighter jets flown by France, Greece, and Italy during a joint military exercise with the United Arab Emirates. More recently, Turkey has accused Greece of militarizing key islands in the Aegean Sea in violation of international agreements.

“Greece should disarm these islands. If not, the sovereignty of these islands will be open to discussion.” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday, per Turkish media, in an apparent threat. “That’s what we clearly tell Greece.”

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis maintained that the two sides are “still very far” from the intensity that their disputes reached in 2020.

“Today, everyone needs to show restraint,” Mitsotakis said Tuesday, “especially at a time when we are facing a very big challenge at NATO with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We must be united.”

That invasion has galvanized the alliance and democratic allies in Europe, even spurring Sweden and Finland to abandon their historic posture of neutrality between Moscow and the capitals of NATO. Russia threatened retaliation for such a move during the Nordic states’ internal debates over the application process, but Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson countered that embattled Russian forces are too “occupied in Ukraine” to interdict their movement into the alliance — leaving Erdogan’s veto threat standing as the greatest impediment to their membership.

“NATO is an organization of security. NATO is not an organization that would pave the way for terror,” Erdogan said. “As long as these terror groups do run rampant in Sweden — and even in their own parliaments, there are terrorists — as long as these terrorists are in their parliaments and as long as these terror groups on the streets of Stockholm make demonstrations ... and as long as interviews with terrorist leaders are broadcast on national TVs, we cannot tell them, 'Go ahead and join NATO, and continue as such.'”

Erdogan appeared to be referring to Swedish lawmaker Amineh Kakabaveh, an Iranian Kurd who joined a Kurdish militia as a teenager during the Iran-Iraq War before fleeing to Europe. Now a political independent and deciding vote in Sweden’s divided parliament, Kakabaveh remains a supporter of Kurdish groups in Syria and rejects Erdogan’s allegation that those militias, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the YPG, are terrorists. The Swedish prime minister’s party endorsed Kakabaveh’s position on the Syrian Kurds in November as part of its effort to secure a governing majority.

“That freedom fighters who fought or sympathize with YPG or [the Democratic Union Party] are classed by certain state actors as terrorists is unacceptable. ... The Social Democrats intend to deepen their cooperation with the [the Democratic Union Party],” the Swedish politicians agreed, as the Financial Times noted.

Erdogan makes no distinction between those groups and the PKK, a militant organization of Turkish Kurds that the U.S. and other countries have designated a foreign terrorist organization for decades. He wants to drive the Syrian Kurdish forces back from the Turkish border — as he attempted to do in 2019. And the SDF, an umbrella group of Kurdish and Arab militias, has said it would partner with Assad to fend off the Turkish assault if Erdogan carries out his threat.

“The meeting confirmed the readiness of [SDF] forces to coordinate with forces of the Damascus government to confront any possible Turkish incursion and to protect Syrian territories against occupation,” the group said Tuesday.

Such a conflict could make it harder for those forces to maintain custody of thousands of IS militants that they are holding in northeast Syrian prisons. IS fighters conducted a major attack to take one of those prisons in January.

“Any venture, any military operation across the border into northern Syria, first and foremost puts the civilian population in the crosshairs, and secondly, [it] severely puts at risk a critical mission that the global D-ISIS coalition, the U.S., is undertaking,” Leaf, the State Department’s lead official for the Near East bureau, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday. “And, obviously, it puts into the crosshairs our own partners in that mission.”