WAR

Gaza Rescuers Say Israeli Strikes Kill 28

Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli strikes overnight and early Sunday killed at least 28 Palestinians, including at one family's home and at a school building the Israeli military said was used by Hamas. On the ground in Gaza, civil agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in ...

Pope Again Condemns 'Cruelty' of Israeli Strikes on Gaza

Pope Francis doubled down Sunday on his condemnation of Israel's strikes on the Gaza Strip, denouncing their "cruelty" for the second time in as many days. "And with pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty," the pope said after his weekly Angelus ...

Russia Claims Capture of Two More East Ukraine Villages

Russia said Sunday it had captured two more villages in east Ukraine, the latest territorial gains for Moscow's advancing army. The defense ministry said on Telegram that its troops had "liberated" the villages of Lozova in the northeastern Kharkiv region and Krasnoye, called Sontsivka in Ukraine. The latter is close to the resource hub of ...

Khamenei Says Assad's Fall Will not Weaken Iran

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that the weakening of the anti-Israel "resistance" after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Syria would not diminish Tehran's power. Some, "unaware of the meaning of resistance, imagine that when the resistance becomes weak, Islamic Iran will also become weak... Iran ...

New Syria PM Calls for 'Stability and Calm'

Syria's new transitional prime minister on Tuesday said it was time for "stability and calm" in the country, two days after longtime president Bashar al-Assad was toppled by rebels in a lightning offensive. The rebels appointed Mohammad al-Bashir as the transitional head of government to run the country until March 1, a statement ...

Assad Exit Puts US at Perilous Crossroads in Syria

For more than a decade, the United States has sought to keep out of Syria's political debacle, seeing no viable partner. Islamist rebels' toppling of strongman Bashar al-Assad has forced a change of tune and a debate over just what US interests are. Donald Trump, who returns to the White House in little more than a month, on the eve of Assad's ...

Erdogan: Turkey Will Never let 'Syria be Divided Again'

Syria must never be divided again and Turkey will act against anyone seeking to compromise its territory, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday. "From now on, we cannot allow Syria to be divided again... Any attack on the freedom of the Syrian people, the stability of the new administration, and the integrity of its lands will find us ...

Three Dead in Russian Attacks on East, South Ukraine

Three people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in Russian attacks on southern and eastern Ukraine over the past 24 hours, authorities said Tuesday. Tensions over the three-year war have escalated in recent weeks, with Moscow pummelling Ukrainian energy infrastructure and threatening to strike Kyiv with its new hypersonic missile. In the ...

Israel Has 'Destroyed the Most Important Military Sites in Syria'

A war monitor said Tuesday that Israel had "destroyed the most important military sites in Syria" with a flurry of airstrikes since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad's government. Israel, which borders Syria, sent troops into a buffer zone on the east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights after Assad's fall, in what Foreign ...

Syria's Bashar al-Assad's Quarter Century in Power

AFP looks back at almost a quarter-century of rule by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since he was propelled to power following the death of his father Hafez in 2000. 2000: takes over from father On July 17, 2000, Assad becomes Syria's new head of state, after the death of his father, aged 69, who ruled Syria with an iron grip for 30 years. He ...

Bashar al-Assad: From Tyranny to Collapse

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad oversaw a merciless crackdown on a pro-democracy revolt that morphed into one of the bloodiest wars of the century. On Sunday, as rebels entered the capital, a Syrian war monitor said he had left the country, in what could spell the end not just of his 24-year rule but the downfall of his clan's five-decade ...