10.1 Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria

10.1.1 Cuba

 

test 5

 

Ex-President Carter visiting Cuba (May 12 to May 16, 2002) but he had to ask the agreement of the US government. Fidel Castro received him while President Bush now includes his country in his "Axis of Evils". Fidel Castro offered Carter to visit any military research laboratory of his choice in Cuba to see by himself that no biological weapons are made there. Carter asked the US to stop boycotting Cuba, to start trading with this country, and to allow the American people to go there freely for any reason. The answer came soon enough and it was NO, of course, the Cuban lobby in south Florida is too important and absolutely necessary for the re-election of Jeb Bush -George's brother- as Governor of Florida this autumn. Poor Bush!!

On October 10, 2003, President Bush asked for regime change in Cuba and increased pressure by tightening the embargo on this little and deprived country that does not threaten anyone.

On December 26, 2003, Cuba said that the US base at Guantanamo Bay was a concentration camp and not a holding centre for terrorist suspects. The Cuban's National Assembly added, "hundred of foreign prisoners are subjected to indescribable humiliations". Guantanamo Bay is rented by the USA by a treaty signed long before the 1959 revolution brought Fidel Castro to power.

On August 1, 2006, Veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro temporarily handed power to his brother Raul because of illness. Mr Castro has undergone surgery to halt internal bleeding. The Cuban leader, who turns 80 this month, said a punishing schedule in recent weeks had affected his health. This is the first time Mr Castro has relinquished any of his duties since he came to power in 1959.

On August 2, 2006, Cuban leader Fidel Castro said he was in a stable condition and good spirits following surgery. "I feel perfectly fine," Mr Castro was quoted as saying.

10.1.2 Iran
Until now it is officially known that seven countries have nuclear weapons: the USA, Russia, China, France, Britain, India and Pakistan. It is certain that Israel has many bombs too and North Korea is believed to have also a very limited number. Will Iran be the next member of this very select nuclear club

Iran Politics and Iraq
- In the middle of July 2002 it was clear that the American are leading Iran to enter into a defensive alliance with Iraq. Linking them together -plus North Korea- in an "Axis of Evil", as President Bush threaten war on Iraq increases pressure on Iran. Moreover the US is boosting its military presence in the Gulf and the region. This is a menace to Iran as well as to Iraq. The creation of new US bases in Afghanistan and central Asia is also seen as a thread by both countries. All this weakens the more radical fractions in Iran.
- On July 23, 2002, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran told the US not to attack Iraq and to stop interfering in the region. This is seen from there as aiming to provoke mass insurrection in Iran. Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei added that America is spreading the shadow of war and death in the region, threatening to overthrow the elected government of Iran.
- Now at the end of July 2002, it looks like the US could attack Iran after they have dealt with Iraq. This would lead to a messy situation in the region.
- On April 16, 2003, Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami attacked the USA for their aggressive stance towards the Arab world, adding that Tehran will not recognise any Iraqi government imposed by the US, and that Iran would support Syria if attacked by America. They will only recognise an all and true Iraqi government.
- On April 23, 2003, Washington warned Iran not to interfere in Iraqi affairs after it was reported that Iranian agents had crossed the border with Iraq to promote pro-Tehran Shia clerics in the southern cities of Kerbala, Najaf and Basra. The USA is afraid that Iraq could turn into an Iranian-style Muslim theocracy.
- On May 21, 2003, the US suspended diplomatic talk with Iran after allegations that Tehran had failed to take action against al-Qaida members in Iran. According to the same information the bombing in Saudi Arabia were ordered by al-Qaida members operating out of Iran. Donald Rumsfeld said that he has no doubt -for what it is worth- that senior al-Qaida members are in Iran. The two countries have no diplomatic relations since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
- There have been some heavy protests lately in Tehran. On June 12, 2003, Iran's conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appealed to the hard-line vigilantes (an offshoot of the revolutionary guards that helped create the clergy-run regime in 1979) not to take the law in their hands helping the police to control the streets after a second night of anti-regime student protest. The regime blamed the USA for stirring up trouble.
- On June 14, 2003, the US denounced Islamic hardliners who attacked pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran and called on the government to release those who were jailed. Many people were hurt in the clashes. The protesters were calling for an end to the rule of the country's hard-line cleric establishment.
- On June 29, 2003, protesting students in Tehran and elsewhere in the country are warning Iran's political leaders that they will face even bigger confrontation unless political prisoners are released. The students accuse President Khatami of being too timid in front of the conservative clergy.
- We were told on July 6, 2003, that America is going to beam a news radio programme in Farsi-language in Iran. This propaganda will be aimed at creating discontent among the younger generation of Iranians. This will confirm the Iranian cleric leaders that Washington is behind the recent protests.
- On July 7, 2003, the Iranian government is taking actions to prevent possible unrest on July 8, the eve of the anniversary of a crackdown on student protesters in 1999. Rallies will be banned and satellites television programmes from exiles in the USA will be jammed.
- On July 9, 2003, hundred of policemen fought students in the streets of Tehran on what was the anniversary of the 1999 student riots.
- On July 12, 2003, Iran's President, Mohammad Khatami, said that he could resign in face of the increasing critics over the slow pace of democratic reforms.
- On July 21. 2003, President Bush accused again Iran of hiding terrorists and told them of the possible consequences. Iran denied the charges.
- On August 4, 2003, we are told that Iran's hard line clergy have started arresting and interrogating journalists, students and political activists in order to intimidate the opposition before the parliamentary election foreseen for next year.
- According to The Guardian of August 8, 2003, Iran is holding al-Qaida senior members prisoners as "bargaining chips" in their dispute with the USA. They will agree to hand them over to the US authorities in exchange for some important concessions. Among the people held by Iran there should be Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian believed to be al-Qaida head of military operations, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, its Kuwaiti spokesman, and Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son. It is believed that hundred of al-Qaida members flew to Iran after the US invasion of Afghanistan, most have been extradited but many are still believed to be there.
- On August 12, 2003, the Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, admitted that his attempts to introduce democratic reforms in Iran had so far failed. He added that he would continue to press for changes.
- The Nobel Peace Prize for 2003 was given to Mrs Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, who has defended individual rights against her government. In her acceptance speech in Oslo on December 10, 2003, She said that the USA has violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of September 11, 2001, and the war on terrorism as a pretext. She added: "For months, hundred of individuals who were arrested in the course of military conflicts have been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without the benefits of rights stipulated under the International Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights". She also compared the way Iraq and Israel were treated, two countries that did not take notice of the UN Security Council resolutions. Iraq was invaded while Israel was encouraged to go on ignoring the UN.
- After the deadly earthquake in Bam on December 26, 2003, the USA lifted its sanctions for 90 days. The Iran government hope that the USA will lift them, and the embargo, permanently. Iran and the USA have broken diplomatic relations in 1979 following the invasion of the US embassy in Tehran and the taking of its employees as hostage for 444 days. The probabilities that the USA will accept are small as it accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism and of having programmes to build weapon s of mass destruction.
- On January 9, 2004, US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said that the USA was ready to talk with Iran on their nuclear programme, human rights record and support to terrorism.
- On January 11, 2004, the Iranian hard-line Islamic religious authority barred reformist legislators to seek re-election next month. On January 12, 80 liberal members of the parliament held a sit-in protest in the parliament. On January 14, Iran's Supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that the incumbent members of the Parliament, at least, should be able to run for re-election. Moreover he added that non-incumbent candidates should be considered on their personal merit rather that rejected out of hand.
- On January 20, 2004, the hard-line cleric authorities reinstated 200 candidates barred from running in next month's legislative elections. They will also reconsider thousand more. The Iranian Guardian Council reinstated 100 more candidates for the February 20 elections but the opposition threatened to boycott the elections if all candidates are not reinstated. A final decision will be taken on February 10. On January 30 the Guardian Council reinstated a third of the candidates it disqualified from the forthcoming elections. It rejected a proposal to postpone the elections. The oppositions said that this was not enough and insists that all candidates should be reinstated.
- On February 1, 2004, the Iran's theocratic leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was under pressure to postpone the February 20 elections after about 124 reformist MP resigned their seats and planned to boycott the vote in protest again the removal of about 2,000 opposition party candidates from the electoral lists while some cabinet ministers said that they would not administer the elections.
- On February 17, 2004, about 100 reformist members of the Iranian parliament launched an attack on the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accusing him of abusing people's rights and freedom by allowing a ban on more than 2,000 moderate candidates in this week parliamentary elections. In the previous elections, reformists won the majority of the seats in the parliament.
- On February 19, 2004, it was clear that the Iranian conservatives would regain control of the parliament after most of the reformist candidates -2,300- were banned from participating by the Supreme Islamic Council while others decided to boycott them. Two reformist newspapers were also closed down a few days before
- On April 22, 2004, Iranian clerics have warned the USA to stay out of the two holy Shia cities of Najaf and Kerbala in Iraq if they want to avoid a bloodbath.
- On May 23, 2004, Iran admitted that they have had until now regular contact with Ahmad Chalabi although both Iran and Chalabi denied that he gave them any US secrets. Iran was also in contact with other members of the Iraqi Governing Council.
- On June 21, 2004, Iran seized three small British Royal Navy vessels in the Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iran and Iraq. Eight crewmembers, sailors and marines, were taken prisoners. The British authorities said that they were part of a team training Iraqi river police. Tehran said that the boats entered Iran's water without authorisation and they confiscated the vessels and arrested the crew. The British diplomats in Iran are doing their best to avoid a full-scale diplomatic crisis between Britain and Iran.
- On June 22, 2004, the eight British sailors and marines are still detained in. Two of the men appeared blindfolded on Iranian television apologising for entering the country territorial waters by mistake. Tehran said that the eight men were from Special Forces but this was denied in London adding that they were only delivering the new unarmed boats to the Iraqi river police in Basra.
- On June 24, 2004, Iran free the 6 marines and 2 sailors it had captured on June 21 when their three small boats entered Iran's territorial water. They will spend the night in the British embassy in Tehran before being flown back to duty in Iraq on June 25. Back on duty in Iraq the eight men said that they did not enter in the territorial waters of Iran by mistake. According to them they were forcibly escorted in these waters before being captured.
- On August 16, 2004, Iran warned the Iraqi government that it was taking "very seriously" the matter of an Iranian diplomat held hostage in Iraq and threatened with "punishment" by his captors.
- On August 28, 2004, Iran said that there is no military solution to the crisis in Najaf and other Iraqi cities, and that a political solution must be found. A speedy withdrawal of the occupying forces and a general election is the only way to prevent the continuation of the Iraq crisis. US officials tried to justify the occupation by saying that they are attempting to establish democracy in the country, but events over the past 16 months have proven that the White House does not intend to fulfil its promises. The US should call on the United Nations to help solve the current dead end and ask the impartial forces of the UN to hold a referendum to allow the Iraqi people to determine the form of their future government.
- On August 28, 2004, President Mohammad Khatami said that Iran was not stirring violence in Iraq. "The policy of Iran is to solve the problems of Iraq. We want calm in that country." "We have problems with the United States, but we will never impose these problems on Iraqis," he said in a press conference.
- On August 30, 2004, Iran's top national security executive, Hassan Rowhani, assured Iraqi officials of Iran's resolve to join hands to establish security in Iraq. Rowhani pressed for the establishment of a government elected by Iraqi people in the near future, which would only be made possible by providing security and stability in Iraq.
- Money and people channelled from Iran fuel the insurgency in Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday September 8 2004. The Washington Times said it had been told by military sources that Iran's Revolutionary Guard helped fund Iraq's rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who led a series of insurrections.
- Hundreds of thousands of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards began military manoeuvres Sunday September 12, 2004, near the border with Iraq; the exercise was designed to reinforce Iran's resolve to defend itself against "big powers." Iran, which views the United States as an arch foe, is concerned about the US military presence in Iraq, to the west of Iran, and in Afghanistan, to the east of Iran.
- On November 18, 2004, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, criticised Arab and Muslim silence over the US attack on Falluja. He asked the nearby countries to help the Iraqis.
- On March 3, 2005, the chief of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards warned that the 190,000 American forces based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan will be targeted if his country is attacked.
- On April 5, 2005, Canada has renewed its demands on Iran to return the body of journalist Zahra Kazemi and reopen a criminal inquiry into her death in Iranian custody. Iran insists she died, in July 2003, after fainting and hitting her head. Ms Kazemi was arrested in June 2003 after taking photos of demonstrators outside a Tehran prison. She died in a Tehran hospital on 10 July. Former Iranian military doctor Shahram Azam - who was granted refugee status after arriving in Canada last week - said he had seen Ms Kazemi when she was brought to hospital, unconscious and on a stretcher. He found horrendous injuries ranging from a broken nose to a ruptured eardrum, lash marks and evidence of brutal sexual assault.
- On April 12, 2005, the US said it is going to give money directly to Iranian groups promoting democracy in Iran for the first time in 25 years. Educational and humanitarian groups will be eligible for the funds - some $3m. Iran has condemned the plan as interference in its affairs and a violation of a 1981 accord with the US.
- On May 4, 2005, Iran has escalated its war of words with the US over Tehran's nuclear programme, calling Washington's arsenal a major threat to global peace. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi demanded assurances that the US would not launch a nuclear strike on Iran. And he rejected a call from President George Bush for non-nuclear nations to be denied access to nuclear technology. Mr Kharrazi told a UN conference it was unacceptable for an "exclusive club" of nations to deny nuclear technology to others "under the pretext of non-proliferation".
- Iran's foreign minister made a historic trip to Baghdad on May 17, 2005, pledging to secure his country's borders to stop militants from entering Iraq and saying the Many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs used to attack American and government forces in Iraq have been designed in Iran according to United States military and intelligence officials claims made on August 7, 2005. They say the deadlier bombs could become more common as insurgent bomb makers learn the techniques to make the weapons themselves in Iraq. The new weapons suggests a new co-operation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces.committed to supporting Iraq's political and economic reconstruction and would do all it could to improve security conditions.
- On May 28, 2005, Iran said that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi was not in Iran where the British Sunday Times said that he had moved to be hospitalised. Some sources said that he was hurt in the chest by bomb shrapnel and others say that he is fit and well. Who knows?
- Former enemies, Iran and Iraq, said on July 7, 2005, they will increase their military co-operation, including training Iraqi armed forces. Relations between the neighbours -who fought a bitter war from 1980 to 1988- have improved greatly since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. This is the first visit to Iran by an Iraqi military delegation since the war, in which a million people died.
- On July 17, 2005, Iran's President Mohammed Khatami has welcomed what he called a "turning point" in relations with Iraq. He said the current visit by Iraq's transitional PM Ibrahim Jaafari would help patch the wounds inflicted by ex-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Mr Jaafari is leading the highest-level Iraqi delegation to Iran in decades. Mr Khatami said the security of Iran and Iraq were closely linked and that Tehran would do everything to help restore Iraq's stability.
- Many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs used to attack American and government forces in Iraq have been designed in Iran according to United States military and intelligence officials claims made on August 7, 2005. They say the deadlier bombs could become more common as insurgent bomb makers learn the techniques to make the weapons themselves in Iraq. The new weapons suggests a new co-operation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces.
- US President George W Bush said on August 13, 2005, he does not rule out the option of using force against Iran, after it resumed work on its nuclear programme. He said he was working on a diplomatic solution, but was sceptical that one could be found.
- On August 14, 2005, Iran's newly elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has nominated known hardliners for key positions in his first cabinet. Conservatives will head the foreign, intelligence and interior ministries. They are:
.Manouchehr Mottaki, foreign minister, is a former ambassador to Japan and Turkey who has strongly backed Iran's nuclear programme and supported the move to resume uranium conversion
.Mostafa Pourmohammadi, interior minister, is a hardline former deputy intelligence minister
.Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehei, intelligence minister, is an Islamic cleric thought to be an opponent of press freedom.
All three men are followers of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Just two clerics were named to the cabinet, and no women were appointed. Mohammad Rahmati, minister of roads and transport, was the only minister to survive from Mr Khatami's cabinet. A former ally of Mr Amhadinejad from his days as Tehran mayor, Ali Saeedlou, was appointed to run the oil ministry, despite no apparent experience in the industry.
- Iranian judges, from August 29, 2005, will carry guns and use them if they feel threatened after a judge was shot in an attack in Tehran. Mohammed Reza Aghazadeh was shot outside his home in the capital, sustaining injuries to his eye. He was investigating cases of land and property corruption near Karaj, a town west of Tehran. The incident comes less than a month after a gunman on a motorcycle in Tehran killed another judge.
- In his annual speech to France's ambassadors at the Elysee Palace, President Jacques Chirac of France on Monday August 29, 2005, issued an ultimatum to Iran, warning that it would face censure by the UN Security Council if it did not freeze its sensitive nuclear activities. He urged its leaders to accept an offer of incentives by France, Britain and Germany in. This is the first time Chirac said Iran would face censure, or even sanctions, by the Security Council if it did not stop its nuclear activities.
- Iran is still several years away from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, according to a study published by the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies on September 6, 2005.
- On September 11, 2005, Iran's new foreign minister has warned of "consequences" if Europe refers Iran to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear programme. Dr Manucher Mottaki said there was no legal basis for referral because Iran had been very transparent. He ruled out any renewed suspension of uranium conversion in the future.
- On October 6, 2005, Mr Blair issued a warning to Iran not to interfere in Iraq following claims it was supplying weapons to insurgents. He said devices that killed British troops looked like those used by Iran, but stressed, "we cannot be sure". Mr Blair added: "There is no justification for Iran or any other country interfering in Iraq." And for the British and Americans?
- Insurgents making tank-busting explosives, which have killed eight UK soldiers in recent months, are being trained in Iran and Lebanon by specialist bomb-makers of an elite arm of Iran's armed forces we were told on October 11, 2005.

- On November 2, 2006, former President of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, branded US attempts to impose Western-style democracy in the Middle East as "a great joke". Mr Khatami was critical of the US-led military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he said had led to more Muslims supporting al-Qaida. Mr Khatami, said he was committed to fighting extremism around the world. He called on US and UK to leave Iraq in an effort to reduce violence.

- Iran's offer of a three-way summit meeting of the presidents of Iran, Iraq and Syria could be welcome, but Iran's Islamic government has a history of saying the right thing and doing something else, the United States said Monday November 20, 2006. Iran has asked presidents Jalal Talabani of Iraq and Bashar Assad of Syria for talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about possible cooperation to curb the violence that has taken Iraq to the verge of civil war and threatens to spread. Talabani was reported to have accepted and be planning to fly Saturday to Tehran. The US State Department said the decision whether to follow up must come from Iraq, not the United States. He said, however, that Iran and Syria will have to change their behaviour before such a meeting could be productive.

- Iran on Wednesday November 22, 2006, touted its weekend summit with the Iraqi and Syrian presidents, moving to secure a larger role in the region just as President Bush prepares to head to the Mideast for meetings on reducing American involvement in Iraq.

- Iraqi President Jalal Talabani will not fly to Tehran on Sunday November 26, 2006, to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad due to an extension of a curfew and closure of Baghdad airport.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday November 26, 2006, Iran was ready to help the United States and Britain in Iraq but only if they pledged to change their attitude and withdraw their troops. The remark comes amid growing calls for Washington to engage Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Syria, to help prevent Iraq plunging into civil war.

- US troops must leave Iraq if security is to be restored, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said during talks with the Iraqi president on November 28, 2006. He said the US was powerless to stop the unrest in Iraq, which was also bad for other countries in the region. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in turn called on Iran to stop backing Shia militias and support Iraq's government instead. US President George W Bush has again ruled out removing US troops from Iraq.

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has again called on the US to get out of Iraq on December 1, 2006. In an interview, Ahmadinejad said that Iraqis should govern themselves without any interference and blamed the US for stirring up divisions between Iraq's Shia, Sunnis and Kurds.

- Iran's foreign minister delivered a blunt challenge to the United States on Saturday December 9, 2006, saying Tehran is willing to help US troops withdraw from neighboring Iraq but only if Washington makes some tough policy changes.Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki claimed US troops were responsible for at least half the violence tearing apart Iraq and that their departure would pay security dividends for the entire region.

- On December 25, 2006 we were told that US forces in Iraq captured at least four Iranians suspected of involvement in attacks on Iraqi security forces. The Iranians, reportedly including senior military officials, were captured during a pair of raids conducted last week. Two of the Iranians were reportedly in the country at the invitation of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

- Five Iranians arrested by US troops in Baghdad last month were on a covert mission to influence Iraq's government we were told on January 5, 2007. The five men were senior intelligence officers "up to no good", an unnamed official told the Newsnight programme. The arrests caused a diplomatic row when it became clear that the Iranians, who have since been released, had been invited by the Iraqi government. Tehran has protested to the US, saying some of the men were diplomats. The White House has suggested the arrests validated US claims of Iranian "meddling" in Iraq.

- On January 14, 2007, Iran demanded the immediately release five of its nationals detained in a US raid in northern Iraq. Iran's foreign ministry says the men are diplomats and were working at the Iranian liaison office in Irbil. US officials say they are linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard which they say trains and arms Iraqi insurgents.

- Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official told the BBC on January 18, 2007. Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion. Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility. But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan.

- On January 23, 2007, Russia said it had completed at the end of last year a contract to sell some 30 air defence missile systems to Iran. The deal - worth $700m (£380m) and signed last year - has angered the US and Israel who say Iran may use the missiles to attack its neighbours. Russia says its Tor-M1 system is short-range and purely defensive.

- The US suspended sales of all spare parts from the retired F-14 fighter jet on January 31, 2007, over concerns they could end up in Iran.

- The US has issued the latest in a series of warnings to Iran on February 1, 2007, telling Tehran to stop helping Iraqi militants make lethal bombs to attack US troops. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said US forces had detained several Iranians suspected of providing weapons technology to Shia insurgents. Tehran has repeatedly denied that it is fuelling the violence in Iraq.

- On February 4, 2007, three former high-ranking American military officers have warned against any military attack on Iran. They said such action would have "disastrous consequences" for security in the Middle East and also for coalition forces in Iraq, the crisis over Tehran's nuclear programme must be resolved through diplomacy and they urged Washington to start direct talks with Iran. The letter was signed by:
- Lt Gen Robert Gard, a former military assistant to the US defence secretary
- Gen Joseph Hoar, a former commander-in-chief, US Central Command
- Vice Adm Jack Shanahan, a former director of the Center for Defense Information

- A coalition of charities, faith groups and unions has warned Tony Blair on February 5, 2007, that any military action against Iran would have "unthinkable" consequences. The organisations are urging the prime minister to put pressure on the US to enter talks with Tehran. The US has refused to rule out military action if Iran does not halt its nuclear activities.

- An Iranian diplomat has been kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad. Jalal Sharafi, the embassy's second secretary, was abducted from his car on Sunday February 4, 2007, in central Karrada district by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms. Iran condemned the kidnapping and said it held the US responsible for his life. A US military spokesman said no US or Iraqi troops had been involved.

- The US military accused the "highest levels" of Iran's government on February 11, 2007, of supplying increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs to Iraqi insurgents. The bombs, weapons known as "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs) are capable of destroying an Abrams tank, were being used to deadly effect, killing more than 170 US troops since June 2004.

- Iran on Monday February 12, 2007, rejected US accusations that the highest levels of Iranian leadership have armed Shiite militants in Iraq with armor-piercing roadside bombs, a day after US military officials in Baghdad said they had traced the weapons to Teheran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised interview that his country was opposed to conflict and bloodshed in Iraq and that problems in Iraq should be solved with dialogue, not the use of force.

- America's General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff contradicted claims made by the White House and other US military commanders on February 13, 2007, that Iran was arming Shia militants in Iraq. He said he did not know if Iranian-made material used to assemble roadside bombs in Iraq had been supplied on Tehran's orders.

- Eleven people have been killed in a bomb blast near a bus in city of Zahedan in south-eastern Iran on February 14, 2007. The bomb, hidden in a car, targeted members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. A military commander described the act as "terrorism" and blamed "rebels".

- Clashes between armed militants and police have erupted in the south-eastern Iranian city of Zahedan, state media reported on February 17, 2007. Police sealed off the area and exchanged fire with the attackers after a bomb went off two days after a car bomb in Zahedan killed 11 Revolutionary Guards. A hardline Sunni group, Jundallah, said it carried out the attack.

- On February 20, 2007, Iran rejected claims by Russian officials that it has failed to meet payments for work on the Bushehr nuclear plant in southern Iran. Russian officials had warned the $1bn deal might be delayed.

- Iran will not necessarily have direct talks with the United States if it attends an upcoming regional conference about Iraq's security crisis, an Iranian official said on Sunday March 4, 2007. Iran will announce "in the near future" whether it will attend the March 10 conference in Baghdad. Syria, the United States, Britain and France have said they will participate.

- A group of Iranian women activists are continuing a hunger strike on Wednesday March 7, 2007, in prison, after eight of their number were freed. Thirty-three women were arrested on Sunday after staging a demonstration outside a courthouse in Tehran showing solidarity with five women on trial for organising an anti-discrimination protest in 2006. The crackdown is intended to prevent any kind of protests as Iran marks International Women's Day on 8 March. The five arrested last June have been charged with endangering national security, propaganda against the state and taking part in an illegal gathering.

- Iran confirmed on Thursday March 8, 2007, it will take part in an international conference alongside the United States in Baghdad on Saturday, a gathering that Iraq hopes will break the ice between the bitter rivals to help end its bloody conflict. The conference of Iraq's neighbours, the United States, and the UN Security Council powers will be attended by officials on the level of deputy foreign minister. A hoped-for session of higher level diplomats has been postponed.

- Iran captured eight British Royal Navy sailors and seven Royal Marines in waters along the disputed Iraq-Iran border Friday March 23, 2007, denouncing the British forces for their "illegal and interventionist" into Iranian territorial waters. British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett said that London had "left the Iranian authorities in no doubt that we expect the immediate and safe return of our service personnel and our boats." The soldiers were seized at the mouth of a river that Iraq refers to as the Shatt al-Arab and Iran calls the Arvandrud. Control of the river and its use has been a long-standing source of tension between the two countries. On Saturday, Iran's official news agency claimed that the British sailors had "confessed violating Iranian territorial waters."

- Britain is still waiting to be granted access to 15 Royal Navy personnel held by Iran on Saturday March 25, 2007, two days after their capture. Iran says the Britons, seized on Friday, were trespassing in Iranian waters, which the UK denies. The Foreign Office is adamant they were in Iraqi waters and has called for their immediate release.

- The 15 Royal Navy personnel who were seized on Friday are being held at an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps base in Tehran we were told on March 26, 2007. The Britons were being interrogated to find out if their mission was intelligence-gathering. The investigation involved examining tracking equipment to determine exactly where the crew was captured. The inquiry would probably take a minimum of days.

- Efforts to secure the release of 15 Royal Navy personnel held by Iran will enter a "different phase" if diplomatic moves fail, Tony Blair said on March 26, 2007. The family of the only woman detained, Faye Turney from Shropshire, have said this is a "very distressing time" for them. It is believed the group are being held at an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps base in Tehran.

- Satellite data proves the 15 navy personnel being held in Iran were 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters when they were seized, UK defence officials said on Wednesday March 28, 2007. Tony Blair said it was time to "ratchet up" pressure on Iran, with whom the UK has now suspended bilateral contacts. Reports suggest the only woman among the group, Faye Turney, will be freed shortly either later on Wednesday or on Thursday.

- Iran has offered on Thursday March 29, 2007, to let UK officials visit the 15 Royal Navy personnel who were captured in the Gulf on Friday. Iran's foreign minister also said the only woman being held, Faye Turney, who has been interviewed on Iranian state television, could be released. But he said the stand-off would be resolved only if the UK stated that the sailors and marines had been in Iranian waters last Friday, which it denies.

- Iran twisted the knife in the hostage crisis on March 29, 2007, by releasing a letter said to be from the captured British sailor Faye Turney in which she called for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. Its release came minutes after Mr Blair had said that he would not be drawn into any "tit for tat" deal to secure the release of the 15 servicemen, and took the stand-off into increasingly unpredictable territory: The letter said "Isn't it time for us to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future?" Iran had earlier reneged on its promise to release Leading Seaman Turney and gone back on a pledge to let British diplomats visit the detainees, who have been held in secret locations since Friday.

- On March 30, 2007, a second member of the Royal Navy crew captured in the Gulf has apologised for "trespassing" in Iranian waters, in a broadcast on Iranian television. Nathan Thomas Summers, says: "I would like to apologise for entering your waters without permission." At a meeting in Germany on Friday, European Union foreign ministers called for "the immediate and unconditional release" of the sailors and expressed "unconditional support" for Britain's position.

- On March 31, 2007, US officials ruled out a deal to exchange 15 Royal Navy personnel captured in the Gulf for five Iranians seized by American forces in Iraq. The five, believed to be members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, were seized in January in the Iraqi city of Irbil. The five Iranians were captured in a raid along with equipment which the Americans say shows clear Iranian links to networks supplying Iraqi insurgents with technology and weapons.

- On April 1, 2007, President George W Bush has condemned Iran's "inexcusable behaviour" after its capture of 15 Royal Navy personnel. He strongly supports the British government over the crisis. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran was waiting for a "change in attitude" from the UK and a "moderate approach" to its requests.

- On April 2, 2007, the 15 Britons held by Iran accept they were picked up in its waters despite the UK's insistence they were in Iraqi territory. Later, previously unseen images of some of the crew were aired but their voices could not be heard.

- The next two days will be a "fairly critical" phase in the talks to free the 15 Royal Navy personnel captured by Iran, Tony Blair said on April 3, 2007. The prime minister said he was "not looking for confrontation" and "the most important thing is to get the people back safe and sound". Earlier, a Tehran official said the issue could be resolved by negotiation.

- Tony Blair said on April 4, 2007, he believes Iran wants to achieve an "early resolution" to the crisis over the Royal Navy crew through direct talks, Downing. However, both countries continue to dispute whether the 15 crew were in Iran's waters when seized on 23 March.

- The 15 Royal Navy crew members held captive by Iran are flying home on April 5, 2007, after being freed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "gift" to the UK. Before leaving Tehran, several of the crew spoke on Iranian television to express thanks for their release. Prime Minister Tony Blair said the homecoming would be "a profound relief" to the personnel and their families.

- An Iranian diplomat who was freed last week, two months after being seized in Iraq, said on April 7, 2007, that he had been tortured by the CIA while in captivity at an Iraqi government installation. The claims by Jalal Sharafi will lead to fresh speculation that the diplomat was freed as part of a deal to secure Wednesday's release of 15 British servicemen seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

- On Sunday April 7, 2007, the US denied claims made by an Iranian diplomat abducted in Iraq that he was tortured in captivity by people who included CIA agents. A US spokesman said Jalal Sharafi's allegations of an American role in his detention were "theatrics" from the "Iranian propaganda machine". Mr Sharafi, second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, was freed last week. He was abducted in February.

- The US military claimed publicly for the first time on April 11, 2007, that Shiite Iranian intelligence agents are supporting Sunni extremists who fight against American-led forces in Iraq. Over the past two years, the US has repeatedly accused Iranian elements of aiding Shiite militias in their sectarian fight against Sunni Arabs and in waging attacks on US troops in Iraq. Tehran has constantly denied arming groups in Iraq. Displaying what he said were newly manufactured Iranian weapons found in Baghdad, Major General William Caldwell said US authorities were now aware of Iranian help to the Sunni extremists who lead the anti-American insurgency.

- In a move likely to irritate Tehran, the US decided on April 14, 2007, not to release five Iranians captured in Iraq. After intense internal debate, the Bush administration had decided to keep the Iranians in custody and make them go through a periodic six-month review process used for the other 250 foreign detainees held in Iraq. The next review is not expected until July. Washington says the five, seized in a January 11 raid by US forces in the Kurdish city of Arbil, are linked with Iranian Revolutionary Guard networks involved in providing explosive devices used to attack US troops in Iraq. Iran says they are diplomats and has demanded their release. The Post said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had wanted to free the men because she judged them no longer useful but went along with the decision to retain them in custody that was strongly supported by Vice President Dick Cheney.

- An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman denied on April 19, 2007, US statements alleging the discovery of Iranian-made weapons in Afghanistan, labelling them as "a repeated and dubious scenario." Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the US allegations were rooted in US weakness and inability to control the situation in Afghanistan. Hosseini said that Tehran was for expanding cooperation with "the friendly and brotherly government of Afghanistan" on the basis of mutual interests.

- Iran said on April 29, 2007, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will attend the conference later this week in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, a key meeting on Iraq's security situation. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is also due to attend, hinted that she could meet Mr Mottaki. But she said any "encounter" would be a chance to discuss Iraq's security situation, and not specific US-Iranian relations.

- A strongly criticised US policy in Iraq on May 4, 2007, blaming the American presence there for sectarian violence. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was speaking in Egypt on the second day of a summit of world and regional powers, called to discuss Iraq's security. The summit had been expected to see the first high-level US-Iran talks in almost three decades. Those hopes were dashed, although ambassadors from the US and Iran did hold a face-to-face meeting.

- Iran is willing to help the USA develops an "exit strategy" from Iraq we were told on May 8, 2007. Iran, through a spokesman Mr Aragchi, dismissed US allegations that Iran was supplying Iraqi insurgents with weapons, and added that no amount of pressure would convince Iran to give up its contested nuclear program. "Their invasion was a disaster - let there not be a disastrous withdrawal." "Yes, immediate withdrawal could lead to chaos, civil war. No one is asking for immediate withdrawal of foreign forces. But there should be a plan." Mr Aragchi said that the American presence in Iraq was part of the problem, telling the FT that Iraq is "suffering a vicious cycle".

- The US and Iran said Sunday May 13, 2007, they will hold talks in Baghdad about improving Iraq's security -a historic political turnabout for the two countries with the most influence over Iraq's future. Expectations of progress remain low, however, with tough issues at stake and mutual suspicions running high. Even as it announced the talks, Iran lashed out at Vice President Dick Cheney's weekend warnings about its nuclear program, saying it would retaliate if the US attacked it. Yet the two sides said they were setting aside such differences to focus on a narrow issue -Iraq's continued violence and sharp political deterioration.

- Iran's supreme leader gave his backing Wednesday May 16, 2007, to US-Iran talks about Iraq's security. But he took a tough line, insisting the meeting will deal only with fixing American policies in Iraq, not changing Iran's. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's harsh tone appeared aimed at quieting criticism by hard-liners over the planned meeting in Baghdad with the United States -and signalled that it's unlikely the talks will make progress in reducing tensions between Washington and Tehran. The Iraqi government has been seeking the talks, hoping the two sides can find a way to ease Iraq's turmoil. Khamenei said Iran agreed to the "face-to-face negotiation" to "remind the US of its responsibilities and duties regarding security" and "give them an ultimatum." He did not specify what the ultimatum was.

- Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Saturday May 20, 2007, urged the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq adding: "Sooner or later the United States has to decide to withdraw its troops from Iraq because that is the cause for the continuation of terrorist activities." Before he said that the United States should admit to "the failure of its policies in Iraq." Iran has agreed to hold talks with the United States on Iraq late this month.

- Iran is secretly forging an alliance of Al Qaida, Sunni Arab militias and Shiite militias in Iraq for the purpose of carrying out a summer campaign against coalition forces the British Guardian newspaper printed on May 22, 2007. Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it's a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guards who are connected right to the top of the Iranian government.

- Iran's envoy to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, will represent his country in its talks with Washington over Iraq's security next week, Iran's state-run Arabic television Alalam reported on Tuesday May 22, 2007. Zarif will meet US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker in Baghdad on May 28 to discuss the security situation in Iraq at the ambassadorial level. But local Fars news agency on Tuesday quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini as saying that no one has been assigned as head of Iran's negotiators in talks with the United States.
- On May 28, 2007, Iran and the US have held their first bilateral public talks for almost 30 years. Iraq's security was the only item on the agenda. The US and Iranian envoys in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker and Hassan Kazemi Qomi, were locked in talks for four hours. The US was expected to present claims that Iran is providing technology and other support to Iraqi militia groups. Tehran was to remind the US that as occupiers of Iraq they have a legal responsibility to bring security.

- Three Iranian diplomats were briefly detained in Iraq, the US military said on Saturday June 16, 2007, but it played the incident down as a simple curfew break while Tehran condemned it as the latest case of harassment. Tension between the two longstanding foes is already high after the arrest earlier this year of five Iranians in northern Iraq, while Tehran is holding three US-Iranian citizens on security-related charges.

- On July 8, 2007, Iranian officials have for the first time been allowed to visit five prisoners held by US forces in Iraq. The five have been detained by the US military in northern Iraq since they were captured in Irbil in January. The US says the five are linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard and were backing militants in Iraq.

- The US and Iran confirmed on July 18, 2007, that they are to hold a second round of talks on the future of Iraq, in a rare sign of positive engagement. Against a backdrop of tension between Washington and Tehran over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons programme, the two sides are planning to meet in Baghdad to discuss ways of stabilising Iraq.

- US and Iranian envoys - Ryan Crocker and Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, met in Baghdad- held direct talks on Iraq's security crisis on July 23, 2007, their second bilateral meeting in almost three decades. The talks, described as heated, started after a plea from Iraq's prime minister to support stability in his country. Washington blames Tehran for fomenting violence in Iraq while the Iranians are demanding the withdrawal of US troops.

- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that Iran poses the biggest threat to US Middle East interests, as she begins a major regional tour on July 20, 2007. Ms Rice and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates are meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Arab ministers at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The tour is aimed at uniting US allies against Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. It is also trying to win support for a Mid-East peace conference planned for later this year.

- The United States and Iran have held a first meeting on August 6, 2007, of a new committee set up to seek an end to Iraq's sectarian violence, which Washington accuses Tehran of fuelling. Establishing the security sub-committee has been the main achievement so far of new face-to-face contacts between Washington and Tehran - enemies who have had no diplomatic ties for almost 30 years but were driven to the negotiating table by the threat of all-out civil war in Iraq.

- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki arrived in Iran on August 8, 2007, for talks which are expected to concentrate mainly on security and co-operation. Mr Maliki's visit comes days after Iran and the Unites States held a third round of talks in Baghdad on improving Iraqi security. Ties between the mainly Shia Iran and the Shia-dominated Iraqi government have become increasingly close lately.

- On August 8, 2007, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has met Iranian leaders for talks aimed at winning Tehran's unequivocal support for restoring security to his war-torn country. Mr Maliki, who has strongly backed the landmark discussions between Iran and the United States on Iraq's security, met Iranian Vice-President Parviz Davuodi and national security chief Ali Larijani.
- Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Tuesday August 28, 2007, that a power vacuum is imminent in Iraq and that Tehran was ready to help fill the gap. "The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," Ahmadinejad said." Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbours and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation." Although Ahmadinejad did not elaborate how Iran would fill an eventual power gap in Iraq, his bold remarks reflected what may be perceived as Iran's eagerness to have an increasing influence on its neighbour's political scene. His mentioning a Saudi role may have sought to allay regional fears that Ahmadinejad would want to dominate in Iraq.

- The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad said seven Iranians working in Iraq have been arrested by United States forces. Witnesses say they saw American troops taking a group of blindfolded and handcuffed men out of the Sheraton Hotel. Other soldiers were then seen carrying bags, including a briefcase and a holder for a laptop computer. The seven men who were arrested were part of a delegation from the Iranian Electricity Ministry. They were guests of the Iraqi Government and had come to Baghdad to help rebuild power stations. The Iranian embassy will be sending a formal letter of protest to the Iraqi Foreign Affairs Ministry.

- The US military admitted on August 29, 2007, to what it called a "regrettable incident" after it arrested a group of eight Iranians in Baghdad. The Iranians were held at a checkpoint and detained overnight. They were freed after the Iraqi government intervened.

- General David Petraeus, top US commander in Iraq, and US envoy to Baghdad Ryan Crocker both cited evidence on September 13, 2007, of Iranian involvement in attacks on US troops. Responding to their report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it made clear Iraq's security had improved, but Iran was a "troublesome neighbour".

- The US military said on September 19, 2007, it has arrested an Iranian officer accused of smuggling powerful roadside bombs into Iraq for Tehran's elite Quds force. The Iranian man was seized from a hotel in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah. The US military says the Iranian officer was involved in bringing explosives into Iraq that were specially-designed to wreck American vehicles and kill US soldiers-only American vehicles and American soldiers?

- The American military command increased its criticism of Iran on Sunday October 7, 2007, accusing that country's ambassador to Iraq of undisclosed membership in a Revolutionary Guard force and announcing the arrests of three men it described as Iranian agents responsible for kidnappings and weapons smuggling.

- President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said here on Sunday October 28, 2007, that the nations of Iran, Turkey, and Iraq are "friends and brothers." "The destiny of all of us is intertwined," Ahmadinejad told the visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan. Ahmadinejad said the enemies are planning to dominate all countries through a long-term plan and "do not want the regional countries including Iran, Turkey, and Iraq to be powerful and live in peace." The president said the presence of foreign troops in the region is a source of insecurity.

- Iran responded defiantly on October 25, 2007, to new sanctions imposed by the US targeting Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and three state-owned banks. The Iranian foreign ministry said the sanctions were doomed to failure.

- On November 9, 2007, the US military released nine of the 20 Iranian citizens it has detained there, including two held on suspicion of helping Shia militants saying that the men no longer posed a security risk and were "of no continued intelligence value". Tehran has dismissed US accusations that it is aiding insurgents in Iraq.

- The quantity of Iranian bomb-making components being found in Iraq is increasing despite a fall in attacks and 20 Iranian-trained agents are still operating south of Baghdad we were told on Sunday.

- On January 8, 2008, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described the actions of Iranian vessels which confronted the US Navy as provocative and dangerous. Iran played down the event. The US said five Iranian speedboats challenged three US ships in the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to blow them up. The Iranians withdrew as the US ships prepared to open fire.

- On Wednesday January 9, 2008, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said the US navy fabricated evidence that a convoy of its ships was harassed by Iranian speedboats in Gulf waters on Sunday. The US has released grainy footage, apparently showing small boats speeding near the American warships. In an audio recording, an Iranian radio operator appears to say "I am coming at you; you will explode". The Iranians dismissed the affair as being part of a US propaganda campaign against Tehran.

- Iranian state-run TV has broadcast video on January 10, 2008 showing a controversial naval stand-off between Revolutionary Guards patrols and US warships. There is no sign of threatening behaviour by the Iranian boats, as alleged by US officials who said their actions were dangerous and provocative. However, the four-minute clip does not appear to show the whole incident in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday.

- Iranian speedboats interfered in the passage of US warships in the Gulf's Strait of Hormuz on two previously undisclosed occasions, the US said on January 12, 2008. The USS Whidbey Island and USS Carr had to issue warnings to Iranian vessels in December.

- Iran is still training and funding insurgents attacking coalition troops in Iraq, the second highest US general serving in the country said Thursday January 17, 2008.

- On February 14, 2008, a day before the meeting was to be held, Iran has postponed talks with the US on how to end the violence in Iraq. Tehran had given no reason for its absence from the planned trilateral talks. Three previous sessions have all ended in deadlock, with both sides blaming the other for the continued fighting. The US accuses Iran of aiding radical Shia groups in Iraq, while Iran blames the violence on US presence in Iraq.

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received a warm welcome in Baghdad on Sunday March 2, 2008, the first ever visit to Iraq by an Iranian president. The visit marks the culmination of a process of normalisation between the two countries after the long war they fought in the 1980s. The two-day visit is also a strong show of support for the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. After talks with the Iraqi president, Mr Ahmadinejad said the visit opened a "new page" in Iran-Iraq relations.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the US on Sunday March 2, 2008, of bringing terrorism to the Middle East as he made a historic trip to Iraq which he said opened "a new page" in ties between the neighbours.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared for a freewheeling hour-long press conference at the home of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Monday March 3, 2008. He flattered Iraq, calling it "the land of education, manners; the land of peaceful living by people of differing religions; the land of idealism, poets, writers and scientists ... and artists." But he also harshly criticized the US, without naming it, urging America to head back.

- Iran said on Sunday April 27, 2008, that a U.S. attack on Iran is "unlikely" because the American military is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. This follows renewed U.S. accusations that the Islamic republic is funnelling weapons to Iraqi militias. Last week both Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defence Secretary Robert Gates accused Iran of stepping up its military support for Iraqi militias and said that all military options to deal with the situation were on the table.

- An Iraqi delegation confronted Iranian security officials with evidence that Tehran is providing support for Shiite militias battling Iraqi government forces we were told on Friday May 2, 2008. Names, training camps and cells linked to Iran were given to the Iranians who did not confess or admit anything. They claim they are not intervening in Iraq and they feel they are being unfairly blamed for everything going on.

- Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is to form a panel of security ministries to weed out any evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq's affairs we were told on Sunday May 4, 2008. He said Iraq had experienced Iranian interference in the past but "we have also experienced a positive role from Iran." Tehran strongly opposes the US military presence in Iraq, while Washington has repeatedly accused Iranian groups of arming and training Shiite militia groups in its neighbour. Iran strongly denies the allegations.

- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki arrived in Iran on June 7, 2008, for talks aimed at improving relations between the two neighbouring countries. He is expected to raise allegations of Iranian support for violent Shia militias in Iraq. Also on the agenda are the ongoing US-Iraqi talks over the two countries' future, long-term relationship.

- Reaction in Iran on November 18, 2008, to the approval by Baghdad of a controversial military pact with Washington has been mixed, with praise from the judiciary, a blast from conservative papers and silence from government.

- On December 12, 2008, we were told that there are signs that Iran has reduced its support for militant Shia groups in Iraq. There has been a big drop in the number of Iranian-made bombs in recent months, suggesting Iran has decided to rein in militants. Iran government has consistently denied arming or funding Iraqi militants.

- Iran on Thursday February 12, 2009, urged the release of its citizens held in Iraq by the US military, the request coming amid signs Tehran was warming to the new administration of President Barack Obama. The US military detained five Iranians in the city of Arbil in January 2007. In November that year, US officials said they would release two of the five, whom Iran said were diplomats.

- Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in Arbil on February 12, 2009, the capital city of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region for a visit. Mottaki's visit to the northern Kurdish region is the first for such high-ranking Iranian official, during which he is expected to meet with senior leaders of Kurdish regional government (KRG).

- US forces shot down an Iranian drone aircraft that ventured inside Iraq several weeks ago, we were told on Monday March 16, 2009, an incident that could highlight deep US-Iranian tensions. The US military in Iraq has declined comment. It has accused Iran of arming militants and meddling in neighbouring Iraq.

- Iran shelled Kurdish rebel positions in a remote area of northern Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdistan region Saturday May 2, 2009. They fired shells at the mountain area of Choma Sar. There were no casualties because it is a mostly unpopulated area. Border guards also spotted Iranian military helicopters bombing an area just inside Iran. The aircraft did not cross into Iraq.

- On July 9, 2009, American forces in Iraq have released five Iranian officials detained in the north of the country more than two years ago, removing a major source of friction between Tehran and Washington.

- Intelligence agents have killed four members of an armed Kurdish separatist group. Its agents ambushed and killed the four near the Kurdish town of Sardasht near the Iraqi border. The four had killed three policemen in a clash on December 26, 2009.

- Iranian artillery bombarded parts of northern Iraq's Kurdish region where Kurdish rebels opposed to Tehran are said to be holed up. On Saturday May 15, 2010 Iranians fired on the villages of Khanawa, Totma, Marado, Sourkan and Nalia Rach, causing extensive damage to agricultural land and losses of livestock. No one was killed or wounded in the shelling. The incident came three days after Iranian forces on the border with Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region mistook Iraqi guards for fighters from the anti-Tehran Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), resulting in armed clashes.

- Two Iranians arrested by U.S. forces in Iraq were released Friday May 21, 2010, a day after Iran allowed three young Americans detained in the Islamic Republic since July to meet with their mothers. The detainees were handed to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad. The moves are the latest hints of behind-the-scenes deal-making between Iran and the West over the fate of detainees.

- Four Iranian border guards were killed and five wounded by a grenade attack on their post at a city in the Kurdistan region that borders. The attack happened on Friday night April 1, 2011 in the city of Marivan. On March 25, news agencies reported two policemen were shot dead and three other people wounded in two "terrorist" shootings in the nearby city of Sanandaj. Security forces in the west of Iran often clash with guerrillas from PJAK, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which took up arms in 1984 for an autonomous homeland in southeast Turkey and shelters in Iraq's northeastern border provinces.

- Iran said on Sunday December 4, 2011, that it shot down a U.S. stealth drone, a RQ-170 Sentinel, the U.S. Air Force's stealth drone, near the country's eastern border, but the craft could instead be an unmanned reconnaissance plane that veered off course and crashed last week. American officials said they believe that after the remote pilots lost control of the aircraft, the drone crashed in an unknown location. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's command in Afghanistan said the Iranians may have been referring to an unmanned craft lost while flying a mission over western Afghanistan "late last week."

- Iraq evacuated an initial batch of 400 Iranian dissidents on Saturday February 18, 2012, from a base founded under Saddam Hussein, a first step towards expelling their entire group from Iraqi territory. The People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a group that calls for the overthrow of Iran's clerical rulers, took refuge at Camp Ashraf during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Ashraf now houses around 3,000 people. With Iraq's Shiite majority newly empowered following Saddam's fall in 2003, Baghdad has forged closer ties with its Shiite neighbour Iran, and the PMOI is no longer welcome here. It is clear that for Camp Ashraf residents there is no future for them inside Iraq. It's not easy for them to leave their place but this is the only peaceful alternative.

- Tehran on Tuesday October 30, 2012, asked Iraq not to stop and search its Syria-bound aircraft despite US pressure to do so, after Baghdad inspected Iranian planes twice this month. The Iraqi authorities stopped and searched a Syria-bound cargo plane from Iran for weapons on October 28, after carrying out a similar inspection on October 2. Both planes were allowed continue their journey on to Syria when their cargo was cleared

- An Iranian semi-official news agency reports an explosion from a land mine left over from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s has killed six people and injured one. The Sunday November 4, 2012, report by Mehr says the explosion happened on Saturday, during a minesweeping operation near the town of Marivan, some 300 miles  southwest of Tehran.

- An Iranian F-5 fighter jet has crashed near the Iraqi border on Sunday April 21, 2013, killing two pilots. The fighter crashed in highlands after it took off from a military air base in Dezful. We were told that two pilots were killed in the crash and that investigators arrived on the scene. ---

- Iran will consider joining forces with the United States to combat Sunni militants in Iraq, Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, said on Saturday June 14, 2014, in the clearest sign yet that the Islamic Republic is ready to set aside its decades-old enmity with Washington. The Iranian leader's cautiously worded remarks came at a news conference in Tehran amid rising speculation that the recent gains of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) could force the two adversaries to forge an alliance of convenience.

- Iran has sent 2,000 advance troops to Iraq in the past 48 hours to help tackle a jihadist insurgency we were told on Sunday June 15, 2014. The confirmation comes as the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said Iran was ready to support Iraq from the mortal threat fast spreading through the country, while the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, called on citizens to take up arms in their country's defence. Addressing the country on Saturday, Maliki said rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) had given "an incentive to the army and to Iraqis to act bravely". His call to arms came after reports surfaced that hundreds of young men were flocking to volunteer centres across Baghdad to join the fight against Isis. In Iran, Rouhani raised the prospect of Teheran cooperating with its old enemy Washington to defeat the Sunni insurgent group –which is attempting to ignite a sectarian war beyond Iraq's borders. Iran said 1,500 basiji forces had crossed the border into the town of Khanaqin, in Diyala province, in central Iraq on Friday, while another 500 had entered the Badra Jassan area in Wasat province overnight. There is growing evidence in Baghdad of Shia militias continuing to reorganise, with some heading to the central city of Samarra to defend two Shia shrines from Sunni jihadist groups surrounding them.

- Iran is offering support to Shia fighters in Iraq, though the Shia majority have good reasons of their own for fighting Sunni extremism. It is one of the more intriguing twists of the Iraq crisis: the prospect of cooperation between the US and Iran in the scramble to bolster Nouri al-Maliki's beleaguered government against Sunni extremists seeking to set up an Islamic emirate. Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, has made clear how concerned Tehran is about the success of Isis fighters who have captured swaths of territory –even suggesting on Saturday June 14, 2014, that Iran might work with the US to halt their advance. On Sunday, however, the tone was markedly more cautious, with an Iranian official warning that "any foreign military intervention in Iraq" would only complicate the crisis. Iraq has the capacity and necessary preparations for the fight against terrorism and extremism. It does look, though, as if Maliki can count on some discreet help. Qasim Suleimani, commander of the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has been visiting Baghdad –though Tehran quickly denied this. Suleimani has been a key, if shadowy, figure for the last decade, pulling strings and lubricating links with Iraqi politicians and militias, some with long experience in fighting US forces after the 2003 invasion. ---

Iran's supreme leader accused the United States on Sunday June 22, 2014, of trying to retake control of Iraq by exploiting sectarian rivalries, as Sunni insurgents drove toward Baghdad from new strongholds along the Syrian border. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's condemnation of U.S. action came three days after President Barack Obama offered to send 300 military advisers to help the Iraqi government. Khamenei may want to block any U.S. choice of a new prime minister after grumbling in Washington about Shi'ite premier Nuri al-Maliki. The supreme leader did not mention the Iranian president's recent suggestion of cooperation with Shi'ite Tehran's old U.S. adversary in defence of their mutual ally in Baghdad.

Despite the ongoing threat of Iraq descending into civil war and repeated warnings that the conflict could spread across the Middle East and beyond, Iran's spiritual leader has said he strongly opposes the idea of US intervention. On Sunday June 22, 2014, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted that the crisis is not a sectarian one, warning instead that the US is seeking to use the opportunity to seek an Iraq “under its hegemony and ruled by its stooges”. Swathes of northern Iraq have been seized by fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), which made further gains today, but Khamenei said he was against the US getting involved, with or without Iran's cooperation.

Deepening its involvement in the crisis in Iraq, Iran has sent three Russian-made attack planes to the Maliki government that could be deployed against the Sunni militants who have wreaked havoc on Iraqi military forces, American and Iraqi we were told on Tuesday July 8, 2014. Delivery of the Su-25 aircraft, which American officials said had already conducted missions in western and northern Iraq, is the latest step Iran has taken to help Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki battle the forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and expand its influence as Iraqi politicians struggle to form a new government. ---

Iran has supplied weapons and ammunition to Iraqi Kurdish forces, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said on Tuesday August 26, 2014, at a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish region. The direct arming of Kurdish forces is a contentious issue because some Iraqi politicians suspect Kurdish leaders have aspirations to break away from the central government completely. The move could also be seen by some as a prelude to Iran's taking a more direct role in a broader Iraqi conflict. The Kurds asked for weapons and Iran was the first country to provide them. Militants from the Islamic State have clashed with Kurdish peshmerga fighters in recent weeks and taken control of some areas on the periphery of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iran has supplied weapons and ammunition to Iraqi Kurdish forces, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said on Tuesday at a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish region.

The direct arming of Kurdish forces is a contentious issue because some Iraqi politicians suspect Kurdish leaders have aspirations to break away from the central government completely. The move could also be seen by some as a prelude to Iran's taking a more direct role in a broader Iraqi conflict.

"We asked for weapons and Iran was the first country to provide us with weapons and ammunition," Barzani said.

Militants from the Islamic State have clashed with Kurdish peshmerga fighters in recent weeks and taken control of some areas on the periphery of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Earlier in the day, a car bomb was detonated in a mainly Shi'ite district of eastern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 28, police and medical sources said. The bombing in the New Baghdad neighbourhood followed a series of blasts in the Iraqi capital on Monday that killed more than 20 people.

The Islamic State, which controls large swathes of northern and western Iraq, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the New Baghdad neighbourhood on Monday. It said in a statement the bombing was carried out as revenge for an attack against a Sunni mosque in Diyala on Friday, which killed 68 and wounded dozens.

The US has said it has no plans for any military co-operation with Iran to fight against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq. The US would also not "share intelligence" with Iran. Iran has traditionally opposed US involvement in Iraq, an Iranian ally. ---

On Tuesday December 2, 2014, we were told that the Iranian Air Force is bombing Islamic State (ISIS) targets inside Iraqi territory. It is an intensification of Iran's military involvement on the side of the Shia regime of its neighbor and most likely also a sign of its alleged coordination with the U.S. military which is leading the international coalition fighting ISIS. The first footage of an Iranian aircraft bombing inside Iraq was broadcast by Al Jazeera a few days ago in a report on a joint operation by the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, Iraq's army and Shia militias to recapture two Kurdish towns in northeastern Iraq, near the Iranian border.

Iran has conducted air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in eastern Iraq in recent days we were told on Wednesday December 3, 2014. The US, which has conducted its own air strikes in Iraq, was not coordinating with Iran.

The talks chaired by US Secretary of State John Kerry will discuss military strategy as well as ways to stem the flow of foreign fighters joining IS and how to counter its propaganda, officials told AFP news agency. Meeting in Brussels the NATO ministers will discuss ways to send "counter-messages" to de-legitimise IS, which has been adept at using social media to promote its cause.

The United States and Iran, which dueled viciously over Iraq during the years of U.S. occupation, suddenly seem to be working in tandem as they confront what both see as a common, even mortal enemy: Islamic State. Air strikes by Iran inside Iraq in recent days are only the latest manifestation of an increasingly muscular role by Tehran in Baghdad's war against Sunni militants. During the administration of George W. Bush, such actions would be denounced as meddling. Not now.

A senior Iranian official said on Friday December 5, 2014, his country’s air strikes against Islamic State extremists in Iraq were carried out at the request of the Baghdad government but was not coordinated with the US. The purpose of the strikes was “the defence of the interests of Iran’s friends in Iraq; they were requested by the Baghdad government and the Kurdish autonomous region in the north of the country, who are both fighting the Isis movement. There were not any coordination with the Americans but only with the Iraqi government. Iranian officials initially denied carrying out air strikes inside Iraq. The Pentagon later confirmed Iranian aircraft had been in action. The new American ambassador in Baghdad, Stuart Jones, said that, as a neighbour, Iran played an important role in the fight against Isis.

United Nations sanctions monitors have said photographs taken inside Iraq appear to confirm that the head of Iran's elite military Quds Force, one of Iran's most powerful people, has been in the country in violation of a U.N. travel ban. Qassem Soleimani, chief of the force which is an overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guards, has been subject to an international travel ban and asset freeze by the U.N. Security Council since 2007. A seven-page report by the U.N. Panel of Experts on Iran, seen on Monday December 9, 2014, said Soleimani "has been photographed and videoed on a number of occasions, allegedly in Iraq." Iran is supporting Iraqi government forces and Shi'ite militia against the militants, who have seized large swaths of Iraqi and Syrian territory. ---

Without the intervention of Iran’s paramilitary Basij force the Islamic State (ISIS) would have captured Baghdad, said Iran’s deputy parliamentary speaker Muhammad Hassan Abuturabi on Monday December 15, 2014. Iranian forces under the command of General Qasem Soleimani are believed to have played a decisive role defeating ISIS militants in northern Diyala, close to the border with Iran. US authorities also reported last month that Iranian fighter jets had bombed ISIS positions in Diyala.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard says a US drone strike has killed two of its advisers in Iraq (Ali Yazdani and Hadi Jafari), though the US said Monday March 30, 2015 it had struck only militants in its campaign against the Islamic State group. The strike happened March 23, just after the US-led coalition began airstrikes to support Iraqi forces trying to retake the Islamic State-held city of Tikrit.

On Saturday May 23, 2015, we were told that Iran has entered the fight to retake a major Iraqi oil refinery from Islamic State militants, contributing small numbers of troops –some operating artillery and other heavy weapons– in support of advancing Iraqi ground forces.

On FRIDAY May 22, 2015, we were told that Iran has entered the fight to retake a major Iraqi oil refinery from Islamic State militants, contributing small numbers of troops —some are operating artillery and other heavy weapons— in support of advancing Iraqi ground forces. Iranian forces have taken a significant offensive role in the Beiji operation in recent days, in conjunction with Iraqi Shiite militia. One official said Iranians are operating artillery, 122mm rocket systems and surveillance and reconnaissance drones to help the Iraqi counteroffensive.

Iranian security forces have arrested members of a jihadist cell linked with the Islamic State group near the country's western borders with Iraq, we were told Sunday November 22, 2015. ---

A barrage of rockets targeted a camp housing members of an Iranian opposition group near Baghdad on Monday July 4, 2016, injuring several people. The People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) members are waiting at the camp to be resettled outside the country. The camp was targeted in a rocket attack last year that killed at least 26 people. This time some 20 rockets were launched towards the camp from a truck in an area west of Baghdad, some of which fell short, wounding Iraqi civilians. More than 40 residents were wounded or injured in the missile attack on the camp. Iran-affiliated militias were blamed for carrying out the attack.

The Revolutionary Guard has killed two Kurdish insurgents who have been on the run since last week. The Thursday July 7, 2016, report says they were part of a larger group, 11 of whom were killed in clashes with Iranian forces last week in Iran's western Kurdistan province. The pair was killed on Tuesday and did not identify them, describing them as "counter-revolutionary bandits." Iranian forces clashed with Kurdish separatists on a number of occasions in June. That month, Iran said its forces killed dozens of insurgents in its western provinces bordering Iraq, a country with a large Kurdish minority.

Iranian forces killed three men allegedly linked to the Islamic State group Tuesday August 16, 2016, in a border town near Iraq. The men were found hiding in a house in Kermanshah province, about 60 miles from the Iraqi border. Iranian forces also arrested six men accused of sympathizing with IS and seized belts armed with explosives and a weapons cache.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards reported Tuesday October 4, 2016, that they had killed 12 militants of a “terrorist” group in the town of Salasbajani in the country’s western Kermanshah Province, near the Iraqi border. In addition a significant amount of weapons and ammunition were seized from the terrorists. Three Iranian soldiers were wounded in the confrontations. The armed group had plans to sneak into Iranian territory to cause insecurity.

Iranian Ministry of Interior announced on Thursday December 8, 2016, the killing of three members of the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS), who were trying to sneak to Iran to carry out terrorist operations. ---

Iran Monday March 6, 1917:

• A US Navy ship was forced to change course when fast-moving Iranian vessels approached it in the Strait of Hormuz. The USNS Invincible changed direction when the other vessels came within 600 yards before stopping.
• Three British Royal Navy vessels, accompanying the American ship at the time, were also forced to move. The Iranian vessel had tried to position itself between them. The Iranian ships are believed to belong to the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran Thursday April 5, 2019:

• Iran was responsible for the deaths of at least 608 American troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, according to a newly revised casualty estimate produced by the Pentagon.
• Tehran is to blame for 17 percent of all U.S. service personnel deaths between 2003 and 2011, having supplied weaponry to Shiite militias fighting U.S. occupation.

Iran Monday November 18, 2019:

• Iranian intelligence officers have co-opted much of the Iraqi government’s cabinet, infiltrated its military leadership, and even tapped into a network of sources once run by the CIA, leaked cables have revealed.
• So prevalent is Iran in Iraq’s affairs that Iranian officers effectively have free rein across key institutions of state and are central to much of the country’s decision-making.
• The intelligence haul largely reaffirms the widely known dominant role that Tehran has played inside the borders of its neighbour, but casts new light on how its agents operate and the extent to which each prime minister and cabinet member has been vetted to ensure they are serving the Islamic Republic’s interests.
• The cables, contained in 700 pages that both news organisations say have been verified, offer a snapshot of political life in Iraq in 2014-15, during the height of the Islamic State insurgency, when Iran stepped up its involvement in Iraq.
• They reveal that Iran’s ministry of information and security, along with the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, were the two main vehicles for Iran’s influence, identifying and running sources at the most senior levels of government, which kept the country pliant and aligned to Iran’s objectives.
• Though more than four years old, the cables give a contemporary insight into Iraq’s current political fissures and a protest movement that is threatening the seat of power – in part inspired by resentment towards Iran’s role in the country.

Nuclear activities
- Iran has been building huge nuclear facilities in the past five years that could produce material for nuclear weapons. As all nuclear reactors produce plutonium, what is the fuss? Two new sites near Natanz and Arak seem to be able to produce enriched uranium as well as plutonium.
- The opposition group "National Council of Resistance in Iran" revealed these facilities in August 2002 and commercial satellite photos confirmed the information. Iran did not inform the International Atomic Energy Agency of these facilities, as they should have done under international law. Iran leaders said that they are only interested in the peaceful use of atomic energy that is to produce electricity. Now the IAEA has been invited to visit them in February 2003.
- Iran is following in the footsteps of North Korea by announcing on February 10, 2003, that it intends to reprocess nuclear fuel. This could mean that Iran is preparing to build its own atomic bombs, even if the government denies it.
- On May 8, 2003, the Bush administration said that Iran is enriching uranium for military purpose and called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare Iran in violation of the non-proliferation treaty. The agency will issue a report next month following a visit by its director Mohamed ElBaradei. Sanctions could be imposed if Iran is enriching uranium after denying doing it. A sophisticated enrichment plant is under construction at Natanz, central Iran. It already has 160 functioning centrifuges in operation and about 1,000 more ready to be assembled. Iran said that they only want to produce enriched uranium for their civilian nuclear power stations.
- On May 15, 2003, the USA accused Iran of stockpiling chemical and biological home-produced weapons in addition to launching a military nuclear programme. Iran denied the allegation.
- America, and probably Europe and Russia, fear that Iran could develop an atomic bomb within the next few years. The USA is pressurising the Atomic Energy Agency to accuse Iran of non-compliance with the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The international board of this organisation will certainly refrain to go so far since it would mean involving the UN Security Council that could impose sanctions and isolation. They will only say that Iran has failed in its obligation to report its nuclear activities to the agency.
- On June 16, 2003, the EU was increasing its pressure on Iran to accept tougher inspections of its nuclear programme to convince the world that it is not developing atomic weapons. The EU said that if Iran does not comply there will be no progress on trade and political cooperation.
- On June 18, 2003, President Bush warned again Iran to stop their military nuclear programme and submit to the rules of the IAEA. Most other countries agree with the USA on this point. There is less agreement when George Bush supports and encourages the demonstrations against the rules of the clerics.
- On June 19, 2003, the UN increased its pressure on Iran to divulge more details of its nuclear programme. Iran is known to enrich uranium using thousand of centrifuges up to weapon grade. It is also building a heavy water power plant at Arak that can produce weapons-grade plutonium. UN inspectors have been forbidden to visit these installations. In conclusion the IAEA experts believe that Iran is five year away from being able to build a nuclear bomb and the Russians add that it could have nuclear-tipped missiles by 2006. American pre-emptive air strike on these installations are believed to be ruled out as they would create another international crisis especially with Russia that has contracts to help Iran build their nuclear industry.
- The British Foreign secretary, Jack Straw, asked Iran on June 29, 2003, to agree by September to let the IAEA nuclear inspectors do new and more intensive investigation in the country' alleged nuclear weapon programme. Britain and the USA believe that Iran is using its legitimate civilian nuclear industry to hide a banned nuclear weapon programme. Tehran denies it very strongly.
- On June 30, 2003, Iran invited the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohammed ElBaradei, to come to Tehran to discuss cooperation on nuclear matters and clarify some technical problems.
- On July 7, 2003, Iran said that they had concluded final tests on their long-range missiles, the Shahab-3, that could hit Israel and all the American forces in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. These weapons, that have a range of about 810 miles, will soon be deployed. On July 19, 2003, the media reported that UN inspectors might have found enriched uranium traces in Iran. This could indicate that Iran is enriching uranium, possibly for military purpose, although the traces found could be the result of contamination.
- On August 14, 2004, we were told that Iran is building a second 1,000 megawatts nuclear reactor at the Busherd nuclear centre with Russian help. It should be operative next year. It is also making feasibility studies for a 5,000 megawatts reactor because they need nuclear reactors as an alternative source of energy as its oil reserves decrease.
- In a report due to be published on August 27, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirm that traces of enriched uranium had been found in samples taken at a nuclear plant in Natanz. This could mean that Iran is enriching uranium for military purpose. Iran said that the samples came from contaminated equipment. The IAEA said that their report was not a conclusive proof of any violation. It looks like Pakistan sold Iran Dutch designs for enrichment centrifuges.
- On September 12, 2003, the Board of Governors of the IAEA gave an ultimatum to Iran to give all the information required on its nuclear activities before the end of next October. If Tehran does not comply, UN sanctions could be imposed. The Iranian delegates walked out of the meeting and threatened to boycott the IAEA, or even to get out of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. Bush, the usual cowboy, threatened to take military actions if Tehran does not come clear. However it is probable that he will not engage in any other war before the 2004 US presidential elections. Later, on September 15, Iran declared that it was fully committed to the Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty.
- On September 20, 2003, Britain, France and Germany tried to persuade Iran to top their work on their military nuclear programme and cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In exchange these countries offered to share their nuclear technology. Iran refused even if the Security Council could apply sanctions if Iran does not conform by October 31.
- On September 22, 2003, Iran showed six of it new ballistic missiles, Shahab-3, that have a range of 810 miles and able to hit Israel and most American military bases in the Gulf region. Later on, Iran said that it will scale down its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy.
- On September 26, 2003, reports said the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency found more traces of weapon-grade enriched uranium at an electric plant outside Tehran, Iran. Iran officials confirmed the information.
- On September 29, 2003, Tehran said that the IAEA inspectors that will visit Iran in the next few days would only have a limited access to their nuclear installations.
- On October 1, 2003,Iran has rejected the request of the European Union to comply fully with the IAEA and the international community demands regarding its military nuclear programmes.
- Official from the International Atomic Energy Agency will talk to their Iranian counterparts in Tehran before the October 31 deadline imposed on Iran to stop their military research programmes. A team of inspectors should arrive on October 4 but it is not certain that they will be given access to all the Iranian nuclear installations.
- On October 15, 2003, the head of the IAEA, Dr Mohammad ElBaradei, flew to Iran to try to prevent an international crisis over Tehran's alleged programme to build a nuclear bomb. On October 16, Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, said that his country would not build nuclear weapons and would continue to cooperate with the IAEA. On October 18, Iran opened talks in Tehran with the IAEA on inspection of its nuclear facilities. On October 19 Iran invited the foreign ministries of France Britain and Germany to come to Tehran to discuss their initiative to settle the Iran's nuclear programme's dispute. On October 21, Iran accepted the international demands and will show that it is not developing nuclear weapons. Iran told France, Germany and Britain that it would allow intrusive inspections. On October 23, Iran delivered a report to the IAEA, well in advance of the deadline of October 31, to detail its nuclear programme.
- On November 24, 2003, a compromise was reached at the IAEA between France, Germany and Britain on one side, and the USA on the other on how to deal with Iran's nuclear programme. A first European resolution was rejected by the US as too weak.
- On November 29, 2003, Iran said that it has the right to enrich uranium to produce nuclear power and they will eventually resume their work on it. This follow the decision of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency on November 26 not to ask the UN Security Council to sanction Iran for its Nuclear programme but to limit itself to censure Iran.
- On December 18, 2003, Iran signed a protocol to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to access and inspect Iran's nuclear facilities.
- On December 24, 2003, Iran said that his country would strike Israel with long-range missiles if Israel attacks its nuclear activities as they did in 1981.
- On February 13, 2004, the agreement between Iran and some European countries to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis was collapsing as negotiations between Britain, France, Germany, the IAEA and Iran that took place in Vienna ended in a deadlock. There was no agreement on freezing Iran's uranium enrichment activities and it became evident that Iran was still hiding some parts of its nuclear programmes including fast centrifuges required to enrich uranium. It is believed that Iran has about 500 centrifuges that could produce 500 kg of enriched uranium a year, enough to produce 30 nuclear weapons. Although the Iranian government agreed to stop working on their weapons nuclear programmes they still try to acquire and perfect a bomb-making capability.
- On February 24, 2004, it became clear that Iran had been engaged in secret nuclear experiments. Production of polonium, a metal used to detonate nuclear bombs, is only one of the new "discoveries" that also include more sophisticated centrifuges that those declared. In other words, Iran has been lying to the IAEA and the country could be referred to the UN Security Council that could impose sanctions.
- On March 7, 2004, European and US diplomats tried to find a common answer to Iran's stance on its nuclear activities before the meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The meeting will discuss the latest findings of Iran's nuclear activities.
- On March 10, 2004, the governing board of the IAEA was close to accuse formally Iran of enriching uranium for nuclear bombs. A majority of the mainly from western countries country members (19 on 35) could formalise their accusation and ask the UN Security Council to act but some European countries, including Germany, are not ready to go so far. Iran has been asked to dismantle its enrichment equipment but so far has refused to do it. It is well known that they obtain the know-how from Pakistan.
- On March 31, 2004, the British government admitted that its diplomatic initiative to try to prevent Iran making nuclear weapons is not working. This follows the announcement by Iran that a uranium enrichment facility had been inaugurated at Isfahan.
- On June 16, 2004, Iran threatened to resume enriching uranium for its military nuclear programmes after the criticisms of its failure to fully collaborate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
- On June 27, 2004, Iran said that they would resume parts of their nuclear programmes, mainly the construction of the centrifuges used for enriching uranium. This is Iran's reaction to the censure decided by the IAEA a few days ago.
- British, French and German officials met their Iranian counterpart in Paris on July 29, 2004 to try to save the agreement by which Iran had promised to stop the development of its nuclear weapons programme. Nobody expect positive results.
- On July 31, 2004, Iran said that it had restarted the building of uranium enrichment centrifuges. They denied the American assertion that it was an attempt to produce enriched weapons-grade uranium; they repeated that they only want to produce enriched uranium for nuclear power stations, that is, slightly enriched uranium unsuitable for bombs.
- On September 9, 2004, we were told that Iran is likely to be given an ultimatum that it must suspend all uranium enrichment activities or face being reported to the United Nations Security Council.
- On September 13, 2004, the IAEA is to decide on a draft resolution giving Iran a deadline to show it does not have a nuclear weapons programme. Germany, France and UK have expressed alarm that Tehran has stepped back from a promise it gave last year to stop its uranium enrichment efforts. They want the IAEA to give Iran until November to dispel suspicions about its nuclear. Iran says abandoning uranium enrichment is "out of the question" but it is prepared to give assurances that it will not build nuclear weapons.
- On September 17, 2004, the US has reached agreement with France, Britain and Germany on a draft UN resolution calling for Iran to end its uranium enrichment programme. The text says the UN's atomic agency should decide in November whether to take further action against Iran. It comes a day after a US nuclear monitor published satellite images of an Iranian weapons facility it said may be used for work on nuclear arms.
- A leading Iranian official has told the BBC on September 18, 2004, that Tehran is prepared to give further assurances that its uranium enrichment programme will be peaceful. Head of the Iranian delegation made the pledge to the International Atomic Energy Agency Hossein Mousavian. The US, Britain, France and Germany have submitted a resolution to the IAEA which calls on Iran to freeze all enrichment activities. Some other board members find that difficult to accept.
- On Tuesday September 21, 2004, Iran announced it would go ahead and make the precursor materials necessary to produce enriched uranium. Its leaders defied a warning on Saturday from the 35-nation board of the IAEA that they must not enrich the nearly 40 tons of raw uranium. The enriched uranium could be used for either peaceful nuclear power (low enrichment) or for bombs (high enrichment). Under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has a right to produce uranium for nuclear power station. But the IAEA says Iran won't need such fuel for 10 years. And it found out last year that Iran broke its treaty obligations by secretly running an enrichment program, and clandestinely buying nuclear technology and know-how. Two years from now Iran could be a bigger security issue for the United States that Iraq.
- Iran says it will continue a dialogue with three European countries, after holding talks with them in Vienna on October 21, 2004, on concerns over its nuclear programme. In closed-door talks Britain, France and Germany offered incentives to Iran to give up its plans to enrich uranium. The offer includes a commitment to resume stalled talks on a EU-Iran trade agreement. An Iranian official said Tehran will consider the European offer, but gave no sign it is about to accept.
- On October 24, 2004, Iran rejected European demands that it halt its uranium enrichment activities as well as all research work related to it.
- On October 31, 2004, the Iranian parliament approved a bill that requires the government to resume uranium enrichment.
- On November 14, 2004, Iran agreed to freeze its uranium enrichment programme in a deal with the European Union represented by France, Germany, and Britain.
- Britain, France and Germany announced on November 15, 2004, to have reached a formal agreement with Iran to suspend production of weapon-grade enriched uranium. This agreement will last while Iran is negotiating with the European Union the possible benefits it may receive. This is a diplomatic victory for Europe and, as usual in these cases the US downplays it. The IAEA insisted that they did not find any evidence that Iran had a nuclear weapon programme.
- On November 17, 2004, the on-going US State Secretary is now saying that, according to US Intelligence, Iran is adapting missiles to deliver nuclear weapons. It looks like his previous claim the Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Can we trust him? He is a big disillusion, and it is time for him to go.
- On November 22, 2004, Iran said that it had stopped all its uranium enrichment research activities as agreed with the European Union. This is only a suspension and work could resume if the EU's promises of economical and technical aid does not materialise.
- On November 25, 2004, Iran decided to keep about 24 centrifuges working after it had agree, with the European Union, to stop all work on uranium enrichment. These machines will be making some tests they say are necessary for their enrichment programme for nuclear power stations.
- On November 26, 2004, Iran refused to sign a deal with the EU to stop all its uranium enrichment facilities. Their Foreign Minister said that the draft project of agreement was unacceptable to his government, and he threatened to resume all enrichment activities.
- On November 28, 2004, Iran changed its mind again and accepted a deal with the EU. All their centrifuges will stop working including the last 20 that Iran wanted to use for research and development.
- The Americans still want to refer Iran to the UN Security Council and impose sanctions. All the other countries are satisfied so sanctions will not be approved.
- On November 29, 2004, the IAEA agreed with Iran on a plan to stop all uranium enrichment activities.
- On December 2, 2004, an Iranian opposition group in London, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said that Iran is developing missiles capable to hit Western Europe and that they are developing chemical and nuclear warheads to arm them. Did not already hear the same about Iraq before?
- On January 16, 2005, there were unconfirmed reports that since last summer the US has conducted" secret reconnaissance missions" in Iran. The aim was to identify as many as 40 suspected nuclear, chemical and missile sites. This knowledge would facilitate their destruction by air strikes or commando raids.
- On February 9, 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran it faces possible UN sanctions unless it accepts a European deal on its nuclear programme. Britain, France and Germany have offered Iran trade concessions if it gives up its nuclear programme.
- On February 12, 2005, Iran said it would not give up its plans to build a heavy-water nuclear reactor. European negotiators had offered to replace a heavy-water nuclear reactor with a light-water reactor. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi dismissed the offer, saying Iran wanted to be a major player in nuclear fuel supply in 15 years.
- On February 15, 2005, Iran said that the US has been flying unmanned surveillance drones over the country's nuclear sites for a "long time" seeking evidence of nuclear weapons development.
- On March 12, 2005, Iran rejected a new American offer of economic incentives to the Islamic state to give up its nuclear enrichment programme. President George W Bush had announced the major change in US policy the day before saying that the US would back European talks to resolve the standoff over Iran's nuclear issue. His Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, announced the lifting of a decade-long block on Iran's membership of the World Trade Organization, and objections to Tehran obtaining parts for commercial planes.
- On March 23, 2005, Iran is maintaining its hard-line stand over its right to develop a peaceful nuclear programme as talks between Iran and the EU open in Paris. Hossein Mousavian, a senior Iranian nuclear negotiator, said Tehran would reconsider its position on the talks if no real progress was made.
- On March 30, 2005, the US has dismissed a tour by journalists of a nuclear facility in Iran as a "staged media event". The state department said Iran should be answering questions about what it is doing at the Natanz site, the existence of which was kept secret until 2002. Journalists accompanied Iran's president to the site.
- Iran said on May 10, 2005, that it will resume uranium enrichment activities within the next few days. Germany has said such a move could lead to Iran being referred to the United Nations Security Council.
- The UK, France and Germany will hold fresh talks with Iran over its nuclear programme, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on May 18, 2005. The European Union has threatened to back a US call for UN sanctions if Iran resumes the programme.
- On June 16, 2005, the IAEA accused Iran to tell lies about its nuclear research. According to the agency Iran does not only produce enriched uranium, but also purify its plutonium possibly for weapon uses.
- Iran said on July 27, 2005, it will resume some controversial nuclear activities regardless of EU proposals. Mohammad Khatami, the outgoing president, said he hoped European diplomats would understand the necessity to resume uranium enrichment activities, but Iran would begin again in any case.
- Iran has brought forward to July 31, 2005, its deadline for European states to submit their proposals to resolve the dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme. Iran would resume limited uranium conversion if the deadline was not met. France, Germany and the UK have said any resumption of nuclear activity would torpedo the long-running talks. Iran suspended all uranium conversion and enrichment activities in November 2004 as a result of international pressure.
- Iran said on August 1, 2005, that it is to resume the processing of uranium at a nuclear plant, breaking seals placed on the facility by the UN nuclear watchdog in late 2004. A letter was sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) explaining Tehran's reasons. The European Union, which failed to respond to an Iranian deadline to re-open talks, has urged restraint.
- On August 5, 2005, the European Union has submitted to Iran a set of proposals aimed at ending the crisis over its nuclear programme. The plan is said to involve recognition of Tehran's right to nuclear power in return for a number of guarantees. Iran is considering its response, but the government remained committed to resuming uranium enrichment activities next week.
- On August 6, 2005, Iran rejected the latest European proposals backed by the USA. The package includes a proposal to let Iran develop a civilian nuclear programme if it halts uranium enrichment activities.
- Inspectors from the UN's nuclear watchdog have arrived on August 8, 2005, at Iran's main uranium conversion plant, which is set to restart operations. The team are due to install surveillance equipment and oversee the removal of seals at the plant.
- The UN nuclear watchdog is to hold a crisis meeting on August 9, 2005, after Iran's resumption of fuel cycle work at its uranium conversion facility. The IAEA confirmed that work had begun at the plant near the city of Isfahan.
- On August 10, 2005, Iran has broken all the remaining UN seals at its nuclear plant at Isfahan, making it fully operational. The removal was completed under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has installed equipment to monitor activity.
- The UN's atomic watchdog has adopted on August 11, 2005, a resolution calling on Iran to halt nuclear fuel development, which it resumed this week. It leaves the door open for further talks if Iran complies. It does not call for action by the UN Security Council. Iran denounced the resolution as a tool to put it under pressure and vowed it would not bend.
- On August 24, 2005, the US has criticised an independent investigation that found no evidence that Iran was working on a secret nuclear weapons programme. The report said traces of bomb-grade uranium in Iran's nuclear facilities came from contaminated Pakistani equipment, not Iranian activities.
- US President George W Bush said on September 17, 2005, he believes Iran will be referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions if it does not "live up to its agreements on uranium enrichment". Russian President Vladimir Putin also said he agreed that Iran should not become a nuclear power but Iran argues its nuclear programme is only for civilian purposes. The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is due to meet in Vienna on Monday and could decide to refer Iran to the Security Council. Russia, which has the power of veto on the Security Council, has been calling for more diplomacy.
- Straw, the British Foreign Office Secretary, described on September 18, 2005, as "unhelpful" the Iranian president's assertion that Iran has a right to produce nuclear energy. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN his country had an "inalienable right" to produce nuclear energy - but said Islam precluded Iran having atomic weapons.
- Western nations, on September 19, 2005, are expected to press for a tough line on Iran at a meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog in Vienna. The US and the EU want Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council, following its decision to resume the conversion of uranium for nuclear fuel. The board of the International Atomic Energy Authority has warned Iran to stop conversion, but there is no unanimity on bringing in the Security Council.
- Russia and China openly opposed Western efforts on September 21, 2005, to take Iran to the UN Security Council over Tehran's controversial nuclear activities. The US and EU have been pressing for Iran to be referred to the Security Council, which can impose sanctions. But Moscow and Beijing may block the plan, with Russia saying the current situation was "not irreversible".
- The EU's "big three" have backed down on September 22, 2005, from a demand that the UN nuclear watchdog should immediately report Iran to the Security Council. Diplomats from France, the UK and Germany said the shift came amid opposition from Russia and China. They are now proposing that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna should only implicitly threaten Tehran with such action.
- The UN nuclear watchdog has passed a resolution on September 24, 2005, that paves the way for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council over its nuclear ambitions. The IAEA did not however set a date for reporting Iran to the council. Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei has said there is still room for diplomacy. Iran criticised the IAEA for acting without consensus -12 members abstained from voting on the EU motion.
- The UK foreign secretary said on September 28, 2005, military action is inconceivable against Iran, and he hopes diplomacy can solve deadlock over its nuclear programme. US President George W Bush has refused to rule out military strikes.
- The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has accused Iran on October 15, 2005, of spending 18 years trying to develop nuclear weapons while lying about its intentions. He added that Iran wanted nuclear arms to intimidate the rest of the Middle East and possibly supply them to terrorists. He said Iran had violated its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has openly clashed with Russia on October 15, 2005, over whether Iran can pursue a nuclear energy programme. Ms Rice said Iran needed to recognise its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, said that Tehran had the right to enrich uranium. Iran and Russia have close energy ties and while President Vladimir Putin has indicated he does not want Iran to have a weapons programme, Moscow has shown little appetite for punishing Tehran.
- On November 7, 2005, the European Union is studying a call by Iran for the resumption of nuclear talks. The call came in a letter from chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani to the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain. It follows the breakdown of talks in August, when Iran defied international calls and restarted uranium conversion. A recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution paved the way for the referral of Iran to the United Nations Security Council for non-compliance with its nuclear commitments. However, the agency did not set a date for this.
- On November 18, 2005, President Bush and President Putin urged Iran to accept a compromise on its nuclear programme. The main point would be to allow Iran to enrich uranium in Russia but only to a level suitable for its nuclear reactor programme.
- On November 18, 2005, the IAEA said that Iran was offered information from Pakistan in 1987 on how to build an atomic bomb. The drawing showing the shape of the required core shape were offered by Dr Abdul Qadeerr Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.
- On November 20, 2005, the Iranian Parliament approved a bill requiring the government to refuse inspection of their national atomic facilities if the IAEA refers Iran to the UN Security Council for sanctions.
- On December 24, 2005, Russia offered Iran to enrich their uranium for nuclear reactors in Russia. This would remove suspicion that Iran is trying to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Iran has not yet answered to the offer.
- On January 3, 2006, Iran said that they would resume after more than two years their research programmes on uranium enrichment in the next few days. The US and the EU are not too happy. All the same why can they pretend to stop a country to do what they do themselves. It is perhaps something like: "Do as we say, do not do as we do!)
- On January 5, 2006, Iran cancelled a meeting with the IAEA in Vienna that should have dealt with its uranium enrichment programme. No reason was given except that the chief Iranian negotiator went back to Tehran.
- On January 9, 2006, Iran should resume its research activities on uranium enrichment. The UN inspectors will remove the seals on part of the equipment.
- Iran broke the UN seal on at least three of its nuclear facilities on Tuesday January 10, 2006. This means that they will really restart their uranium enrichment programmes. The US and the Europeans (France, Britain and Germany) believe that they do it to produce nuclear bomb grade enriched uranium. Iran says that they only want to produce enrich uranium for their nuclear power stations (using low enrichment). Who is right? Can we trust the US and Britain more than Iran after what they said and did about Iraq?
- On January 12, 2006, the EU Foreign Minister Meeting decided to refer Iran to the UN Security Council if it does not stop work on its uranium enrichment programmes. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, backed the proposal.
- On January 16, 2006, a meeting took place in London to discuss the Iran's decision to restart its uranium enrichment programmes. Britain, France, Germany and the USA want the case referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions. Russia and China are more prudent and it is far from certain that they would approve them. And they have veto power.
- On January 18, 2006, the pressure is increasing on Iran, as Europe and the USA want Tehran to stop their uranium enrichment programmes. Europe and the USA rejected an Iranian offer to resume the discussions that ended after Tehran broke the IAEA seals on their equipments and restarted their work.
- On January 20,2006, we were told that Iran is moving its assets out of European banks. The aim is to protect tem from possible UN sanctions. Moreover Iran -the second producer of oil after Saudi Arabia- asked OPEC to reduce the oil production and threatened to stop oil delivery if sanctions are imposed. This would increase the oil price all over the world.
- On January 26, 2006, China gave its support to the Russian proposal to allow Iran to operate civilian nuclear facilities as long as Russia and the IAEA are in full control of the fuel. President Bush and Europe also agreed. Iran would be able to operate its uranium enrichment facilities in Isfahan but under Russian and IAEA control. Iran has not approved the proposal yet.
- The head of the IAEA, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, said on January 27, 2006, that the USA should provide Iran with nuclear reactors. He also said that Iran should declare a moratorium on uranium enrichment for at least 8 years.
- On January 28, 2006, Russia and Iran agreed in principle to allow other countries to participate in the plan to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia.
- On January 30, 2006, it seems more or less certain that Iran will be called before the UN Security Council in relation to its decision to restart it uranium enrichment activities. It loos like the USA and the European countries have reached a compromise with Russia and China to this effect.
- On February 1, 2006, Iran threatened immediate retaliation if the IAEA refers their country to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. If there were any military action, Tehran would fight back with all its means. First of all Iran would expel the IAEA inspectors and would stop any kind of voluntary cooperation with the west.
- Iran could abandon the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if forced to limit nuclear activities, its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on February 11, 2006, if the rights of the Iranian people were violated. On 4 February, the IAEA decided to report Iran to the UN Security Council over its disputed nuclear programme. The NPT, which has 187 signatories, was created to prevent new nuclear states emerging, to promote co-operation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to work towards nuclear disarmament.
- On February 13, 2006, Iran has postponed Tuesday's talks with Russia indefinitely on a proposal to enrich uranium on Russian soil, amid reports that Tehran has resumed its own small-scale enrichment.
- A senior nuclear negotiator has confirmed on February 14, 2006, that Iran's resumption of small-scale uranium enrichment work began at Natanz last week.
- On February 16, 2006, France has for the first time explicitly accused Iran of using its nuclear programme as a cover for clandestine military nuclear activity. Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told that no civilian programme could explain Iran's activity.
- On February 17, 2006, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to keep up strong diplomatic pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme. Mr Blair said the issue should be tackled "strongly but through the diplomatic means". Ms Merkel said Iran had "crossed the red line" by resuming its controversial programme this month.
- Iranian officials are in Moscow on February 20, 2006, to discuss a proposed Russian compromise aimed at defusing nuclear tensions. Under the plan, Tehran could receive uranium enriched on Russian soil. But as the talks began, Iran's foreign minister said in Brussels that Tehran reserved the right to pursue nuclear research even if it accepts the deal.
- Iran is forging ahead with nuclear enrichment by feeding uranium gas into centrifuge "cascades", a report by the United Nations' atomic said on February 28, 2006. Iran has begun using a 10-centrifuge machine -or cascade- and is testing a 20-machine version, chief inspector Mohamed ElBaradei said. Iran says its plans are peaceful, but Mr ElBaradei said he could not be sure.
- On March 7, 2006, China has urged Iran to co-operate with the UN's nuclear agency to settle a standoff over its nuclear programme. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is meeting in Vienna for talks that could pave the way to UN Security Council action against Iran.
- On March 8, 2006, UN Ambassador John Bolton called for continued international pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear programme. His remarks came after the UN nuclear agency, the IAEA, decided to send a report on Iran's nuclear activity to the UN Security Council. Iran said it had done all it could to reach a peaceful settlement but the US had "hijacked" the diplomatic process. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the agency should continue to lead efforts to resolve the dispute.
- Iran said on March 12, 2006, that the Moscow's compromise proposal on its nuclear programme is "off the agenda", after the Islamic Republic was reported to the UN Security Council. Russia has sought to persuade Iran to move its enrichment programme to Russian territory, which would allow closer international monitoring.
- On March 30, 2006, Iran has been given 30 days to return to the negotiating table or face isolation, foreign ministers from six major powers have warned. Iran has rejected the call, and insists its nuclear activities are peaceful. However, the ministers at the talks in Berlin said the US, Russia, China and Europe remained intent on a "diplomatic solution" to the dispute.
- Russia has warned on March 29, 2006, it will not support any attempts to use force to resolve the standoff over Iran's controversial nuclear programme. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "exclusively political methods should be used".
- The UN Security Council has unanimously approved a statement on Wednesday March 29, 2006, urging Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. It follows weeks of wrangling between the US, UK, Russia, China and France over the details of a text that sets out the UN's response to the issue. The agreement - which is not legally binding - comes ahead of Thursday's meeting of foreign ministers from the five members, as well as Germany, in Berlin to discuss a future strategy on Iran. It was reached after France and the UK drew up a third version of a draft statement that made concessions to Russia and China.
- On April 10, 2006, the US has rejected suggestions that it might be preparing to use nuclear weapons against targets in Iran. A report in The New Yorker magazine said the US was increasing planning for a possible air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. It said one option being considered was a tactical nuclear strike against underground nuclear sites. Dan Bartlett, a senior adviser to President George W Bush, said the report was "ill-informed".
- US President George W Bush has dismissed on April 11, 2006,as "wild speculation" a media report suggesting he is considering using nuclear weapons against Iran. But Mr Bush insisted the US was focused on finding a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Earlier, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused to back down on demands to freeze uranium enrichment.
- On April 12, 2006, Iran is facing growing calls from the international community to halt its nuclear activities after announcing it has successfully enriched uranium. The US secretary of state said it was time for "strong steps" by the UN, and her Russian counterpart said Iran was going "in the wrong direction". Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is to report back to the UN Security Council at the end of this month on whether Tehran is complying with its demand to stop all enrichment activity by 28 April or face isolation. Iran could be in a position to produce enough fissile nuclear material to make a nuclear bomb within 3-5 years, according to the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.
- Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on April 13, 2006, that Iran will not halt work on its nuclear programme. He added the country would not back down "even one iota", despite mounting international pressure after it announced that it has enriched uranium. The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, is in Tehran for talks aimed at defusing the standoff. He said he hoped to convince Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment "until outstanding issues are clarified".
- Senators in the US said on April 16, 2006, the Bush administration should hold direct talks with Iran on its nuclear programme. The calls for bilateral talks contrast with the president's multilateral approach through the UN. Richard Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, also said it was too soon to press for sanctions.
- Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking after US media reports last week said the US might take military action to try to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons, on April 18, 2006, has warned his country's military would deal with any attack by "cutting the hand of the aggressor".
- Russia has ruled out sanctions against Iran unless there is proof that its nuclear programme is not peaceful. Mikhail Kamynin of the foreign ministry said on April 21, 2006, Russia would have to see "concrete facts" proving military intent.
- On April 22, 2006, Washington has asked Moscow to reconsider selling Iran anti-aircraft missiles as the crisis over its nuclear programme continues. Russia plans to sell Tehran 29 TOR M1 mobile surface-to-air missile defence systems in a deal said to be worth about US $700 million. The US also urged other states like China to review defence sales to Iran.
- Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said on April 25, 2006, that his country will suspend contacts with the UN's nuclear watchdog if sanctions are imposed. He also said Iran would "hide" its nuclear programme if it was attacked.
- Iran has ignored a UN Security Council call to suspend all nuclear fuel enrichment, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, has concluded on April 28, 2006. The UN wants the research halted amid Western fears - denied by Iran - that Tehran might develop nuclear weapons. US Ambassador John Bolton said he would now push for Iran to face mandatory UN demands to stop its nuclear work. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said earlier Iran did not "give a damn" about UN resolutions over its research.
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has again vowed on April 29, 2006, never to give up Iran's nuclear programme adding the pursuit of peaceful nuclear technology was Iran's "absolute right... our red line". He was speaking after the UN's atomic watchdog said Iran had failed to meet a Security Council deadline to suspend its uranium enrichment programme. A senior Iranian official meanwhile has said Iran will allow snap checks to resume if the council drops the case.
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has again on April 30, 2006 vowed never to give up Iran's nuclear programme. Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said UN experts could conduct snap inspections of its nuclear facilities if the issue was returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
- On April 30, 2006, Iraq has accused Iranian forces of entering Iraqi territory and shelling Kurdish rebel positions in the north. Iranian troops bombed border areas near the town of Hajj Umran before crossing into Iraq. The Iranians targeted the PKK, a Kurdish group believed to have links with anti-Iranian Kurdish fighters that have waged a 15-year insurgency against Turkey.
- Iran has predicted on May 2, 2006, Russia and China will block any move to impose sanctions over its nuclear programme. Top diplomats from all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, as well as Germany, are in Paris for talks on the issue.
- On May 3, 2006, a top US diplomat has said he expects European states to prepare a binding UN resolution on Iran's nuclear programme that could allow for sanctions. However, US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns added that diplomacy still offers the best solution to the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Senior diplomats from the Council's five permanent members ended a meeting in Paris on Tuesday without agreement. A meeting of foreign ministers is due next week to seek a unified stance.
- On May 4, 2006, the UN Security Council is discussing a resolution introduced by Western countries calling on Iran to suspend enrichment or face further action. The ambassadors of France and the US said they hoped the council would approve the resolution soon. Despite Russian and Chinese opposition, the draft falls under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, which could, after further decisions, allow for sanctions.
- On May 5, 2006, Iran has accused the US and its allies of creating an artificial crisis by tabling a UN resolution calling for a halt to its uranium enrichment. The five permanent UN Security Council members are discussing the resolution, which the UK and France also back. Both Russia and China are opposed to strong action.
- On May 7, 2006 Iran's parliament has threatened to force a withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if Western pressure over its programme increases. The threat came in a statement made a day before key UN members discuss a tough draft resolution on the issue. A withdrawal would mean the country's programme could no longer be inspected by the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.
- On May 13, 2006, the European Union is drawing up new proposals to offer to Iran to get it to halt its nuclear programme. The package, believed to include freer trade and political incentives, is to be discussed by permanent UN Security Council members and Germany next week.
- Iran said on May 14, 2006, it will reject any offer to resolve the dispute over its nuclear programme that forces it to halt its "peaceful activities".
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed on May 17, 2006, a possible European offer of incentives to induce Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment programme. He likened the incentives - thought to be discussing plans to offer Iran a light-water reactor- which European negotiators are said to be considering, to the offer of "walnuts and chocolates" in exchange for gold.
- Iran's foreign minister has said his country is ready to talk to the US -but insisted that it will continue with uranium enrichment. The US on Wednesday May 31, 2006, said it would join EU states in talks if Iran first halted sensitive nuclear activities. It was a major US policy change and an attempt to regain the initiative in the Iran nuclear issue. The world's major powers are meeting in Vienna later to discuss a package of incentives to offer to Iran.
- Iran is determined to have a nuclear weapon and could possess one within 10 years, the top US intelligence chief said on June 2, 2006.
- On June 4, 2006, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned that fuel shipments from the Gulf region could be disrupted if the US makes a "wrong move". In a speech on state TV, Ayatollah Khamenei also said accusations that Iran intended to make a nuclear bomb amounted to a "sheer lie". He insisted Iran would not give up its right to produce nuclear fuel. Tehran has agreed to study proposals drawn up by six world powers to defuse the row over Iran's nuclear programme.
- On June 16, 2006, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has welcomed a package of incentives offered to resolve the dispute over its nuclear programme as "a step forward". He said he had instructed his colleagues to consider the offer by the US, Europe, Russia and China carefully. The package is thought to include trade and security guarantees, if Iran suspends uranium enrichment and placates fears it is building a bomb. The US has described Mr Ahmadinejad's remarks as "encouraging".
- The US national security adviser has called on June 23, 2006, for Iran to respond as early as next week, before a cycle of G8 meetings began on 29 June, to a UN package of incentives on its nuclear programme. On Wednesday Iran's president said a reply would come on 22 August.
- Iran's Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, was in Germany on June 24, 2006, for talks to tackle the standoff over Tehran's nuclear programme. The talks will focus on a package of incentives offered by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany.
- Iran's supreme leader said on June 28, 2006, talking to the US about his country's nuclear activities would hold no benefits. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran was ready to ease concerns over its uranium enrichment but would not suspend it. Iran will not negotiate with anyone over the undeniable right of nuclear technology and using it, said Ayatollah Khamenei adding" If they recognise this right, we are ready to negotiate over supervision controls."
- Talks between the EU and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme have got off to a good start, a EU official said on July 7, 2006. Iran would give a UN meeting a "substantial response" to an incentives package agreed by world powers in June. Earlier the UN nuclear watchdog chief said the world was "impatient" at Iran's failure so far to respond. Mohamed ElBaradei said the earlier Tehran gave an answer on the offer, the better it would be for everyone.
- Foreign ministers from the major powers have agreed on July 13, 2006, to refer Iran back to the UN Security Council for possible punishment over its nuclear programme. The decision by the Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany could lead to economic sanctions. Ministers meeting in Paris said Tehran has not signalled it was seriously considering incentives designed to get it to abandon uranium enrichment. But any threats of punishment by the UN would not include military force.
- US President George W Bush, who is visiting Germany, said on July 14, 2006, the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme can still be resolved diplomatically. Mr Bush said it would be dangerous if Iran had nuclear weapons and said the world was united in opposing this.
- On Saturday July 29, 2006, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have agreed on a draft resolution giving Iran until 31 August to suspend uranium enrichment. The draft was circulated to all 15 members of the Council and could be voted on as early as Monday. The US envoy to the UN, John Bolton, said the Council would consider sanctions if Iran missed the deadline. But Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin stressed that the draft resolution did not contain the threat of sanctions. The draft does not mention sanctions but is a clear signal to Iran that it is facing its last best chance to gain international approval for its nuclear ambitions.
- Iran has asserted its right to produce nuclear energy on August 2, 2006, a day after the United Nations passed a resolution demanding it suspend uranium enrichment. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he would not bow to "the language of force and threats".
- Iran is ready to discuss the suspension of its uranium enrichment programme as demanded by Western powers, the country's foreign minister has said on August 16, 2006.

- On August 23, 2006, China and Russia have said negotiations are the only way of easing tension over Iran's nuclear programme, following Tehran's offer of talks on the issue. Beijing said it hoped all parties would show calm, patience and flexibility so that negotiations may be resumed. Iran has offered "serious talks" with six world powers in response to a UN demand that it stop enriching uranium.

- The US lacks reliable intelligence on Iran's weapons capability, including its possible plans to develop a nuclear bomb, a US Congressional report said on Thursday August 24, 2006. Given the "significant gaps" in US intelligence, the report questions whether the US can engage in effective dialogue with Iran.

- On August 26, 2006, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has inaugurated a new phase of a heavy water reactor project despite Western fears about its nuclear programme. Heavy water made at Arak will be used to cool a reactor being built that will create a plutonium by-product that could be used to make atomic warheads. Observers say Iran's move aims to send a signal of defiance days ahead of a UN deadline to halt uranium enrichment.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on August 31, 2006, Tehran will not yield to pressure and will not suspend uranium enrichment and re-processing activities. The UN had set a 31 August deadline for Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment and re-processing activities. If Iran is found not to comply, the US wants UN powers to discuss a resolution that could impose sanctions on Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is due to submit a report to the UN Security Council, which is expected to say that Iran has not complied with the UN demand.

- Iran failed to stop enriching uranium despite a UN deadline calling for a halt to its nuclear programme. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on August 31, 2006Tehran began a new round of uranium enrichment in recent days. Six world powers are set to meet next week to decide on the way forward. The US is pushing for sanctions.

- The EU's foreign policy chief and Iran's top nuclear negotiator have met for talks in Vienna on Saturday September 9, 2006, with both sides describing them as "constructive". The EU's Javier Solana and Iran's Ali Larijani are thought to be trying to find common ground for negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme. They will meet again on Sunday, both sides confirmed.

- French President Jacques Chirac said on September 18, 2006, referring Iran to the UN Security Council is not the best way to resolve a crisis over its nuclear programme. He believes in dialogue and urged countries to remove the threat of sanctions. The US is leading calls for sanctions to be imposed on Iran if it refuses to suspend uranium enrichment.

- In a letter from 1988 published on September 30, 2006, Iran's top commander said Iran could need a nuclear bomb to win the war against Iraq has come to light in Tehran. The commander is quoted in the letter, written by the father of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, to top officials in the final days of the war. The letter seems at odds with Tehran's statements that Iran is not seeking a bomb because it is against Islam.
- Iran suggested on October 3, 2006, that France monitor its nuclear programme, by setting up a nuclear fuel consortium inside Iran. The deputy head of Iran's atomic energy agency made the announcement. France said Iran's offers had to go through the EU's foreign policy chief. But Javier Solana has concluded that Iran is unlikely to suspend nuclear enrichment.
- The US and UK are to push for sanctions against Iran as foreign ministers from six key nations hold talks in London on October 6, 2006, on Tehran's nuclear programme. The five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany are meeting after the EU said it had failed to convince Iran to stop enriching uranium.
- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, said on Wednesday October 11, 2006, that the country will continue developing nuclear technology. He believes that the nation has the right to do it.
- On October 26, 2006, Moscow said a draft UN Security Council resolution on Iran's nuclear programme drafted by the council's three EU members appears not to match positions agreed within the council. Russia's foreign minister said the draft did not "match the tasks the six sides agreed on".

- Iran has reportedly taken another step in its uranium enrichment programme, in defiance of international pressure we were told on October 27, 2006. It has activated a second set of centrifuges -the machines used to enrich uranium. Iran would need tens of thousands of centrifuges (?) to make industrial-scale nuclear fuel. US President George W Bush says the international community must "redouble" efforts to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

- Iran's military has fired dozens of missiles during a military exercise in central Iran on November 2, 2006. The missiles included the Shahab-3, which has a 2,000km range, and the Shahab-2, which can carry cluster bombs. The Shahab-3 is capable of hitting Israel and US military bases in the Gulf. The missile tests come at the start of 10 days of military manoeuvres planned across the country.

- On November 10, 2006, Iran's top nuclear negotiator said Tehran would review its ties with the IAEA unless Russian changes to a UN draft resolution on Iran are accepted. A resolution drafted by the UN Security Council's three EU members threatens sanctions over Iran's nuclear efforts. Russia says the text is too tough and is seeking a watered down version.

- The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has not found conclusive evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons we were told on November 21, 2006. This document challenges Washington's views regarding Iranian nuclear intentions but the White House was dismissive about the CIA report. The US and Europe say Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme - a charge Iran has strongly denied.

- On December 23, 2006, the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to impose sanctions against Iran over its failure to halt uranium enrichment. The sanctions ban the supply of nuclear-related technology and materials and impose an asset freeze on key individuals and companies. Iran says its programme is for peaceful purposes and has vowed to continue. The resolution demands that Tehran end all uranium enrichment work, which can produce fuel for nuclear plants as well as for bombs. The draft resolution was amended several times after objections from both the Russians and Chinese. After parts of the resolution were watered down, both Russia and China -who have close financial ties with Iran- backed the proposals.

- On December 23, 2006, Iran's president rejected UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran, insisting his country would press ahead with its nuclear programme. Iran said it would immediately begin installing 3,000 centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

- Iran's parliament passed a bill on December 27, 2006, which obliges the government to review its co-operation with the United Nation's nuclear agency, the IAEA. The move comes four days after the UN Security Council voted to impose sanctions on Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme.

- Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani started a two-day trip to China on January 4, 2007. Mr Larijani is believed to be carrying a message from the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, for Chinese President Hu Jintao.

- Iran said on January 15, 2007, it is pressing ahead with its nuclear programme despite recent sanctions by the UN Security Council. Iran is moving towards the industrial production of nuclear fuel, with the installation of 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Reuters Iran was planning to expand its facilities "very soon, bit by bit".

- Iran's nuclear body denied on January 28, 2007, claims by a senior MP that it has begun installing 3,000 nuclear centrifuges to boost its uranium enrichment. Hossein Simorgh, of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said there were no new centrifuges at its Natanz plant. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the foreign affairs and national security committee, made the earlier claim.

- The US rejected on January 30, 2007, a call from the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog for a "timeout" in the showdown with Iran over its nuclear programme. The US ambassador to the UN said the sanctions already being applied against Iran were not open to reinterpretation. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, said that Iran's nuclear work and UN sanctions could be simultaneously stopped.

- The UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has frozen almost half its technical aid projects -22 in all- involving Iran we were told on February 10, 2007. The IAEA's move is to comply with UN sanctions imposed on Tehran late last year over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

- On February 11, 2007, addressing a mass rally in Tehran, marking the 28th anniversary of the Islamic revolution President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted on Iran's right to develop nuclear fuel while staying within international rules. Mr Ahmadinejad accused the West of making false offers -calling for talks and then insisting that Tehran first halts its uranium enrichment work.

- US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, we were told February 20, 2007. Any such attack would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres. The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment. The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions.

- Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on February 21, 2007, Iran would try to achieve nuclear capability as soon as possible. His comments come as a UN deadline for Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment programme expires. For the first time, a political party in Iran has called on Mr Ahmadinejad to accept the UN's demands.

- On February 23, 2007, US Vice-President Dick Cheney renewed a warning that the use of force could be an option if Iran continues to defy the West over uranium enrichment. He added that diplomacy was the preferred course.

- Iranian media say the country has successfully launched its first rocket capable of reaching space on February 25, 2007. It was for research and would not go into orbit.

- The US reported progress on March 2, 2007, in talks with major powers on imposing further sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. Most of the issues had been resolved during a conference call between the US, UK, Germany, China, Russia and France. Ambassadors could start drafting a new UN resolution next week.

- Military strikes against Iran could speed Tehran's development of nuclear weapons, the Oxford Research Group, a UK think tank, said on March 5, 2007. The report said military action could lead Iran to change the nature of its programme and quickly build a few nuclear arms.

- On March 13, 2007, diplomats at the UN say they have made "substantial progress" in reaching a consensus on further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities. However, Russia and China, which have strong commercial ties with Iran, are continuing to oppose any tough action. Ambassadors admit privately that the nature of the sanctions being discussed is limited.

- A new sanctions package designed to put pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme has been agreed on March 15, 2006, by the six countries handling the issue at the UN. The package includes an arms embargo and economic penalties. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made a formal request to attend the Security Council vote on the draft.

- The United Nations Security Council is still trying on March 22, 2007, to reach agreement on the next stage of sanctions to be imposed on Iran over its nuclear programme. The council's five permanent members are pushing for consensus on a draft resolution but have so far failed to persuade some other members. They want to augment existing sanctions with a ban on arms exports from Iran and further financial restrictions. Iran's supreme leader warned it would not stop its nuclear activities. The country is still enriching uranium in defiance of previous Security Council resolutions.

- On March 25, 2007, the European Union's foreign policy chief is hoping to resume talks with Iran over its nuclear programme, a day after UN sanctions were stiffened. Javier Solana said he would contact Ali Larijani, Iran's senior negotiator, in an effort to schedule new discussions. Iran has denounced the Security Council decision to impose new sanctions over its refusal to stop nuclear enrichment.

- On Tuesday April 10, 2007, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country had no evidence Iran has made the advances needed to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale. On Monday, Iran said it could produce nuclear fuel on such a scale. Earlier, the head of Iran's atomic energy agency said his country intended to continue enlarging its capacity to produce nuclear fuel.

- On April 19, 2007, we were told that Iran has started enriching small amounts of uranium gas at its underground plant at Natanz, according to the UN's nuclear agency, the IAEA. The agency said eight cascades of more than 1,300 centrifuges, the machines that spin uranium gas into enriched material, were now operating. Earlier this month Iran's president said Natanz was ready to enrich uranium on an industrial-scale.

- On April 23, 2007, EU foreign ministers have agreed to implement sanctions against Iran after its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. The sanctions go further than those already agreed by the United Nations. They involve a partial arms embargo and a travel ban against people and organisations involved in Iran's nuclear programme. The EU has agreed a total arms embargo, and added further people to the travel ban list -they are banned from the EU and their assets are frozen.

- Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said on April 25, 2007, Iran and the EU are approaching "a united view" in talks on settling the Iranian nuclear crisis. Mr Larijani has been holding talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in the Turkish capital, Ankara. The two men have been meeting for the first time since the UN-imposed sanctions on Iran in March for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.

- A former top Iranian nuclear negotiator arrested on Monday May 7, 2007, is to be charged with spying. Hossein Mousavian is to be charged with espionage relating to nuclear affairs. Mr Mousavian, an ex-envoy to Germany, was a member of Iran's negotiating team with Europe in the last government.

- International efforts to halt Iran's uranium enrichment programme have been "overtaken by events", the head of the UN's nuclear agency said on May 14, 2007 adding that Tehran now possessed "the knowledge about how to enrich" and the focus should now be on trying to stop Iran from going to industrial-scale production. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed that Iran has solved its technical problems and is now capable of making fuel suitable for nuclear reactors.

- Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said on Thursday May 17, 2007, that the United States can count on Iran's help in Iraq if it changes strategy. Larijani, who is also secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said the United States needs to change its strategy by establishing security and stability in Iraq to help Iraqi people to get rid of pain and hard conditions.

- The UN nuclear watchdog is expected issued a report to the Security Council on Wednesday Mau 23, 2007, on whether Iran has suspended sensitive nuclear work. The US is to complain to the International Atomic Energy Agency's chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, about his proposal that Iran keep parts of its enrichment programme. Mr ElBaradei said Iran possessed "the knowledge about how to enrich" and the focus should now be on preventing industrial-scale production. But there are concerns his comments will weaken UN resolve to punish Iran over its nuclear activity.
- On June 23, 2007, the EU's foreign policy chief described as "constructive" talks with Iran's top nuclear negotiator. Speaking after meeting Ali Larijani in Portugal, Javier Solana said another round of talks will be held next month. Mr Larijani said Iran wanted a diplomatic solution to the dispute.

- The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency said on July 13, 2007, it has reached a deal with Iran to allow new inspections and safeguards at key nuclear facilities. Tehran will allow inspectors into Arak heavy water plant and agree safeguards at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant.

- The head of the UN's atomic energy agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, welcomed Iran's decision to allow inspections of its heavy water reactor at Ara on July 18, 2007. He said that after recent talks with IAEA experts, Iran had for the first time agreed to discuss concerns which remain over its nuclear programme.

- Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog visited Iran's heavy water reactor at Arak on July 31, 2007, the first time since April. Iranian officials let the inspectors in as part of a deal struck with the International Atomic Energy Agency to discuss outstanding nuclear issues. Heavy water reactors produce plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons as an alternative to enriched uranium
- Iran said on August 28, 2007, that it has resolved questions posed by the UN's nuclear watchdog about its plutonium experiments. The claim was made in a text outlining a timetable for co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was agreed at talks last week.

- The UN nuclear watchdog said on August 31, 2007, Iran has agreed to a plan aimed at clearing up questions about its controversial nuclear activities. The development is "significant", but for the plan to work, it is essential to get full and active co-operation from Iran. Iran is continuing its enrichment programme, but at a slower pace than before, despite UN sanctions.

- Iran has met a key target for its nuclear programme and now has 3,000 centrifuges enriching uranium, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on September 3, 2007. Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran would continue its drive in spite of UN sanctions.

- French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on September17, 2007, the world should prepare for war over Iran's nuclear programme. He was speaking ahead of a visit to Russia, during which Iran is likely to feature prominently.

- On September 18, 2007, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed fears over the threat of war in Iran after talks with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner. The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, said force should only be used as a last resort to resolve the dispute. Mr Lavrov said there was no military solution to any modern problem, including Iran's uranium-enrichment programme.

- Iran's president criticised "illegal" UN Security Council sanctions against his country, in a speech at the General Assembly in New York on September 26, 2007. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said debate over Tehran's nuclear programme was "closed" and the issue was now in the hands of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said a nuclear Iran could threaten the world.

- The world's major powers will delay until November a decision on whether to impose tougher sanctions on Iran over its controversial nuclear programme. The five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany said on September 29, 2007, they would wait until they saw reports from the UN and EU before drafting a resolution.

- France urged its EU partners on October 4, 2007, to expand economic sanctions against Iran to end its "nuclear defiance". French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Iran was close to mastering uranium enrichment which he said was a de facto military capacity.

- Moscow has no information that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on October 10, 2007. But he said the Kremlin shared the West's concern that Tehran's nuclear programme should be "transparent".

- On October 16, 2007, Russia's President Vladimir Putin offered qualified support for Iran's nuclear programme on a visit to Tehran. Mr Putin told journalists that "peaceful nuclear activities must be allowed" and cautioned against using force to resolve the dispute over Iran. Iran wants Russian help in its dispute with the West over its nuclear aims.

- Iran's chief negotiator with the West over Tehran's nuclear programme, Ali Larijani, resigned on Saturday October 20, 2007. A government spokesman said Mr Larijani had repeatedly offered his resignation and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had finally accepted it. Mr Larijani had differences with the president over how to proceed with the negotiations.

- Iran's outgoing nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, is to accompany his successor to scheduled talks with the European Union in Rome on Tuesday October 23, 2007.

- The US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, warned Iran's government on October 22, 2007, it will not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. Mr Cheney said the United States and the international community could not stand by as a "terror-supporting state" fulfilled its grandest ambitions.

- On October 23, 2007, more than 180 Iranian MPs have signed a letter praising former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, who has resigned from his post. A top foreign policy adviser to Iran's supreme leader also said Mr Larijani should not have been allowed to resign.
- On November 8, 2007, US President George W Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have said they will work jointly to convince Iran to give up its nuclear programme.

- On December 4, 2007, Iran welcomed a major US intelligence report that suggests its government is not currently trying to develop nuclear weapons. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says it is now believed Iran stopped its weapons programme in 2003.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on December 5, 2007, that a US report on Tehran's nuclear programme is a "great victory" adding that the report had been a "fatal blow" to those who had filled the world for several years with threats, stress and anxiety.

- On Sunday December 9, 2007, Iran sent a formal protest letter to the United States, accusing it of spying on Iran's nuclear activities. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the note was sent in response to a US intelligence report released on Monday about Iran's nuclear activities.

- On December 13, 2007, Russia and Iran have agreed a schedule for finishing building the Bushehr nuclear plant.

- On December 17, 2007, Russia delivered its first shipment of nuclear fuel to a reactor it is helping to build at Bushehr in Iran. The two sides reached agreement last week on a schedule to finish building the plant after years of delays.

- The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei, asked Iran ON January 11, 2008, to speed up co-operation over its nuclear programme. Mr ElBaradei is hoping to clarify the scope of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme, which the West fears could be used to produce a bomb.

- Iran agreed to clarify all outstanding questions over its past nuclear activities within a month, the UN nuclear watchdog said on January 14, 2008.

- Permanent members of the UN Security Council -and Germany- agreed on January 22, 2008 on the contents of a new draft resolution of fresh sanctions against Iran.

- On January 30, 2008, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran is approaching the "summit" of nuclear development. He was speaking in the city of Bushehr two days after Russia completed delivery of nuclear fuel for the Iran's first nuclear power station. This is likely to begin operations later this year.

- Russia thinks the launch of an Iranian rocket into space raises suspicion over the true aim of its nuclear programme. "Long-range missiles are one of the components of a nuclear weapons system," it said on Wednesday February 6, 2008. Therefore Monday's test launch of Iran's Explorer-1 space rocket was "of course, a cause for concern."

- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on February 23, 2008, there is a "very strong case" for a third round of sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear programme as the UN nuclear agency said it could offer no "credible assurances" that Iran was not building a bomb.

- On Tuesday February 26, 2008, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed Iran's "great victory" over its nuclear programme. Mr Khamenei praised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's handling of the issue.

- On March 3, 2008, the UN Security Council voted in favour of new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of measures including asset freezes and travel bans for Iranian officials. Indonesia abstained.

- On March 6, 2008, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused to enter into any new talks with the European Union about Iran's nuclear programme. Mr Ahmadinejad said from now on Tehran would only discuss the issue with the UN's nuclear agency, the IAEA. Meanwhile Britain, France and Germany have said Iran's record in complying with the IAEA is "abysmal".

- Support for tough international action against Iran over its nuclear programme has fallen in the past 18 months, a poll carried out for the BBC suggests. Fewer people now say Iran should face sanctions or military strikes over its refusal to abide by UN resolutions. The United States and Western allies believe Iran may be developing nuclear weapons. Iran vehemently denies this. Of more than 30,000 people asked, most said Iran should be allowed to produce nuclear fuel if subject to UN checks.
- Iran has begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its main nuclear site in Natanz, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on April 8, 2008. Iran is already thought to have some 3,000 centrifuges at the Natanz plant. The US and Western allies accuse Iran of wanting to enrich uranium to build nuclear weapons, but Iran vehemently denies it.

- A meeting between Iran's chief nuclear negotiator and the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog agency has been postponed. The meeting was intended to take place in Vienna on Monday April 14, 2008.

- The United Nations Security Council's five permanent members held talks in Shanghai on April 16, 2008, to discuss action aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions. Envoys from China, the US, Russia, the UK and France met a German negotiator to consider new moves to ensure Iran's nuclear programme remains peaceful. A Chinese spokesman said problems still remained and the talks had failed to iron out a new agreement. Iran is widening its nuclear work in defiance of Security Council demands.

- Major world powers are to offer Iran updated incentives to stop enriching uranium and end fears it is seeking a nuclear arsenal. The agreement on a new package was announced by UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Saturday May 3, 2008 after talks between foreign ministers in London. No details would be made public before the offer was made to Tehran.

- Iran's new parliament speaker warned on May 28, 2008, that it could set limits on future co-operation with the United Nation's nuclear agency, the IAEA. Former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said parts of the agency's latest report on Tehran's nuclear programme had been "deceitful" and "ambiguous". Mr Larijani spoke moments after being overwhelmingly voted in as speaker by the conservative-dominated parliament. The IAEA recently voiced "serious concern" about Iran's nuclear work.

- On June 3, 2008. Iran's supreme leader insisted it will continue its nuclear activities for civilian purposes only and will not manufacture nuclear weapons. The comments come a day after the UN's atomic watchdog urged from Iran "full disclosure" about its atomic work. Its report said alleged research into warheads was "of serious concern".

- On June 11, 2008, US President George W Bush said he wants to pursue diplomacy to deal with Iran's controversial nuclear programme, but "all options are on the table". Mr Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said further sanctions against Iran were possible. He was speaking after talks in Germany, on the latest leg of what is likely to be his last tour of Europe.

- On June 14, 2008, Tehran warned it will reject any deal that demands it halt uranium enrichment - part of a new package of incentives from world powers. EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana presented the offer of trade benefits in Tehran. Early reports suggest both sides have agreed to carry on talking. The UN Security Council's permanent members and Germany have threatened new sanctions if Iran refuses the deal.

- EU Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana said on June 15, 2008, the new package of incentives offered by world powers to Iran to halt nuclear enrichment is "full of opportunities". He made the offer in Tehran, said the six powers were ready to help develop Iran's nuclear energy programme for peaceful purposes. The deal also involves trade benefits but Iran has warned it will reject any demands to halt uranium enrichment.

- On Tuesday June 24, 2008, Iran condemned as illegal new EU sanctions against Tehran over its uranium enrichment programme. A foreign ministry spokesman said the sanctions would make Iran more determined to obtain the technology. On Monday, the EU imposed an asset freeze on Iran's largest bank and added more names to a list of Iranians who are banned from travelling to the EU.

- Iran said on July 5, 2008, its stance on its nuclear programme remains unchanged, despite an EU offer of incentives to suspend uranium enrichment.

- On July 8, 2008, Iran test-fired nine missiles, including a new version of the Shahab-3, which is capable of reaching its main regional enemy Israel. The Shahab-3 has a range of 2,000km, was armed with a conventional warhead. Iran has tested the missile before, but the latest launch comes amid rising tensions with the US and Israel over the country's nuclear programme. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe called on Iran to "refrain from further missile tests if they truly seek to gain the trust of the world".

- The US said on July 10, 2008, it will not hesitate to defend its interests and those of its allies as Iran continues missile tests. The US had increased its security in the region and Iran should not be "confused" about US capabilities. Iran has tested missiles, including one that could reach Israel, over the past two days. Meanwhile French energy giant Total has said it will not invest in Iran because it is too politically risky.

- A top US official, Under Secretary of State William Burns, is to attend talks aimed at persuading Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment programme. Burns will travel to Switzerland with the EU foreign envoy Javier Solana to receive Iran's response to a UN offer. The US said Mr Burns would not hold separate talks with Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili, and was there to listen.

- A senior United States official, William Burns, is taking part for the first time in international talks with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme together with envoys from the EU and permanent members of the UN Security Council. Their talks with top Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili were expected to focus on incentives for Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment. Mr Burns' attendance is being seen as a major shift in US policy.

- Iran must decide between confrontation and co-operation in the dispute over its nuclear plans, the US has warned on July 20, 2008. At talks in Geneva, envoys from the US, EU and UN asked Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment in return for a pledge not to introduce new sanctions. Iran gave no guarantees it would halt its activities, so the diplomats gave Tehran two weeks to provide an answer.

- Britain is determined to prevent Iran developing nuclear arms, Gordon Brown said in an address to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on July 21, 2008. Tehran must abandon its nuclear programme or face "growing isolation". UK stood ready to lead in taking firmer sanctions and was also set to vow to stand beside Israel in its "fight for liberty".
- Iran will not "retreat one iota" in its nuclear activities, its president said on July 23, 2008, in his first reaction to a new call for Tehran to end uranium enrichment. Envoys from the US, EU and UN asked Iran to give an answer within two weeks or face possible new sanctions.

- The major world powers agreed on August 6, 2008, to consider further sanctions against Iran because of its refusal to halt its nuclear programme. The decision came during talks between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. The six nations had wanted a clear answer from Iran to an offer of incentives, but only received a non-committal letter. But Russia's UN ambassador said there was potential in ongoing dialogue.

- The deputy head of the UN nuclear agency arrived in Tehran on August 7, 2008, for talks on Iran's disputed nuclear programme. This week Iran missed a deadline to reply to an offer of incentives to end its uranium enrichment programme, which could be used in arms manufacture. France, the US and UK are pushing for new sanctions, but Russia says there is potential for more dialogue.

- On August 9, 2008, the European Union approved new sanctions against Iran in protest at its nuclear programme. The measures target loans to companies trading with Iran and allow for tougher cargo inspections.

- A senior nuclear official, Olli Heinonen of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is visiting Iran, on August 19, 2008, a day after the country launched a satellite-carrying rocket into space. He arrived in Tehran for his second round of talks this month. The US expressed concern over Sunday's launch, saying the technology could also be used for carrying missiles.

- Iran will resist "bullying powers" trying to thwart its peaceful nuclear ambitions, its leader has told the UN on September 24, 2008. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran supported dialogue but would not accept "illegal demands".

- On September 28, 2008, the UN Security Council unanimously passed a new resolution on Iran, reaffirming demands it stop enriching uranium, but imposing no new sanctions. The text calls on Iran to "comply, and without delay, with its obligations" under past resolutions and co-operate with the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.

- The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps has test fired a new Iranian-designed missile, the Samen, on November 12, 2008. The test firing was conducted during a military exercise in the town of Marivan, on the border with Iraq.

- On February 25, 2009, Iranian and Russian nuclear officials have begun a test run of Iran's first nuclear power plant. The test involves dummy rods that imitate the enriched uranium needed to run the Russian-built plant at Bushehr. The test is likely to fuel fears in the West about Iran's nuclear ambitions, though Tehran says they are peaceful. Iran had increased the number of its centrifuges enriching uranium at another site to 6,000.

- Iran has enough nuclear material to build a bomb, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said on March 2, 2009. "And Iran having a nuclear weapon, I've believed for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world," he said.
- The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Iran on March 17, 2009, it faces a "clear choice" over its nuclear programme -and urged it to let the world help it get civil nuclear power. The prime minister said an expansion of nuclear power was needed globally to meet carbon reduction targets. Iran already said its nuclear programme is designed for developing civil nuclear power rather than weapons. But Mr Brown said that unless it agreed to the UN overseeing the programme Iran faced "further and tougher sanctions".

- On April 10, 2009, Iran's president has inaugurated the country's first nuclear fuel production plant. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was open to an offer of fresh talks with world powers, but only if they were based on "justice" and "respect". Once operational, the new plant could produce sufficient plutonium for two nuclear weapons a year.

- Iran has successfully test launched a mid-range surface-to-surface missile. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Sajjil-2 missile with a range of 2,000km used "advanced technology" and had landed on target. The US confirmed the launch had taken place on May 20, 2009.

- The US says it is unhappy with the latest package of proposals submitted by Iran on Wednesday September 9, 2009, aimed at breaking the deadlock over its nuclear ambitions. A senior US State Department official said the measures do not address the status of Iran's nuclear programme.

- Iran is to hold talks next month with the six world powers dealing with the crisis over its nuclear programme we were told on September 14, 2009. The talks are due to start on 1 October at an as yet undecided venue. The US called it an "important first step", but questions remain over whether Tehran will directly address the issue of its nuclear programme. The announcement comes as the UN nuclear watchdog formally endorsed its new director general, Yukiya Amano of Japan, at a conference in Vienna. Mr Amano will replace Mohammed ElBaradei, who is stepping down after 12 years as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 1 December.

- The Iranian president said on September 18, 2009, that his country sees no need for nuclear weapons, while insisting Iran will not abandon its pursuit of nuclear energy. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not explicitly rule out the possibility that Iran would acquire nuclear weapons. He said simply that it was "not a part of our programmes and plans".

- On Friday September 25, 2009, Iran has revealed that it has a second, previously undeclared, uranium enrichment plant. Iran's announcement came in a letter sent Monday to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment, which can make both nuclear fuel and warhead material.

- Iran concealed a partially-built second uranium enrichment plant in defiance of calls for transparency over its nuclear plans, US President Barack Obama said on September 28, 2009. The US, UK and France said the UN had to be given immediate access and urged tough new sanctions, while Russia also said it was "seriously concerned". But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied that the facility was in breach of IAEA rules.

- Iran has said on September 29, 2009, it is not willing to discuss its "nuclear rights" during an upcoming meeting with the five permanent UN Security Council members. The head of the country's atomic energy body also ruled out a suspension of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme. But Ali Akbar Salehi said he would set out when and how inspectors could view Iran's second uranium enrichment plant. The US has demanded "immediate and unfettered access" for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.

- On Saturday October 3, 2009, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog says inspectors will visit an Iranian uranium enrichment plant revealed recently by Tehran, on 25 October. Mohamed ElBaradei said after meeting Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi that he hoped Iran would be "as transparent as possible" with monitors. The US had urged Iran to give the IAEA "unfettered access" to the site, near the city of Qom, within two weeks.

- The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on October 4, 2009 that relations with Iran are shifting from confrontation to co-operation. Mohamed ElBaradei, who is visiting Tehran, said this was a "critical moment" and urged Iran to be as transparent as possible. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency also announced inspectors would visit Tehran's newly revealed uranium enrichment plant on 25 October.

- Talks between Iran and world powers on a uranium enrichment deal are "off to a good start", the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said on October 19, 2009. Russia, France and the US were at the IAEA meeting in Vienna. Under a proposed deal, Iran would ship enriched uranium abroad to be converted for use in a research reactor. Tehran sent a lower-level delegation led by its IAEA envoy, not its atomic agency chief, indicating a final agreement may not be reached this week.

- Iran will accept a UN deal on its nuclear programme, but only if "very important changes" are made we were told on October 27, 2009. Under the draft proposal, Iran would send its enriched uranium to Russia and France to be turned into fuel.

- The UN's nuclear watchdog says it is hopeful an agreement with Iran can be reached after Tehran's response to a new offer on uranium refinement. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it received Iran's reply to the UN-backed proposal on Thursday October 29, 2009. Under the plan, most of Iran's enriched uranium would be sent abroad to be turned into fuel rods for research use.

- Iran has come under more international pressure to respond to a proposal that it send uranium abroad for enrichment. The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, said on November 3, 2009, the draft deal offered last month was a "fleeting opportunity" to avoid confrontation. Iran has raised "technical and economic considerations" with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and has missed deadlines to respond.

- On Friday November 27, 2009, the UN nuclear watchdog's governing body has passed a resolution condemning Iran for developing a uranium enrichment site in secret. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also demanded that Iran freeze the project immediately.

- Iran has successfully test-fired an improved version of a medium-range missile on Wednesday December 16, 2009. The Sajjil-2 rocket has the range to be able to hit Israel and US bases in the Gulf. It is not the first time this missile has been tested, but the timing is likely to add to current tension over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

- On December 22, 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed as a US forgery a document allegedly showing plans by Tehran to test a nuclear bomb trigger.

- On January 20, 2010, Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency it does not accept the terms of a deal to ease concerns about its nuclear programme. For months, the Iranian government has criticised the offer to ship low-enriched uranium abroad in return for fuel, but never responded formally. Tehran is now suggesting an alternative involving a simultaneous exchange on its territory.

- On February 3, 2010, the US and key allies have called on Iran to match its words with actions after it appeared to accept a deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would have "no problem" if most of its stock was held for several months before being returned as fuel rods.

- Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked the country's nuclear chief to begin enriching uranium to 20% on February 7, 2010

- On March 10, 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused the US of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan after the US used the same term to condemn Iran's role. Mr Ahmadinejad said the US had "created terrorists and now say they are fighting them", as he appeared with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

- On April 1, 2010, President Obama has made a direct appeal to Chinese President Hu Jintao for the two countries to co-operate on the Iranian nuclear issue. In an hour-long phone call Mr Obama stressed "the importance of working together to ensure that Iran lives up to its... obligations." Their talks came as Iran's top nuclear official, Saeed Jalili, was in China for talks. Beijing agreed that sanctions were "not effective".

- On Sunday May 16, 2010, Iran has agreed a deal to send uranium abroad for enrichment after mediation talks with Turkish and Brazilian leaders. Iran's foreign ministry said it was ready to ship 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium to Turkey, in return for nuclear fuel for a research reactor. The plan could revive an UN-backed proposal and may ward off another round of sanctions. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is calling on world leaders for new talks.

- On May 25, 2010, Iran said that its nuclear fuel deal proves it is ready to open a new chapter of cooperation with the West. Tehran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) urged the UN Security Council to respond positively. So far Western powers have said the agreement is too little too late, and are pursuing sanctions against the Islamic state.

- On Monday June 8, 2010, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Iran will not agree to talks on its nuclear programme if a fourth round of UN sanctions are imposed. Mr Ahmadinejad urged Russia not to side with Iran's enemies in the vote, which is due to be held on Wednesday. The sanctions would tighten financial curbs and shipping inspections on Iran, and expand a limited arms embargo.

- On June 18, 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev criticised the unilateral US and EU sanctions on Iran that go beyond those approved by the UN Security Council. He said Russia "did not agree" to any separate sanctions when it backed a joint UN resolution last week. Meanwhile, Pentagon chief Robert Gates said US intelligence showed that Iran could be able to attack Europe with "scores" of missiles by 2020. He added that Russia seemed to have a "schizophrenic" approach to Iran.

- On June 21, 2010, Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) it will not allow two of its inspectors to enter the country. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, said they had prematurely published a report he described as "untruthful". Mr Salehi did not say which parts of the report he considered inaccurate. The decision comes two weeks after the UN Security Council voted to impose a fourth round of sanctions on Iran.

- A man who says he is an Iranian nuclear scientist claimed on June 30, 2010, to have escaped after being abducted by US agents. In a video shown on Iranian state TV, he says he has escaped in the US state of Virginia and is now on the run. Mr Amiri disappeared a year ago while undertaking the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. Two videos purportedly showing him surfaced three weeks ago. One said he had been kidnapped, the other that he was living freely in Arizona. The US has strenuously denied abducting him, but ABC News reported in March that Mr Amiri had defected and was helping the CIA compile intelligence on Iran's controversial nuclear weapons programme. The state department has refused to say whether he is in the US.

- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on July 13, 2010, that Iran is "moving closer" to having the potential to create nuclear weapons. It is one of the first times Moscow has publicly recognised that Iran might be moving towards a nuclear weapon. Russia, which has strong economic and military ties with Iran, has traditionally been an ally of Tehran. But it has recently adopted a tougher stance towards Tehran's nuclear drive, and backed the fourth round of UN sanctions that was imposed last month.

- Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi suggested China and Iraq as potential venues for nuclear talks between his country and world powers this month. Istanbul was the initial proposal. The Europeans first rejected it and then agreed but other countries were kept in mind. Salehi's comments came after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on March 31 that negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany will be held on April 13-14 in Istanbul.

-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani returned from his trip to the UN General Assembly in New York on Saturday September 28, 2013, to a range of reactions at home —from supporters who hailed his diplomatic efforts to Basij militia members who hurled eggs and a shoe at him and his entourage after they landed. The scene at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, just hours after the news of the historic telephone call between Rouhani and President Barack Obama, underscored the delicacy of rekindling diplomatic ties after 34 years of estrangement between the two countries. Several dozen protesters chanted "Death to America" and tried to block Rouhani's motorcade. At least one demonstrator hurled a shoe —a common gesture of contempt in the Middle East— in the direction of Rouhani. Other reports said eggs were thrown at his car.  Rouhani supporters, meanwhile, greeted his return from New York with cheers placards thanking him for seeking peace instead of confrontation. One banner read: "Yes to peace, no to war." Rouhani now has the difficult mission of trying to unite the country behind his outreach to ease a three-decade estrangement with the U.S. and move toward a possible settlement to roll back sanctions imposed over Tehran's nuclear program. His effort appears to have the critical backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

At least four people have been arrested for trying to sabotage a nuclear site we were told on Sunday October 6, 2013. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, said officials had monitored and then arrested a "number of saboteurs" before they could carry out their plan. Four of these individuals were caught red-handed and their interrogations are ongoing. ---

Iran declared it would not bow to demands to ship its uranium stockpile abroad on Sunday October 13, 2013, ahead of key talks over its nuclear programme. Officials involved in the process expect the long-running nuclear diplomacy surrounding Iran to be reinvigorated by a new Iranian negotiating team that has signalled its readiness to seek a breakthrough. Iranian representatives are expected to offer a plan at the latest talks in Geneva, which begin on Tuesday that could result in the mothballing of most of its nuclear facilities and put substantial parts of its uranium stockpile up for negotiation. In return Iran would demand significant easing of sanctions that have shrunk its economy, reduced oil revenues and driven up inflation.

The Iranian delegation to international talks in Geneva on Wednesday October 16, 2013, has presented proposals which it claims will end the longstanding deadlock over its nuclear programme. Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, gave an hour-long PowerPoint presentation of the proposals, entitled "Closing an unnecessary crisis: Opening new horizons", to senior diplomats from the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China at the Palace of Nations in Geneva on Tuesday. The presentation was not made public, but it is believed to lay out a timetable for a confidence-building deal that would place limits on Iran's nuclear programme in return for relief from sanctions and international recognition of the country's right to enrich uranium.

On Saturday October 26, 2013, a senior Iranian official denied reports the Islamic republic has temporarily stopped enriching uranium to the 20 per cent level. "Iran's nuclear activities are unchanged and enriching uranium to 20 percent continues," IRNA quoted Alaeddin Boroujerdi, who heads the Iranian parliament's influential foreign policy committee, as saying.

Iranian and western officials will start drafting a nuclear agreement in Geneva on Friday November 8, 2013, after international negotiations made dramatic progress, Iran's foreign minister said. As hopes of a breakthrough soared, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, is to travel to Switzerland to help seal an agreement which could, if successful, go a long way towards defusing tensions in the Gulf and put off the threat of new war in the Middle East. An agreement on any scale would represent a historic breakthrough after a decade of diplomatic sparring marked by paralysis and distrust. The process of drafting will begin on Friday morning at a meeting with the EU foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton, who acts as a convenor for the six world powers with delegations in Geneva: the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China.

Benjamin Netanyahu set himself on a collision course with Israel's Western allies on Friday November 8, 2013, after lashing out at an impending deal over Iran's nuclear programme and warned that his country would not be bound by it. The Israeli prime minister effectively accused Western negotiators of caving in during talks in Geneva and handing Iran the "deal of the century". He called the proposed short-term agreement "a very bad deal" and said Israel "utterly rejects it".

On Sunday November 10, 2013, we were told that a landmark agreement to contain Iran’s nuclear programme stayed just out of reach despite hours of talks between John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and his Iranian counterpart. After three days of negotiations, Baroness Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said no deal had been signed but the two sides would meet again on November 20. A lot of concrete progress has been achieved but some issues remain. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, who had previously rejected a draft agreement, said: “The meetings in Geneva have made it possible to move forward, but there are still some questions remaining to be dealt with.”

Iran has agreed to curb some of its nuclear activities in return for about $7bn in sanctions relief, after days of intense talks in Geneva. The deal will last for six months, while a permanent agreement is sought. US President Barack Obama welcomed the deal, saying it would "help prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon". Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran's right to uranium enrichment had been recognised. Israel, however, said the agreement was a "historic mistake". World powers suspect Iran's nuclear programme is secretly aiming at developing a nuclear bomb - a charge Iran has consistently denied. Tehran insists it must be allowed to enrich uranium to use in power stations. The deal comes just months after Iran elected Mr Rouhani -regarded as a relative moderate- as its new president, succeeding the hard line Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It has also been backed by Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in nuclear matters.

After four days of negotiations, representatives of the so-called P5+1 group of nations -the US, the UK, Russia, China, France and Germany- reached the agreement with Iran in the early hours of Sunday. Key points of the deal have been released by the White House:

• Iran will stop enriching uranium beyond 5%, and "neutralise" its stockpile of uranium enriched beyond this point
• Iran will give greater access to inspectors including daily access at Natanz and Fordo nuclear sites
• There will be no further development of the Arak plant which it is believed could produce plutonium
• In return, there will be no new nuclear-related sanctions for six months if Iran sticks by the accord
• Iran will also receive sanctions relief worth about $7bn (£4.3bn) on sectors including precious metals

 

US Secretary of State John Kerry said the agreement would make the region safer for its allies, including Israel. But the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet it was a "historic mistake" and that his country reserved the right to defend itself. At a later news conference, Mr Netanyahu said Israel would not be bound by the agreement. The Israeli comments came as it was revealed that the US and Iran had held a series of face-to-face talks in recent months that paved the way for the agreement but were kept secret even from their allies. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the agreement was an opportunity for the "removal of any doubts about the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme". But he insisted that Iran had not given up its right to enrich uranium.

The deal to curb Iran's nuclear program prompted oil prices to fall and world equity markets to rise on Monday November 24, 2013, as investors priced in an easing of Mideast political tensions and the lift it could give to global economic growth. The breakthrough accord reached over the weekend in Geneva halts Iran's most sensitive nuclear activities and gives it some relief from crippling sanctions, but does not allow the OPEC member to boost oil sales for six months. The interim pact -aimed at easing a decades-old stand-off between Iran and the United States- won the critical endorsement of Iranian cleric Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany also agreed to the accord. Despite tough work ahead to transform the agreement into a permanent solution, it was enough to ease oil supply fears and send Brent crude down $1.04 to $110.01. Crude prices pared losses after hitting a session low of $108.05 on the realization markets will not soon be awash in new supply. ===

A breakthrough agreement to end a standoff over Iran's nuclear programme appeared to face its first major difficulty on Friday December 13, 2013, with Russia warning that a U.S. sanctions move could "seriously" complicate its implementation. Russia echoed Iran's criticism by saying Washington's sanctions decision violated the spirit of the deal. Moscow's statement came after diplomats said Iran had interrupted technical talks with the six nations in Vienna over how to implement the agreement, under which Tehran is to cap its nuclear programme in return for limited sanctions easing. Several Western diplomats insisted the inconclusive outcome of the December 9-12 expert-level discussions in Vienna should not be seen as a sign that the political deal hammered out nearly three weeks ago was in serious trouble.

Iran and six world powers resumed expert-level talks in Geneva on Thursday December 19, 2013, to work out how to put into practice a landmark deal obliging Tehran to curb its nuclear program in return for some relief from economic sanctions. Discussions on the implementation details of last month's breakthrough accord were interrupted by Tehran diplomats last week, after a decision by the United States to blacklist 19 more Iranian companies and individuals. But diplomats said much progress had been achieved in the four-day meeting on December 9-12 in Vienna and expressed hope they could wrap up the practical discussions at meetings in Geneva on Thursday and Friday. That could mean the seven countries -the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and Iran- would be ready to agree on a date when the accord goes fully into effect. Specifically, they would decide when western governments ease sanctions and how much prior verification of any Iranian curbs of its most sensitive nuclear work would be needed ahead of time.

Iran resumed technical talks with world powers in Geneva on Monday December 30, 2013, a vital step in implementing a nuclear deal signed last month which suspends key elements of Tehran's nuclear programme in exchange for limited sanctions relief. The talks between expert teams from Iran and six world powers are meant to translate the political deal into a detailed implementation plan by the end of January. A key sticking point appears to be how much advance information Western governments will get so they can verify that Iran is meeting its end of the deal before they lift any sanctions. The third round of talks between technical experts from the permanent U.N. Security Council members -Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States- plus Germany, are set to last a day and resume in 2014.

World powers and Iran have agreed to start implementing in late January an agreement obliging Tehran to suspend its most sensitive nuclear work we were told on Tuesday December 31, 2013. However there was no immediate confirmation of the agreement from the six powers or the European Union, which oversees contacts with Iran on behalf of the six. The reported agreement follows nearly 23 hours of talks between nuclear experts from Iran and the six powers held in Geneva on Monday and Tuesday.

Negotiations between Iran and six world powers on implementing a landmark November deal to freeze parts of Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for easing some sanctions have run into problems over advanced centrifuge research on Saturday January 10, 2014. The dispute over centrifuges highlighted the huge challenges facing Iran and the six powers in negotiating the precise terms of the November 24 interim agreement. If they succeed, they plan to start talks on a long-term deal to resolve a more than decade-long dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Among the issues to be resolved in political discussions due to begin in Geneva later this week is that of research and development of a new model of advanced nuclear centrifuge that Iran says it has installed. Centrifuges are machines that purify uranium for use as fuel in atomic power plants or, if purified to a high level, weapons.

A nuclear agreement between six world powers and Iran will come into effect on January 20 when Tehran is to start rolling back parts of its nuclear programme, it was announced on Sunday January 12, 2014. In return, the countries that negotiated the agreement will provide over a period of time about 4.2 billion dollars in sanctions relief, according to US Secretary of State John Kerry. The interim agreement is for a period of six months, during which time a wider-ranging deal will be sought. Starting January 20, Iran is to stop enriching uranium beyond 5%, the level that would prepare fuel for energy production but is not concentrated enough for weaponizing. It is also to start diluting its stockpile of 20% enriched or start converting it to another chemical form that could not be used in weapons. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is to monitor and verify Iran's cooperation over the coming months.

Spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi announced on Monday January 20, 2014, that Iran has begun the voluntary suspension of its 20-percent uranium enrichment in accordance with the Geneva deal struck by Tehran and the world powers in Geneva in November. On the undertakings mentioned in the Geneva deal, the six powers should now begin to ease their sanctions on Tehran. ---

Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi stressed on Monday February 10, 2014, that despite the transient halt in Iran's uranium enrichment above the 5% grade, the country has not and will not give up its right to enrich uranium to the 20% grade and it may resume its enrichment operations to 60% grade if needed. He underlined that Iran is entitled to enrich uranium to any level it wants, and said, “We have the ability to enrich uranium at 60 percent grade if one day we need it for peaceful works.”

Iran and six world powers resumed talks on Thursday July 3, 2014, aimed at clinching a long-term deal later this month on the scope of Tehran's contested nuclear programme. The cost of failure could be high. If diplomacy falls short, the risk of Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear sites could rise, and with it the threat of a wider Middle East war. After informal contacts on Wednesday, chief negotiators from Iran, the United States, France, Germany, China, Russia and Britain began a full plenary session, the sixth round of talks in Vienna since February. They have less than three weeks to try to agree on the future dimensions of Iran's uranium enrichment programme and other issues if they are to meet a self-imposed July 20 deadline for a deal. Washington and some of its allies have imposed sanctions on Iran over suspicions that its nuclear programme is designed to produce weapons -a charge denied by Iran, which says it is only interested in producing electricity and other peaceful projects.

Iran’s Ali Khamenei let’s the world know the details of the nuclear disarmament talks in Vienna. Does he want to negotiate a new peace, or a new war? Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei usually prefers to stay above the fray, intoning his policy directives from the pulpit in emotive or elliptical terms that only an Islamic Republic apparatchik could decipher, and maybe that’s why even some seasoned analysts stopped paying attention. But on July 7, 2014, as critical nuclear negotiations got underway in Vienna between Iran, the United States, Europe, Russia and China, Khamenei started talking hard numbers. Khamenei began his speech, as is his wont, with a proverb. This one was about bargaining: “The other side threatens you with death so you would be happy with a fever.” Then he swiftly went into highly technical details about remaining disagreements around Iran’s permitted level of uranium enrichment, the critical process that creates fuel for nuclear weapons. The Supreme Leader started talking about SWUs, in this context the acronym stands for “separative work units, which relates directly to Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to levels that might feed into nuclear weapons. SWU defines the capability derived from the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges and their efficiency. For example one thousand AR1 centrifuges with the efficiency of 0.9 translates into 900 SWU, whereas 225 AR2 centrifuges with an efficiency of 4 translates into 900 SW. “They want us to be content with 10,000 SWUs,” he said. That is, he estimates the bottom line the West will accept. “But they have started from 500 and 1000 SWUs,” he added. “Our people say that we need 190,000 SWUs,” he went on. That’s a big spread to try to close.

Iran and six world powers have agreed to a four-month extension of negotiations on a nuclear deal with Tehran after failing to meet a July 20 deadline due to "significant gaps" between the two sides we were told on Saturday July 19, 2014. There are still significant gaps on some core issues which will require more time and effort. Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China had set a July 20 deadline to complete a long-term agreement that would resolve the decade-old dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. But diplomats said they were unable to overcome significant differences on major sticking points.

On Monday July 21, 2014, we were told that Iran has eliminated its entire stock of enriched uranium -closest to the level needed to make nuclear arms- into more harmless forms. Even as talks to reach a nuclear deal with Iran were extended beyond an initial July 20 deadline, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Tehran was standing by its international commitments. As agreed under a so-called Joint Plan of Action reached in November, the Islamic Republic has cut half of its stock of 20-percent medium enriched uranium down to five-percent purity. The rest was being converted into uranium oxide. Tehran also refrained from enriching above the five-percent level at any of its nuclear facilities. --

Senior US and Iranian diplomats gathered on Thursday August 7, 2014, in Geneva to restart talks on a nuclear deal, after having failed to bridge their differences by their July deadline. Iran and six world powers have set themselves a new November deadline to reach a deal that would place strict limits on Tehran's nuclear programme, and that would spell the end of economic sanctions against Iran. Iran's talks with the US, Britain, China, France, Russia, and Germany ended without a deal in late July, because they could not agree on how much to curb Iran's uranium enrichment programme. The six countries want to ensure that Iran does not amass uranium that could be turned into a nuclear weapon, while Tehran's leaders insist they need a big enrichment capacity to fuel power reactors.

Negotiations on limiting Iran's nuclear program resume this week (September 16, 2014) in New York, but a summer of multiplying crises has world capitals distracted as the talks hit a crucial stage. The high-profile setting for this round of talks between Iran and six world powers has raised expectations, and the talks come at a time when world leaders are also gathering for the U.N. General Assembly meeting. The last round of talks, aimed at giving Iran sanctions relief if it accepts strict limits intended to keep it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, ended in Vienna in July with only an agreement to keep trying for a few more months. Now, as a crisis-heavy summer turns into fall, the Ukraine conflict, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the extremist violence in Iraq and Syria are all threatening to overshadow the Iran issue. ---

Iran is taking further action to comply with the terms of an extended interim agreement with six world powers over its disputed atomic activities we were told Friday September 18, 2014. The findings may be seen as positive by the West as negotiations resumed in New York this week on ending the decade-old nuclear stand-off. The IAEA document made clear that Iran is continuing to meet its commitments under the preliminary accord that it reached with the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia late last year and that took effect in January. In addition, as agreed when the deal was extended by four months in July, it is using some of its higher-grade enriched uranium in oxide form to produce fuel -a step that experts say would make it more difficult to use the material for any bombs. Iran denies Western allegations that it has been working to develop a capability to make atomic bombs, saying it is refining uranium to fuel a planned network of nuclear power plants.

Iran and the United States said they made some progress in high-level nuclear talks but much work remained to clinch a breakthrough deal by a late-November deadline. Both sides said they still aimed to meet the self-imposed November 24, 2014, date, despite doubts among many experts that they can reach a full agreement to end a decade-old dispute over Tehran's nuclear program with just a few weeks remaining. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry left Vienna early on Thursday October 16, 2014, after six hours of talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton the previous day, but his officials remained to continue the talks through Thursday.

The White House will bypass Congress to avoid a vote it would lose if an agreement is reached with Iran. The Obama administration will not to seek congressional approval to suspend sanctions against Iran if a deal on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program can be reached, we were told Sunday October 19, 2014. Iran has agreed in principle that a “suspension” of sanctions would be enough for them to take away from the negotiating table.

On Wednesday October 22, 2014, we were told that Western governments will reluctantly consider an extension of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program should world powers fail to clinch a comprehensive deal by November 24, 2014, a move Israel would support. Informal discussion of an extension beyond the self-imposed deadline –the second since talks began in January, with the aim of ending international concerns over the nature, purpose, size and scope of the Iranian program– has already started despite five weeks left on the clock. That is because Western diplomats see no movement from their Iranian counterparts.

A deal over Iran’s nuclear program appears unlikely by a November 24, 2014, deadline, meaning an extension of the interim agreement may be needed to press Iran for more concessions, the French ambassador to Washington said. Iran wants “sanctions lifted immediately,” while negotiators for six international powers want an “incremental and reversible suspension” of economic penalties, based on Iran’s compliance with limits on its nuclear activities. “The Iranians are really negotiating”. “The problem is whether they are ready to pay the price for an agreement” and “for the moment, they are not.” The Iranians’ last proposal was “to keep what they have right now,” about 19,000 declared centrifuges, half of which are currently operating, with the right to add more in the future for a theoretical industrial-scale energy program, a position that is unacceptable to the international community. ---

Iran, the United States and European Union will hold an unscheduled second day of talks on Monday November 10, 2014, on disagreements blocking resolution of a dispute over Tehran's nuclear program. With two weeks to a deadline for a comprehensive accord, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and EU envoy Catherine Ashton met in Oman's capital Muscat on Sunday to address a decade-long confrontation that has raised the risk of a wider war in the Middle East. Reiterating Iran's official line, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted by Iranian media as saying the Islamic Republic would not abandon its nuclear "rights" but was committed to the negotiations under Khamenei's leadership. Western countries and close U.S. ally Israel suspect Iran has covertly sought to develop the means to build nuclear weapons. Iran denies any secret nuclear weapons agenda, saying it wants peaceful nuclear energy only, but has refused to curb enrichment capacity and has been hit by damaging U.S., EU and U.N. Security Council sanctions as a result. The discussions aim to put verifiable limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment work -and any other potential path to a nuclear weapon- in return for a gradual lifting of sanctions.

On Wednesday November 12, 2014, we were told that Russia has agreed to build up to eight nuclear reactors in Iran, 12 days before a deadline for a deal to curb Iran's nuclear activity. The deal agreed by Russia and Iran envisages the construction of two reactors, with scope for a further six.

Iran, the US and other world powers meeting in Vienna this week are close to a historic, comprehensive agreement that could bring a permanent end to 12 years of deadlock over Iran’s nuclear programme. With a deadline for the talks looming in a week’s time, diplomats are converging on the Austrian capital for the last stretch of marathon negotiations beginning Tuesday November 18, 2014, with the outcome still in the balance. Compromises have been found on previously contentious issues, and detailed text for different versions of a final deal has been drafted. Some diplomats describe their work as 95% done, pending political decisions to be made in national capitals over Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium over the next few years, and the sequence in which international sanctions are lifted. Several leading arms-control experts have argued that the residual obstacles are more political than substantial. There are also differences among the six-nation group involved in the negotiations with Iran. France has consistently been more opposed to nuclear concessions than the other five (the US, UK, Germany, Russia and China).

Few events in history are momentous enough to reshape the world order. If the US and its partners are able to come to an agreement with Iran to curtail its nuclear program, this week may be one of those times. This deal has the potential to place the United States and Iran on the same side of the table, while testing America’s longstanding —but already strained— alliances with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and countries in the Persian Gulf. It could also dangerously alter the power struggle in the region between Sunnis and Shiites. That geopolitical landscape has already been muddied recently by other factors including the fight against terrorism, booming US energy production, plummeting oil prices, and frustration over Israeli settlement construction. That’s not to say the U.S. and Iran would become friends (or that it would shatter old alliances), but it could add to other areas of possible cooperation between Washington and Tehran like the fight against ISIS. ---

World powers and Iran struggled on Saturday November 22, 2014, to overcome crucial differences that are preventing them from ending a 12-year standoff over Tehran's atomic ambitions, raising the prospect of another extension to the high-stake talks. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said "big gaps" remained with two days to go before a self-imposed November 24 deadline for an accord, despite signs of some headway. A European source said the likelihood of a final deal by Monday was "very small". Diplomats said a framework accord was still possible, but that weeks if not months would then be needed to agree on the all-important details of how it would be implemented.

The deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran has been extended to the end of June after talks in Vienna failed to reach a comprehensive agreement. The talks have been "tough", but "substantial progress" has been made. The parties will reconvene in December. The six countries -the US, UK, Russia, China, France and Germany- have now agreed to extend discussions, with the aim of reaching a high-level political agreement by 1 March, and confirming the full technical details of the agreement by 1 July. Iran would be allowed to continue accessing $700m (£450m) a month in frozen assets during that period.

Senior Iranian nuclear negotiators are scheduled to head to Geneva for a fresh round of talks with the P5+1 group of world powers over Tehran’s nuclear energy program. The round of talks between Tehran and the P5+1 group  will be held at the deputy level. There will be bilateral negotiations between delegations from the Islamic Republic and its negotiating partners in Geneva two days prior to the start of the talks on December 17, 2014.

After failing to reach agreement in Vienna by a November 24 deadline after nine months of negotiations, diplomats are sitting down in Geneva today Sunday December 14, 2014, to try to keep the momentum for a nuclear deal going. The deadline was extended until the beginning of July 2015, with the aim of agreeing a framework deal by March 1. The race is on to meet those looming deadlines under the added pressure of a new hawkish, Republican-run US Congress preparing to convene in the first week of January. The mood is downbeat and sober compared to the tantalising hopes awakened in Vienna with the arrival of US secretary of state John Kerry to meet face-to-face with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, accompanied by five other foreign ministers from major powers. ---

Negotiators for Iran and six global powers, striving to reach a complex deal on Tehran's nuclear programme, have had "serious and useful" discussions in Geneva and will meet again next month. Senior officials from the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia met with Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for a day of talks as part of "ongoing diplomatic efforts to find a comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear issue," the EU said on Sunday.
European diplomats have told Israeli officials in recent days that the United States and Iran are moving closer to an agreement that would allow the Islamic Republic to keep a large number of centrifuges in return for guaranteeing regional stability, Army Radio is reporting on Tuesday.

On Monday February 2, 2015, we were told that US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have discussed increasing the number of centrifuges which Iran would be permitted to keep. In exchange, the Iranians would undertake an obligation to bring their influence to bear in order to ensure quiet in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. The US in recent weeks has made significant concessions in its talks with Iran, so much so that it is willing to permit Tehran to operate 6,500 centrifuges while lifting sanctions that have hurt its economy this past decade. These concessions were offered in exchange for Iranian promises to maintain regional stability. Israel is concerned that the Obama administration’s willingness to allow Iran to keep centrifuges would in effect render Tehran a “nuclear threshold state,” enabling it to assemble a nuclear bomb within months if it so chooses. Such a scenario is unacceptable to the Israelis.

On Monday February 16, 2015, we were told that US officials believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has authorized his government to release secret details of the US nuclear negotiations with Iran to the Israeli press. The alleged leaks would appear designed to undermine the negotiations, which Israel opposes. In response the US has decided to "reduce the exchange of sensitive information about the Iran talks" with Israel.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif met for two hours in Geneva on Sunday February 22, 2015, in another round of nuclear talks to try to narrow gaps as they pressed against a 31 March deadline to reach a political agreement. The meeting included for the first time the US energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, and Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, who spent most of the day separately negotiating technical details of curbing Iran’s nuclear programme.

Binyamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document. It is part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world’s major intelligence services, one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times. Brandishing a cartoon of a bomb with a red line to illustrate his point, the Israeli prime minister warned the UN in New York that Iran would be able to build nuclear weapons the following year and called for action to halt the process. But, in a secret report shared with South Africa a few weeks later, Israel’s intelligence agency concluded that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”. The report, leaked on Monday February 23, 2015, highlights the gulf between the public claims and rhetoric of top Israeli politicians and the assessments of Israel’s military and intelligence establishment. ---

On Sunday March 1, 2015, Iran said it has shut down its Bushehr nuclear power plant based on a previously arranged schedule. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) has been quoted by IRNA state news agency as announcing that Bushehr plant will remain shut down for two months. AEOI has announced that this is meant to refuel the 1,000-megawatts power plant and prepare it to satisfy Iran’s electricity consumption for the peak period of next summer. Iran signed a contract with Russian over the construction of Bushehr plant in 1995. Bushehr plant officially began its operations in September 2011, generating electricity at 40 percent of its capacity. The commercial production of the plant is expected to happen later in 2015. Iran and Russia signed several deals in late 2014 over the construction of two nuclear reactor units at Bushehr plant.  The deals also envisage the building six more reactors in the project in the future.

Iran has rejected as "excessive and illogical" a demand by US President Barack Obama that it freeze sensitive nuclear activity for at least 10 years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to urge the US Congress on Tuesday March 3, 2015, to oppose a deal with Iran. He was invited to speak at the US Capitol by Republican House Speaker John Boehner, angering Democrats.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will speak before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday March 3, 2015, will try to convince lawmakers to scuttle a potential agreement being negotiated between Iran, the U.S. and other world powers. The agreement is intended is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. It would gradually eliminate worldwide economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for actions that would prevent the country from using its civilian nuclear program to build a nuclear bomb. In an unprecedented move, House Speaker John Boehner has invited Netanyahu to address Congress without consulting the president -or the Democratic leadership in Congress. Boehner apparently hoped to score partisan political points by undercutting support for President Obama and Democrats among pro-Israeli Americans. If he is successful, he will shatter a decades-old tradition of bipartisan support for Israel. That, of course, would be terrible for Israel. But Boehner, Dermer and Netanyahu also have another, even more destructive goal. They hope to stop the negotiations and prevent the potential agreement with Iran and with it, the hope that Iran can be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon without a war.

The United States and France sought on Saturday March 7, 2015, to play down any disagreements over nuclear talks with Iran, saying they both agreed the accord now under discussion needed to be strengthened. "We are on the same page," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters after talks with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in Paris. "If we didn’t think that there was further to go, as Laurent said, we’d have had an agreement already," Kerry added. "The reason we don’t have an agreement is, we believe there are gaps that have to be closed. There are things that have to be done to further strengthen this. We know this."

Republican US senators warned Iran Monday March 9, 2015, that an international deal curbing its nuclear program may collapse because President Barack Obama has no right to negotiate a binding accord without congressional approval. In an open letter to the Islamic republic, 47 Republicans, including Senate leaders and several potential 2016 presidential candidates, reminded Iranian leaders that Obama is in office only until January 2017, and a successor could scrap the agreement if Congress has not approved it. ---

Iran and six world powers suspended negotiations on a nuclear agreement and were set to meet again next week to break a deadlock over sensitive atomic research and lifting of sanctions we were told on Friday March 20, 2015. While the talks have made progress over the past year, differences on sticking points are still wide enough to potentially prevent an agreement in the end. France was demanding more stringent restrictions on the Iranians under any deal than the other Western delegations. The six power group -the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China- was generally unified but voiced concern that the Obama administration was under pressure due to concerns Republican-led Congress might wreck any agreement. The great ‎paradox is that Congress and Israel have put the pressure on the Americans instead of pressuring Iran which is what we need to be doing. Iran's delegation told the six powers it was returning to Tehran due to the death of President Hassan Rouhani's 90-year-old mother on Friday. Prior to the Iranian departure, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation chief Ali Akbar Salehi held another series of meetings to break the impasse.

The prospect of Iranian nuclear proliferation has strained relations between the U.S. and Israel. Israel, a routine geopolitical ally of the United States, has been caught spying on the U.S.’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. The state’s surveillance came to the attention of the White House after the U.S., somewhat ironically, intercepted Israeli communications containing confidential information that could have only come from access to its private talks. What perturbed the White House most was not so much Israel’s eavesdropping—that’s to be expected between nation states these days, I guess—but it was the way Israel used the information to influence Congress. Israel remains adamant that it did no wrong. “These allegations are utterly false. The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel’s other allies.” Yet the White House seems to believe otherwise.

On Thursday March 26, 2015, we were told that the United States wants major powers to reach a detailed political understanding with Iran by March 31 to clear the path for a long-term nuclear accord; Washington could be flexible on its format. Washington will not rush to complete an agreement just because there was a deadline. Any framework agreement must address key aspects of a future nuclear deal with Tehran that Iran and the six aim to conclude by June 30.

The Nuclear talks reached a critical point Saturday March 28, 2015, as the ministers of France and Germany arrived to push a framework agreement with Iran ahead of Tuesday's deadline. The talks hit a snag as the negotiations entered their third day, with Iran standing firm on several sticking points that could jeopardize a deal. Iran has refused to budge on key issues cantering around the scope of advanced nuclear research that Iran could continue to do while a deal is in effect, as well as the pace of sanctions relief. The Iranians are being very tough on the most difficult issues. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tried to downplay tensions after meeting with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, saying that some progress was made.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned on Sunday March 29, 2015, the framework Iranian nuclear agreement being sought by international negotiators, saying it was even worse than his country had feared. Israel has mounted what it terms an "uphill battle" against an agreement that might ease sanctions on the Iranians while leaving them with a nuclear infrastructure with bomb-making potential. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

Representatives of six world powers are intensifying talks with Iran on its nuclear programme, ahead of a 31 March deadline for a deal. The US secretary of state and German and French foreign ministers have all cancelled their travel plans in a final push for an agreement. The world powers, known as the P5+1 group -the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany- want to ensure that Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons.

Iran and major powers were struggling on Monday March 30, 2015 to reach a preliminary nuclear accord as "gloom" set in, with both sides sticking to their positions a day before a self-imposed deadline. For days Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China have been trying to break an impasse in negotiations aimed at ensuring that Tehran cannot develop a nuclear bomb, in exchange for an easing of United Nations sanctions that are crippling its economy. But officials at the talks in the Swiss city of Lausanne said attempts to reach a framework accord, intended as a prelude to a comprehensive agreement by the end of June, could yet fall apart, and that they were at any rate likely to run until the deadline of midnight (2200 GMT) on Tuesday or beyond.

Arab governments are watching the endgame of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme with barely-concealed alarm, fearing that the US is bent on a rapprochement with Tehran, not so much at any price, but certainly at the expense of its long-standing Gulf allies. Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main regional rival, has made clear its unhappiness with the emerging deal. Still, unlike Israel, which flatly opposes any agreement, Saudi Arabia has adopted a more subtle approach. The Saudis have hinted for years that they would turn to Pakistan if they felt threatened by a nuclear Iran. But the Saudis have wider concerns: an American-Iranian rapprochement, they fear, will undermine their own influence and security. The United Arab Emirates, which has a long-running dispute with Iran over three Gulf islands, is also concerned, suggesting a nuclear agreement will strengthen Tehran’s hand in other areas of Middle Eastern strategic competition that have a Sunni-Shia sectarian tinge – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and more recently Yemen.

On Thursday April 2, 2015, an outline agreement on the future shape of Iran's nuclear programme has been reached after marathon talks with six major powers in Switzerland. Under the deal, Iran will reduce its enrichment capacity in exchange for phased sanctions relief. The world powers and Iran now aim to draft a comprehensive nuclear accord by 30 June. The framework agreement was announced by the European Union and Iran after eight days of negotiations in Lausanne. The talks between the so-called P5+1 -the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany- and Iran at Lausanne's Beau-Rivage Palace hotel continued beyond the original self-imposed deadline of 31 March.

On Thursday April 2, 2015, President Obama has hailed a deal restricting Iran's nuclear programme as a "historic understanding" which, if implemented, will make the world safer. The framework agreement, struck after intensive talks, aims to prevent Tehran making a nuclear weapon in exchange for phased sanction relief. Iran and the six world powers involved must now finalise the deal. Iranians have been celebrating in the streets but Israel says the deal threatens its survival.---

Iran will be freed from almost all economic and financial sanctions under the plan agreed with major world powers in Lausanne, but only after fulfilling a list of stringent conditions in a process that is expected to take at least six months. The process could take significantly longer, raising the risk that the Iranian public might grow disillusioned with the agreement, and strengthen the country’s hardliners. The plan agreed on Thursday April 2, 2015, includes a set of parameters for a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme due to be signed in Vienna at the end of June. They require Iran to carry out a set of tasks intended to extend its breakout time, the period it would take to produce enough fissile material for a warhead, to a year. The tasks include:

• Removal of the core of the heavy water reactor at Arak, rendering it inoperable.
• Agreement to the application of the additional protocol, a regime of enhanced inspections carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
• Cutting Iran’s installed centrifuges from about 19,000 to just over 6,000, of which slightly more than 5,000 would be used for enrichment. The remaining 13,000 would be disabled and put under IAEA seal.
• Reduction of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) from more than eight tonnes to just 300 kg, either by dilution or export.
• Cooperation with an IAEA investigation into evidence of past work on nuclear weaponisation, specifically the granting of access for inspectors to suspect sites and people.

Once the conditions have been fulfilled, the EU oil embargo and all other EU economic and financial sanctions would be lifted, as well as the block on Iran using the Swift system for international electronic banking. In coordination with the EU, Barack Obama would issue waivers on corresponding US sanctions. US and European sanctions would have to be lifted together because the US measures are extra-territorial, so would punish European companies for dealing with Iran.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday April 9, 2015, demanded that all sanctions on Iran be lifted at the same time as any final agreement with world powers on curbing Tehran's nuclear program is concluded. Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's most powerful figure and who has the last say on all state matters, was making his first comments on the interim deal reached last week in the Swiss city of Lausanne. His stand on the lifting of sanctions matched earlier comments by Rouhani, who said Iran would only sign a final nuclear accord if all measures imposed over its disputed atomic work are lifted on the same day. These include nuclear-related United Nations resolutions as well as U.S. and EU nuclear-related economic sanctions.

Nuclear talks between Iran and world powers will resume on April 21 at the deputy level we were told on Tuesday April 14, 2015. Despite the progress made in the last round of talks, several disagreements remain between the two sides, including how quickly sanctions would be lifted and whether Iran would be able to use advanced centrifuges under a final deal.

U.S. Under Secretary Wendy Sherman and Tehran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will resume talks about curbing Iran's nuclear program later on Thursday April 23, 2015. Under the framework agreement, Iran agreed to slash the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges it operates and would allow more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for sanctions relief. The diplomatic push needs to iron out details about the timing of sanctions relief, the future of Iran's atomic research and development program, the exact nature of the IAEA's monitoring regime and what kind of uranium stockpile Tehran will be allowed to keep under any final deal. Iran says economic sanctions must be lifted as soon as any final deal is signed, while the United States wants a gradual lifting of restrictions. ---

Iran and world powers are to resume talks in the Austrian capital next week on drafting a final accord on the country's nuclear programme, we were told Friday May 22, 2015. The discussions are to resume on Tuesday in Vienna. The United States as well as Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany are in the midst of negotiations with Tehran to finalise a deal by June 30 that would prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons in exchange for an easing of crippling economic sanctions. For several weeks, political and technical experts have been trying to finalise the terms of a final agreement. The latest was the fourth round of talks since an interim deal was agreed on April 2.

Iran has agreed to grant United Nations inspectors “managed access” to military sites as part of a future deal over its contested nuclear programme we were told on Sunday May 24, 2015, apparently contradicting earlier comments by the nation’s supreme leader.

An Iran nuclear deal is not likely by June 30 because technical details will remain to be defined and Iran will not get sanctions relief before the end of the year in the best of cases, we were told on Tuesday May 26, 2015.

A month before a nuclear deal deadline, top US and Iranian diplomats gathered in Geneva on Saturday May 30, 2015, in an effort to bridge differences over how quickly to ease economic sanctions on Tehran and how significantly the Iranians must open up military facilities to international inspections. The talks between US secretary of state John Kerry and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif were likely to extend into Sunday. Kerry and Zarif met for six hours on Saturday, trying to overcome obstacles to a final nuclear agreement. They were the first substantive talks since Iran struck an interim accord with the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China on 2 April.

US Secretary of State John Kerry broke his leg in a bike crash Sunday May 31, 2015, apparently after hitting a curb while taking a break after talks in Geneva, Switzerland. The diplomat was biking near Scionzier, France before the accident, which caused him to scrap the rest of a four-nation trip that included an international conference on combating the Islamic State group. Kerry, 71, was in stable condition and in good spirits as he prepared to return to Boston for further treatment with the doctor who previously operated on his hip.

Six world powers have agreed on a way to restore U.N. sanctions on Iran if the country breaks the terms of a future nuclear deal, clearing a major obstacle to an accord ahead of a June 30 deadline. The new understanding on a U.N. sanctions "snapback" brings them closer to a possible deal with Iran, though other hurdles remain, including ensuring United Nations access to Iranian military sites. U.S. and European negotiators want any easing of U.N. sanctions to be automatically reversible if Tehran violates a deal. Russia and China traditionally reject such automatic measures as undermining their veto power as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. As part of the new agreement on sanctions snapback, suspected breaches by Iran would be taken up by a dispute-resolution panel, likely including the six powers and Iran, which would assess the allegations and come up with a non-binding opinion. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would also continue regularly reporting on Iran's nuclear program, which would provide the six powers and the Security Council with information on Tehran's activities to enable them to assess compliance. ---

Prosecutors in Switzerland and Austria have launched investigations into allegations that a computer virus was used to spy on the recent high-level Iran nuclear talks. It comes a day after a top Russia-based software security company, Kaspersky, said a spy virus dubbed Dugu 2.0 appeared to have compromised computer networks in at least three Swiss hotels that had been host to senior diplomats from Iran and the six major powers of the group known as the P5+1. The office of the Swiss attorney general announced on Thursday June 11, 2015, that police had last month raided unnamed locations in Geneva, where recent talks took place, and confiscated computer equipment and IT material. Austria, which also hosted the Iranian nuclear negotiations, confirmed on Thursday it was investigating separately as well.

Iran is trying to avoid detailed commitments. The French are sticking to their tough line. And U.S. President Barack Obama faces a battle to sell any deal to a sceptical Congress. Despite those and other obstacles, negotiators appear increasingly likely to clinch an historic deal to restrict Iran's nuclear program for at least a decade in exchange for relief from sanctions we were told on Thursday June 18, 2015. U.S. officials, including Obama, have long said they see at best a 50-50 chance of getting a deal with Iran. That remains the official line, but diplomats close to the talks tell Reuters the chances are higher than that as foreign ministers and other negotiators head to Vienna next week for the final stage of a nearly two-year process.

Iran's supreme leader has hardened his stance on the nuclear negotiations with world powers, with the deadline for a comprehensive agreement only days away. In a speech on Tuesday June 23, 2015, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted Iran would only dismantle its nuclear infrastructure if economic sanctions were lifted first. He also ruled out a freeze on research and development for 10 years, as well as inspections of military sites. The demands appear to undercut a framework deal announced in April. They could also limit the ability of Iran's negotiating team to make key concessions as the self-imposed 30 June deadline approaches. As supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei has final say on all state matters.

Moreover Iran's parliament passed a bill on Tuesday June 23, 2015, banning access for U.N. inspectors to its military sites and scientists, potentially complicating chances for a nuclear accord with world powers as a self-imposed June 30 deadline approaches. Two major stumbling blocks to a deal have been disputes over how much transparency Iran should offer to ease suspicions that it has covertly sought to develop nuclear bombs, and the timing and pace of relief from sanctions imposed on Tehran. France has spearheaded the powers' demand that Iran grant unfettered U.N. access to military bases -where Western officials believe Iran has conducted nuclear bomb research- as part of any final settlement that would curb Tehran's nuclear program in return for a phase-out of sanctions.

Iranian nuclear talks are set to go on beyond Tuesday June 30, 2015's formal deadline for a deal, a senior US official says. The admission came as Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif prepared to fly back to Tehran from Vienna, Austria, where talks are taking place. Mr Zarif probably needed to seek guidance over a stumbling block in negotiations- how much access Tehran will grant to nuclear monitors. Six world powers and Iran are taking part in the talks. The negotiations aim to see limits placed on Tehran's nuclear programme in exchange for removing international sanctions on Iran.

Iran and world powers gave themselves an extra week to reach a nuclear accord, extending a deadline due to expire on Tuesday June 30, 2015, while U.S. President Barack Obama said there would be no deal if all pathways to an Iranian nuclear weapon were not cut off. With talks in the final stretch, Iran's president Hassan Rouhani also spoke out, saying his country would resume suspended atomic work if the West breaks its promises. ---

An Iranian nuclear agreement is possible this week if Iran makes the necessary hard choices, but if not, the United States stands ready to walk away from the negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday July 5, 2015. Kerry also said they had made genuine progress in talks over the last few days but several of the most difficult issues remain. If hard choices get made in the next couple of days, made quickly, we could get an agreement this week, but if they are not made we will not, he said in Vienna.

The United States and other major powers are not in a rush to reach a nuclear deal with Iran we were told on Thursday July 9, 2015, suggesting an accord was unlikely hours ahead of a deadline set by the U.S. Congress for a quick review. In another sign an agreement was not at hand, a senior Iranian official accused the United States and others nations of shifting their positions and backtracking on an April 2 interim agreement that was meant to lay the ground for a final deal. The comments suggested Iran and the major powers have a way to go to reach a deal under which Iran would curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Reports that a provisional deal on Iran's nuclear programme could come on Sunday July 12, 2015, have sparked a US warning that major issues remain. The historic deal could be in sight, and a number of negotiators at the Vienna talks also expressed hopes for a deal. But a senior US official then said that major issues remained. The deal would impose verifiable limits on Iran's nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions. Details of the deal were still being worked and it would still need to be reviewed by Iran and the so-called P5+1 -the US, UK, Russia, France, China and Germany. But then the agreement could be announced on Monday. Another diplomat had told AFP that "98% of the text is finished". Negotiators at the talks had also expressed hopes they were nearing an end.

European and Chinese officials are pushing for a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme to be signed on Monday July13, 2015, but Washington and Tehran will not be rushed. European diplomats at the talks said on Sunday that the major obstacles to a deal had been cleared away and that they expected an announcement on Monday afternoon, but their American counterparts were more cautious. Meanwhile, the Iranian delegation also suggested the talks were not yet at the finish line.

On Monday July 13, 2015, world powers have reached a deal with Iran on limiting Iranian nuclear activity in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions. US President Barack Obama said that with the deal, "every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off" for Iran. His Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, said it opened a "new chapter" in Iran's relations with the world. Negotiations between Iran and six world powers -the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany- began in 2006.

In a few words this is what has been agreed: Iran’s acceptance of strict limits on its nuclear programme in return for escape from the forest of sanctions that has grown up around its economy over the last decade. In addition, Iran would have to accept extensive monitoring and cooperate with an inquiry looking into evidence of past work on nuclear warhead design.

• Uranium enrichment capacity

Iran’s current capacity of 19,000 gas centrifuges would be reduced by more than two-thirds to 6,104, out of which just over 5,000 would actually be enriching uranium. All of them would be first-generation centrifuges based on technology going back to the 1950s. Furthermore, for the first 15 years of the deal Iran would not enrich beyond the level of 3.67% purity, low-enriched uranium (LEU) of the kind used in nuclear power stations.

• Fordow underground enrichment plant

This cavern under a mountain near the city of Qom first came to light in 2009. Under the agreement, it would be used only for non-military research. Two-thirds of its centrifuges would be removed and the remainder would not be allowed to enrich uranium. No fissile material would be allowed at the site. These restrictions would apply for 15 years.

• The enriched uranium stockpile

Iran’s stockpile of LEU would be reduced from its current level of about 7,500kg to 300kg, a reduction of 96%. The reduction would be achieved either by shipping the uranium abroad or by diluting it.

• Research, development and future enrichment capacity

There would be limits on the R&D work Iran could do on advanced centrifuges, so that it could not suddenly upgrade its enrichment capacity after the first 10 years of the agreement and bring its breakout time down from one year to a few weeks almost overnight. Iran would be able to test experimental new centrifuges on a small scale according to a gradual plan.

• The heavy water reactor at Arak

Iran would remove the reactor core and fill it with concrete. The reactor would be redesigned so that it produces much less plutonium, if any, and all its spent fuel would be shipped out of the country. Iran would refrain from building a reprocessing plant –or even doing research on reprocessing– indefinitely, and would not build any new heavy water plants for 15 years.

• Inspections

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would have full access to all Iran’s declared nuclear sites as at present, but with much more advanced technology than they are using now. Inspectors would be able to visit non-declared sites where they think nuclear work might be going on. A commission made up of a range of IAEA members would be set up to judge whether the inspectors’ access requests are justified, and would take its decision by majority vote.

• Investigation into past activity

Iran has agreed a “road map” with the IAEA officials by which it would provide access to facilities and people suspected of involvement in past experimental work on warhead design, managed by a centralised and covert unit, mostly before 2004. The IAEA would have to certify Iranian cooperation with the inquiry before Iran benefits from sanctions relief.

• Sanctions relief

As Iran takes the agreed steps listed above to reduce the capacity and proliferation risk of its nuclear infrastructure, the US and EU would provide guarantees that financial and economic sanctions will be suspended or cancelled. The EU would stop its oil embargo and end its banking sanctions, and Iran would be allowed to participate in the Swift electronic banking system that is the lifeblood of international finance. Barack Obama would issue presidential waivers suspending the operation of US trade and financial sanctions.

• A new UN security council resolution and the arms embargo

The JCPOA will be incorporated into a new Security Council resolution intended to replace and supersede six earlier sanctions resolutions imposed on Iran over its nuclear programme. The resolution will be passed before the end of the month but the agreement will not take effect for 90 days, allowing for the domestic political review to be completed. An arms embargo on Iran would remain in place for five years, and a ban on the transfer of missile technology would stay for eight years.

The Obama administration on Sunday July 19, 2015, sent the Iran nuclear deal to Congress for review. As it did so, secretary of state John Kerry and the secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, pressed the case for the deal as the best way to curb Iranian nuclear ambitions and ensure US security. Obama says Iran deal 'will make world safer' as Republicans plot opposition. The real fear of that region should be that you don’t have the deal. A move to restoring diplomatic relations with Iran in the wake of the deal was “not being contemplated”. Florida senator Marco Rubio said he would reinstate US sanctions on Iran that will be waived under the present deal. Rubio called the deal “flawed”. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker repeated his promise to “tear the deal up” on his first day in the White House. The prime minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu expressed his strenuous opposition. Defence secretary Ash Carter left Washington for Tel Aviv on Sunday, on a mission to shore up a relationship with Israel that has been frayed by negotiations with Iran. Carter strongly supports the Iran deal, but he has no intention of trying to reverse Israeli opposition to it. Carter is also scheduled to visit Jordan and Saudi Arabia, both US allies concerned over the Iran deal. Barack Obama has promised to exercise his presidential veto if Congress rejects the deal. To overcome that veto would require a two-thirds majority of both the House and the Senate. The administration must gain the support of enough Democrats to offset Republican opposition.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday July 20, 2015, backed Iran's nuclear agreement with world powers but the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards attacked the resolution, underlining powerful opposition to the deal. U.S. President Barack Obama, who also faces domestic political opposition to the agreement, hailed the United Nations endorsement, saying it showed last week's accord commanded broad international support as the best way of ensuring Iran never gets nuclear weapons. The European Union also approved the deal while Germany rapidly moved to revive its once close trading relationship with Tehran. ---

Secretary of State John Kerry has been painting an apocalyptic picture of what would happen if Congress killed the Iran nuclear deal. Among other things, he has warned that “our friends in this effort will desert us." But the top national security official from one of those nations involved in the negotiations, France, has a totally different view: He told two senior U.S. lawmakers that he thinks a Congressional no vote might actually be helpful. His analysis is already having an effect on how members of Congress, especially House Democrats, are thinking about the deal. The French official, Jacques Audibert, is now the senior diplomatic adviser to President Francois Hollande. Before that, as the director general for political affairs in the Foreign Ministry from 2009 to 2014, he led the French diplomatic team in the discussions with Iran and the P5+1 group. Earlier this month, he met with Democrat Loretta Sanchez and Republican Mike Turner, both top members of the House Armed Services Committee, to discuss the Iran deal. The U.S. ambassador to France, Jane Hartley, was also in the room. According to both lawmakers, Audibert expressed support for the deal overall, but also directly disputed Kerry’s claim that a Congressional rejection of the Iran deal would result in the worst of all worlds, the collapse of sanctions and Iran racing to the bomb without restrictions. “He basically said, if Congress votes this down, there will be some sabre-rattling and some chaos for a year or two, but in the end nothing will change and Iran will come back to the table to negotiate again and that would be to our advantage,” Sanchez told me in an interview. “He thought if the Congress voted it down, that we could get a better deal.

US allies in the Gulf have backed the nuclear deal with Iran, after the US promised them better intelligence-sharing and faster arms transfers. Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiya said the Iran deal represented the best option for regional stability. Gulf States accuse Shia Iran of stoking unrest in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. They fear the nuclear deal will encourage the Tehran government to boost support for proxies who are fighting Sunni forces across the region. The US has argued that the deal, aimed at preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon in exchange for sanctions relief, will make the region safer. On Monday August 3, 2015, Mr Kerry discussed the nuclear deal with members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) -a regional body bringing together Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar.

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives will vote on whether to reject the nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran when lawmakers return to Washington in September, party leaders said on Tuesday August 4, 2015, setting up a showdown with the White House. This deal gives up too much, too fast, to a terrorist state –making the world less safe, less secure, and less stable, said Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who introduced the disapproval resolution. A law President Barack Obama signed in May gives the Republican-led Congress until September 17 to approve or disapprove of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers announced on July 14. A disapproval resolution could cripple the agreement by eliminating Obama's ability to temporarily waive most U.S. sanctions, and Obama has promised a veto if a resolution passes Congress. Lawmakers could have opted to vote on a non-binding approval resolution, or just let the deal go ahead. Although they had not made it clear before Tuesday, House leaders had been expected to opt for the disapproval resolution.

Chuck Schumer, the senior Democrat expected to become the first Jewish Senate leader in the US Congress, has broken party ranks to oppose the Obama administration on the Iran nuclear agreement. Under pressure from his constituents and opponents of the deal, Schumer made clear in a statement on Thursday August 6, 2015, that he did not believe the comprehensive agreement struck in Vienna in July was enough to prevent Iran from making a bomb. Schumer gave his verdict a day after the US president, Barack Obama, delivered a combative and passionate speech at American University in Washington, in which he accused “armchair” warmongers in Washington of luring Congress towards another military conflict in the Middle East.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday August 6, 2015, rejected President Barack Obama's pitch for the Iran nuclear deal, saying it was "absurd" to argue that lawmakers must essentially choose between the agreements and going to war. The Democratic president said if the Republican-controlled Congress blocked the deal, it would accelerate Tehran's path to a nuclear bomb. "Let's not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon," Obama said. But McConnell was not buying it. "That's an absurd argument," he said.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) threw her support behind the Iran nuclear deal on Thursday August 6, 2015, saying there's no "viable alternative" to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. "If we reject this deal, we do not have a viable alternative for preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," she said. "Our goal has been, and remains, to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. We have far more ability to achieve that outcome if we approve this deal."

An American progressive advocacy group has committed to withholding millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats if their vote against the nuclear deal with Iran scuttles President Obama's diplomatic effort in September. Nearly 18,000 people signed a petition on MoveOn's website, entitled "No money for war hawks," committing to withhold $8.3 million they would have otherwise contributed to the party less than 24 hours after Schumer announced he will oppose the deal in Congress, the group told the Huffington Post on Friday. MoveOn, which describes itself on its website as a "community of more than 8 million Americans from all walks of life who use innovative technology to lead, participate in, and win campaigns for progressive change," has launched a campaign together with other supporters of the Iran deal aimed at urging constituents to pressure their elected officials to vote for the deal. ---

Neutral Switzerland will officially lift on Thursday August 13, 2015, sanctions against Iran that had been suspended since January 2014. The deal that Iran struck with China, Russia, the United States, Germany, France and Britain aims to rein in Iran's nuclear programme in return for relief from U.N., EU and U.S. sanctions that were crippling the Islamic republic's economy. The Swiss sanctions had banned trade in precious metals with Iranian state bodies and set requirements to report trade in Iranian petrochemical products and the transport of Iranian crude oil and petroleum products. Switzerland will also introduce a new exemption clause that lets Berne implement U.N. Security Council resolutions on Iran.

Barack Obama has enough votes to get the Iran deal through the House of Representatives, despite Republican efforts to block the historic nuclear accord, the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, has said on Thursday August 20, 2015. With a Senate vote looking increasingly secure for the president, Pelosi’s comments suggest it is now extremely unlikely that Congress will halt the deal.

Democrats have picked up enough congressional support for the Iran nuclear deal that they are now hoping not merely to sustain any White House veto of a resolution rejecting the agreement but also to prevent the resolution from even reaching the President's desk. All 54 Senate Republicans are expected to vote for a resolution in mid-September disapproving of the accord, but to clear a procedural hurdle so the chamber can move on the bill, they need six Democrats to join them. So far, only two Democratic senators have said they will oppose the agreement: New York's Chuck Schumer and New Jersey's Bob Menendez. This week two key undecided Democratic senators -Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who is close to Schumer, and Joe Donnelly of Indiana- announced their support for the deal.

Democratic Senator Tom Carper of Delaware on Friday August 28, 2015, became the 30th senator to announce support for the Iran nuclear deal, as momentum for the White House-backed agreement grows. If Senate Democrats can amass 41 votes in favour of the deal, they could block passage of a congressional resolution to disapprove of the deal. If that doesn't happen and the GOP-led Senate votes to disapprove of the deal, President Barack Obama has vowed to veto it. Democrats then would need 34 votes —four more than they have now— to prevent a congressional override of the presidential veto. A vote on the nuclear deal the U.S. and other world powers negotiated with Iran is scheduled for early September. ---

The Obama administration has secured enough support in the Senate to ensure that the Iran nuclear deal will survive a congressional vote, but John Kerry warned remaining waverers that rejection of the agreement would be a “self-destructive blow” to US credibility. Democrat Barbara Mikulski became the 34th senator to support the deal, ensuring a landmark victory for the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent it being derailed. Mikulski’s support for the agreement means that Obama has enough votes in the Senate to uphold his veto if Congress rejects the July deal as expected. But the administration is still hoping to amass 41 votes, which would spare Obama from having to use his veto and spend political capital.

On Monday October 12, 2015, Iran's parliament has approved a deal on its nuclear programme agreed with six world powers. The deal was passed with 161 votes in favour, 59 against and 13 abstentions. However, parliament insisted that international inspectors would have only limited access to military sites. The agreement, struck in July, authorises the lifting of sanctions in return for Iran curbing sensitive nuclear activities. Iran insists that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.

The United States has confirmed that Iran tested a medium-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, in clear violation of a United Nations Security Council ban on ballistic missile tests we were told on Friday October 16, 2015. On October 10 Iran launched a medium-range ballistic missile inherently capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

The United States approved conditional sanctions waivers for Iran on Sunday October 18, 2015, though it cautioned they would not take effect until Tehran has curbed its nuclear programme as required under a historic nuclear deal reached in Vienna on July 14.

Iran’s recent ballistic missile test was “a clear violation” of UN sanctions, and the United States will seek action from the Security Council we were told Friday October 16, 2015. The medium-range ballistic missile launched on October 10 was “inherently capable of delivering a nuclear weapon” and this violated a UN Security Council resolution adopted on June 9, 2010 which imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran. While condemning the ballistic missile test, the United States has made clear that it is “entirely separate” from the nuclear deal, which is aimed at preventing Iran from developing atomic weapons. The 2010 UN resolution bans Iran from undertaking “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology.”

On Monday October 19, 2015, we were told that EU sanctions against Iran, which Western powers and their allies have long suspected of striving to produce nuclear weapons, are to be lifted as soon as Iran has “done its part” which includes dismantling centrifuges and shutting down nuclear facilities. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister and senior nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi is certain the final agreement with major world powers to be signed after Iran meets all necessary conditions which include dismantling centrifuges and shutting down nuclear facilities in exchange for sanctions relief. The deal is expected to come into effect by the end of 2015. ---

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has given his qualified approval to the nuclear accord agreed with major powers, but added conditions that could complicate its implementation. In a letter to President Hassan Rouhani, Khamenei said Iran would not take major steps to dismantle its nuclear programme until the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), closed an investigation into the country’s alleged past work on the design of nuclear weapons. The intervention is problematic for Rouhani’s government, which is in a hurry to implement the nuclear deal so that Iran can benefit from sanctions relief before legislative elections in late February. On Wednesday October 21, 2015, it announced that it was close to a deal with Russia to export its stockpile of enriched uranium in return for imports of natural uranium. Khamenei also stipulated that sanctions, or even the threat of sanctions, from abroad could be grounds for walking away from the deal, known as the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA).

Iran has begun shutting down uranium enrichment centrifuges under the terms of a deal struck with six world powers in July on limiting its nuclear program we were told on Monday November 2, 2015. Iran has begun dismantling parts of its nuclear programme, as agreed in a landmark deal with major powers. Iran has started removing centrifuges and related infrastructure at the Natanz and Fordo enrichment facilities. The country had agreed to slash two-thirds of the centrifuges, machines that can enrich or purify uranium to make it suitable for peaceful uses but also for a nuclear weapon. In addition, Iran pledged to change the design of a new reactor at Arak to reduce sharply the amount of plutonium produced, the alternative to uranium for a bomb. In return, the six major powers –the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany– have agreed to lift sanctions imposed on the Islamic republic. The accord was formally adopted by all parties on 18 October and it is expected to come into force in the coming weeks or months. Iran still has some way to go before all its commitments are met. So far, 4,500 centrifuges have been removed at Natanz and Fordo meaning it still has to take out approximately 10,000 more.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog IAEA has confirmed suspicions that Iran had a concerted nuclear weapons design programme until 2003 and conducted some sporadic weapons studies after that before ceasing all related activity in 2009. In response, the Iranian government denied on Wednesday December 3, 2015, that any such programme existed and declared the International Atomic Energy Agency investigation closed. In Washington, the state department said the report was proof of the administration’s own conclusions. The IAEA found no evidence of any weapons activity after 2009, so the report cleared the way for the investigation to be closed and for implementation to proceed of a comprehensive nuclear deal agreed in July between Iran, the US and five other major powers. Under that deal, Iran has already begun dismantling much of its nuclear infrastructure, particularly its uranium enrichment capacity, in return for sanctions relief, a milestone that will be reached in the new few weeks.

On Tuesday December 15, 2015, the UN atomic watchdog has formally closed a long-running investigation of Iran’s past work on warhead design, and pledged its support to helping implement a comprehensive nuclear deal Tehran agreed in July with major powers. The decision by the 35-nation board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency removes a hurdle to implementation of the July deal, under which Iran accepted strict curbs on its civil nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. Iranian officials say can fulfil the country’s other obligations –dismantling uranium enrichment centrifuges, removing the core of a heavy-water reactor and drastically reducing the stockpile of low-enriched uranium– in the next few weeks, opening the way to broad lifting of international sanctions. The IAEA director general, Yukiya Amano, summarised the findings of the investigation –which Iran had a concerted weapons design effort up to 2003, and there were some sporadic activities after that. Moreover the agency has no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009. Nor has the agency found any credible indications of the diversion of nuclear material in connection with the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. ---

Iran has moved closer to next month's expected implementation of a landmark nuclear deal with six world powers by allowing Moscow to transfer most of its enriched uranium to Russia we were told Monday December 28, 2015. As part of the July 14 deal, Iran must ship out all except 300 kilograms of the close to nine tons of low-enriched uranium it has stockpiled. Low-enriched uranium is suited to power generation but can be further enriched to arm nuclear warheads.  Its removal is a key obligation taken on by Iran under the deal, which aims to reduce its ability to make nuclear weapons —something Tehran says it has no interest in. The July agreement also commits Iran to sharply reduce the number of centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, as well as to re-engineer a reactor to cut its output of plutonium —another pathway to nuclear weapons. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, which is monitoring the progress of the Iranian implementation, says both of those measures are well underway. The Russia-Iran agreement foresees that Moscow ship Iran around 140 tons of raw uranium in exchange for Tehran's low-enriched uranium.

On Sunday January 10, 2016, we were told that Iran has removed the core of its Arak heavy water nuclear reactor and filled it with cement as required under a nuclear deal signed with world powers last year. Any such move, reducing the plant's ability to produce plutonium, might signal imminent implementation of the nuclear deal and clear the way for Tehran to receive relief from economic sanctions. The European Union's foreign policy chief said that EU nuclear-related sanctions on Iran could be lifted soon.

Iran "has opened a new chapter" in its ties with the world, President Hassan Rouhani said, hours after international nuclear sanctions were lifted on Saturday January 16, 2016. The move came after the international nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said Iran had complied with a deal designed to prevent it developing nuclear weapons. Most Western governments hailed the move but Israel accused Tehran of still seeking to build a nuclear bomb.

On Saturday January 16, 2016, the US has imposed fresh sanctions on Iranian companies and individuals over a recent ballistic missile test. The new sanctions prevent 11 entities and individuals linked to the missile programme from using the US banking system. The move came after international nuclear sanctions on Iran were lifted as part of a deal hailed by President Barack Obama on Sunday as "smart". ---

An Iranian man has been arrested on Saturday August 27, 2016, on suspicion of informing about Iran's nuclear deal with the West, a "spy who had infiltrated the nuclear team". The man was held for several days before being released on bail. Last year's nuclear deal was widely celebrated in Iran and internationally, but some Iranian hardliners saw it as a capitulation to the US. The deal with the US, UK, China, France, Germany and Russia resulted in the lifting of sanctions against Iran imposed over its nuclear programme.

Iran has deployed a Russian-made, long-range missile defence system to 'protect' its Fordow underground nuclear facility we were told Monday August 29, 2016. The recently-delivered S-300 surface-to-air missile system are now installed at the uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.

Iran began building its second nuclear power plant with Russian help on Saturday September 10, 2016, the first such project since last year's landmark nuclear deal with world powers. The project in the southern port city of Bushehr will eventually include two power plants expected to go online in 10 years. Construction on the second plant is set to begin in 2018. The entire project will cost more than $8.5 billion, with each plant producing 1,057 megawatts of electricity. Construction of the power plant is a symbol of Iran enjoying the results of the nuclear deal. Iran said it will continue working with Russia as a strategic partner and friend. Iran's sole operational nuclear reactor, also built in Bushehr with Russian assistance, produces 1,000 megawatts. It went online in 2011, and the two countries have agreed to cooperate on future projects. Iran has a current capacity of 75,000 megawatts, nearly 90 percent coming from fossil fuels. It hopes to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear power in the next 15 years.

Iran has kept to a nuclear deal it agreed with six world powers last year limiting its stockpiles of substances that could be used to make atomic weapons, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Saturday October 1, 2016. Tehran had observed the deal which was opposed by hardliners inside Iran and by sceptics in the West.

U.S. lawmakers passed bills on Tuesday November 15, 2016, renewing sanctions on Iran for 10 years and imposing new sanctions on Syria, underscoring their determination to play a strong role in Middle East policy no matter who occupies the White House. The House of Representatives voted 419 to one for a 10-year reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, a law first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran's energy industry and deter Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The House also passed by voice vote a bill that would sanction the government of Syria, and supporters including Russia and Iran, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Iran measure will expire at the end of 2016 if it is not renewed. It must still be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama in order to become law.

Iran Thursday November 17, 2016:

• Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, and one of the top contenders for Foreign Secretary in the new Cabinet, called for a regime change in Iran. He has repeatedly urged the overthrow of the existing regime in Tehran. Bolton said that the US face the challenges of Iran, the region, and the world, adding: “The only long-term solution is to change the regime in Tehran.”

Iran has transferred some of its surplus heavy water to Oman for sale we were told Sunday November 20, 2016. Iran was criticized last week by the head of the UN’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, for Tehran’s second minor breach this year of the 2015 nuclear deal with major powers. Iran’s stock of heavy water had inched above the level agreed under the landmark accord. ---

On Wednesday November 30, 2016, the outgoing director of the CIA has warned of disastrous consequences if Donald Trump goes ahead with his threat of tearing up the US deal with Iran over nuclear weapons. John Brennan said Trump’s opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran was the “height of folly”. “I think it would be disastrous, it really would: for one administration to tear up an agreement that a previous administration made would be almost unprecedented.” Spelling out the dangers, the US intelligence chief added: “It could lead to a weapons programme inside of Iran that could lead other states in the region to embark on their own programmes with military conflict, so I think it would be the height of folly if the next administration were to tear up that agreement.” Brennan also expressed alarm about many of the key foreign policy pledges made by Trump during his election campaign, including the president-elect’s admiration for Vladimir Putin, his anti-Islamic rhetoric and his willingness to use torture. He said that in Syria, Russia and the Assad regime were responsible for “wanton slaughter of civilians that is ... nothing short of outrageous”. Brennan said he hoped for an improvement in relations between Washington and Moscow, but urged Trump to be careful of cosying up to Putin.

The U.S. Senate passed a 10-year extension of sanctions against Iran on Thursday December 1, 2016, sending the measure to the White House for President Barack Obama to sign into law and delaying any potentially tougher actions until next year. The measure passed by 99-0. It passed the House of Representatives nearly unanimously in November, and congressional aides said they expected Obama would sign it. The ISA will expire on December 31 if not renewed. The White House had not pushed for an extension, but had not raised serious objections. The renewal of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) would not violate the nuclear agreement with Iran reached last year.

A Senate vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act for 10 years shows the world that Washington cannot be relied upon to act on its commitments Iran said Saturday December 3, 2016.

On Tuesday December 13, 2016, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has ordered his officials to develop nuclear-powered ships, accusing the United States of violating last year's international nuclear deal. World powers had agreed to lift sanctions in exchange for curbs to Iran's nuclear programme. But Congress recently voted to extend its laws regarding sanctions on Iran. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the laws, but says they will not affect the international agreement as the White House will continue to suspend all the sanctions linked to Iran's nuclear programme.

In an unexpected reversal, President Barack Obama declined to sign a renewal of sanctions against Iran but let it become law anyway, in an apparent bid to alleviate Tehran's concerns that the U.S. is backsliding on the nuclear deal. Under the Constitution, the president has 10 days after Congress passes a bill to sign it, veto it or do nothing. If Congress has adjourned, failing to sign it is a "pocket veto" that prevents the bill from becoming law. ---

Iran Saturday December 24, 2016:

• A high-level commission that oversees Iran's nuclear deal with world powers will meet in Vienna on January 10 to address a complaint by Tehran about the renewing of sanctions by the United States.
• The meeting was called by the European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who coordinates follow-up of the nuclear deal for its signatories  -Iran, the US, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
• The meeting will review the implementation of the agreement and discuss the issues raised in the letter Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif addressed on 16 December to Mogherini.
• The officials will meet 10 days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, who has promised to tear up the nuclear deal once in the White House.
• Zarif formally requested the meeting after Washington on December 2 extended the Iran Sanctions Act -which mostly seeks to limit Iran's oil and gas trade- for another decade.

Iran Tuesday January 17, 2017:

• One year ago this week, the European Union, China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, the US and Iran began to implement the joint comprehensive plan of action on Iran’s nuclear programme. This agreement was the result of brave choices, political leadership, collective determination and hard work. A year on, we can clearly say that the Iran deal is working and we need to maintain it.
• The agreement has already paid off by addressing a highly contentious and longstanding dispute in a peaceful manner. In its absence, today we might be facing one more military conflict, in a region that is already far too destabilised.
• The deal, one year after its implementation, is delivering on its main purpose: ensuring the purely peaceful, civilian nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. The International Atomic Energy Agency –the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog– has issued four reports on the matter and has regularly verified that Iran is complying with its nuclear-related obligations. This means that the Iranian nuclear programme has been significantly reformatted and downsized and is now subject to intense monitoring by the IAEA. The joint commission –which I coordinate– oversees constantly the implementation of the agreement, meeting regularly, which allows us to detect even minor possible deviations and to take necessary corrective measures if the need arises.
• The deal is also working for Iran. Major companies are investing in the country: the oil sector, the automotive industry, commercial aircraft, just to give a few examples, are areas where significant contracts have been concluded. The International Monetary Fund has forecast real GDP growth in Iran to rebound to 6.6% in 2016-17. ---

Iran Wednesday March 15, 2017:

• Construction and installation work formally started at the site of unit 2 of the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The first foundation stone for units 2 and 3 of the plant was laid in a ceremony held at the construction site in southern Iran in September last year.
• AtomStroyExport (ASE) -another Rosatom subsidiary and the general contractor for the Bushehr project- and Nuclear Power Production and Development Company (NPPD) of Iran signed an EPC turnkey contract for construction of the units at Bushehr in November 2014. The two VVER-1000 units will be built with Generation III+ technology, including the latest safety features, and have a combined capacity of 2100 MWe.
• Russian-built Bushehr 1 was connected to the national grid on 3 September 2011 and became the first nuclear power plant in the Middle East. Bushehr units 2 and 3 are to be completed in 2024 and 2026, respectively.

Iran Tuesday August 15, 2017:

• Iran's president has warned that it could restart its nuclear programme "within hours" if the United States imposes any more new sanctions. Hassan Rouhani also said the programme would be more advanced than in 2015, when Iran curbed its nuclear activities as part of a deal with world powers.
• Iran says unilateral US sanctions targeting its ballistic missile programme breach the agreement. But the US says Iran's missile tests have violated a UN resolution.
• The resolution endorsed the nuclear deal and called upon Iran not to "undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology". Iran says the missiles it has tested are not designed to carry nuclear warheads and insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.

Iran Thursday September 28, 2017:

• Iran may abandon the nuclear deal it reached with six major powers if the United States decides to withdraw from it, the Iranian foreign minister said.
• Trump is considering whether the accord serves U.S. security interests. He faces a mid-October deadline for certifying that Iran is complying with the pact.
• The collapse of the deal could trigger a regional arms race and worsen tensions in the Middle East.

Iran Tuesday October 3, 2017:

• Jim Mattis, US secretary of defence, has expressed support for the historic nuclear deal with Iran, just days before Donald Trump is set to rule on an agreement he has called an “embarrassment” and threatened to rip up.

Iran Monday October 30, 2017:

• Iran is fulfilling its commitments under the nuclear deal with world powers and U.N. inspectors are facing no problems in their verification efforts.
• U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier this month that he would not continue to certify the multinational 2015 agreement, reached under his predecessor Barack Obama, and warned that he might ultimately terminate it.
• Iran would abandon the agreement if it were deemed not be serving its national interests, President Hassan Rouhani said in reaction to Trump's decision. But he also said, "No president can revoke an international deal...(and) Iran will continue to honour its commitments under the deal.
• The other parties to the accord -Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China and the European Union- have all reaffirmed their commitment to it and urged the United States not to back out.---

Iran Saturday January 13, 2018:

• Iran’s president says the United States has failed to undermine a nuclear deal between Tehran and the world’s major powers, and hailed the accord as a “long-lasting victory” for Iran.
• Donald Trump on Friday delivered an ultimatum to European signatories of the deal to fix the “terrible flaws” of the agreement with Iran, or the US would pull out.
• Iran says the nuclear deal is not renegotiable and it will stick to the accord as long as the other signatories respect it but will “shred” the deal if Washington pulls out.
• Under the deal, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme, in exchange for lifting of most sanctions.

Iran February 22, 2018:

• Iran may pull out of its nuclear deal with international powers if Western banks continue to refuse doing business with the country over fear of American sanctions.
• Donald Trump has threatened to resume sanctions against the Islamic republic unless the other five states which are signatories to the deal agree to changing the terms and imposing fresh restrictions on Tehran.
• UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, the P5+1 group, have all stressed that Iran is abiding by the agreed conditions, as has the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body carrying out inspections. Mr Trump, who had threatened to tear up the deal, has declared he will not sign the ongoing waiver on sanctions when it comes up for renewal on 12 May unless the country accepts a new set of measures.

Iran Saturday March 3, 2018:

• Iran will not negotiate over its ballistic missiles until the United States and Europe dismantle their nuclear weapons.
• While Iran has accepted curbs on its nuclear work —which it says is for purely peaceful purposes— it has repeatedly refused to discuss its missile program, something the United States and the Europeans have called for.
• Iran says its nuclear program is defensive because of its deterrent nature, and that it is not related to Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers which led to the lifting of sanctions against the country.
• European powers and Iran have started talks over Tehran's role in the Middle East and will meet again this month in Italy as part of efforts to prove to U.S. President Donald Trump that they are meeting his concerns over the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran Tuesday April 24, 2018:

• Iran has threatened to withdraw from the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons should Donald Trump pull the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal.
• Tehran could leave the NPT nearly half a century after it signed if it decided the treaty no longer served its interests.
• As the 12 May deadline nears for Trump to either sign a presidential waiver on sanctions against Iran or withdraw from the nuclear accord, Tehran has made it known that it will not stand idly by if the latter decision is taken.

Iran Sunday April 29, 2018:

• The leaders of Germany and the UK have joined their French counterpart in a last-ditch effort to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive in the face of the Trump administration’s threat to pull out of it within two weeks.
• After phone calls between the trio on Saturday and Sunday, Germany’s Angela Merkel and the UK’s Theresa May agreed to sign up to the plans of France’s Emmanuel Macron to pursue additional agreements to bolster the 2015 accord. The French president then spoke to Hassan Rouhani, his Iranian counterpart, for more than an hour.
• The deal, the main diplomatic accomplishment of the Obama administration and reached after years of multinational talks, reined in Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. But the agreement has been consistently criticised by US president Donald Trump, who last week described it as “terrible”.
• In a further drive to project a common European front despite Britain’s impending departure from the EU, the leaders also voiced their alarm over the impact on European industry of US steel and aluminium tariffs that take effect on Wednesday.

Iran Friday May 11, 2018:

• A major international diplomatic effort is being mounted to try to save the Iran nuclear deal from collapse in the wake of Donald Trump’s withdrawal.
• Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy head, said the bloc was determined to keep the 2015 agreement in place and she is due to lead talks between the foreign ministers of four countries in the pact next week. Representatives from Iran, the UK, France and Germany are to meet in Brussels on Tuesday. The summit will follow a string of phone calls between leaders in which they talked up efforts to preserve the deal.
• Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel spoke a week before the German chancellor travels to Sochi, and agreed they would work to maintain the deal while seeking to avoid an escalation of regional tensions. Emmanuel Macron is also due to visit Russia later this month.
• Mr. Trump spoke to Theresa May on the phone. After the prime minister “reiterated the government’s position on the Iran nuclear deal: “we and our European partners remain firmly committed to ensuring the deal is upheld as the best way of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon”.
• Thousands of Iranians protested across the country on Friday against Mr. Trump’s decision to remove the US from the nuclear agreement. France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China are the remaining signatories, alongside Iran.

Iran Sunday My 13, 2018:

• Donald Trump is prepared to impose sanctions on European companies that do business in Iran following his withdrawal of the US from the international nuclear deal. Trump’s most senior foreign policy aides signaled that the US would continue pressuring allies to follow Washington in backing out of the pact, which gave Tehran relief from sanctions in exchange for halting its nuclear program.
• US sanctions on Iran re-imposed following Trump’s withdrawal not only block American firms from doing business in the country, but also bar foreign firms that do business there from accessing the entire US banking and financial system.
• Trump’s decision to scrap the nuclear deal was sharply criticised by European leaders, who have pledged to uphold their side of the agreement.
• Alarm has been particularly high in France, whose energy giant Total last year signed a $5bn deal to extract Iranian natural gas. Airbus, the French-based plane manufacturer, has already begun delivering jets to Iran Air under a multi-billion dollar contract.
• Volkswagen, the German automaker, has resumed exporting cars to Iran.
• Some European leaders have called for measures to nullify the US sanctions. Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, said last week: “We have to work among ourselves in Europe to defend our European economic sovereignty.”
• Trump himself hinted that there would be no concessions to European firms during remarks at the White House last week in which he confirmed the US withdrawal, which he promised during the 2016 presidential campaign.
• We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanctions, Trump said. Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States.

Iran Tuesday May 15, 2018:

• The foreign ministers of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, along with Iran's foreign minister, have agreed on a nine-point economic plan to keep the Iran nuclear deal alive.
• The ministers rushed to discuss alternative solutions after US President Donald Trump on May 8 withdrew from the deal and vowed to impose tough economic sanctions against Tehran.
• Heiko Maas, Germany's foreign minister, acknowledged that the process to resolve the issues surrounding the US withdrawal would not be easy.

Iran Thursday May 17, 2018:

• The EU has put itself on a collision course with the US over Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran, as major European firms started to pull out of the country to avoid being hit by sanctions.
• In an attempt to shield EU companies doing business with Iran, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said he would turn to a plan last used to protect businesses working in Cuba before a US trade embargo was lifted on the Latin American country.
• The EU is seeking to keep Iran in the 2015 accord by safeguarding the economic benefits Tehran gained in return for giving up its nuclear program.
• The “blocking statute” is a 1996 regulation that prohibits EU companies and courts from complying with foreign sanctions laws and stipulates that no foreign court judgments based on these laws have any effect in the EU.
• Some firms have already decided to pull out of Iran:

. The French oil firm Total said that it was going to pull out of its 50.1% stake in the South Pars 11 oil field. It would only retain its investment if the US gave it a specific exemption from the planned sanctions. Its joint venture partners in China are likely to take over its share of the investment.
. Maersk, the world’s largest oil shipping container firm, said it would honour customer agreements entered into before 8 May, but then wind them down by 4 November, as required by the re-imposed US sanctions.

Iran Friday May 18, 2018:

• The EU announced a package of measures to counter US sanctions on Iran, setting up a potential new conflict with Washington as Europe fights to save a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran.
• The plans include enabling its member states to make direct payments for oil to Iran’s central bank and the revival of a 1990s era so-called “blocking statute” to allow companies to ignore US sanctions without fear of punishment in Europe.
• The EU’s moves defy US wishes for it to comply with Washington’s relaunch of measures against Iran after Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear accord last week.
• Analysts say there will be limits to the effectiveness of the Brussels response, and European leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron, have said they do not want a trade war with the US over Iran.
• As long as the Iranians respect their commitments, the EU will, of course, stick to the agreement of which it was an architect, said Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president.
• The American sanctions will not be without effect. So the commission and the European Union must do what we can to protect European businesses.

Iran Monday May 21, 2018:

The US secretary of state has set out 12 tough demands for inclusion in a new nuclear treaty with Iran. The conditions will require Iran, in his words, to:
◾Declare to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear programme and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity.
◾Stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing, including closing its heavy water reactor.
◾Provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country.
◾End its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems.
◾Release all US citizens as well as citizens of US partners and allies.
◾End support to Middle East "terrorist" groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
◾Respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and permit the disarming, demobilisation and reintegration of Shia militias.
◾End its military support for the Houthi rebels and work towards a peaceful, political settlement in Yemen.
◾Withdraw all forces under Iran's command throughout the entirety of Syria.
◾End support for the Taliban and other "terrorists" in Afghanistan and the region and cease harbouring senior al-Qaeda leaders.
◾End the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps-linked Quds Force's support for "terrorists" and "militant" partners around the world.
◾End its threatening behaviour against its neighbours, many of whom are US allies, including its threats to destroy Israel and its firing of missiles at Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and threats to international shipping and destructive cyberattacks.

Iran Thursday May 24, 2018

• Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has set out several conditions for staying in the nuclear deal with world powers. The UK, France and Germany, meanwhile, have been trying to keep the deal alive, and Iran says it will restart its nuclear programme unless its concerns are met.
• The Ayatollah Khamenei's main conditions are:

◾European powers should protect Iranian oil sales from the US sanctions and continue buying Iranian crude
◾European banks should safeguard trade with Iran
◾The UK, France and Germany should pledge not to seek negotiations on Iran's ballistic missile programme and regional activities, both demanded by Washington

• The supreme leader said that if the three countries were unable to meet these demands, Iran would resume its enrichment of uranium. He also said Iran could no longer have any dealings with the US.

Iran Friday May 25, 2018:

• Iran has threatened to withdraw from the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty and demanded that Europe come up with an “economic package” to compensate for Washington’s decision to pull out of the atomic deal Tehran signed with world powers.
• The Islamic republic could exit the near-50-year-old NPT —the only binding multilateral treaty aimed at achieving disarmament by nuclear-armed states— should hard-line forces in Tehran prevail.
• The warning highlights mounting pressure on European-led efforts to save the nuclear deal (JCPOA) that Tehran signed in 2015 with the US, Russia, China, France, Germany, the EU and the UK.
• President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal this month meant “all options are on the table” for Iran should Tehran decide the accord was no longer viable. It was “unfortunate” that those in Iran arguing for a radical response were “getting stronger. ---

Iran Tuesday June 5, 2018:

• Iran has begun preparations to increase its uranium enrichment capacity in the strongest response yet to Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the nuclear deal Tehran signed with world powers.
• These measures would not violate the 2015 nuclear deal as Iran would only ramp up uranium enrichment if the accord collapsed.
• Iran’s atomic agency has also started preparations to domestically secure nuclear fuel for the Bushehr power plant that needs 280 tonnes of uranium raw material, and is readying infrastructure to produce advanced centrifuges.

Iran Wednesday June 6, 2018:

• The European Union has updated legislation aimed at countering sanctions imposed by the United States on businesses operating in Iran as part of its pledge to uphold the nuclear deal after Washington pulled out. These development came as the EU and the other parties to the deal vowed to stick to the agreement if Iran continues to implement it.
• The European Commission revised the so-called blocking statute, the legislation that seeks to shield EU companies that continue doing business with Iran, and gives them a framework to recover any damages suffered as a result of US sanctions.
• It also authorised the European Investment Bank (EIB) to finance Iranian projects, while noting it was up to the bank to give the go-ahead for any investments.       
• EU governments and members of the European Parliament now have a period of two months to object to the two measures; otherwise, they will come into effect in early August, which is when the first round of US sanctions against Iran will take effect.
• However, the EIB said it could not ignore US sanctions on Iran, rejecting the EU executive plan to do business there in an effort to save the 2015 nuclear deal.
• The pushback from the European Union's lending arm underscores the limits of the bloc's ability to shield trade with Iran from the reimposition of US sanctions.
• Despite its political role in supporting EU policy, the EIB said it "could not be the solution to the problem" of a push by the remaining parties to keep alive their promise of sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on Tehran's nuclear programme.

Iran Friday July 6, 2018:

• World powers and Iran appeared to make no concrete breakthrough in talks to provide Tehran with an economic package to compensate for U.S. sanctions that begin taking effect in August.
• Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia met their Iranian counterpart in Vienna for the first time since U.S. President Donald Trump left a nuclear accord in May, but diplomats had seen limited scope for salvaging it.

Iran Wednesday October 3, 2018:

• The UN’s international court of justice has reprimanded the US over its re-imposition of sanctions on Iran, ordering Washington to lift restrictive measures linked to humanitarian trade, food, medicine and civil aviation.
• The Hague ruling is a victory for Iran after it complained to the ICJ in July that the return to sanctions imposed by Donald Trump following the US withdrawal from the 2015 landmark nuclear agreement was in violation of the Treaty of Amity, a 1955 pre-revolutionary friendship treaty.
• The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, reacted by announcing the US was terminating the treaty, which the US signed with Tehran two years after orchestrating a coup to topple the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.
• “This is a decision that is frankly 39 years overdue,” Pompeo told reporters. Legally it will take a year for US withdrawal to take effect, but the secretary of state, indicated that the administration did not take it seriously, claiming that Iran had been “ignoring it for an awfully long time”. He said the ICJ case had served the purpose of underlining the “absolute absurdity” of the treaty.
• Pompeo insisted that there were appropriate exemptions in US sanctions for humanitarian transactions and aviation safety. He described the case that Iran had taken to the ICJ as “meritless”, and made clear that the US would ignore the court’s ruling. “I am disappointed the court failed to recognise its lack of jurisdiction,” said Pompeo. ---

Iran Saturday February 23, 2019:

• Iran has remained within the key limits on its nuclear activities imposed by its 2015 deal with world powers, despite growing pressure from newly-re-imposed US sanctions, according to the UN's nuclear watchdog.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the Islamic Republic had kept to the caps placed on its uranium enrichment levels and enriched uranium stocks as part of the 2015 accord, signed in Austria's capital, Vienna.
• IAEA inspectors responsible for policing those nuclear restrictions were also given access to all sites in the country requiring a visit to verify Iran's ongoing compliance with the deal.
• Under the agreement, originally brokered between the US, Iran, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union, Iran agreed to scale back its uranium enrichment programme and pledged not to develop nuclear weapons in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

 

Iran Friday March 22, 2019:

• The United States imposed sanctions on 14 people and 17 entities connected to an Iranian research organisation it said had played a central role in the country's past nuclear weapons effort and which remains active.
• Among those designated for sanctions was the Shahid Karimi group, which works on missile and explosive-related projects for Iran's Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, and four associated individuals.
• The US charges that the organisation, known by its Farsi acronym SPND, oversees nuclear-relevant research for Iran and is active in the training of new scientists.
• In 2008, the US sanctioned SPND's head, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
• The announcement coincided with a visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Beirut, where he was expected to focus on Lebanon's ties to the heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah.

 

Iran Tuesday March 26, 2019:

• The United States imposed fresh sanctions on a network of companies and individuals in Iran, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates it said was transferring billions of dollars and euros to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.
• The US Treasury said it was blacklisting 25 people and entities, including front companies based in the three countries, associated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL).
• The targeted institutions include banks and other financial institutions, including Ansar Bank, Atlas Exchange, Iranian Atlas Company.
• "We are targeting a vast network of front companies and individuals located in Iran, Turkey, and the UAE to disrupt a scheme the Iranian regime has used to illicitly move more than a billion dollars in funds," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
• The sanctions seek to lock those named out of the global financial system by banning US citizens and US businesses - including international banks with a US presence - from doing business with them.
• Mnuchin said the IRGC and MODAFL continued to try to evade sanctions to help Iran's government fund terrorism and destabilise the Middle East.

 

Iran Monday June 10, 2019:

• Iran has followed through on a threat to accelerate its production of enriched uranium, the head of the UN's atomic watchdog said.
• The assessment comes at a time of sharply increased US-Iranian confrontation, a year after Washington abandoned an international agreement that imposed curbs on Tehran's nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of financial sanctions.
• Washington tightened sanctions on Iran from the start of May, ordering all countries and companies to halt any imports of Iranian oil or be banished from the global financial system. It also dispatched extra troops to the region to counter unspecified threats from Iran.
• Iran responded with a threat to increase its enrichment of uranium, saying it was up to European countries who still support the nuclear deal to save it by finding ways to ensure Tehran receives the economic benefits it was promised. ---

Iran Tuesday June 25, 2019:

• Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon, its foreign minister has claimed, saying Islam prevented the country from doing so.
• Iran has previously said it is ideologically opposed to acquiring nuclear weapons and seeks nuclear power only for civilian purposes. But in the current unpredictable climate it is possible Donald Trump could pick up Javad Zarif’s remarks as a signal to talk.
• The White House is pursuing a twin-track strategy of seeking talks while trying to throttle the Iranian economy through sanctions that block trade with Europe and oil sales, and freeze the assets of political and diplomatic leaders.
• Iran has said it will breach the uranium enrichment limits set out in the 2015 nuclear deal on Thursday, but that does not imply the country is on the path to building a nuclear weapon.

Iran Thursday June 27, 2019:

• European states will announce a multimillion-euro credit line to ease trade between the EU and Iran in a last-minute and probably doomed effort to persuade Tehran not to take the first step to quit the 2015 nuclear deal.
• Iran’s withdrawal is almost certain to deepen the Gulf crisis, and prompt US demands for Europe states – primarily Britain, France and Germany – to quit the deal and join Washington in imposing sanctions on Tehran.
• The relatively modest credit line will be announced in Vienna at a meeting of the joint commission for the Iran deal – the grouping of all the remaining parties to the deal including Europe, Iran, Russia and China.

Iran Saturday July 6, 2019:

• Iran has announced it will break a limit set on uranium enrichment, in breach of the landmark 2015 deal designed to curb its nuclear ambitions.
• Deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said Iran still wanted to salvage the deal but blamed European countries for failing to live up to their own commitments.
• The US unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018. It has since re-imposed tight sanctions affecting the Iranian economy.
• Responding to the latest announcement, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said it would only lead to "further isolation and sanctions" for the nation.

Iran Tuesday July 16, 2019:

• Donald Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal to spite Barack Obama, according to a leaked memo written by the UK's former ambassador in the US. Sir Kim Darroch described the move as an act of diplomatic vandalism. The memo was written after the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appealed to the US in 2018 to stick with the deal.
• The latest leak came despite the Met Police warning against publication.
• The first memos criticising President Trump's administration, which emerged a week ago, prompted a furious reaction from the US president and resulted in Sir Kim resigning from his role.

Iran Friday September 6, 2019:

• Iran is set to begin unlimited nuclear research and development work, as part of what it describes as a "measured step" to scale back its commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal, without declaring an outright withdrawal.
• On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif officially informed European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini that Tehran was acting in response to "the European countries' failure" to defend the agreement amid continued pressure from the US. Mousavi denounced the "widespread and continued violations" of the deal since the 2018 US withdrawal, while saying that within Article 36 of the agreement, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Tehran had the right to respond in case of non-compliance by other signatories.
• US intensifies pressure on Iran with yet more sanctions. Mousavi said Iran would soon inform the United Nations nuclear watchdog body of the "technical and operational" aspects of its actions related to the nuclear research and development.
• At the same time, Mousavi said that the diplomatic door remained open and that the reduction of its JCPOA commitments could be reversed as soon as the other parties to the agreement fulfilled their part of the bargain. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani first announced the so-called "third-step" response on Wednesday.
• Iran is to lift all limits on its development of centrifuges used to enrich uranium, the latest step in reducing its commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
• President Hassan Rouhani said the country would do whatever was necessary to be able to accelerate enrichment. Enriched uranium can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons.
• Iran stopped abiding by two commitments in July in response to sanctions the US reinstated when it abandoned the deal.
• President Donald Trump wants to force Iran to negotiate a new agreement that would place indefinite curbs on its nuclear programme and also halt its development of ballistic missiles. But Iran has so far refused.

ran Monday October 7, 2019:

• Iran's nuclear chief said the country will start using 30 advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium, again violating terms of the 2015 nuclear deal and ramping up pressure on Europe to save the accord. Additional IR-6 centrifuges will be used in the coming weeks. The centrifuges can enrich uranium 10 times faster than IR-1 centrifuges.
• The country is now producing up to 13 pounds of enriched uranium every day.
• It means Iran has restored pre-[nuclear]-deal capacity" of uranium production. The 2015 pact allows for 3.67 percent uranium enrichment. Iran says it has already hit 4.5 percent. Prior to the nuclear deal, it only reached up to 20 percent, which is a short technical step away from the weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. ---

Iran Thursday November 7, 2019:

• Iran resumed uranium enrichment at its underground Fordow plant south of Tehran in a new step back from its commitments under a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
• Engineers began feeding uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6) into the plant's mothballed enrichment centrifuges.
• The suspension of uranium enrichment at the long secret plant was one of the restrictions Iran had agreed to on its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of UN sanctions.

Iran and Syria

Iran has boosted the number of military advisers it has sent to Syria where it is determined to help defeat terrorism. Iran believes that the future of Bashar al-Assad can be decided only by the Syrian people. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said there was “no Iranian fighting force, as such,” on the ground. But he said advisers were helping the Syrian army. Recent reports have described Tehran sending in thousands of troops, though many are Shia militiamen from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Amir-Abdollahian lashed out at Saudi Arabia, Iran’s longstanding regional rival and a leading supporter of anti-Assad rebel groups, saying that its “radical policies” had encouraged the growth of al-Qaida and Isis.

Iran has been invited to participate for the first time in international talks over Syria's future we were told Tuesday October 27, 2015, a shift in strategy for the United States and its allies. Iran has yet to reply. The next diplomatic round starts Thursday in Vienna, with Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and several top European and Arab diplomats attending.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and three of his deputies will attend international talks over Syria’s future in Vienna later this week. It will be the first time that Tehran, the main regional backer of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has attended an international summit on the four-year-long war. Iran believe the solution for Syria is a political solution.

Iran has recruited thousands of Afghan refugees living in the Islamic Republic to go and fight in Syria to protect their ally President Bashar al-Assad. We were told on Thursday November 5, 2015, that Iranian authorities have lured some of the estimated three million Afghan refugees living in their country to fight in Syria by offering a regular salary and permanent residence in Iran. The Afghan military unit is called Fatemioun and was set up in Iran after the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011. It is now the second biggest foreign force fighting for President Assad, behind the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

Iranian security forces have arrested members of a jihadist cell linked with ISIS near the country’s western borders with Iraq we were told Sunday November 22, 2015. Iranian security forces were monitoring attempts by militants to “create insecurity” in Iran. ISIS has multi-layered support networks. One such network was identified in Kermanshah province (in western Iran) and its members were arrested.

General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' foreign operations wing, was lightly injured in fighting against Syria rebels near Aleppo we were told Wednesday November 25, 2015. Soleimani was injured a few days ago in an offensive in the Al-Eis area in the south of Aleppo province. ---

Iran said Monday August 22, 2016, that Russian raids on jihadists in Syria from one of its airbases had ended for now, after accusing Moscow of "showing off" when it revealed the bombing runs. It was a specific, authorised mission and it's over for now. The possibility of future Russian combat flights from the Islamic republic would depend on the situation in the region, and according to Iran’s permission. The planes had "carried out all their tasks with success" and were back on home territory.

A retired Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) general has been killed on Tuesday August 30, 2016, while battling against Islamic militants in Aleppo, northern Syria. Gholami was a "volunteer" who was serving in Syria as a "military adviser" to Syrian government forces.

Iran denied on Thursday September 1, 2016, that a retired general, Brigadier Haj Ahmad Gholami) had been killed in Syria, saying he was still in a coma after being shot in the head. Gholami, an ex-general who served as a senior Revolutionary Guards commander in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, was reported dead by Iranian media on Wednesday after being shot in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

More than 1,000 soldiers deployed by Iran to Syria to back the government side in its civil war have been killed we were told Monday November 21, 2016. It was a major increase in the reported death toll from just four months ago, when the Islamic Republic announced that 400 of its soldiers had died on Syria's battlefields. Iran has been sending fighters to Syria since the early stages of the more than five-year-old war to support its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, against rebels and Islamist militants including Islamic State trying to topple him. --

Iran Sunday March 19, 2017:

• Iran has lost thousands of fighters and more than 10 generals during its engagement in the Syria/Iraq wars, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reported. The report from the Glilot-based center analyzed the different estimates of Iranian losses that have been recently announced. The accuracy of the report is not known.

Iran Saturday June 23, 2018:

• Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps announced that one of its senior commanders was killed on Friday while fighting Islamic State fighters in northeastern Syria. He had been involved in training fighters from the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy which has been fighting in Syria alongside forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.

Iran Sunday September 16, 2018:

• Two Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been killed during clashes in Syria. Bodies of the guards were buried in the provinces of Albarz (north) and Kerman (south), without indicating the exact date and place of their deaths.
• At least 2,400 Iranian soldiers have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the crisis in the country.

Iran Monday October 1, 2018:

• Iran's Revolutionary Guards have fired missiles at eastern Syria targeting the ringleaders of the deadly attack on a military parade in Ahvaz. Many terrorists were killed or injured in the strikes.
• The missiles hit an area close to the border town of Albu Kamal where Islamic State militants are known to operate.

Iran Thursday March 28, 2019:

• A Syrian war monitoring group says an Israeli airstrike the night before killed seven Iranian and Iranian-backed fighters in northern Syria. The airstrike targeted an Iranian weapons depot and also wounded several other fighters.
• The Syrian's air defenses responded to an "Israeli air aggression" targeting positions in an industrial area northeast of the city of Aleppo city, causing material damage only.
• Iran is an ally of Damascus and has offered military advisers, sent allied militiamen and material support to help the Syrian government force in the eight-year civil war.
• Israel considers Iran a national security threat and says it won't tolerate Iran's presence on its borders. It has recently acknowledged striking Iranian targets in Syria.

 

 

Iran politics and Afghanistan
- That a country like Iran has certain sympathy for their fellow Muslims in Afghanistan is obviously true. However the al-Qaida people are mostly Sunni, whereas the majority of the population of Iran is Shia, and it is well known that these two clans do not get on too well together. In addition, Iran supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban and al-Qaida during the Afghan civil war won by the Taliban.
- On August 21, 2004, Iran said that an electricity line, which will carry power from Iran to Herat in Afghanistan, is ready for official launch. The first phase of the project has come to an end and Iran was waiting for Afghan minister to officially inaugurate the line. He added that the project has cost about 80.792 billion Rls. while 29.5 billion Rls. have been spent on building electricity posts. Iran-Afghanistan power line comprises two phases. The first phase includes a 20kv line from Taibad in Iran to Herat in Afghanistan while the second phase includes a 132kv line and a 132/20kv electricity station. The line is 185km from Taibad to Herat.
- On August 22, 2004, Iran has allocated a grant of 7.5 million dollars to Sangan-Herat railway project, which is currently under construction in Afghanistan. The Dogharoun-Herat road should be opened in a month; the required expenses have also been financed by Iran on a non-return basis.
- By implementing the CROS-Plus project, Iran will take crude oil from the Caspian Sea littoral states and pump it to its refineries inside the country and in return, Iran will sell its own oil from Persian Gulf ports on behalf of the Caspian producers, an official in National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said. On August 25, 2004. He stated that about 380 million Euros had been invested in Tehran Refinery and nearly 150 million Euros in Tabriz Refinery for the purpose; the CROS-Plus project, expected to come on stream in 32 months, would cost around 520 million euros.

- Iran's political and military influence is growing in neighbouring Afghanistan with Iranian-made weapons reaching the Taliban we were told on Wednesday April 18, 2007. While Iran had been playing a helpful role in areas such as tackling the narcotics trade and in cultural and educational areas, the latest signs are worrying the US.

- On April 30, 2007, we were told that the Iranian government has recently stepped up efforts to expel Afghan labour migrants and numerous other Afghans who reside in Iran without formal permits. After consultation with the Afghanistan government and the UN, they decided to deport all illegal Afghan workers and emigrants from Iran. About 30,000 Afghan refugees, including women and children, had been sent home from Iran in the past week alone. Afghan officials have called on their Iranian counterparts to adopt a gradual approach in the deportation of illegal Afghan migrants in Iran, as it is impossible to integrate thousands of deported young men in Afghanistan over a short period of time.

- More than 36,000 Afghans have been deported from Iran in the past 10 days, the UN refugee agency said on May 3, 2007. Iran says it has collected 50,000 Afghans for deportation, and argues it is the right of every country to send home illegal workers. Iran is estimated to have more than a million illegal Afghan workers, and slightly fewer registered refugees.
- On June 15, 2008, Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened to send troops over the border into Pakistan to confront militants based there. He said that when militants crossed over from Pakistan to kill Afghans and coalition troops, his nation had the right to retaliate in "self-defence".

- Iran will attend an upcoming conference on Afghanistan, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Thursday March 12, 2009.

- Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi on Friday March 13, 2009, rejected recent reports that quoted him as saying that Iran would attend an upcoming conference on Afghanistan, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

- A local police commander in Iran's South Khorasan Province said that the drug traffickers killed 11 policemen in eastern Iran bordering Afghanistan. The clash broke out on Friday January 1, 2010 in the desert area of eastern province and the police forces are still chasing the smugglers.

- At least six soldiers of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, including a senior officer, Abbas Asemi the most senior commander of the Guards in the important holy city of Qom, have been killed in clashes with ethnic Kurdish fighters on the border with Iraq we were told on Friday July 22, 2011. A statement from the Guards confirmed Asemi's death in an explosion but did not say when was killed. Iranian troops launched a major offensive last week against PJAK fighters operating out of rear-bases in neighbouring Iraq. The autonomous regional government in Iraqi Kurdistan demanded on Tuesday that Iran respect the border after a Guards commander said Iranian forces had taken "full control" of three PJAK camps inside Iraq.

- The oil ministers of Iraq, Iran and Syria Monday July 25, 2011, signed a preliminary agreement for a $10 billion natural-gas-pipeline deal. Syria would purchase between 20 million to 25 million cubic meters a day of Iranian gas. Iraq has already signed a deal with Tehran to purchase up to 25 million cubic meters a day to feed its power stations. The project requires some $10 billion investment and will be constructed within three years. The pipeline length is more than 1,500 kilometres and will run from Assalouyeh to Damascus while passing through Iraq, with a transfer capacity of 110 million cubic meters of natural gas a day. The gas will be produced from the Iranian South Pars gas field in the Gulf, which Iran shares with Qatar, and holds estimated reserves of 16 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas. Iranian officials have said Iran is producing some 600 million cubic meters of gas a day, of which only 37 million cubic meters are exported. Tehran also aims to extend the pipeline to Lebanon and the Mediterranean to supply gas to Europe.
- An Iraqi official says Iraq and Iran have exchanged the bodies of 111 soldiers killed during the two countries' 1980-1988 war. The remains of 98 Iranians and 13 Iraqis were returned to their native countries during a ceremony on Tuesday May 22, 2012.

General politics
- The European Union and Russia condemned on October 27, 2005, the Iranian president's public call for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remark has already been condemned by individual EU states and Canada who all summoned Iranian diplomats for an explanation. A top Israeli minister called for Iran to be expelled from the United Nations. The White House said the comment showed the US was right to be concerned about Iran's nuclear programme.
- On October 28, 2005, Iran has defended its president's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map", saying this has been its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Ahead of an anti-Israel rally in Tehran, Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said Iran did not recognise the "illegitimate Zionist regime".
- Iran said on October 29, 2005, a UN Security Council statement condemning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" is unacceptable. The statement also said Tehran respected its UN commitments and had no intention of attacking Israel.
- On February 17, 2006, Iran's foreign minister demanded the immediate withdrawal of British forces from Basra today, saying their presence had destabilized Iraq's second-largest city. British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the demand and accused Iran of trying to divert attention from other issues, presumably its nuclear program. A Basra city spokesman said the departure of foreign troops "is not in Iraq's interest now" because of the security situation.
- Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has announced a week of mourning following the attack Wednesday February 22, 2006, on one of the holiest Shiite shrines at Samarra in Iraq, and accused the Americans and Israelis of responsibility. In Iran, where 90 per cent of the population is Shiite, the attack against the shrine has caused disgust and consternation. Ayatollah Khamenei went on to appeal to Shiites to "not fall into the enemy trap by attacking mosques and sacred places of their Sunni brothers".
- Two bombs have exploded in the southern Iranian cities of Dezful and Abadan on Monday February 27, 2006. In both cities, the devices were planted in the governor's offices. No serious injuries were reported. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest explosions.
- Raising a new complaint about Iran, Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday March 7, 2006, accused Tehran of dispatching elements of its Revolutionary Guard to stir trouble inside Iraq. Rumsfeld offered few details concerning his allegation of interference by Iran.
- The top US military officer, Marine Corps General Peter Pace, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday March 14, 2006, the United States does not have proof that Iran's government is responsible for Iranians smuggling weapons and military personnel into Iraq. On the other hand, President George W. Bush said on Monday components from Iran were being used in powerful roadside bombs used in Iraq, and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel had been inside Iraq.
- Supreme Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday March 21, 2006, that he approves of proposed talks between US and Iranian officials on Iraq, but warned that the United States must not try to "bully" Iran. It was the first confirmation that Khamenei, who holds final say on all state matters in Iran, is in favour of the talks. His comments came as US President George W. Bush said that he favours the talks, in which he said American officials would show Iran "what's right or wrong in their activities inside of Iraq."
- US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said on March 24, 2006, that Iran is publicly professing support for Iraq's political process while backing militias and insurgents. He added Iran's security services were training, supplying and financing groups such as the Shia Mehdi Army and Sunni Arab Ansar al-Sunna. Iran has repeatedly denied US charges of interference in Iraqi affairs.
- Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to George W Bush on May 8, 2006, proposing "new solutions" to their differences. The letter will be sent via the Swiss Embassy, which represents US interests in Iran. Reports say it is the first letter from an Iranian president to a US leader since the Iranian revolution in 1979.
- Details have emerged on May 9, 2006, of the surprise letter written by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to US President George W Bush. In it, Mr Ahmadinejad criticises the US invasion of Iraq and urges Mr Bush to return to religious principles. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed the letter as "offering nothing new" and the White House said there would be no formal written reply.
- On Tuesday May 9, 2006, Iran has appointed an ambassador to Iraq for the first time in more than 20 years. Hasan Kazemi Qomi presented his credentials to Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president. The move indicates an improvement in official Iran-Iraq relations, which have been at the level of charge d'affaires since ambassadors were withdrawn shortly before the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.
- On July 25, 2006, Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji declined to meet White House officials during a visit to the US. Mr Ganji said he had been invited to discuss the current situation in Iran. The White House declined to comment. He said he rejected the offer because he believed current US policies could not help promote democracy in Iran. In a speech last week in Washington DC, he also criticised US policy in Iraq, saying: "You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it". He added that the war in Iraq had helped Islamic fundamentalism and hampered the democracy movement in the region. A group of Iranian dissidents met State Department official Nicholas Burns and Elliot Abrams, an adviser to the National Security Council, while Mr Ganji was in Washington last week. Mr Ganji said he believed such meetings would undermine the credibility of the Iranian opposition.
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad started his own weblog, www.ahmadinejad.ir, on August 14, 2006. Mr Ahmadinejad's first posting, entitled autobiography, tells of his childhood, Iran's Islamic revolution, and the country's war with Iraq. The blog includes a poll asking if users think the US and Israel are trying to trigger a new world war. There is a postform for users to send in questions for the president, and a picture gallery containing a series of images of the blogger himself.
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on July 30, 2006, urged Iran to increase investment in his country's oil and gas assets. Visiting Tehran as part of a foreign tour, Mr Chavez also pledged Venezuela would "stand by Iran at any time and under any condition". Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described Mr Chavez as a "brother and trenchmate".

- On September 2, 2006, UN chief Kofi Annan has received assurances from Tehran that it will co-operate fully with the UN resolution on Lebanon. He also met the top nuclear official for "good" and "constructive" talks. The visit comes two days after the UN nuclear watchdog reported that Iran had failed to meet the Security Council's deadline to halt uranium enrichment.
- On October 21, 2006, Iran's president has warned that Muslims around the world will take revenge on states, which support Israel against the Palestinians.

- On October 21, 2006, Israel's ambassador to the UN accused Iran, without giving any evidence or details, of paying Hamas $50m to block the release of an Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian militants.

- Iran's president has come under fire on May 3, 2007, from a conservative newspaper after he publicly kissed the hand of a woman who used to be his schoolteacher. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative by the standards of Iranian politics, was attacked by the Hezbollah newspaper for acting "contrary to Sharia law". It accused him of "indecency and violating religious values". The elderly woman at the centre of the controversy was wearing thick gloves, a headscarf, and a long black coat.

- A second editor of a student publication in Iran has been detained on May 7, 2007, following days of unrest in one of Tehran's most prestigious universities. Scuffles broke out last week between reformist and right-wing students at Amirkabir University, after several works were accused of insulting Islam. However, the editors say the offending articles were forged. Right-wing students have called for a purge of liberal and Western influence from higher education establishments.
'Framed'

- From aboard the USS John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf about 150 miles off Iran's coast, Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday May 11, 2207, issued a warning to Iran to keep sea routes open. Cheney said that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Iran from blocking sea-lanes or developing nuclear weapons. Cheney said that America's allies would join that effort.

- On Sunday May 27, 2007, Iran said it has uncovered several spy networks run by the US and its allies -the occupying forces in Iraq. The intelligence ministry said it had "succeeded in uncovering, identifying and striking blows" at infiltrators organised by those forces. The allegations come two days before the Iran and US ambassadors meet in Baghdad to discuss the crisis in Iraq.

- UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on June 8, 2007, he was "shocked and dismayed" at recent comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about Israel. Mr Ahmadinejad said that the world would soon see Israel's destruction. He added the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 showed for the first time Israel's weakness. The Iranian leader is an outspoken critic of Israel and has said the Holocaust of European Jewry is a myth.

- Iran has officially confirmed on June 10, 2007, that it is detaining a fourth Iranian American on suspicion of spying. Ali Shakeri, an American Iranian peace activist and academic disappeared while on a visit to Iran last month but officials initially denied his arrest.

- On June 15, 2007, demonstrators have thrown paint and eggs at the UK embassy in Tehran to try to prevent an annual party in honour of Queen Elizabeth II's birthday. They said any Iranian guests who tried to attend the party were dirty traitors willing to sell out their country. The protesters also called for the expulsion of the ambassador and relations to be cut off. Police beat back demonstrators as they tried to block the mission's side entrance to stop guests from entering.

- On June 17, 2007, Iran has criticised the British government for its decision to give a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie. His book The Satanic Verses offended Muslims worldwide and led to Iran issuing a fatwa in 1989, ordering Sir Salman's execution. Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the decision to praise the "apostate" showed Islamophobia among British officials. The UK Foreign Office said Sir Salman's honour was "richly deserved".

- On June 20, 2007, Iran stepped up its protest over the knighthood awarded by Britain to Salman Rushdie. Iran's foreign ministry summoned the UK ambassador in Tehran and said the knighthood was a "provocative act". Pakistan voiced similar protests, telling the UK envoy in Islamabad the honour showed the British government's "utter lack of sensitivity". Britain denied that the award was intended to insult Islam.

- At least 12 petrol stations have been torched on Jubne 27, 2007, in the Iranian capital, Tehran, after the government announced fuel rationing for private vehicles. Windows were smashed and stones thrown at the stations, and there was traffic chaos as motorists queued to buy fuel. Iranians were given only two hours' notice of the move that limits private drivers to 100 litres of fuel a month. Despite its huge energy reserves, Iran lacks refining capacity and it imports about 40% of its petrol. The country has a large budget deficit largely caused by fuel subsidies and the inflation rate is estimated at 20-30%.

- Iran announced on July 7, 2007, that it will stop producing purely petrol-driven cars and produce more dual-fuel vehicles, which also run on gas. The minister of industries said the production of petrol-only cars would stop in just over two weeks' time.

- On Tuesday July 17, 2007, the Iranian TV has shown the first pictures of two Iranian American academics -Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh- who have been held in Iran since May. Ms Esfandiari, Mr Tajbakhsh and another detained Iranian American, journalist Parnaz Azima, are accused of spying. They could face the death penalty if found guilty.

- On July 19, 2007, Iranian state TV broadcasted a programme based on interviews with two Iranian-American academics who have been detained in Tehran since May. Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh are being held on suspicion of spying and endangering Iranian national security. The academics could face the death penalty if charged and found guilty.

- Iran has sentenced to death on August 1, 2007, two dissident journalists from its ethnic Kurdish minority for being "enemies of God". The two journalists have 20 days to appeal against their sentences, but if their cases are rejected by the Supreme Court the sentence will be carried out. Iran has executed over 100 people so far in 2007, most of them by hanging.
- Iranian police have closed more than 20 barbers' shops in the capital Tehran we were told on August 24, 2007. The authorities say the barbers were encouraging un-Islamic behaviour by offering Western hairstyles, tattooing and also eyebrow-plucking for men. Police have inspected more than 700 shops during a two-week crackdown in the city. The move is part of an annual campaign against what is known locally as bad hijab, or un-Islamic clothing, that this year is also targeting men.

- On September 4, 2007, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been elected speaker of a powerful clerical body responsible for supervising Iran's Supreme Leader. The Assembly of Experts has the power to dismiss the Islamic state's highest authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mr Rafsanjani will succeed Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, who died in July.

- On September 8, 2007, a US federal judge has ordered Iran to pay $2.65bn to the families of 241 marines killed in a 1983 bombing of their Beirut barracks. But getting the money will be difficult and the families are backing a law in Congress that would make it easier for victims to claim such compensation. Iran denies involvement in the bombing and did not respond to the lawsuit.

- On September 11, 2007, an Iranian-American academic who has been detained in Tehran since May has said he expects to be freed soon. Kian Tajbakhsh, a planning consultant at the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, said that he had been well treated. Mr Tajbakhsh also said he had been told why he had been detained, but said he had not yet been formally charged. In May, Iran said it had charged him with spying, acting against national security and conducting propaganda.

- The Supreme Leader of Iran launched a scathing attack on United States President George W Bush on September 14, 2007. Speaking at Friday prayers, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he was sure President Bush would be tried in an international court for what had happened in Iraq. It was a particularly tough message, accusing the US of invading Iraq partly to undermine Iran's Islamic system.

- On September 19, 2007, authorities in Iran released a second Iranian-American academic who had been detained in Tehran since May. Kian Tajbakhsh, a planning consultant at the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, was freed from Evin prison on bail for around $100,000. Mr Tajbakhsh had been accused by the Iranian government of spying and trying to help organise a "velvet revolution".

- On September 22, 2007, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a tough warning to any country considering an attack on Iran. He said Iran's forces were just for defence, but that anybody who attacked would experience nothing but regret.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on September 24, 2007, Iran is not heading for armed conflict with the United States. He added that Iran was not on a path of war with the US and that Iran had no need of nuclear weapons. Protests have been held outside Columbia University in New York where Mr Ahmadinejad is due to speak later.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with the head of New York's Columbia University on September 25, 2007, while making his controversial appearance at the campus. Columbia President Lee Bollinger described Mr Ahmadinejad as a "cruel dictator" who denied the Holocaust. In response, Mr Ahmadinejad called the remarks "an insult", adding that more research was needed on the Holocaust. He again defended Tehran's nuclear ambitions and said it had every right to pursue a peaceful programme.

- Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on October 14, 2007, urged Muslim countries to boycott a planned US-sponsored Middle East peace conference next month. He said the aim of the meeting was to bolster Israel's position at the expense of the Palestinians. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, hopes it will kick-start substantive talks with Israel on the creation of a Palestinian state but the Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, opposes the conference. Because Hamas will not recognise Israel, renounce violence, or accept previous Palestinian agreements with Israel, it has not been invited.

- Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on October 15, 2007, that he will visit Iran, despite reports of a possible plot to kill him there. Iran's presidential office said Mr Putin would arrive on Tuesday instead of Monday as planned.

- On October 16, 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the first visit to Tehran by a Kremlin leader since 1943. Earlier, the two presidents attended a summit of heads of countries in the Caspian Sea area.

- Around 180 Sufi Muslims have been arrested in Iran on November 12, 2007, after attacking a Shia mosque where a cleric labelled their religion "illegitimate." The confrontation in the western city of Boroujerd led to a shootout between the Sufis and police that reportedly left about 80 people injured. Sufis are tolerated in the Islamic Republic though some religious leaders have branded them "a danger to Islam". About 1,000 Sufis were held last year in clashes at Iran's holy city of Qom.

- Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will this week become the first sitting president of the Islamic republic to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca we were told on December 13, 2007. It follows a formal invitation from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, seat of the Islamic holy places and a long-time regional rival of revolutionary Iran.

- Reports from Iran on January 2, 2008, say a person has been arrested for spreading a rumour that Russian leader Vladimir Putin would be assassinated during a visit to Tehran. The individual, who worked for a telecommunications company, was arrested last week.

- On January 18, 2008, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused US President George W Bush of "sowing the seeds of division" during his recent Middle East visit. Mr Ahmadinejad said Mr Bush had brought a "message of confrontation" during his tour, during which he warned Arab allies that Iran posed a threat.

- On January 22, 2008, Iran's supreme leader overruled its president by ordering him to implement a law to supply gas to remote villages. Iran is having its coldest weather in years and parliament ratified a law to release extra funds to supply gas to rural areas undergoing shortages. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refused to implement it, prompting the speaker to appeal to the supreme leader.

- On January 29, 2008, Iran sentenced three members of the Bahai faith to four years in jail for security offences and 51 others to suspended prison terms. They were convicted for propaganda against the system in the southern city of Shiraz. Bahaism is viewed as heresy by Iran's religious authorities.

- The head of Iran's judiciary issued an order on January 31, 2008, that no executions be carried out in public without his permission. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi also banned the publication of photographs or films of executions. Iran executed nearly 300 people in 2007 as it tries to improve security and reduce what it calls immoral behaviour. Most executions take place inside prisons but some criminals have been hanged from cranes in public.

- On February 4, 2008, Iran launched a research rocket to inaugurate a newly built space centre. The test-launch for the country's first low-orbit research satellite was shown on Iranian state television to cries of "God is Great" from the announcer.

- On February 17, 2008, the Iranian government has intervened to try to stop the screening of a film in the Netherlands about the Koran. The Iranians say that the film, by the Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders, is offensive.

- Amnesty International called on Iran on February 28, 2008, to stop persecuting people who campaign for women's rights. The human rights group says activists involved in a big campaign to improve women's rights have been targeted. Amnesty said women activists have suffered an "acute" backlash since the campaign was launched in August 2006. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has insisted women in his country are treated better than anywhere else.

- The resignation of the commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Admiral William Fallon, does not signal a policy change on Iran, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on March 12, 2008. He said he was stepping down because of public perceptions of a rift with Mr Bush. A recent article said Adm Fallon opposed military strikes against Iran.

- On Sunday March 16, 2008, it was clear conservative candidates in Iran's general election have kept control of parliament, in line with expectations. However, many of the conservative winners are critics of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Reformists saw a small increase in their representation, despite the disqualification of many of their proposed candidates. They are claiming a relative success, given the circumstances of the poll.
- At least 12 people were killed and 160 wounded in an explosion at a mosque in Shiraz, southern Iran, on April 13, 2008. A local police chief ruled out sabotage, and that "negligence" involving old war munitions might be the cause.

- Iran's conservatives have consolidated their victory in the country's parliamentary elections, after taking more seats in a run-off on April 26, 2008. Conservatives now have 69% of all seats, reformists 16% and independents over 14%. Many reformist candidates had been disqualified from standing in the election by the country's non-elected Guardian Council.

- Tehran complained to the UN on May 1, 2008, about remarks made last week by Hillary Clinton on the circumstances under which the US might attack Iran. She said the US could "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel. Tehran, which insists its nuclear programme is solely for power generation, denounced her words as "provocative and irresponsible", "a flagrant violation" of the UN Charter.

- On Wednesday May 7, 2008, members of Iran's parliament have made a formal complaint to the intelligence minister over remarks made by former President Mohammad Khatami. On Friday Mr Khatami said the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, had not wanted to export the revolution by armed force. The MPs accuse him of jeopardising national security and want to know if he had clearance to make the remarks.
- On Monday May 26, 2008, an Iranian-born Israeli has been arrested and charged by the Israeli authorities with spying for Iran. The man confessed to passing information to Iranian agents in Turkey while in Istanbul in 2006.

- On May 26, 2008, an explosion and fire at a chemical plant near the city of Arak in central Iran has killed 30 people and injured 38. A container holding 60,000 litres of flammable products exploded during welding work nearby and the fire quickly spread. Some of the dead were burnt beyond recognition and 23 of the injured suffered burns of 70% or more. The factory produced cosmetics and detergents.
- On July 2, 2008, the US state department criticised reported comments by a defence official that it was increasingly likely Israel would attack Iran in the coming months. If attacked Iran would retaliate against Israel and the US. According to a report, Iran's nuclear programme was nearing "red lines" that would trigger an Israeli offensive. State department dismissed the anonymous comments as ill-informed and discourteous.

- America's top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said opening up a new front in the Middle East through a strike on Iran would be "extremely stressful" for US forces. He was commenting on the likelihood of US or Israeli military action over Iran's nuclear programme. Tensions have risen amid reports Israel could be planning a possible strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

- Iran will strike Israel and the US navy in the Gulf if it is attacked over its nuclear programme, a senior Iranian official has warned on July 8, 2008.

- On July 18, 2008, Iran welcomed as positive America's decision to take part in international talks on its nuclear programme. Iran's foreign minister said Tehran was looking forward to constructive engagement. A meeting in Switzerland will involve, for the first time, the US Under Secretary of State, William Burns. The talks will aim to find out how Iran will respond to the West's offer of economic incentives if Tehran suspends its uranium enrichment programme.

- Reports from Iran say 29 people have been executed by hanging in Tehran on Sunday July 27, 2008. Among them were convicts found guilty of murder, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking. All the executions took place in Tehran's Evin prison. Amnesty International said that last year Iran carried out 317 executions, a higher total than any other country apart from China.

- Iraq's top Shiite cleric took the unusual step on August 24, 2008, of inviting reporters to his office to deny widespread rumours he was seriously ill. Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani is thought to be 80 and suffers from an unspecified heart ailment for which he received treatment in London in 2004. The Iranian-born cleric does not give media interviews and rarely ventures out of his modest home in Najaf.

- Bolivian President Evo Morales arrived in Iran on September 1, 2008, to discuss trade and closer ties with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His visit follows a trip made by Mr Ahmadinejad to La Paz last year, during which he pledged a $1.1bn investment in the Andean nation. The trip will be closely watched by the US, which has tense relations with Tehran over its nuclear programme. Mr Morales has also been in Libya, for talks with leader Muammar Gaddafi.

- Iran protested to the UN on September 10, 2008, after an Israeli minister suggested his country could kidnap Iran's president over threats he has made against Israel. Iran's UN ambassador called the remark "outrageous and vicious" and called on the UN Security Council to take action. Israeli minister Rafi Eitan suggested President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be kidnapped and brought to trial. Mr Eitan, an ex-intelligence chief, was involved in the kidnap of leading Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960.

- On October 3, 2008, Washington has given rare approval for a research body, The American Iranian Council, to open an office in Iran, although it stressed United States policy had not changed. The AIC is a policy think tank devoted to improving relations between the US and Iran, which have been mutually hostile since Iran's 1979 revolution.

- A jet that violated Iranian airspace and was forced to land at an airport in Iran belonged to Nato. Iran's media claimed on October 8, 2008, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) Falcon jet, carrying military personnel from various nations including Hungary, was heading to Nato bases in Afghanistan. The plane took off from Turkey and then strayed into Iranian air space on September 30. Iranian fighter jets escorted the aircraft to Tehran's Mehrabad airport and forced it to land, the report said. After interrogation of the Nato personnel it was determined that the aircraft did not enter Iran intentionally and was allowed to leave for its original destination. A number of governments, including Hungry, have apologized to Iran's government for the incident.

- On November 7, 2008, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered his congratulations to Barack Obama on his presidential win. It is the first official message of goodwill presented to an American leader by the Islamic Republic. In a key change to US foreign policy, Mr Obama has offered to open unconditional dialogue with Iran about its nuclear programme.

- On December 27, 2008, dozens of Iranians in Tehran have held their own shoe-throwing rally in protest at US President George W Bush. They were showing support for the Iraqi journalist who threw his footwear at the American leader in Baghdad. The protesters waved their shoes in the air before throwing them at posters featuring caricatures of Mr Bush.

- On January 27, 2009, Iran's president responded to an overture by the new US president by demanding an apology for past US "crimes" committed against Iran. The US "stood against the Iranian people in the past 60 years", Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

- Real change in Washington's policy in the Middle East would enable Iran to have a "co-operative" attitude towards the US, Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said on January 30, 2009.

- Iran said on February 3, 2009, it has launched its first domestically made satellite into orbit. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the launch had been successful and that with it Iran had "officially achieved a presence in space". The satellite, carried on a Safir-2 rocket, was meant for telecommunication and research purposes.

- Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami has ended months of speculation by announcing on February 9, 2009, that he will run in June's presidential election. Mr Khatami was president of Iran from 1997-2005 and was succeeded by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative.
- On March 19, 2009, we were told that Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami is to withdraw his candidacy from the country's June presidential election. Mr Khatami was president of Iran from 1997-2005 and was succeeded by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative. Mr Ahmadinejad is expected to stand for re-election. Mr Khatami's apparent decision to withdraw leaves Mr Ahmadinejad in a stronger position.

- On March 20, 2009, US President Barack Obama offered "a new beginning" of engagement with Tehran in an unprecedented direct video message to the Iranian people. An advisor to Iran's president welcomed Mr Obama's message but said Washington had to fundamentally change policy.

- On March 21, 2009, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded concrete policy changes from the US as the price for new relations between the two states. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he had seen no change in America's attitude or policy, singling out US support for Israel and sanctions against Iran. But he also said that if President Barack Obama altered the US position, Iran was prepared to follow suit.
- On March 28, 2009, we were told that an Iranian diplomat has held informal talks with NATO officials for the first time in 30 years. Senior NATO negotiator Martin Erdmann said he had met Iran's ambassador to the European Union, Ali-Asghar Khaji, more than two weeks ago. The talks with Mr Khaji had concentrated on Afghanistan.

- On April 14, 2009, we were told that an Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, accused of spying in Iran went on trial this week and a verdict is expected soon. Ms Saberi, 31, is being held in Evin prison near Tehran. She worked briefly for the BBC three years ago. She has also worked for the American public radio network NPR and the TV network Fox News. She has been in custody in Tehran since late January.

- On May 20, 2009, Iran's electoral council approved the four main candidates for the 12 June presidential poll. They include President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is seeking a second term in office. Two leading reformists have also had their qualifications approved -former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and ex-parliament speaker Mehdi Karoubi. Former Revolutionary Guards chief, Mohsen Rezai, can also run.

- An explosion at a prominent Shiite Muslim mosque in the southeast Iranian city of Zahedan on Thursday May 28, 2009, killed 30 people and wounded 60. The blast was a suicide bombing but no person or group had claimed responsibility.

- An explosion in a mosque killed 15 people and injured 80 in Zahedan near Iran's border with Pakistan and Afghanistan on Thursday My 28, 2009. The city has also faced attacks by an Islamist group called Jundallah, which claims to be fighting for the rights of Sunni Muslims in mainly Shiite Iran but is suspected of links to al-Qaeda.

- Italy, current G8 president, formally invited Iran on Thursday June 4, 2009, to attend a ministerial level G8 conference on Afghanistan later in June and a senior Italian diplomat said he expected Tehran to attend.

- On June 4, 2009, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has strongly criticised the US as Iran marks 20 years since the death of the founder of the Islamic republic. He said the US remained "deeply hated" in the region and "beautiful and sweet" words would not change that. He told the huge crowd at the mausoleum of his predecessor, Ayatollah Khomenei that action was needed not words.

- Campaigning in Iran's presidential election ended Thursday June 11, 2009, after three weeks of mass rallies and increasingly acrimonious political rhetoric. Iranians will head to the polls on Friday to choose between the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and three rivals. They are Mohsen Razai, Mehdi Karroubi and the man seen by most observers as main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

- There has been a huge turnout for Iran's closely-fought election on June 12, 2009, as incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seeks a second term in office. Long queues have been reported at polling stations, and voting has been extended by at least four hours.

- On June 12, 2009, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been re-elected as president of Iran in a resounding victory. He won some 62.6% of the vote in an election marked by a high turnout of 85%. Supporters of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi have cried foul and clashed with riot police in Tehran, despite a ban on public protests. Iran's Supreme Leader congratulated Mr Ahmadinejad on his win, and urged his rivals against "provocations".

- Up to 100 members of Iranian reformist groups have been arrested on June 14, 2009, accused of orchestrating violence after the disputed presidential election result. Backers of defeated reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi were rounded up overnight including the brother of ex-President Khatami. There were reports of new small-scale clashes ahead of a planned victory rally by President Ahmadinejad. At a news conference, he vowed Iran would not be bullied by foreign powers.

- On June 15, 2009, thousands of Iranians have staged a protest rally against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defying a government ban. Defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi appeared at the rally. He wants the election results annulled, alleging fraud. Other reports said marchers had clashed with Ahmadinejad supporters.

- Tens of thousands of people have again taken to the streets in Iran's capital Tehran on Wednesday June 17, 2009, in protest at election results. It follows a call by presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi for further peaceful demonstrations. An even larger protest is expected on Thursday, which Mr Mousavi says should be a day of mourning for the eight people killed after Monday's protest.

- Iran's supreme leader issued a stern warning on June 19, 2009, that protests against the country's disputed presidential election results must end. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the outcome had to be decided at the ballot box, not on the street. He said political leaders would be blamed for any violence.

- Iranian police have used water cannon, batons, tear gas and live rounds to break up protests over the presidential election on June 20, 2009. One man was shot and others injured amid a huge security operation involving thousands of police.

- Defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi repeated calls for the election to be annulled on the grounds it was rigged. There were also reports of a bombing at the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini. Two Iranian news agencies reported that the suicide bomber died and two people were injured in the bombing at the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution.

- Iran's legislative body, the Guardian Council, said on June 23, 2009, there were no major polling irregularities in the 12 June election and ruled out an annulment.
Opposition supporters called for the vote to be set aside and the elections re-run amid claims of vote tampering. Iran has also condemned UN chief Ban Ki-moon for "meddling" in its affairs. It comes after Mr Ban urged the authorities to respect fundamental civil rights "especially the freedom of assembly and expression".

- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on June 24, 2009, that the nation "will not yield to pressure" over a disputed presidential election. Several people have been killed in days of street protests since the 12 June poll returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency. Violence erupted after protesters claimed the elections were rigged. Iran has also said it is "reviewing" whether to downgrade relations with the UK, as diplomatic tensions increase. The UK has moved to expel two Iranian diplomats in response to Tehran's decision to order two UK diplomats to leave Iran, following allegations UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called "absolutely without foundation".

- More than 180 Iranian MPs appear to have snubbed an invitation to celebrate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election win. All 290 MPs were invited to the victory party on Wednesday June 24, 2009, but only 105 turned up. The move is a sign of the deep split at the top of Iran after disputed presidential polls.

- On June 26, 2009, the White House has accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of seeking to blame the US for unrest following Iran's disputed election replying one day after Mr Ahmadinejad was sharply critical of President Barack Obama for condemning Iranian violence against protesters. Tehran's leadership has accused foreign governments of fuelling the protests. The Group of Eight foreign ministers, meeting in Italy, said they "deplored" the post-election violence in Iran.

- Five out of nine local staff from the UK embassy detained in Tehran have been released on June 29, 2009. Iran's media earlier said local employees at the UK mission were held over their role in protests against June's disputed presidential election. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has dismissed the allegations as baseless. Separately, Iran's top legislative body began a partial recount of the poll -a move rejected by defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

- Three more Iranian British embassy staff have been released by the authorities in Tehran on July 2, 2009. Nine embassy employees were detained at the weekend; all but one had now been freed. However, the UK Foreign Office said two people had been freed and it was seeking confirmation on the third. Iran said the staff had had a role in protests against the disputed presidential election result.

- Some UK embassy staff detained in Tehran and accused of inciting protests after disputed elections will face trial we were told on July 3, 2009. Guardians Council chief Ahmad Jannati said: "Naturally they will be put on trial, they have made confessions." Nine embassy staff were held last weekend. Britain says all but two have now been freed. European Union governments summoned Iranian ambassadors to protest against the detentions.

- A conservative Iranian newspaper said on July 4, 2009, the country's main opposition leader must be tried for inciting unrest after June's disputed presidential elections. The Kayhan daily said Mir Hossein Mousavi was a US agent and should be charged with "treason". Street protests after the poll -which Mr Mousavi says was rigged- have revealed a rift in Iran's leadership.

- The chief political analyst at the British Embassy in Iran has been charged on July 4, 2009, with "acting against national security". The UK Foreign Office is investigating claims by his lawyer that he has been charged and will stand trial shortly. Britain denies fomenting discontent to undermine Iran's Islamic regime.

- The eighth of nine British embassy employees detained by Iranian authorities has been released on July 5, 2009. The last remaining detainee, an Iranian, is the embassy's chief political analyst. He has been charged with acting against national security.

- Iran has executed 20 people for drug trafficking on July 5, 2009. The group -all convicted of buying, selling and possessing drugs- were hanged in a prison in Karaj, west of Tehran. Over 700kg of drugs including heroin, cocaine and opium had been seized from the group, all arrested in the last five years.

- On Sunday July 5, 2009, a group of clerics in Iran has called Iran's presidential vote invalid, contradicting official results. The pro-reform group's statement pits it against the top legislative body, which last week formally endorsed the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On Saturday, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said that post-election events had caused bitterness.

- Iranian opposition leaders have criticised on July 7, 2009, what they describe as the "security state" imposed in the country after the controversial June elections. They also called for the release of people detained during mass protests that followed the vote. Runner-up Mir Hossein Mousavi's website said the call was backed by fellow defeated candidate Mehdi Karoubi and former President Mohammad Khatami.

- On July 8, 2009, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defended his June re-election as the world's "most free" despite ongoing opposition claims that it was rigged. Mr Ahmadinejad blamed foreign powers for trying to sabotage the vote.

- The US has "absolutely not" given Israel a green light to attack Iran over its nuclear programme, President Barack Obama said on July 8, 2009. His remarks followed weekend comments by Vice-President Joe Biden that the US would not stand in the way of Israel's response to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

- On July 20, 2009, the former President of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, called for a referendum on the legitimacy of the government, following June's disputed elections. Mr Khatami, quoted on Iranian websites, said millions of Iranians had lost faith in the electoral process. The Iranian opposition, including Mr Khatami and the defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, say the election was rigged.

- On July 25, 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed his most senior vice-president. The decision came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered Mr Ahmadinejad to do so. First Vice-President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie had angered hardliners last year by saying Iranians and Israelis were friends. Mr Mashaie no longer considered himself first vice-president. The decision came after a week-long stand-off between Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr Ahmadinejad, who had defended Mr Mashaie. Ayatollah Khamenei wrote to the president, telling him that appointing Mr Mashaie was "against your interest and the interests of the government".

- On July 27, 2009, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has urged Iran to respond to US diplomatic overtures by September.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sacked one of his ministers on July 27, 2009, a day after he was forced to cancel the appointment of his vice-president. No reason was given for the sacking of Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie. Meanwhile, the culture minister quit, saying the government was weakened. The president is due to announce a new cabinet after he is sworn in for a second term in 10 days' time, following a disputed election victory. Amid the turmoil, Mr Ahmadinejad's office also denied reports that three other ministers were sacked.

- On July 28, 2009, the head of Iran's judiciary has ordered a decision within a week on the fate of prisoners arrested after disputed elections. He said some prisoners should be freed. Officially, about 300 people remained behind bars.

- On August 1, 2009, the trial begun in Iran of 100 people arrested for their alleged involvement in post-election violence. The charges included rioting, vandalism, "acting against national security", and conspiring against the ruling system. Those on trial included members of the opposition reform movement, including a former vice-president. Pro-government media reported what they say were confessions by some of the leading reformists.

- Three missing US nationals have been detained by Iranian guards on August 1, 2009, after they crossed into Iran from Iraq. The two men and a woman, described as tourists by Iraqi media, were reported to have been hiking in Iraq's Kurdish region which borders Iran. Iranian media said the three were arrested inside Iran.

- Defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi said on Sunday August 2, 2009, that opposition detainees put on trial have been subjected to "medieval torture". He denounced the trials, which started on Saturday, as fraudulent and said the prisoners had been forced to confess. Earlier ex-President Mohammad Khatami criticised the hearings as "show trials" that would damage confidence in Iran's Islamic establishment. More than 100 people have been put on trial on charges including conspiracy. Ten more people were brought before the court on Sunday.

- Senior Iranian political figures have snubbed the formal endorsement of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was among those not at Monday August 3, 2009's ceremony. Another former president, Mohammad Khatami, was also absent, as were defeated election candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

- An Iranian official on Tuesday August 4, 2009, confirmed three U.S. nationals have been detained by Iranian forces near the border with Iraq. The three people "were arrested on Malakh-Khor border near the town of Marivan," which borders Iraq's Kurdish area. The three "middle-aged" Americans -or mid-twenties- Shane Bauer, Sara Shourd and Joshua Fattal were travelling on Syrian and Iraqi visas.

- On August 4, 2009, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been sworn in for a second term as Iran's president, after weeks of post-election unrest. In an address after the ceremony, he criticised foreign powers who have cast doubt on the validity of the election, saying Iran would resist them. Opposition supporters protesting outside parliament were met by hundreds of riot police. Germany, France, Britain and the US all said they would not be sending letters of congratulation to Mr Ahmadinejad. At least 30 people died during the street protests which followed the 12 June poll.

- On August 5, 2009, a juvenile court in Iraq's Diyala province has sentenced a 16-year-old girl to seven-and-a-half years in prison for an attempted suicide attack. Rania Ibrahim was arrested in August 2008 in Baqouba, capital of Diyala province, considered to be a stronghold of al-Qaeda. Video of the arrest shows police removing her long dress to reveal what appears to be a suicide belt. She said a relative of her husband had told her to wear the vest. In the police video, Rania, with dark curls around a chubby, childish face, looks confused.

- On August 9, 2009, European nations have strongly criticised the latest trials in Iran over the unrest that followed the disputed presidential poll. Iranian workers at the French and British embassies and a French national were among dozens of detainees to appear in court in Tehran. The EU presidency said action against any EU national or embassy would be seen as an act against the whole bloc.

- A defeated opposition candidate in Iran's presidential election called on August 10, 2009, for an investigation into allegations some protesters were raped in prison. Mehdi Karroubi said senior officials had informed him of the "shameful behaviour" taking place. He wrote that both male and female detainees had been raped, with some suffering serious injuries. He asked Mr Rafsanjani to consult the Supreme Leader about the allegations.

- On August 13, 2009, the speaker of Iran's parliament has dismissed claims by a defeated presidential candidate that opposition protesters were raped in detention.

- On August 14, 2009, one of Iran's defeated opposition presidential candidates has said some protesters held after June's disputed poll were tortured to death in prison. The claim by Mehdi Karroubi comes days after he said a number of prisoners, both male and female, had been raped. Officials deny the rape claims, but admit that abuses have taken place.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on August 16, 2009, he will bring at least two women into his new cabinet -the first such appointments in Iran since the 1970s. He would propose Fatemeh Ajorlou as social security minister and Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi as health minister, among others.

- On August 17, 2009, Iran has freed on bail a 24-year-old French university lecturer who was charged with spying after last month's presidential election. Clotilde Reiss is in good health and would stay at the French embassy in Tehran awaiting a verdict in her trial. President Nicolas Sarkozy had asked that all charges against her and an embassy employee be dropped.

- The trial has begun in Iran on August 25, 2009, of a number of senior opposition figures following June's disputed presidential election. The defendants, who include former ministers in the 1997-2005 Khatami government, are accused of conspiring with foreign powers to organise unrest. One leading reformist, Saeed Hajjarian, apologised for his "grave mistakes". It is the fourth such trial since the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative, sparked pro-reform street protests.

- Iran's supreme leader vowed on September 11, 2009, to confront those who threaten national security, amid continuing disputes over the presidential election. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was leading Friday prayers in Tehran for the first time since June, when he defended President Ahmadinejad's re-election. He said that "resisting the system" would bring "a harsh response". Iran says 36 people died in violence after the 12 June polls; the opposition says double that number were killed.

- The Iranian president's latest denial of the Nazi Holocaust on September 19, 2009 has drawn strong condemnation from Western powers. Speaking in the capital, Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was "a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim". Germany said the comments were a "disgrace to his country" while the US said they would "isolate Iran further".

- Three people detained after June's disputed presidential election have been sentenced to death on October 11, 2009. The judgements are preliminary and must be confirmed by a higher court. So far the only named opposition activist reported as having been sentenced to death over post-election protests is Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani.

- Several top commanders in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have been killed in a suicide bombing on October 18, 2009. 31 people died in the attack, in the Pishin region of Sistan-Baluchistan, and more than 25 were injured. Shia and Sunni tribal leaders were also killed. A Sunni resistance group, Jundullah, said they carried it out.

- Foreign Secretary David Miliband has urged Iran to overturn a four-year jail sentence reportedly given to a British embassy employee on October 29, 2009. Hossein Rassam, 44, was arrested in June at the time of massive street protests over the country's disputed presidential election. The Iranian, who worked as a political analyst at the embassy, was accused of spying and inciting unrest. Mr Miliband called the reported sentence "wholly unjustified".

- On January 27, 2010, Iranian forces have clashed with Kurdish fighters in Iran's north western border region and arrested a suspect in the killing of a prosecutor.

- Iran is "becoming a military dictatorship", US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on February 15, 2010.

- Iranian authorities have arrested the leader of the Sunni Muslim militant group Jundullah we were told on February 23, 2010. Abdolmalek Rigi had been held in eastern Iran. He is said to be behind a series of deadly bombings and killings in Sistan-Baluchistan province.

- Iran's president Mahmoud Amadinejad emphasised his country's "deep" ties with Syria during a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on February 25, 2010.

- The leader of a Sunni militant group has been hanged in Iran on June 20, 2010. Abdolmalek Rigi, head of the Jundullah rebel group, was executed in front of families of victims of his insurgency. The move came after months of interrogation following his arrest in February. Mr Rigi was accused of being behind a series of deadly bombings in Sistan-Baluchistan province.

- A missing Iranian nuclear scientist, who Tehran says was kidnapped a year ago by the CIA, has taken refuge in the Iran section of Pakistan's US embassy on July 13, 2010. Shahram Amiri was seeking immediate repatriation to Iran. The US rejected Tehran's claims that it was behind Mr Amiri's disappearance. Mr Amiri worked as a researcher at a university in Tehran, but some reports say he worked for the country's atomic energy organisation and had in-depth knowledge of its controversial nuclear programme.

- The Iranian nuclear scientist who claims he was abducted by CIA agents last year and taken to the US is on his way back to Tehran on July 14, 2010. The US state department has insisted he was in the US of his own free will.

- A bomb tore through a military parade in Iran on September 22, 2010, killing 10 people, including wives of two military chiefs, as the country marked the 30th anniversary of the start of the bloody Iran-Iraq war. Dozens of people were wounded in the blast, which occurred during an annual military parade in the northwestern Kurdish town of Mahabad.

- Iranian authorities sentenced two Americans arrested and detained along the Iran-Iraq border to eight years in prison we were told on Saturday August 20, 2011. The men, who have already been held in prison for more than two years in Iran, have 20 days to appeal their convictions on charges of illegal entry onto Iranian territory and espionage. Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, both 28 years old, were arrested along the Iran-Iraq border during what they insist was an ill-fated hiking trip in the scenic mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iranian officials allege that the two men were spies. A third hiker, Sarah Shourd, was released on bail last year and has been campaigning for her friends' release.

- On Sunday August 21, 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she is "deeply disappointed" by the jail terms given to two US citizens found guilty of spying in Iran. Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were sentenced in Tehran on Saturday to three years for illegally entering Iran and five years for spying. The men deny the charges, saying only they may have accidentally entered Iran while hiking in Iraq in July 2009. Their lawyer has said they intend to appeal against the verdict.

- Two Americans arrested while hiking along the Iran-Iraq frontier two years ago and sentenced to eight years for espionage were released Wednesday September 21, 2011, on $1 million bail. The men, Shane M. Bauer and Joshua F. Fattal left Evin prison in a diplomatic convoy including Swiss and Omani officials and headed to the airport. The release of the two Americans followed days of uncertainty over their fate after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised last week that they would be freed as a humanitarian gesture "in a couple of days." The announcement by Mr. Ahmadinejad appeared calibrated to garner favourable attention before the Iranian leader flew to New York to attend this week's United Nations General Assembly meeting. But soon after his announcement, Iran's judiciary denied that the men would be freed imminently, saying it had exclusive authority to order their release. On Wednesday Press TV said that this time the judiciary had approved their release.

- Iranian president said on Tuesday October 18, 2011, that the US claims of Iranian involvement in an alleged plot to kill Saudi ambassador will prove false. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said US allegations of an Iranian assassination plot resemble its claims about weapons of mass destruction that formed the basis for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and would prove to be equally untrue. The Iranian president suggested that the US aimed to cause a rift between Tehran and Saudi Arabia that would help Washington dominate the oil-rich Gulf and had fabricated the plot of an Iranian seeking to kill the Saudi ambassador to America.

- Iranian authorities said on Saturday December 17, 2011, they had arrested an Iranian caught spying for the United States. State TV quoted the Intelligence Ministry as saying the arrested person had received training at U.S. bases in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq and was meant to feed false information to Iranian intelligence. He was identified by Iranian intelligence agents and his espionage missions were revealed.

- Iran escalated its confrontation with the United States on Thursday December 15, 2011, over the captured American spy drone launched from Afghanistan, warning the Afghan government to order a halt to such surveillance flights. Any further flights would be regarded as a hostile act, the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said. His warning threatened to drag Afghanistan directly into the dispute over American aerial surveillance of Iran.

- The sentencing of an American man to death in Iran for allegedly being a CIA operative prompted outrage Monday January 9, 2012. Behnaz Hekmati, mother of Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, said she and her husband Ali are "shocked and terrified" about the sentence. His father, Ali, a professor at a community college in Flint, Michigan, said his son was visiting his grandmothers in Iran.

- The head of Iran’s cyber warfare programme has been shot dead, triggering further accusations that outside powers are carrying out targeted assassinations of key figures in the country’s security apparatus. Mojtaba Ahmadi, who served as commander of the Cyber War Headquarters, was found dead in a wooded area near the town of Karaj, north-west of the capital, Tehran. Five Iranian nuclear scientists and the head of the country’s ballistic missile programme have been killed since 2007. The regime has accused Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad, of carrying out these assassinations. Ahmadi was last seen leaving his home for work on Saturday. He was later found with two bullets in the heart. The commander of the local police said that two people on a motorbike had been involved in the assassination.

- Iran's revolutionary guards have announced on Thursday October 10, 2013, the arrest of "a network of homosexuals and satanists" in the wes0ern city of Kermanshah, close to the country's border with Iraq. A number of foreign nationals, including Iraqis, were also among those detained; eight of the group were married to each other. The group were picked up from one of the city's ceremony halls, which they had rented for a birthday party. The guards' webiste said they were dancing as the raid ensued. Authorities in the Islamic republic have previously likened homosexuals to satanists in an apparent attempt to further smear them in the eyes of the country's religious conservatives. The raid took place on Tuesday night when some 80 people, including both straight and gay Iranians, had gathered for a birthday party in Kermanshah. At least 17 people who had tattoos, make-up, or were wearing rainbow bracelets were blindfolded and taken to an unknown location. Partygoers were filmed by the elite forces and had their mobile phones confiscated. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iran face serious persecution both from the ruling system and broader society, especially by hardline conservatives. Some risk horrific punishments, including the death penalty and heavy jail sentences, others are bulllied and forced into exile. ---

Iranian security forces have killed four members of an extremist rebel group behind an attack that left 14 Iranian border guards dead we were told on Tuesday October 29, 2013. We were not told when or where the new clash took place. Jaish-ul Adl, a Sunni rebel group formed last year whose name means Army of Justice in Arabic, has claimed responsibility for the deadly ambush on Friday in the mountains of Sistan-Baluchestan in the restive southeast. The attack killed 14 border guards and wounded another seven.

A commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards has been killed in Syria after volunteering to defend a Shi'ite shrine in Damascus we were told on Monday November 4, 2013. Commander Mohammad Jamalizadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the southeastern province of Kerman was killed in the last few days by "Wahhabi terrorists. Jamalizadeh was a veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and then served in anti-smuggling units. He did not travel to Syria for the IRGC, but volunteered to defend the Sayyida Zainab mosque in the southern suburbs of Damascus. The area around the mosque revered by Shi'ites as the burial site of a grand-daughter of the prophet Mohammad has been the scene of heavy fighting. Jamalizadeh's funeral is to take place on Tuesday in Kerman, capital of the province of the same name. ---

Iran said it executed 16 "rebels" Saturday December 7, 2013, in reprisal after gunmen killed at least 14 border guards near the border with Pakistan. The ambush happened overnight in the mountains of Sistan-Baluchestan, a province in southeastern Iran. Three soldiers have been taken hostage and taken to the other side of the border in Pakistan.

Iran claims to have captured a British “spy” in a move that has threatened to cause a diplomatic crisis. A businessman in his fifties had been detained on suspicion of gathering intelligence “in all spheres” for the British security services. We were told that he had confessed to meeting MI6 agents inside and outside Iran on 11 occasions.

Three members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards have been killed by a bomb blast in the south-eastern province of Sistan Baluchistan. The men were part of an engineering division and had been working on construction projects near the city of Saravan. They were travelling to a workshop on Wednesday December 18, 2013, when a bomb exploded beside their vehicle. A Sunni militant group, Jaish al-Adl, said it was behind the blast. The victims included a high-ranking officer and senior engineers, and that its fighters had been waiting a long time to ambush them.

The United States on Sunday January 5, 2014, appeared for the first time to hold out the possibility that Iran might play a role on the side-lines of a Syria peace conference even if Tehran is not formally invited. Washington, and Syrian opposition groups, have long had reservations about the participation of Iran, which they accuse of supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with manpower and arms during the near three-year uprising against his rule. Despite the improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations this year with a landmark nuclear deal struck in November, ties are strained by many issues, including the Syrian civil war in which at least 100,000 people have been killed and millions uprooted. At a news conference in Jerusalem, Kerry reiterated U.S. opposition to Iran being a formal member of the so-called "Geneva 2" talks scheduled for January 22 in Switzerland because it does not support a 2012 international agreement on Syria. That so-called "Geneva 1" accord called for the Syrian government and opposition to form a transitional government "by mutual consent", a phrase Washington says rules out any role for Assad. Russia, a sponsor of the plan, disputes that view.

Iran has about $100 billion in foreign exchange assets around the world, of which it will be able to draw $4.2 billion under last year's nuclear agreement with six world powers we were told on Friday January 17, 2014. The money and assets were held in various countries and that a significant proportion was Iran's oil revenue. Financial and other sanctions have meant that Tehran has not had free access to spend it. Under the November 24, six-month accord between Iran and the major powers, Tehran will receive limited sanctions relief, which the U.S. estimates to be worth about $7 billion, in return for curbing its disputed nuclear programme. Of this amount, $4.2 billion is in the form of access to currently blocked Iranian revenue held abroad.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei agreed on Saturday January 18, 2014, to pardon or reduce the sentences of 878 people in honour of the Prophet Mohammad's birthday on Sunday. Last September, some 80 political prisoners were released, including prominent human rights activist and lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, just before a trip by President Hassan Rouhani to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. In October, another 1,241 prisoners were pardoned. IRNA did not say whether any of those pardoned on Saturday had been convicted of political offences. There did not appear to be any change in the status of Iran's two most prominent political prisoners - former presidential candidates Mirhossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi -who have been under house arrest for nearly three years. ---

The United Nations says Iran has been invited to attend a meeting of foreign ministers In Switzerland on Wednesday January 22, 2014, ahead of internationally brokered peace talks between Syria's warring factions. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has pledged that his country "would play a positive and constructive role" in the meeting to be held in the Swiss city of Montreux. Ban says Iran is among 10 additional countries invited to attend the Montreux meeting that precedes the talks scheduled to begin Friday between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's delegation and Syrian opposition groups at the UN headquarters in Geneva. Thirty other countries had already accepted invitations.

Bashar al-Assad's key international allies in Moscow and Tehran have reacted angrily to the UN's decision to rescind Iran's invitation to this week's peace talks on the crisis in Syria. The UN hastily withdrew its surprise invitation after pressure from the US and a threat that the Syrian opposition would boycott the talks. The build-up to the talks, which are due to start in the Swiss town of Montreux on Wednesday January 22, 2014, is being overshadowed by Iran's non-attendance, and new evidence showing the Syrian government has been involved in the systematic killing of thousands of political detainees. Iran, which is accused of providing military and financial backing to the Assad government, said the decision to withdraw its invitation was deplorable. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who helped broker the talks with his US counterpart, John Kerry, said the UN move was a mistake. While it was not a catastrophe, it made the slim prospect of an agreement less likely, he said. Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, speaking to reporters in Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat, said it was regrettable that the UN general secretary had rescinded the invitation and that Tehran had only accepted it reluctantly in the first place.

Iran has criticized the UN secretary general’s decision to withdraw his invitation to Tehran to attend the Syria conference, which is scheduled to open Wednesday January 22, 2014. Ban Ki-moon rescinded his invitation late on Monday, under intense U.S. pressure, after Syria’s main Western-backed opposition group threatened to boycott the long-awaited conference. After Ban withdrew the invitation, the opposition Syrian National Coalition said it would attend the talks aimed at finding a solution to the Syria crisis, which has dragged on for nearly three years. That cleared the way for the conference to open as planned in the Swiss resort city of Montreux, with high-ranking delegations from the United States, Russia, and close to 40 other countries attending. Face-to-face negotiations between the Syrian government and its opponents -the first since the crisis began- are to start on Friday in Geneva. ---

The Iranian Defence Ministry announced on Monday February 10, 2014, that it has successfully tested two new missiles, including a laser-guided surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missile named Bina and a new generation of long-range ballistic missiles carrying Multiple Re-entry Vehicle payloads. The missiles were test-fired in a ceremony on the eve of the 35th anniversary of the victory of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution to mark the occasion.

On Tuesday February 11, 2014, we were told that Iran has executed an Arab-Iranian poet and rights activist for “waging war on God" and "acting against national security. Hashem Shaabani was executed at the end of January along with a man called Hadi Rashedi in a yet unidentified location. Shaabani, an activist for the rights of ethnic Arabs in the Iranian province of Khuzestan, was imprisoned in February or March 2011, according to Al Jazeera. He was arrested for being an "enemy of God," or "Mohareb." Last July, an Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced Shaabani and 13 other activists to death for "waging war on God," “spreading corruption on earth” and “questioning the principle of the "guardianship of the jurist." According to a report last week in Asharq Al-Awsat, Shaabani and Rashedi were the first two to be executed. Shaabani, 32, founded the Dialogue Institute, and Arab cultural organization, and wrote poetry in Arabic and Persian. He was a member of the Arabic-speaking Ahvazis minority. In 2012, he was forced to confess to "separatist terrorism" on Iran's state Press TV, Al Jazeera said.

Iran executed 16 "rebels" Saturday March 1, 2014, in reprisal after gunmen killed at least 14 border guards near the border with Pakistan. The ambush happened overnight in the mountains of Sistan-Baluchestan, a province in southeastern Iran. The guards were killed in an ambush set by Iranians who were "members of hostile groups". Three soldiers have been taken hostage and taken to the other side of the border in Pakistan.

Sunni Muslim militants have killed one of the five Iranian border guards they have been holding hostage for the past six weeks we were told on Monday March 24, 2014. The four other hostages were in good health. The guards were seized while patrolling the lawless frontier with Pakistan in early February. Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), an Iranian Sunni Muslim rebel group in Sistan-Baluchistan province later claimed responsibility. The group said that it had killed the border guard. Neither Tehran nor Islamabad could immediately confirm the report.

The Pakistan-based Jeish Al-Adl terrorist group has released the Iranian border guards it abducted in early February in Eastern border region we were told on Friday April 4, 2014. The five Iranian border guards were abducted in Jakigour region of Iran’s Sistan and Balouchestan Province on February 6 and taken to Pakistan. One of the border guards was killed by the terrorist group last week. ---

Congress said no way to Iran's choice for ambassador to the United Nations, outraged by the prospect of a member of a group responsible for the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran stepping on U.S. soil. The move forces President Barack Obama to make a decision that could have serious diplomatic repercussions. In a rare unanimous vote on Thursday April 10, 2014, the House backed a bill that would bar entry to the U.S. to an individual found to be engaged in espionage, terrorism or a threat to national security. The vote came four days after similar action in the Senate and sends the bill to the White House. The Obama administration opposes the selection of Hamid Aboutalebi because of his alleged participation in a Muslim student group that held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days during the takeover. American officials have told Iran that Aboutalebi is unacceptable, and the State Department indicated Thursday that the issue could be resolved if Tehran simply withdrew the nomination. Iran has called U.S. rejection of Aboutalebi "not acceptable as Aboutalebi is one of the country's best diplomats and argued that he previously received a U.S. visa. Aboutalebi has insisted his involvement in the group Muslim Students Following the Imam's Line was limited to translation and negotiation. In practical terms, Obama must decide whether to sign or veto legislation that could upset host country agreements with numerous nations.

An Iranian appeals court has overturned a death sentence of a former US Marine convicted of working for the CIA, instead sentencing him to 10 years in prison we were told on Saturday April 12, 2014. Amir Hekmati, a dual US-Iranian citizen born in Arizona, was arrested in August 2011 then tried, convicted and sentenced to death for spying.

Iran said on Wednesday April 23, 2014, it had replaced the country's prisons chief amid an uproar over alleged beating of political prisoners in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison. Families of the dozens of political prisoners held there have been protesting outside parliament and the presidential complex. The prison incident drew attention to human rights in the Islamic republic at a time the new reformist President Hassan Rouhani struggles to show a gentler face for his country and dispel suspicions about its nuclear program. The prison chief Gholam-Hossein Esmaeeli had been switched to another job in the judiciary. ---

Iran executed 16 "rebels" Saturday April 26, 2014, in reprisal after gunmen killed at least 14 border guards near the border with Pakistan, in a rugged area often rocked by violence.

A billionaire Iranian businessman convicted of masterminding a $2.6bn banking scam has reportedly been hanged in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. Mahafarid Amir Khosravi was sentenced to death after being convicted of "corruption on earth... through bribery and money laundering.

Revelations about the scandal swept Iran in 2011 when prosecutors said they uncovered a private umbrella group, led by Amir Khosravi, also known as Amir Mansour Aria, and his brothers, illegally amassing billions of dollars. The case is said by prosecutors to be the largest fraud case since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Over the space of two years, Amir Mansour Aria Development Co. bought some 40 companies including state-owned companies like major steel producer Khuzestan Steel Co, and a football club. We are told that he used forged letters of credit obtained from several major banks whose managers they had bribed. A total of 39 defendants were convicted in the case. Four received death sentences, two got life sentences and the rest received sentences of up to 25 years in prison. The case took on political dimensions when the finger was pointed at some senior officials in the administration of then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr Ahmadinejad, who was elected on an anti-corruption platform, dismissed the attacks as a smear campaign by his opponents.

Iran said it executed 16 "rebels" Saturday May 24, 2014, in reprisal after gunmen killed at least 14 border guards near the border with Pakistan, in a rugged area often rocked by violence. The ambush happened overnight in the mountains of Sistan-Baluchestan, a province in southeastern Iran. The province is home to a large community of minority Sunni Muslims, unlike the rest of Shiite-dominated Iran, where drug traffickers and Sunni militants operate. Fourteen border guards were killed during armed clashes in the region of Saravan, and five others were wounded.

A passenger train collided with a freight train in northern Iran on Thursday June 5, 2014, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens. The train was en route from the northeastern city of Mashhad to Tehran. So far 10 passengers have been killed and dozens wounded. The death toll is expected to rise. The train carried 340 passengers.

Iran offered neighbouring Iraq support against "terrorism" Wednesday June 11, 2014, as Baghdad battled a jihadist offensive that has seized the country's second city and is moving towards the capital. Iran is a predominantly Shiite Muslim country, while the campaign against Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition government is led by Sunni hardliners. Police Chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam says Tehran would take action in Iraq if Shia shrines and cities were threatened by the Sunni jihadis who have taken control of Mosul. The border patrol has increased its vigilance on the Iran-Iraq border. The country’s Supreme National Security Council would consider intervening to protect Shia shrines and cities. ---

Iran confirmed Friday July 25, 2014, that it has detained four journalists, including a reporter for the Washington Post and two freelance photographers, but did not disclose details about why they were being held. The Washington Post said its correspondent, Jason Rezaian, and his wife were detained Tuesday evening in Tehran. Rezaian holds both American and Iranian citizenship. His wife, Yeganeh Salehi, is an Iranian citizen works as a correspondent for a newspaper based in the UAE. The other two American photojournalists have not been identified.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said Sunday  August 24, 2014, its forces shot down an Israeli drone as it approached an Iranian nuclear site, recovering major parts of what it described as an advanced aircraft. The incident comes as Iran negotiates with world powers over its nuclear program and hard-liners press moderate President Hassan Rouhani to demand more concessions before limiting its atomic capabilities. Israel has not ruled out taking military action against Iran's nuclear facilities if its capability to build an atomic weapon progresses. The Guards said its forces fired a missile at the drone as it neared its uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. Major parts of the devices of the drone are intact and have been received by our friends that can be used for further information. One does not know when the aircraft was shot down.

A 37-year-old man has been executed in Iran after being found guilty of heresy and insulting prophet Jonah. Mohsen Amir-Aslani was arrested nine years ago for his activities which the authorities deemed were heretical. He was engaged in psychotherapy but also led sessions reading and reciting the Qur’an and providing his own interpretations of the Islamic holy book, his family said. Amir-Aslani was hanged last week for making “innovations in the religion” and “spreading corruption on earth”, but human rights activists said he was a prisoner of conscience who was put to death because of his religious beliefs. He had interpreted Jonah’s story in the Qur’an as a symbolic tale. Iran’s judiciary has denied that Amir-Aslani’s execution was linked to his religious beliefs. Instead, the authorities allege that he had illicit sexual relationships with a number of people who participated in his sessions and the type of activities he was involved in did not follow an official interpretation of the religion.

The sister of a leading Iranian nuclear physicist widely believed to have been assassinated by Israel as part of an effort to derail the Islamic Republic’s drive to create nuclear weapons says her brother was murdered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRI) because he wouldn’t cooperate with the effort to divert nuclear activities from peaceful purposes. When Iranian scientist Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour was killed in February 2007, the cause of death was reported to be “gassing” and most presumed the act was carried out by Israel. ---

U.S. President Barack Obama sent a secret letter to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last month, in which he wrote that the two nations have shared interests in fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, but that any cooperation between Tehran and Washington on this issue would hinge upon reaching an agreement over Iran's nuclear program by the November 24 deadline we were told on Thursday November 6, 2014. The White House did not inform either Israel or America’s Gulf State allies, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, about the letter, which was sent in mid-October. The White House refused to either confirm or deny the report.

Oil prices have undercut Iran’s current and expected earnings by billions of dollars, and there are signs that the hit could get worse —Saudi Arabia expects prices to drop another $10 a barrel, and some traders are betting on an additional $30 plunge to just $40 a barrel. As if to vindicate those bears, prices fell again today Friday December 5, 2014, after the Saudis sharply cut what they charge their customers, and the release of a new report that US crude oil reserves are at their highest level in 39 years.

On Sunday December 7, 2014, we were told that a Washington Post reporter who has been detained in Iran for more than four months has been formally charged. However the nature of the charges was not clear to those in the Tehran court. Iranian-US citizen Jason Rezaian, 38, and his Iranian wife Yeganeh Salehi, were taken into custody in July. ---

For five months, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian has slept on the concrete floor of his cell, waking each morning to relive the nightmare that is solitary confinement in one of Iran’s most notorious prisons. Rezaian, an Iranian-American who holds dual citizenship, was arrested under dubious circumstances in July and jailed at Evin prison in Tehran, where he has been held for the past 153 days –the longest any western journalist has been detained in Iran. The 38-year-old reporter was arrested with his Iranian wife, Yeganeh Salehi, who is also a journalist, and an American couple, who have not been identified. Of the four, Rezaian is the only one still in prison. He was not formally charged until 6 December, and, even now, the nature of those charges has not been disclosed. Rezaian is being held in a bare prison cell, where he is forced to sleep on the hard floor. His physical and mental health are deteriorating, and his family is deeply concerned his prolonged detention will cause permanent damage. He has spent days at a time locked in his cell without seeing another human being other than his guard. Other days, interrogators will question him for hours. In the first months of his detention, Rezaian lost nearly 20% of his body weight, which has caused new health problems. Rezaian suffers from chronic high blood pressure and he is also afflicted with recurring eye infections and an inflammation of his groin. Rezaian has been denied bail, a translator or access to an attorney. He is allowed brief visits from his wife, who was recently allowed to bring him warm clothes.
                      
Iran held a funeral on Monday December 29, 2014, for a senior Revolutionary Guard commander who was killed during a battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq. The funeral for Brig. Gen. Hamid Taqavi was held in a Guard compound in Tehran. He will be buried in his hometown Ahvaz in southwestern Iran on Tuesday. Taqavi was "martyred while performing his advisory mission" in Samarra, a town that is home to a major Shiite shrine. He is the highest ranking Iranian officer known to have been killed abroad since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, in which he fought. ---

President Obama has sworn to veto any new sanctions imposed on Iran, stating that the likelihood of discussions collapsing will be very high if the US persists with its implementation. Obama has been encouraging both Democrats and Republicans to hold back while negotiations are still taking place. The statement comes just after the P5+1 group -the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France, plus Germany- kicked off talks with the Iranian delegation in Geneva on January 15. The P5+1 talks will continue until the end of June, as parties failed to reach a deal by the November 24 deadline. The delegations hope to reach a rough agreement by March. But expert opinion is divided on whether a deal will be reached over Iran's nuclear capabilities before the June deadline.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have confirmed that a general was killed in a suspected Israeli air strike in the Syrian Golan Heights on Sunday January 18, 2015. Mohammad Ali Allah-Dadi was in Syria to advise forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad. The Lebanese Shia Islamist movement Hezbollah said six of its fighters also died when a helicopter fired missiles at a convoy in Quneitra province. Israel said it was aimed at stopping an attack on Israeli soil. A total of six Iranian soldiers had been killed, along with its own fighters.

Israel was apparently unaware an Iranian general was travelling in a Hezbollah convoy it targeted with an air strike in Syria on Sunday January 18, 2015, killing the general as well as a senior Hezbollah commander. The claim made by an unnamed senior Israeli security source on Tuesday January 20, 2015, came as Iran threatened to retaliate for the killing and amid growing concern about the security situation on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon and Syria. Although Israel has not officially confirmed it carried out the strike on a convoy of several cars near the Syrian border village of Quneitra, it has been widely assumed that Israel was behind the attack. Israeli drones were seen in the vicinity before the attack.

On Tuesday January 20, 2015, President Barack Obama vowed to veto any bill that would place additional sanctions on Iran, while receiving ringing applause for his commitment to “take down terrorists and their allies” in a State of the Union speech largely defined by its focus on domestic policy. ---

An US Senate panel approved a bipartisan Iran sanctions bill on Thursday January 29, 2015, though the measure is likely to gather dust for at least two months after Democratic backers agreed to give the Obama administration more time to reach a nuclear deal. The Senate banking committee advanced the bill on an 18-4 vote, with six Democrats voting for it. The legislation would impose additional sanctions on Iran if international negotiators fail to reach a deal on the country's nuclear program by June 30. Sponsors of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2015 have argued the measure is necessary to keep pressure on Tehran as well as ensure that Congress has a say on any final agreement.

A commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been killed in Iraq. Reza Hosseini Moghadam was in Samarra to confront militants of the Islamic State (IS) when he was killed on February 7, 2015. Moghadam was martyred in the vicinity of the Al-Askari [Shi’ite] shrine in Samarra.

Militants claiming loyalty to Islamic State said they were behind Sunday February 22, 2015's twin bomb attacks on the residence of the Iranian ambassador in the Libyan capital and a rocket strike on the eastern Labraq airport. The attack on the ambassador's residence came two days after the group claimed responsibility for a double suicide bombing that killed more than 40 people in the eastern town of Qubbah, one of the worst attacks on civilians since a 2011 uprising toppled Muammar Gaddafi.

Iran said on Sunday March 1, 2015, that its first flight had landed in the Yemeni capital only a day after the two countries signed a landmark aviation deal. A plane from Iranian airliner Mahan Air had taken a cargo of humanitarian aid –mostly medicine- for Yemen.  The cargo was contributed by the Red Crescent of Iran. The flight was the first between the two countries in many years. Under the deal that was signed between the Civil Aviation and Meteorology Authority (CAMA) of Yemen and Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO)on 28 February, Mahan Air and Yemen’s airliner Yemenia would operate 14 flights between Tehran Sanaa each a week.

On Tuesday March 3, 2015 a delegation of ministers from the new revolutionary regime in Yemen has arrived in Tehran for talks as Iran strengthens its diplomatic grip on another troubled Arab country. The delegation was sent by the new administration led by the former “Houthi” rebels, a Shia militia close to Iran’s Lebanese proxy group Hizbollah. Among the first signs of Iran’s new dominance in the country was the announcement on Sunday of 14 new direct flights a week between Sana’a and Tehran, to be run by Yemenia Airways and Iran's Mahan Air.

An Iranian diplomat held hostage in Yemen for more than 18 months has been freed following an intelligence operation. Nour Ahmad Nikbakht was greeted by officials and tearful relatives at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport on Thursday March 5, 2015.  It was not immediately clear if Mr Nikbakht was freed in an armed raid. He had been rescued "from the clutches of terrorists in a series of complex and difficult operations". Mr Nikbakht is the second high-profile hostage to be freed in Yemen in a week. Saudi diplomat Abdullah al-Khalidi was released on Monday after being held by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) since March 2012.

On Tuesday March 10, 2015, a hardliner has been elected chairman of Iran's Assembly of Experts, a clerical body which chooses and monitors the country's supreme leader. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi defeated moderate former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, winning 47 out of 73 votes. He will head the assembly until next February, when direct elections for all 86 of its members will coincide with national parliamentary polls. ---

On Friday March 13, 2015 at least a few of the Republican senators feeling the backlash from signing an open letter to Iran’s leaders are expressing some second thoughts. Amid mounting criticism from allies, home-state editorial boards and colleagues who opted not to sign the missive, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson became the latest Republican to suggest he might do things differently if given another chance. While Johnson said he stood by the content of the letter, which warned Iran that any deal with President Barack Obama might not outlast his term in office, he said it probably shouldn’t have been directed to leaders of the Islamic Republic. The White House, which was facing pushback on the Iran nuclear negotiations from some Democrats as well as Republicans, seized on the letter to argue that Republicans were making foreign policy a partisan issue. Obama and his aides have responded with a mix of scolding and disdain. European allies who also are party to the Iran negotiations have condemned the letter as counterproductive. The letter has shifted attention from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech earlier this month to a joint meeting of Congress. His presence, at the invitation of House Speaker John Boehner, and remarks had forced the White House to defend the framework of a nuclear deal. ---

Twenty-five Iraqi tourists were killed and 16 injured when their bus plunged off a cliff in Iran's northern mountains on Tuesday June 2 2015. A brake defect caused the driver to lose control, sending the bus crashing 200 metres down into a river in the Alborz mountain range. The Iraqis were on their way to a Caspian Sea resort, they could have been pilgrims.

Iran laid to rest 175 military divers in an emotional public funeral ceremony on Tuesday June 16, 2015, almost three decades after they were captured in war with Iraq and, according to Iran's military, were buried alive. A large crowd gathered in Tehran to commemorate the divers and other soldiers killed in the 1980-88 war whose remains were recently recovered. Several mourners wept openly as prayers were read.

Saboteurs attacked a pipeline carrying natural gas from Iran to Turkey in Turkey's eastern province of Agri late on Monday July 27, 2015, halting the flow. There was no claim of responsibility so far, but the attack bore the hallmark of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whose camps in northern Iraq have been bombed by the Turkish air force in recent days and which has struck the pipeline before. The explosion occurred as a result of sabotage about 15 kilometres inside the Turkish border. The blast caused a fire which was swiftly put out. The pipeline, which carries around 10 billion cubic metres of Iranian gas to Turkey annually, frequently came under attack by Kurdish militants during the 1990s and up until 2013, when a ceasefire was established. Iran's natural gas exports to Turkey should resume in three days.

The European Union has removed two Iranian oil companies from its sanctions list, the first such action since Iran reached a nuclear agreement with world powers earlier this month. Petropars Operation and Management and Petropars Resources Engineering had argued there was insufficient evidence to include them. The companies are part of a group involved in extracting natural gas from Iran's South Pars field. They appealed to the EU court in May. A note from the UK Treasury said an asset freeze no longer applied to the companies. At the same time the court maintained sanctions on two other companies, Petropars Iran and Petropars Oilfields Services, because of the larger stakes they had in parent group National Iranian Oil Company.

Iranians celebrated the long-awaited reopening of their London embassy on Sunday August 23, 2015, with Qur’anic verses, soft drinks, expressions of florid goodwill and relentless hopes for a better future for the often stormy relationship between the Islamic Republic and the UK. Taking its cue from the parallel ceremony in Tehran, the event at the Iranian ambassador’s residence in Kensington was long on formal expressions of mutual respect and short on matters of substance or contention. Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, one of Iran’s deputy foreign ministers, set the tone with a call for relations based on mutual respect and good faith. He also called for a new era of cooperation following last month’s landmark nuclear deal and the steadily improving atmosphere between the two governments since a 2011 attack on the British embassy. Guests were offered bottled water and French macaroons in the grand first-floor drawing room of the residence, a few doors down the white stucco terrace from the embassy itself, scene of the SAS’s famous hostage rescue in 1980.

 

 

International sanctions meant to deprive Iran's nuclear programme of funds and technology are squeezing the country's vital oil exports. Talks between Iran and major powers that could lead to an easing of sanctions if successful are taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Following are details of major sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations over the years and in force on April 2, 2015:

U.S. SANCTIONS: Initial sanctions were imposed after Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy and took diplomats hostage in 1979.

- Under a U.S. trade embargo dating back to then, Iranian products cannot be imported into the United States, except for small gifts, information material, food and some carpets.

- In 1995, President Bill Clinton issued executive orders preventing U.S. companies from investing in Iranian oil and gas and trading with Iran. The same year, Congress passed a law imposing sanctions on foreign companies investing more than $20 million a year in Iran's energy sector.

- Under current sanctions, Americans are prohibited from trading directly or indirectly with Iran's oil sector, the Iranian government and individuals connected to the oil sector or in any financing of it. U.S. companies are also barred from investing in Iran's oil and gas industries or trading with them.

- U.S. sanctions can also target foreign firms or people that do business with Iran's energy sector, with some exceptions for countries that are reducing their Iranian oil imports.

- U.S. sanctions can also target financial institutions that engage in transactions with a host of Iranian companies and government agencies, including Iran's central bank, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the National Iranian Oil Co. and its subsidiary Naftiran Intertrade Co.

- Companies or individuals found to breach the sanctions face significant fines, asset freezes, the risk of being cut off from the U.S. dollar banking system or potentially even be blacklisted themselves.

- Other U.S. sanctions prohibit Americans from dealing with a range of Iranian industries, including precious metals, shipping and port operations

- Some of the sanctions are tied to Iran's nuclear activities, while others focus on what Washington deems to be human rights abuses, support for terrorism or interference in Iraq or Syria.

EU SANCTIONS: The 28-nation European Union has gradually introduced tighter sanctions against Iran since 2007 in response to concerns about Iran's nuclear activities. They include:

- An export and import ban on arms.

- An export and import ban on goods and technology related to nuclear enrichment or nuclear weapon systems.

- An export ban on materials relevant to the Iranian nuclear, military and ballistic missile programmes or to industries controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

- A ban on investment by Iranian nationals and companies in uranium mining and production of nuclear material and technology within the EU.

- A ban on imports of crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas from Iran as well as related finance and insurance. No oil or petrochemical tankers may be supplied to Iran (measures dealing with insurance and transport of Iranian crude oil suspended under interim nuclear deal between six powers and Iran).

- A ban on imports of petrochemical products from Iran (suspended under interim deal).

- An export and import ban on goods and technology that have both military and civilian uses.

- An export ban on key equipment and technology for the oil, gas and petrochemical industries in Iran.

- A ban on investment in the Iranian oil, gas and petrochemical industries.

- No new commitments by EU member states for financial support for trade with Iran.

- EU member states barred from giving new grants or concessional loans to the government of Iran. Ban on providing insurance to the Iranian government and Iranian companies (except health and travel insurance).

- Trade in gold, precious metals and diamonds with Iranian public bodies and the central bank is prohibited (measure suspended for gold and precious metals under the interim deal).

- No delivery of Iranian denominated banknotes and coins to the Iranian central bank.

- A ban on financial transfers with Iranian banks, unless specifically authorised in advance. Payments may be authorised in certain cases such as for food and healthcare. (New authorisation thresholds apply under the interim deal).

- A ban on Iranian banks opening branches or creating joint ventures in the EU. EU financial institutions may not open branches or bank accounts in Iran, either.

- A ban on the issuance of and trade in Iranian government or public bonds with the Iranian government, central bank and Iranian banks.

- Cargo flights operated by Iranian carriers or coming from Iran may not have access to EU airports.

- No flagging or classification services may be supplied to Iranian oil tankers or cargo vessels.

- A ban on supplying key naval equipment for shipbuilding and maintenance to Iran.

- Visa bans on people designated by the U.N. or associated with Iran's nuclear activities or the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems.

- An asset freeze on entities associated with Iran's nuclear activities or the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems.

(Source: Adapted from EU factsheet)

U.N. SANCTIONS

- The Security Council has imposed four sets of sanctions on Iran, in December 2006, March 2007, March 2008 and June 2010.

- The first covered sensitive nuclear materials and froze the assets of Iranian individuals and companies linked with the nuclear programme.

- The second included new arms and financial sanctions.

- The third, in 2008, increased travel and financial curbs on individuals and companies. It expanded a partial ban on trade in items with both civilian and military uses to cover sales of all such technology to Iran.

- A Security Council resolution passed on June 9, 2010, called for measures against new Iranian banks abroad if a connection to the nuclear or missile programmes was suspected. It expanded a U.N. arms embargo against Tehran and called for the setting up of a cargo inspection regime.

- There are currently 43 individuals and 78 entities and groups on the U.N. blacklist and subjected to a global travel ban and asset freeze. ---

Iran released five senior members of Al Qaeda earlier this year, including the man who stepped in to serve as the terrorist group’s interim leader immediately after Osama bin Laden’s death, and who is the subject of a $5 million bounty. The release of the five men was part of a prisoner swap in March with Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, the group holding an Iranian diplomat, Nour Ahmad Nikbakht. Mr. Nikbakht was kidnapped in the Yemeni capital of Sana in July 2013.

At least 10 people have been killed after flash floods hit several regions of Iran we were told on Saturday September 19, 2015. Six people died on Friday in Pakdasht, a city southeast of Tehran, when they attempted to have a picnic by the side of a river which then burst its banks. And in Iran's southern Hormozgan, four people including two children were also killed by flooding on Friday. They had gathered next to a river to watch the flooding when they were swept away.

On Sunday September 27, 2015, Russia and Iran declare victory as Western leaders including Cameron accept Assad will stay. Bashar al-Assad’s key backers hail the turn-around by Western leaders in accepting the Syrian president would remain in power, at least in the short-term future.

A car crash in central Iran has killed 20 illegal Afghan migrants and injured 10 others. The crash involving a car, a mini-bus and a truck happened Sunday evening October 18, 2015, on the road linking Tehran to the city of Qom. The victims were Afghan migrants who illegally crossed the border into Iran.

Iranian authorities arrested two prominent journalists on Monday November 2, 2015. Isa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist, was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on charges of "insulting the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and propaganda against the regime. Ehsan Mazandarani, managing director of the Farikhtegan newspaper, was arrested on security charges. The IRGC answers directly to Khamenei and is not accountable to the government. It works with the conservative judiciary to counter perceived internal threats to the Islamic Republic. The arrests came after two Iranian poets and a film-maker were sentenced to long prison terms and lashes last month on charges including "insulting sanctities and propaganda against the state".

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a visit to Tehran Monday November 23, 2015, as Moscow goes on a diplomatic push over the Syria conflict. Talks with Iran's leadership will focus on "issues in bilateral relations, including atomic energy, oil and gas and military-technical cooperation. The Russian president will also meet his counterpart Hassan Rouhani. ---

The US victims of the Iran hostage crisis are to receive compensation 36 years after their ordeal. Each of the 53 hostages or their estates will receive up to $4.4m we were told Friday December 25, 2015. The victims of other state-sponsored terror attacks such as the US embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998 will also be eligible. The hostage-taking lasted 444 days and led the US to break off ties with Iran.

The US has thanked Iran for the swift release of 10 US sailors held for entering its territorial waters. The sailors were detained on Tuesday January 12, 2016 when one of their two vessels broke down while training in the Gulf. They were released on Wednesday. The incursion was "unintentional" the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said. The sailors were released into international waters after they apologised.

Friday January 15, 2016, global share markets tumbled as the prospect of an end to the Iranian oil export ban sent oil below $30 a barrel for the second time this week. London shares fell 2.2% to 5788.2, while France's Cac 40 fell 2.4% and Germany's Dax was 2.5% lower. Wall Street opened down sharply, with the Dow Jones index sinking 2.33% to 15,997.94 points. It came as concern grew that Iran could restart oil exports, flooding an already over-supplied market. The oil benchmark Brent crude fell 4.7% to $29.43. US West Texas intermediate oil fell 5% to $29.51. Shares in mining firm Anglo American were the worst hit, falling by more than 11%. Glencore was down 7%, and BHP Billiton and Antofagasta lost 6%.

On Saturday January 16, 2016, Iran has released Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and three other Iranian-American prisoners in an apparent prisoner swap with the US. Rezaian, 39, was jailed on charges, including espionage, last November. The United States said it was offering clemency to seven Iranians being held in the US for sanctions violation. On Saturday evening, after talks in Vienna, international sanctions on Iran were lifted as part of the nuclear deal agreed last year. The lifting of the sanctions was announced by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. The other three Americans were named as Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari.

Iran plans to buy 114 civil aircraft from European aircraft maker Airbus we were told on Saturday January 16, 2016, ahead of the anticipated lifting of international sanctions on Iran. Airbus said it was not engaging in commercial talks with Iran until sanctions had been lifted.

Hassan Rouhani is to make the first state visit to Europe by an Iranian president in almost two decades this week, following the lifting of sanctions against his country. The trip will aim at rebuilding economic ties and Iran is expected to sign a deal with Airbus for 114 new aircraft. Europe was Iran’s largest trading partner before sanctions, and has sent an unprecedented number of business delegations to the country since the landmark nuclear agreement with the west was sealed in July. The end of sanctions, including the removal of EU’s embargo on Iranian oil imports, means that trade can begin again. Rouhani is expected in Rome on Monday January 25, 2016, where he will meet the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi. He will also meet Pope Francis at the Vatican. He will then travel to Paris on Wednesday and is scheduled to be welcomed by the French president, François Hollande, at the Elysée palace on Thursday. Germany, Italy and France have been leading the pack as Europe aims to increase trade with Tehran from the current level of €7.6bn (£5.8bn) a year to the pre-sanctions figure of almost €28bn.

On Thursday January 28, 2016, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has hailed "a new chapter" in French-Iranian relations during his visit to Paris to discuss trade ties. Mr Rouhani agreed a number of major deals, including a €22bn contract to buy 118 Airbus planes. Earlier, French carmaker Peugeot said it had agreed a joint venture in Iran worth €400m. Mr Rouhani's Europe tour comes after the lifting of international sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme. Mr Rouhani's five-day visit to Italy and France is the first by an Iranian president in nearly two decades.

Iran flew a surveillance drone over a US aircraft carrier and took “precise” photographs of it as part of an ongoing naval drill we were told Thursday January 28, 2016. The US navy said an unarmed Iranian drone flew near a French and American carrier earlier this month, but we were not told if it was the same incident. The US navy did not open fire as the drone was unarmed and not threatening the ship’s safety, but the incident again highlighted that tensions remain between America and Iran in Gulf waters despite their recent diplomatic detente.

Only days after Iran signed a landmark agreement to purchase 118 planes from Airbus a separate order to buy 40 turboprop planes from the European manufacturer ATR is in the pipeline. ATR officials are expected in Tehran in the coming days to complete the agreement. There will be 20 firm and 20 optional orders. ATR is based in France and is a joint partnership between two major European aeronautics players –France’s Airbus Group and Italy’s Finmeccanica. ---

Partial results released Sunday February28, 2016, indicate that Iranian reformists will win all 30 parliamentary seats contested in the capital, Tehran, handing hard-liners an embarrassing defeat in the first elections held since last year's nuclear deal, which appears to be propelling moderates to their best nationwide electoral showing in more than a decade. The deal is expected to bolster moderate allies of President Hassan Rouhani, who championed it in the face of hard-line opposition. However, none of Iran's three main political camps -reformists, conservatives or hard-liners- is expected to win a majority in the 290-seat assembly.

President Hassan Rouhani and his allies won 15 out of the capital's 16 seats on the clerical body (Assembly of Experts), which may choose the country's next supreme leader. Two leading hard-line clerics, assembly chairman Mohammad Yazdi and Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, lost their seats. The only hardliner to make the cut in Friday February 26, 2016's polls was Ahmad Jannati.

Iran has launched two new ballistic missiles continuing a military exercise that has drawn a threat of a US diplomatic response. The Revolutionary Guards launched the missiles from northern Iran against targets in the south-east. On Tuesday March 8, 2016, the country had launched several ballistic missiles as part of the same exercise. In January, the US imposed sanctions targeting Iran's missile programme in response to a previous round of tests. UN experts said those tests had violated a Security Council resolution.

The Obama administration paid Iran nearly $2billion in a 'ransom payment' to release U.S. prisoners after at least two years of secret talks between Washington and Tehran. Five prisoners were freed by Iran in January 2016, with a $1.7 billion payment heading from the U.S. to the Islamic republic that day. At least two years of secret talks led to the deal that officials claim is a settlement relating to one of more than 1,000 long-standing legal disputes that began after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

An air ambulance helicopter has crashed in southern Iran, killing all seven on-board. We were told Friday March 25, 2016, that the helicopter was carrying a patient in a serious condition from a remote area to the southern city of Shiraz when it crashed. Four helicopter medics were among the victims. ---

A court in Iran has sentenced four reformist journalists to between five and 10 years in prison. Afarin Chitsaz, Ehsan Mazandarani, Saman Safarzai and Davud Asadi were found guilty of charges including acting against national security. The Committee to Protect Journalists urged Iran to change laws that it says allows journalists to be harassed.  The four were arrested in November 2015 as part of a crackdown by hardliners. Writers, artists and other cultural figures were also detained in the run-up to February's elections for parliament and the Assembly of Experts, in which supporters of moderate President Hassan Rouhani made gains.

Politicians allied to President Hassan Rouhani came out strongest in a second round of parliamentary elections in Iran, early results showed on Saturday April 30, 2016, but his moderate faction appeared unlikely to clinch an overall majority. If confirmed, Iran's next parliament will be more supportive of Rouhani's drive for economic reforms, but conservatives will remain a powerful force and could limit the prospects for social change. An unofficial Reuters tally of first-round results showed moderates won about 90 seats, conservatives 112, and independents 29. The figures are approximate because Iran does not have rigid party affiliations and some candidates were backed by both camps. It looks like neither the moderates nor the conservatives will have the 146 seats needed for a majority in the next parliament, which will begin sitting on May 27. The balance of power will be determined by independents, setting the scene for combative politics in which Rouhani's government is likely to enjoy more support than in the past, but will by no means have a free hand. Hardline factions will continue to assert authority through a number of unelected bodies in Iran's political system, including the judiciary, the Guardian Council, and various branches of the security forces.

The British mother held prisoner in Iran has been allowed to see her parents and her infant daughter for the first time since her arrest. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, was allowed out of solitary confinement for over two hours on Wednesday May 11, 2016. She was taken from prison to a hotel in the city of Kerman where she was permitted to have lunch with her parents and see her daughter, Gabriella, who is 22 months old. Mrs Ratcliffe, who holds dual British-Iranian nationality, was arrested at Imam Khomeini International Airport on April 3 while trying to leave the country after visiting her parents in Tehran.

More than 30 Iranian college students who were caught partying at a recent graduation celebration were promptly arrested and given 99 lashes each. The mixed-gender party in the northern city of Qazvin —at which the women were “half naked” and “dancing and jubilating,” according to prosecutor Esmail Sadeghi Niaraki— was brought to a halt by authorities after they were informed of the festivities. Morality police delivered the lashings within 24 hours of ending the party we were told Thursday May 26, 2016. The punishment comes amid a wider crackdown on behaviours considered to be contrary to Islamic values by Iran’s powerful judiciary, despite President Hassan Rouhani’s relatively progressive views on social freedoms. Iranian officials have strongly pushed back against Western traditions influencing Middle Eastern culture.

Iran has arrested eight people involved in producing "obscene" music videos, Tehran prosecutor general Abbas Jafarabadi told the judiciary's news agency Mizan Online on Saturday May 28, 2016. ---

A firefight between Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards and Kurdish militants in western Iran left five militants dead we were told Monday June 13, 2016. The five were members of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, or PJAK, which is the Iranian wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in Turkey. The Revolutionary Guards ambushed the militants in northwestern Sardasht area but didn't elaborate as to when the shootout happened or provide more details. Weapons and ammunition were confiscated from the five at the site of the clash.

Separately there was a clash in the country's Sistan-Baluchistan province near the border with Pakistan. Iranian security forces killed five members of the Jaish al-Adl group there on Monday June 13, 2016. Tehran has branded the group a terrorist organization. An Iranian police officer was also killed in the clash. Sistan-Baluchistan, the site of frequent clashes with drug traffickers, lies on a major transit route for opium and heroin being smuggled from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Iran has reached a deal to buy 100 planes from US plane producer Boeing; the two sides are awaiting approval by US Treasury authorities. The final obstacle in this area are only the permits from the US Treasury Department we were told Sunday June 19, 2016. Out of 250 planes in Iran, 230 need to be replaced.

A senior Iranian prosecutor said that a British-Iranian woman has been held in solitary confinement for three months because she helped to design a website. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Tehran airport with her two-year-old daughter on her way home to London on 3 April. Neither she nor her husband, Richard, were told why she had been arrested until last week, when the Revolutionary Guard issued a statement describing her as a spy. Now Iranian prosecutor Yadollah Movahed said that she was implicated in the 2009 protests known as Iran’s Green Movement, even though she was in Britain at the time. Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held in Kerman, 600 miles from her daughter in Tehran. In 2014-2015, the intelligence service of the Revolutionary Guards in Kerman province identified and arrested members of one of the groups that during the Sedition conducted activities against the security of the country by designing websites and carrying out campaigns in the media. Some of the group were outside Iran, including the suspect Nazanin Zaghari. The only previous account of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest came on 15 June when the Revolutionary Guard said she had plotted the “soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic” through “her membership of foreign companies and institutions” and as one of the “heads of foreign-linked hostile networks”. Zaghari-Ratcliffe works as a programme manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency. She was initially stopped at Tehran airport when officials said there was a problem with her passport. Her daughter Gabriella’s passport was confiscated and the two-year-old was handed over to her grandparents. The Foreign Office says it has raised the case “repeatedly and at the highest levels” and will continue to do so at “every available opportunity”. Other women with dual-nationality have been detained in recent weeks by the Iranian authorities. Canadian-Iranian Homa Hoodfar, a 65-year-old professor from Montreal in Canada, was a founder of the Women Living Under Muslim Laws group, headquartered in London. She was arrested on the grounds of “feminism and security” and anti-security activities.

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) forces have destroyed an 11-member gang of terrorists tied to an anti-Iran Kurdish terror outfit we were told Tuesday June 28, 2016. The members of the group are “counter-revolutionaries” who have been unsuccessfully working against Iran’s Islamic Revolution since its 1979 victory. Three IRGC members were killed in the operation.

Iran said on Thursday June 30, 2016, it was under no obligation to buy A380 superjumbo jets raising further questions over part of a landmark deal with European plane manufacturer Airbus. The order for the double-decker jetliners grabbed attention in January as part of a preliminary deal signed in Paris for 118 Airbus planes worth $27 billion. Iran has also provisionally agreed to buy or lease 109 Boeing jets. Reuters reported on Monday, however, that Tehran was having second thoughts about whether to take delivery of the order for a dozen A380 superjumbo jets. 

Armed bandits have killed four Iranian border guards during clashes in the country’s southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan. We were told on Wednesday July 6, 2016, that the guards were killed in an ambush by terrorists in the border region of Jakigour in the southern Sarbaz district of the province. The attack was followed by clashes in which a number of terrorists were killed or injured.

On Friday July 8, 2016. the House of Representatives has passed a measure that would block US aircraft sales to Iran, potentially undercutting a Boeing deal with Tehran worth up to $25bn. Two approved amendments to an appropriations bill from Representative Peter Roskam would ban sales from Boeing and European rival Airbus, amid concerns the aircraft could be used for military purposes. One amendment would prohibit the Office of Foreign Assets Control from using funds to authorise a license necessary to allow aircraft to be sold to Iran. A second would bar loans from US financial institutions to purchase militarily adaptable aircraft. The ban would need to be approved by the Senate or any bill that reconciles differences in legislation by the two chambers.

Iran is hoping to join an international project that aims to harness the energy produced by nuclear fusion for the first time for peaceful purposes we were told Friday July 8.      A high-level Iranian delegation led by nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi and Vice President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari visited St. Paul Lez Durance in southern France on June 30-July 1, where the ITER fusion-harnessing device is being built to discuss  the possibilities of Iran's joining to ITER. ---

Unknown gunmen killed two people and injured a lawmaker and a local governor in western Iran after opening fire on their car Sunday July 10, 2016. Four gunmen blocked the car and opened fire. The driver and a local veterinary official were killed. Pro-reform lawmaker Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh sustained minor injuries, and the local governor of the Dalahoo district and a fishery official were also injured. The gunmen fled toward the Iraqi border. In recent weeks, Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists have clashed in western Iran. Iran said its forces have killed dozens of insurgents in the country’s western provinces near Iraq, which have a large Kurdish minority.

Iran has attempted to launch a new type of ballistic missile based on North Korean technology. The missile is said to have been launched on 11 July near the city of Saman near Isfahan. The test ended in failure when the North Korean BM-25 Musudan ballistic missile exploded shortly after lift-off.

Iran suspended all flights to Turkey after a coup attempt in the neighbouring country. Seven flights to Turkey had been cancelled Saturday morning July 16, 2016.

On Sunday July 17, 2016, Iranian airlines have been permitted to resume flights to and from Turkey as security in the neighbouring country has improved. Iran’s decision to resume flights to and from Turkey comes just a day after suspending them following a failed coup attempt in the neighbouring Turkey. Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic has announced that all border crossings along Iran-Turkey border have been reopened but only Iranian and Turkish nationals, so far, can cross through them

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps forces have arrested three people suspected of being behind a recent terrorist attack targeting an Iranian lawmaker in the western province of Kermanshah. We were told Saturday July 23, 2016 that the three were detained in Kermanshah Province over their alleged link with an assassination attempt against Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, the representative of the county of Eslamabad-e Gharb, earlier this month. On July 10, Falahatpisheh escaped an assassination attempt unhurt after the vehicle carrying him came under an attack by terrorists as he was travelling to the village of Rijab.

Iran has executed at least 10 Sunni Muslim prisoners held on terror charges in spite of claims they were subjected to forced confessions and did not have a fair trial. The Norway-based Iran Human Rights, which documents Iran’s use of the death penalty, reported that the executions had been carried out on Tuesday morning August 2, 2016, at Rajaee Shahr prison in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran. According to judicial protocol in Iran, people condemned to death are usually hanged just before sunrise. Many if not all of these prisoners were subjected to unfair trials and sentenced to death based on confessions extracted under torture. Among them was Shahram Ahmadi, a 28-year-old Kurdish prisoner, who was convicted for “enmity against God” because of his alleged membership of so-called Takfiri-Salafist groups, an Iranian term for Sunni jihadi extremists. ---

The Obama administration said Thursday August 18, 2016, that a $400 million cash payment to Iran seven months ago was contingent on the release of a group of American prisoners. It is the first time the US has so clearly linked the two events, which critics have painted as a hostage-ransom arrangement. The negotiations to return the Iranian money -from a military-equipment deal with the US-backed shah in the 1970s- were conducted separately from the talks to free four US citizens in Iran but the US withheld the delivery of the cash as leverage until Iran permitted the Americans to leave the country.

The leader of a Sunni militant group in southeast Iran responsible for attacks against security forces and civilian targets has been killed we were told Thursday August 25, 2016. Hesham Azizi, also known as Abu Hafs al Baloushi, was the head of the Ansar al Furqan militant organization. Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province, in the southeast of the country on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the Balouch minority and has long been a hotbed of Sunni militant activity against the Shi’ite-dominated government of the Islamic Republic. The province, one of Iran's most impoverished, is also part of a well-known drug trafficking route. Baloushi organized 12-member teams to carry out attacks across the country in exchange for payment of $500,000. A number of other members of the teams have been arrested.

On Thursday August 25, 2016, a US Navy vessel fired three shots to warn an Iranian military boat off in the Gulf. It was one of several incidents of Iranian vessels harassing US ships in the past week. The shots, fired from a 50-calibre gun, caused the Iranian vessel to turn away. In a separate incident, several small boats approached a destroyer at high speed. Flares were fired after two of the boats ignored warnings to change course. Some 40% of the world's seaborne oil exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, at the entrance to the Gulf.

Britain and Iran restored full diplomatic relations on Monday September 5, 2016, by appointing ambassadors in one another’s capitals although four Britons are still being held prisoner in Iranian jails. Almost five years after a pro-regime mob stormed and looted the British Embassy in Tehran in 2011, forcing the closure of the mission, Britain’s most senior diplomat in Iran, Nicholas Hopton, was upgraded from Charge D’Affaires to full Ambassador. Meanwhile, Iran appointed Hamid Baeidinejad, a senior foreign ministry official, as its Ambassador in London. The embassies of both countries were officially reopened last year. As a further sign of normalisation, British Airways resumed direct flights between London and Tehran last week. But four Britons are still being held in Iranian prisons, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 37-year-old charity worker, and Kamal Foroughi, a 77-year-old grandfather who is in danger of going blind. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, said the “upgrade in diplomatic relations” would provide an “opportunity” to raise these “consular cases about which I am deeply concerned”. Mr Johnson has already discussed the British prisoners with Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei renewed criticism of Saudi Arabia over how it runs the haj after a crush last year killed hundreds of pilgrims, and suggested Muslim countries think about ending Riyadh's control of the annual pilgrimage. Custodian of Islam's most revered places in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia stakes its reputation on organising haj, one of the five pillars of Islam which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to is obliged to undertake at least once. Its prestige was damaged by the 2015 disaster, in which Riyadh said 769 pilgrims were killed -the highest haj death toll since a crush in 1990. Counts of fatalities by countries who repatriated bodies showed that over 2,000 people may have died in the crush, more than 400 of them Iranians. Iran, Saudi Arabia's main regional rival, blamed the disaster on organisers' incompetence. Pilgrims from Iran will be unable to attend haj, which starts on September 11, this year after talks between the two countries on arrangements broke down in May.

The Obama administration made two additional cash payments totaling $1.3 billion, after delivering $400 million to Iran by plane in January, to resolve a failed arms deal we were told Tuesday September 6, 2016. The additional payments were delivered to Iran in Swiss francs, Euros and other currencies.

A British-Iranian mother has been jailed for five years in Iran on "secret charges we were told Friday September 9, 2016. Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at Tehran airport after visiting her family on holiday. ---

A soldier killed himself after shooting to death three of his comrades in southern Iran on Friday September 16, 2016. The shooting happened in a youth correctional facility in Yasuj, some 700 kilometers south of Tehran. Two more soldiers who were injured in the shooting are in critical condition. The shooter killed himself after the assault.

Iran on Monday September 26, 2016, freed a Canadian-Iranian academic detained since June, a week after the two nations began talks on a potential restoration of diplomatic relations broken in 2012. Homa Hoodfar, 65, is a teacher at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and an expert on gender and Islam. Homa Hoodfar, the retired professor of Canadian universities was released for humanitarian reasons including illness.

Iran rejected on Tuesday September 27, 2016, a proposal from Saudi Arabia to limit its oil output in exchange for Riyadh cutting supply, dashing hopes the two major OPEC producers would find a compromise to help ease a global glut of crude.

Iran fired mortar shells into Pakistan's Balochistan province on Wednesday September 28, 2016, causing panic among the local population. The mortar shells fired by Iranian border guards landed in the district of Panjgoor. Two of the shells landed near a Frontier Corps checkpoint while the third landed at a place called Killi Karim Dad. No loss of life or damage was reported following the shelling.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards unveiled a home-built drone, called Saegheh or lightning, that is capable of carrying bombs we were told Saturday October 1, 2016 It seem to be another copy of a reconnaissance U.S. drone that Iran captured five years ago.

Iran broke up an Islamic State plan to bomb commemorations marking the Shiite religious mourning period of Ashoura. Several foreign nationals were detained with some 100 kilograms of explosives. Wednesday Octobre 12, 2016, we were told that the suspects planned to attack Ashoura events in Iran's southern Fars province. Ashoura marks the death of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the Battle of Karbala in present-day Iraq in the 7th century. The suspects are "takfiri terrorists," a term used to describe militant Sunni Muslim fundamentalists like the Islamic State group.

Iran sent two warships to the Gulf of Aden on Thursday October 13, 2016, establishing a military presence in waters off Yemen where the U.S. military launched cruise missile strikes on areas controlled by Iran-backed Houthi forces. They said it is to protect trade vessels from piracy. The U.S. military strikes were in response to failed missile attacks this week on a U.S. Navy destroyer. The Iranian ships will patrol the Gulf of Aden, south of Yemen, which is one of the world's most important shipping routes.

Iran has arrested 11 people on suspicion of planning suicide bombings on behalf of the Islamic State group and seized large quantities of explosives we were told on Friday October 14, 2016. It was the latest in a series of alleged plots by the Sunni extremists uncovered in Shiite Iran which has been a major supporter of the campaign against them in neighbouring Iraq.

An Iranian court has sentenced an Iranian-American businessman and his elderly father to 10 years in prison on charges of cooperating with the United States we were told Tuesday October 18, 2016, the latest sign of an intensifying crackdown against Iranians with ties to the West. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in October 2015 detained Siamak Namazi, a businessman in his mid-40s with dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship, while he was visiting family in Tehran. The IRGC in February arrested his 80-year-old father, Baquer Namazi, a former Iranian provincial governor and former UNICEF official who also has dual citizenship. Both men were sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying and cooperating with the U.S. government. ---

An Iranian-American held in Tehran has been sentenced to 18 years in prison, the latest dual national convicted in secret trials since Iran's nuclear deal with world powers. The sentence was handed down after he was convicted of "collaboration with a hostile government we were told Tuesday October 25, 2016.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday October 26, 2016, they had developed a "suicide drone" capable of delivering explosives to blow up targets at sea and on land. The new drone is primarily for maritime surveillance and has not been designed to be armed with missiles. But it can carry heavy payloads of explosives for combat missions to launch suicide attacks. Flying at a high cruising speed near the surface of the water, the aircraft can collide with the target and destroy it, either a vessel or an onshore command centre.

On Friday October 28, 2016, we were told that Iranian authorities executed three Turkish nationals for drug trafficking last year only 11 days after a high-profile visit to Tehran by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Gas flow from Iran to Turkey has been halted after a huge explosion rocked a pipeline in eastern Turkey we were told Friday October 28, 2016. The huge blast hit a pipeline in the town of Dogubayazit in Agrı Province in eastern Turkey, bordering Iran. A fire broke out on the pipeline and the flames reached up to 50 meters.

On Tuesday November 1, 2016, an Iranian court has sentenced Tehran's controversial former chief prosecutor to 135 lashes for corruption. Saeed Mortazavi was convicted of misappropriation and wasting public goods. The offences took place while he was in charge of Iran's social welfare system in 2012 and 2013. He has previously been the subject of US sanctions, accused of "sustained and severe violations of human rights".

On Wednesday November 9, 2016, a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims has crashed, killing 26 people and wounding 16 others. The bus overturned in the south of the country overnight, and that the cause is being investigated. The bus was carrying Iranian pilgrims from the city of Yazd who were traveling to the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala for the Arbaeen religious observance.

President Barack Obama's administration said on Monday November 14, 2016, he would veto legislation seeking to block financial transactions related to the export of passenger aircraft to Iran, saying it would undermine the nuclear deal implemented early this year. The legislation in the House of Representatives is the latest Republican-led effort to stop the sale of aircraft to Iran by Airbus and Boeing Co, allowed under the nuclear deal. The White House said U.S. partners would view the bill, if implemented, as a violation of the nuclear agreement. The United States plus Britain, Russia, France, China and Germany agreed to lift sanctions if Iran would curtail its nuclear program. The deals by Airbus and Boeing to sell or lease over 200 jets to IranAir would help modernize and expand the country's elderly fleet, held together by smuggled or improvised parts after years of sanctions. Some members of Congress have raised concerns that killing the sale could cost jobs. But opponents argue that the passenger aircraft could be used for military purposes such as transporting fighters to battle U.S. troops or allies in Syria. The measure would bar the Secretary of the Treasury from authorizing a transaction by a U.S. financial institution related to the export, or re-export, of commercial aircraft to Iran. And it would revoke any authorities enacted before the bill passed, such as those that allowed the Boeing and Airbus sales. The measure also limits the role of Export-Import Bank financing of sales to Iran. Some banks have been reluctant to finance the aircraft deals, fearing they could fall foul of remaining sanctions prohibiting the use of the U.S. financial system for Iranian business. The House is expected to take up, and pass, the measure as soon as this week. ---

President Barack Obama’s administration said on Monday November 14, 2016, he would veto legislation seeking to block financial transactions related to the export of passenger aircraft to Iran. The legislation in the House of Representatives is the latest Republican-led effort to stop the sale of aircraft to Iran by Airbus and Boeing, allowed under the nuclear deal. The White House said U.S. partners would view the bill, if implemented, as a violation of the nuclear agreement. The United States plus Britain, Russia, France, China and Germany agreed to lift sanctions if Iran would curtail its nuclear program. The deals by Airbus and Boeing to sell or lease over 200 jets to IranAir would help modernize and expand the country’s elderly fleet, held together by smuggled or improvised parts after years of sanctions.

The U.S. Treasury Department has issued a license to France's Airbus (AIR.PA) for the sale of 106 commercial planes to Iran Air, Iran's flagship carrier we were told Tuesday November 22, 2016. Although Airbus is based in France, it must have U.S. approval to sell planes to Iran because at least 10 percent of the aircraft's components are American-made.

A train collision in northern Iran has killed at least 36 people and injured 95 on Monday November 28, 2016. The accident happened in sub-zero temperatures when a moving passenger train hit a stationary train at a station about 150 miles east of Tehran. Four of the people who died were railway employees on board the trains when the collision occurred near the city of Semnan. Four carriages derailed and two caught fire.

A senior Iranian lawmaker said that the recent comments made by British Prime Minister Theresa May against the Islamic Republic prove that London is pursuing a divisive agenda. The Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Thursday December 8, 2016, that the British prime minister’s remarks among “subservient regional countries are not compatible with the reality” of the Islamic Republic and “indicate Britain’s divisive policy.” Speaking at the annual summit of Persian Gulf Cooperation Council in the Bahraini capital of Manama, May said Britain would help the GCC states “push back” against what she claimed to be Iran’s “aggressive regional actions.” The British premier also said that her country wanted to “make a more permanent and more enduring commitment to the long-term security” of the Persian Gulf and would invest almost four billion dollars in defence spending in the region over the next 10 years.

Iran's Aseman Airlines has agreed to lease seven Airbus jets we were told on Thursday December 15, 2016, scotching earlier reports that Iran had agreed to buy the aircraft directly from the European manufacturer. The report fuelled French media speculation that a keenly awaited deal between IranAir and Airbus for more than 100 aircraft had been watered down significantly.

Airbus Group SE suffered a blow to its already troubled A380 program when Iran, dropped the model as part of a wider fleet upgrade. Iran reduced its order with Airbus to 100 planes in a contract that will no longer include A380s. This will shrink the original $27 billion agreement for 118 jets, including 12 A380s. Airbus has already cut production of its superjumbo by more than half, to one plane a month by 2018, as demand has dwindled. ---

Iran said on Sunday December 25, 2016, it had negotiated to pay only about half the announced price for 80 new Boeing airliners in an order that the American plane maker had said was worth $16.6 billion. Boeing and its European rival Airbus have both signed huge contracts this month to supply airliners to Iran, the first such deals since international sanctions were lifted under a deal to curb Tehran's nuclear program.

An Arab separatist group has claimed two pipeline bombings in Iran's oil-rich south and threatened to launch more attacks in the coming year. The Iranian Interior Ministry denied the claim by the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, which said it bombed the pipelines early Tuesday morning January 3, 2017, in Khuzestan province. The militants released online video they said showed one of the pipelines exploding. The separatists' statement said the bombings came in response to Iran's Oil Ministry publishing a list of 29 international companies qualified to bid for projects following the atomic accord.

Iran's ex-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a dominant figure in the country's politics since the 1980s, has died Sunday January 8, 2017, at the age of 82. Mr Rafsanjani had suffered a heart attack. He served as president from 1989 to 1997 but lost to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he ran again in 2005. Although Mr Rafsanjani was part of the religious establishment, he was regarded as a "pragmatic conservative" open to improving ties to the West.

On Sunday January 8, 2017, a U.S. Navy destroyer fired three warning shots at four Iranian fast-attack vessels near the Strait of Hormuz after they closed in at high speed and disregarded repeated requests to slow down. This was an unsafe and unprofessional interaction, and that is due to the fact that they were approaching at a high level of speed with weapons manned and disregarding repeated warnings. The warning shots were fired at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps boats by the USS Mahan after it established radio contact but failed to get them to slow down. The Iranian vessels came within 900 yards of the Navy destroyer, which was escorting two other U.S. military ships. The Mahan also fired flares and a U.S. Navy helicopter also dropped a smoke float before the warning shots.

The first Airbus passenger plane ordered by Iran Air in decades after the lifting of international sanctions on the Islamic Republic has landed in the capital, Tehran. The new A321 jet arrived at Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport on Thursday January 12, 2017 on a flight from the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France. The head of IranAir, Farhad Parvaresh, called the delivery a "sunny day" for relations between Iran and Europe, and a memorable one for aviation in the nation of 80 million people.

A historic high-rise building in the heart of Iran’s capital caught fire and later collapsed Thursday January 19, 2017, killing at least 30 firefighters and leaving their stunned colleagues and bystanders weeping in the streets. The disaster at the 17-story Plasco Building, inadvertently shown live on state television, came after authorities said they repeatedly warned tenants about blocking stairwells with fabric from cramped garment workshops on its upper floors. Firefighters, soldiers and other emergency responders dug through the debris into the night, looking for survivors. While it was not clear how many people were in the steel-and-concrete building, witnesses said many had slipped through a police cordon while the fire burned to go back inside for their belongings. ---

Rescue teams in the Iranian capital worked through the night and into the day Friday January 20, 2017, to try and reach firefighters and other victims believed to be under the rubble of a commercial building that collapsed in Tehran the previous day. Iranian officials have yet to offer definitive casualty figures for the disaster but we have been told that 30 firefighters had been killed. No civilians should have been inside the building at the time of the collapse, though witnesses said people had slipped through a police cordon to try and save their valuables inside the burning building.

Iran Saturday January 28, 2017:

• Iran would stop U.S. citizens entering the country in retaliation to Washington's visa ban against Tehran and six other majority-Muslim countries.
• While respecting the American people and distinguishing between them and the hostile policies of the U.S. government, Iran will implement the principle of reciprocity until the offensive U.S. limitations against Iranian nationals are lifted.
• Iran will block American citizens from entering the country in “retaliation” for Donald Trump’s ban on travellers from seven majority-Muslim countries coming to the US. It would enforce its own ban “until the offensive US limitations against Iranian nationals are lifted.
• The US ban is an affront against the Muslim world and a “great gift to extremists”. Mr Trump’s policy of barring citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen has caused outrage around the world.       
• The Republican billionaire signed an executive order on Friday that suspended travel visas for anyone from those seven “countries of particular concern” from entering the US for at least 90 days.

Iran Wednesday February 1, 2017:

• The Trump administration has said it was “officially putting Iran on notice” in reaction to an Iranian missile test and an attack on a Saudi warship by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen but gave no details about how Washington intended to respond.
• The threat was made by the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in his first public statement since taking office. A missile launch on Sunday and a Houthi attack on a Saudi frigate on Monday underlined Iran’s “destabilizing behaviour across the Middle East.”.
• Flynn did not specify how the new administration would respond. Asked for clarification, the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, said the president wanted to make sure the Iranians “understood we are not going to sit by and not act on their actions”.

Iran Friday February 3, 2017:

• The Trump administration is imposing sanctions on Iran following its recent ballistic missile test. The US Treasury Department announced the measures against 13 people and a dozen companies.
• President Donald Trump tweeted earlier: "Iran is playing with fire -they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!"
• But Iran has said it will not yield to "useless" American threats from "an inexperienced person".
• John Smith, the US Treasury Department's acting sanctions chief, said in a statement: "Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile programme poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the United States."
• US Defence Secretary James Mattis has called Iran the world's "biggest state sponsor of terrorism”. But Mr Mattis said he did not see any need to boost US troop numbers in the Middle East to deal with Iran. ---

Iran Saturday March 11, 2017:

• Iran received its second new Airbus plane under an order that Tehran placed last year after a partial lifting of international sanctions. The A330-200 landed in Tehran's Mehrabad airport to join national carrier Iran Air's fleet for long-haul flights.
• Iran Air received its first Airbus, an A321 used for domestic flights, on January 12. It completed a deal for 100 Airbus planes with a list price of around $20 billion on December 22, after approval from Washington as some parts are manufactured in the United States.
• The purchase, along with a historic deal with US manufacturer Boeing, followed a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers lifted some sanctions in 2016, in return for limits on Tehran's atomic programme.
• Boeing has said the contract for 80 planes, also finalised in December -Iran's first with a US aviation firm since its 1979 Islamic revolution- was worth $16.6 billion.
• The Islamic republic projects a demand for between 400 and 500 new commercial airliners over the next decade.

Iran Sunday March 19, 2017:

• A group of tourists have gone missing and a man has died after an unexpected tsunami hit Iran this morning. Huge waves battered the coastline of Dayyer in southern Iran and killed a 51-year-old man.
• An eight-year-old boy from the local area, as well as four Iranian tourists in a car went missing after they were hit by waves. Another 17 people were injured, with the freak weather event causing cars to capsize as trees and canopies fell down.
• Iran has imposed sanctions on 15 American companies over their alleged support for Israel, terrorism and repression in the region. The companies are barred from any agreements with Iranian firms and that former and current directors will not be eligible for visas.
• The move is seen as a response to US sanctions placed on dozens of Iranian entities in February following an Iranian missile test. Iran’s sanctions are unlikely to have much impact as none of the targeted US companies is known to do business in Iran.
• The companies include Bent Tal, United Technologies Products, ITT Corporation, Raytheon, Re/Max Real Estate, Magnum Research Inc, Oshkosh Corporation, Kahr Arms and Elbit Systems.
• It comes after Iran denied US accusations on Saturday that its fast-attack boats were “harassing” warships at the mouth of the Gulf, and said Washington would be responsible for any clashes in the key oil shipping route.
• US Navy commanders earlier accused Iran of jeopardising international navigation by “harassing” warships passing through the Strait of Hormuz and said future incidents could result in miscalculation and lead to an armed clash.

Iran Monday April 3, 2017:

• An American of Iranian descent arrested in Iran in July and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment on dubious charges has been released on bail after he went on a hunger strike.
• The American, Robin Shahini, who is 46 or 47, was released about two weeks ago, just before the start of Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
• It is unclear whether Mr. Shahini’s release was temporary or if he could leave the country. Mr. Shahini had been required to post bail of two billion rials -about $60,000— and that he could be sent back to prison if his conviction were affirmed on appeal.
• Mr. Shahini, a graduate student at San Diego State University, is one of at least four Americans of Iranian descent who have been imprisoned in Iran since the country negotiated a nuclear agreement with major powers including the United States in 2015. The agreement relaxed economic sanctions in exchange for verifiable promises of peaceful nuclear work.

Iran Tuesday April 4, 2017:

• Boeing Co. it has signed a new $3 billion deal with Iran's Aseman Airlines to supply 30 737 MAX aircraft to the carrier, the first major sale by a U.S. company to the Islamic Republic under new President Donald Trump.
• The new agreement comes on top of the $16.6 billion sale Boeing previously made in Iran following the landmark nuclear deal struck with Tehran under the Obama administration. ---

Iran Saturday March 11, 2017:

• Iran received its second new Airbus plane under an order that Tehran placed last year after a partial lifting of international sanctions. The A330-200 landed in Tehran's Mehrabad airport to join national carrier Iran Air's fleet for long-haul flights.
• Iran Air received its first Airbus, an A321 used for domestic flights, on January 12. It completed a deal for 100 Airbus planes with a list price of around $20 billion on December 22, after approval from Washington as some parts are manufactured in the United States.
• The purchase, along with a historic deal with US manufacturer Boeing, followed a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers lifted some sanctions in 2016, in return for limits on Tehran's atomic programme.
• Boeing has said the contract for 80 planes, also finalised in December -Iran's first with a US aviation firm since its 1979 Islamic revolution- was worth $16.6 billion.
• The Islamic republic projects a demand for between 400 and 500 new commercial airliners over the next decade.

Iran Sunday March 19, 2017:

• A group of tourists have gone missing and a man has died after an unexpected tsunami hit Iran this morning. Huge waves battered the coastline of Dayyer in southern Iran and killed a 51-year-old man.
• An eight-year-old boy from the local area, as well as four Iranian tourists in a car went missing after they were hit by waves. Another 17 people were injured, with the freak weather event causing cars to capsize as trees and canopies fell down.
• Iran has imposed sanctions on 15 American companies over their alleged support for Israel, terrorism and repression in the region. The companies are barred from any agreements with Iranian firms and that former and current directors will not be eligible for visas.
• The move is seen as a response to US sanctions placed on dozens of Iranian entities in February following an Iranian missile test. Iran’s sanctions are unlikely to have much impact as none of the targeted US companies is known to do business in Iran.
• The companies include Bent Tal, United Technologies Products, ITT Corporation, Raytheon, Re/Max Real Estate, Magnum Research Inc, Oshkosh Corporation, Kahr Arms and Elbit Systems.
• It comes after Iran denied US accusations on Saturday that its fast-attack boats were “harassing” warships at the mouth of the Gulf, and said Washington would be responsible for any clashes in the key oil shipping route.
• US Navy commanders earlier accused Iran of jeopardising international navigation by “harassing” warships passing through the Strait of Hormuz and said future incidents could result in miscalculation and lead to an armed clash.

Iran Monday April 3, 2017:

• An American of Iranian descent arrested in Iran in July and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment on dubious charges has been released on bail after he went on a hunger strike.
• The American, Robin Shahini, who is 46 or 47, was released about two weeks ago, just before the start of Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
• It is unclear whether Mr. Shahini’s release was temporary or if he could leave the country. Mr. Shahini had been required to post bail of two billion rials -about $60,000— and that he could be sent back to prison if his conviction were affirmed on appeal.
• Mr. Shahini, a graduate student at San Diego State University, is one of at least four Americans of Iranian descent who have been imprisoned in Iran since the country negotiated a nuclear agreement with major powers including the United States in 2015. The agreement relaxed economic sanctions in exchange for verifiable promises of peaceful nuclear work.

Iran Tuesday April 4, 2017:

• Boeing Co. it has signed a new $3 billion deal with Iran's Aseman Airlines to supply 30 737 MAX aircraft to the carrier, the first major sale by a U.S. company to the Islamic Republic under new President Donald Trump.
• The new agreement comes on top of the $16.6 billion sale Boeing previously made in Iran following the landmark nuclear deal struck with Tehran under the Obama administration.

Iran, Wednesday April 12, 2017:

• Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has registered to run in the presidential race next month, defying an edict from the country’s supreme leader not to do so.
• It makes Ahmadinejad the most high-profile Iranian politician to defy the wishes of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all state matters.

Iran Thursday April 13, 2017:

• European airplane manufacturer sealed a $536-million sale with Iran Air for at least 20 aircrafts ATR 72-600s, a twin-propeller aircraft; Iran Air had an option to purchase another 20.

Iran Sunday April 16, 2017:

• Over 1,600 people registered to run for president. Hopefuls only must believe in Iran's form of government and be Shiite Muslims. That gives gadflies and publicity seekers the chance to smile and wave to gathered journalists. It's still a lot of candidates, though. The last similar turnout was Iran's 2005 election, which saw more than 1,000 register.
• Who are the contenders??

1. Rouhani, whose moderate administration negotiated the nuclear deal with world powers, is seeking another four-year term.
2. Former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who ignored the supreme leader's warning that his candidacy could expose lingering wounds from the unrest surrounding his contested 2009 re-election.
3. Hard-line cleric and judge Ebrahim Raisi, a favourite of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who allegedly was involved in the 1988 mass execution of thousands of prisoners.
4. Others include a brother of late President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Tehran's mayor.

• At least 14 people were killed and 37 declared missing as flash floods hit northwestern Iran. Torrential rains that began on Friday lashed East Azerbaijan province. The prefect of Ajabshir district said that rescue teams had recovered the bodies of three women and nine men. Two more people were killed in nearby Azarshahr.

Iran Thursday April 20, 2017:

• Six candidates have been cleared to stand for president in Iranian elections in May:

. The incumbent president, Hassan Rouhani, 68, is a smiling, soft-talking cleric. Born Hassan Fereydoun, he adopted the name Rouhani -which means spiritual in Persian- early in his career. Known for his sharp intellect and oratory, he famously holds a PhD in law from Glasgow Caledonian University. Mr Rouhani swept to power in 2013 promising reform and change. His biggest achievement so far has been negotiating a crucial 2015 deal to end the decade-long international stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme.
. Conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, 56, is the surprise candidate of this election. With a background in the judiciary, he has kept in the shadows and is not widely known by Iranians. He has close personal ties to the leadership of the Revolutionary Guard and as the favoured candidate of the hardliners, he is likely to be Mr Rouhani's key challenger. Mr Raisi holds a PhD in Islamic law and had a stellar rise through the ranks of the judiciary, becoming deputy prosecutor for the capital Tehran at the age of just 25.
. The youngest candidate in the race is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a 55-year-old pilot and former commander of Revolutionary Guards air force. A familiar figure to Iranians, Mr Ghalibaf has been mayor of Tehran since 2005 and this is his third bid for the presidency. He ran a strong campaign in 2005, but lost out in the final days when conservatives switched their alliance to the more populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
. Reformist Eshagh Jahangiri, is the current vice-president. Many observers believe he is there to support his boss, Mr Rouhani, and to provide another moderate voice - especially during TV debates where the rhetoric can often get quite hostile.
. Mostafa Mirsalim is an ultra-conservative figure who is supported by some of the most traditional conservatives. He was minister of culture in the mid-90s and was known for his harsh treatment of the independent media, closing a number of reformist publications.
. Mostafa Hashemitaba, is another lesser known figure. He was a minister of industries and mining in the 1980s and later became the head of National Olympic Committee of Iran. He tried his chance for presidency in 2001 but finished 10th out of 10 candidates, winning just 28,000 out of the 28 million votes cast in that election.

Iran's former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been disqualified from running in next month's presidential election.

Iran Monday May 1, 2017:

• A speeding minibus has overturned on a slippery road, killing two German tourists and injuring 18 other people, two of those injured are in critical condition.
• Road accidents in Iran kill or injure some 17,000 people a year. The high figure is widely blamed on poor enforcement of traffic rules, the presence of old and poorly maintained vehicles, and the lack of adequate emergency services.

Iran Wednesday May 3, 2017:

• The bodies of at least 21 miners trying to help colleagues trapped after an explosion in a coal mine in northern Iran have been recovered. Nearly 70 people were injured.
• Those killed were miners in a tunnel trying to reach 32 miners trapped underground in the northern province of Golestan. The mine blast is thought to have been caused by a gas leak.
• At least 33 people have died after a large explosion at a coal mine in northern Iran trapped scores of miners in a mile-long tunnel 1,200 metres deep underground.
• The blast was due to workers jump-starting a locomotive engine by using an external battery. A spark ignited accumulated methane gas which exploded trapping scores of miners inside.

Iran Monday May 8, 2017:

• At least 42 people are now known to have been killed by an explosion at a coal mine in north-eastern Iran last Wednesday. Seven more bodies had been recovered from the Zemestan-Yurt mine, near Azadshahr.
• The blast occurred when methane gas that had accumulated inside a tunnel was ignited, causing it to collapse. On Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani faced a protest from angry miners and the families of victims when he visited the site. ---

Iran Saturday May 13, 2017:

• At least three people were killed and 370 injured when a 5.7-magnitude earthquake hit Iran's North Khorasan province. The quake killed a 54-year-old woman and a teenage girl and jolted the town of Pishqaleh, a farming region close to the Turkmenistan border with a population of about 2,000 people.
• The US Geological Survey said it occurred at a depth of 12.5km. The earthquake led to a power outage and state TV reports said the quake damaged several buildings in nearby villages.

Iran Saturday May 20, 2017:

• Hassan Rouhani was re-elected president with 57% of the votes.
• Iran took its first steps into a new future with flickering hopes that the historic and overwhelming victory of Hassan Rouhani in a landmark election will usher in a future of reform at home and reconciliation abroad.
• Mr Rouhani’s triumph was not only an emphatic endorsement of his platform for change, but a ringing rejection of his hardliner opponent Ebrahim Raisi who had claimed to champion the legacy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution. With a massive victory by the liberals in last year’s parliamentary election, the President now has the opportunity to push through much-needed legislation which critics say have been slow in coming.

Iran Monday May 22, 2017:

• Donald Trump, on his first presidential visit to Israel and the West Bank, has escalated his war of words against Iran, demanding that Tehran immediately stop its financial and military support for “terrorists and militias” and reiterating that it must never be permitted to possess nuclear weapons.
• Trump referred to the Iran issue repeatedly on Monday, expanding on his speech in Saudi Arabia the day before in which he blamed “Iran’s rising ambitions” for violently destabilising the Middle East.
• The United States and Israel can declare with one voice that Iran must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon –never, ever– and must cease its deadly funding, training and equipping of terrorists and militias, and it must cease immediately.
• Trump also appeared to inadvertently confirm that Israel was the source of classified intelligence material he shared with Russian officials.

Iran Saturday May 27, 2017:

• Iranian mortar fire killed a Pakistani civilian in the western Baluchistan province that shares a long border with Iran.
• Relations between Iran and Pakistan have been at a low ebb since 10 Iranian border guards were killed by militants last month. Iran said that, in that incident, Jaish al Adl, a Sunni militant group, had opened fire from inside Pakistan.
• Earlier this month, the head of the Iranian armed forces warned Islamabad that Tehran would hit bases inside Pakistan if the government did not confront Sunni militants who carry out cross-border attacks.
• Abdul Jabbar, deputy commissioner of the Panjgur district in Baluchistan, said Iranian border security forces had fired "many" mortar shells and rockets over the last two days.

Iran Friday June 2, 2017:

• A huge explosion at a hypermarket in Iran’s southern city of Shiraz wounded at least 35 people. No one has been killed in the incident.
• The walls of the store have collapsed because of the force of the blast which also damaged nearby shops and houses. The explosion also caused the electricity in the district to be cut off for an hour. The reason behind the blast is under investigation. ---

Iran Saturday June 3, 2017:

• A fire at a shopping centre in southern Fars province injured 37 people. The fire in Shiraz city was preceded by an explosion. 15 of the injured were hospitalized.
• The cause of the blast and fire at the hypermarket was negligence and inattention to safety standards.

Iran Wednesday June 7, 2017:

• Four gunmen, including a suicide bomber, opened fire at the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini killing a gardener, and in another attack, four gunmen entered the Iran Parliament complex and opened fire killing a security guard and injuring several others.
• One attacker blew himself up inside Iranian Parliament complex, while another suicide bomber blew himself up at the shrine. This was the second suicide bombing at the shrine minutes after a woman had blown herself up after three or four armed assailants stormed the site.
• Members of a third group were arrested before being able to carry out any attack. Iranian officials have not yet confirmed if the two attacks are linked or who was behind the twin attacks.
• The Presidential building has been locked down and nobody is being allowed to enter or leave the premises.
• Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have blamed Saudi Arabia for the first terrorist attack claimed by Islamic State in their country.
• At least 12 people were killed and at last 42 more injured in Tehran when gunmen and suicide bombers attacked the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of the revolutionary founder of the Islamic Republic.
• Isis claimed responsibility for the attacks. The assailants were Iranian Isis recruits.

Iran Friday June 9, 2017:

• Fighting between rival tribesmen in southern Iran left 22 people dead. The incident in Ramhormoz County (in Khuzestan province) is rooted in an old tribal conflict.

Iran Saturday June 10, 2017:

• Iran security forces killed the mastermind of a twin attack on Tehran that left 17 people dead this week, as security was tightened around the country to prevent other possible plots.
• Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings and gun attacks on parliament and the mausoleum of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, on Wednesday.

Iran Sunday June 11, 2017:

• Iran has sent five planeloads of food to Qatar, which is suffering shortages amid a regional blockade. Some nations, including Iran's major rival Saudi Arabia, last week cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of funding terrorism, charges it denies.
• The land border with Saudi Arabia, through which 40% of Qatar's food comes, has been closed.
• Mediators Kuwait said that Qatar was ready to listen to the "qualms" of its neighbours.
• Iran has arrested almost 50 people in connection with twin attacks on Tehran that killed 17 people last week as security forces stepped up efforts to crack down on suspected militants.
• Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings and gun attacks on parliament and the mausoleum of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, on Wednesday.
• Iran is sending two warships to Oman before they start their mission in international waters near the coast of Yemen.
• The two ships, an Alborz destroyer and a Bushehr logistics warship, will depart from the port city of Bandar Abbas for an overseas mission to Oman and then on to international waters, the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.

Iran Monday June 12, 217:

• Police forces clashed with four men and killed them in a mountainous area in southern Iran in the southern province of Hormuzgan and seized explosives, guns and the group's flag. Two of them were foreigners
• A major security operation is underway after 17 people were killed last Wednesday in suicide bombings and gun attacks in Tehran, the first to be claimed by the hard-line Sunni Islamist group Islamic State inside Iran, a Shi'ite power. Five suspects linked to Islamic State were detained on Monday.

Iran Wednesday June 14, 2017:

• Iranian forces killed two members of a Sunni Muslim jihadist group in the city of Chabahar and arrested five others.
• Last week, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum in Tehran, killing 17 people in what was an unprecedented security breach. Iran has arrested almost 50 people in connection with the attacks.
• Security forces have fought with members of Ansar al-Furqan, a militant Sunni group, in Chabahar, a city in southeastern Iran. Two militants had been killed and five arrested. One security officer was also killed. Five members of this terrorist team were Iranians and two were from neighbouring countries. The militants were planning to carry out attacks this week, during the holy nights of Ramadan. ---

Iran Saturday June 17, 2017:

• An Iranian fisherman was killed by Saudi Arabia’s coast guard. Saudi coast guard officers fired at two Iranian fishermen on Friday, killing one. Two Iranian boats were also shot at as they approached a Saudi oil rig.

Iran Thursday June 22, 2017:

• Two Iranian airlines made prospective deals with Airbus to buy 73 jetliners, a signal that the global aerospace industry is betting such sales to Iran will prevail despite increased hostility by the Trump administration.
• The prospective deals, described by Airbus as memorandums of understanding, are worth as much as $2.5 billion. If completed, the deals would further solidify Iran as a significant customer in the industry, dominated by Boeing in the United States and Airbus in Europe.
• Desperate to rejuvenate an aging civilian fleet hurt by years of sanctions, Iranian air carriers have made arrangements over the past year to buy up to 140 planes from Boeing and 100 from Airbus.
• The deals are permitted under the 2015 nuclear agreement Iran reached with six major powers, which relaxed sanctions in return for Iran’s verifiable pledges of peaceful nuclear work. But the deals —even for the Airbuses— still must be licensed by the United States government because many components and technology in the aircraft are made in the United States and are subject to export control regulations.

Iran Monday July 3, 2017:

• Iran has signed a deal with French oil giant Total to develop its share of the world’s biggest natural gas field. It’s the first investment in the country by an international energy company since sanctions were eased last year.
• The 20-year deal with National Iranian Oil Company and China National Petroleum Corporation to develop phase 11 of the South Pars offshore gas field represents the “first of many” projects for Total in Iran,
• The first phase of the project is expected to cost Total and its partners around two billion dollars.

Iran Friday July 7, 2017:

• Iran’s security forces have arrested 21 Takfiri Daesh terrorists in the northeastern city of Mashhad, foiling their plans to launch several attacks on Iranian soil. Some of the detained Daesh members are Iranians and some of them are Afghan nationals who have entered the country using fake documents. A number of the arrested terrorists had conducted terrorist operations outside the country.

Iran Friday July 15, 2017:

• Tehran police shot dead a man who attacked a clergyman and other people with a knife at a metro station. The unidentified man attacked the clergyman with a knife after a dispute, and injured another man.
• Police shot and wounded the assailant, who later died of his injuries; the assailant was mentally "unbalanced".

Iran Monday July 17, 2017:

• A soldier has opened fire on his comrades, killing three and injuring six others. This took place when soldiers were resting at a military base in the town of Abyek, some 62 miles west of the capital Tehran.
• The assailant was injured after he shot himself and he was taken to a nearby hospital. The attack happened after higher officers opposed the attacker’s request for a transfer to his hometown.

Iran Thursday July 20, 2017:

• Elite Revolutionary Guard forces have killed three terrorists and wounded four others in a clash in a border area in the country’s northwest. A Guard member was killed and another wounded in the clash. One terrorist was detained.
• Northwest of Iran is a Kurdish area close to the borders of both Iraq and Turkey and it is the scene of occasional clashes between Iranian forces and militant Kurdish separatists and IS-linked fighters. Iran also faces threats from Arab separatists in the southwest and Baluch militants on its eastern border with Pakistan.

Iran Sunday July 23, 2017:

• Alcohol poisoning has killed three and 48 people hospitalized (three of them are in critical condition) in southern Iran. ---

Iran Thursday July 27, 2017:

• Iran successfully launched its most advanced satellite-carrying rocket into space. The U.S. State Department called the launch "provocative."
• The rocket, whose name means "phoenix" in Persian, is capable of carrying a satellite weighing 250 kilograms.

Iran Friday July 28, 2017:

• The United States is slapping Iran with new ballistic missiles sanctions in response to its launch of a satellite-carrying rocket into space a day earlier. The sanctions target six Iranian subsidiaries of the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group. The Treasury Department says that group is "central" to Iran's ballistic missiles program.
• The U.S. has said that launch flouted a U.N. Security Council resolution because the technology is inherently designed to be able to carry a nuclear payload.

Iran Sunday August 6, 2017:

• An Iranian soldier opened fire on his colleagues, killing three and wounding 12 of them at a military air base in south Tehran. One of the victims was an officer and the other two were regular soldiers. The assailant was killed in a shootout with other soldiers.
• The reason of the shooting was either the assailant’s “mental problem” ‘’or accidental” firing. It said the case is still under investigation.
• Iran's Revolutionary Guards clashed with a group of militants in the northwest of the country, killing two of them. Four militants were also wounded and some military material was confiscated.
• The clashes took place in West Azarbaijan province, which borders both Turkey and Iraq. 

Iran Tuesday August 8, 2017:

• Iran President Hassan Rouhani has appointed three women as vice-presidents and one as a civil rights assistant following criticism of his all-male cabinet. Iran's 12 vice-presidents run organisations linked to the presidency.
• There has been only one female cabinet member since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. The cabinet, which must be approved by parliament, also lacks Sunni members. Sunnis are 10% of Shia-majority Iran.
• Masumeh Ebtekar has been named vice-president for family and women's affairs, Laya Joneydi is vice-president for legal affairs and Shahindokht Mowlaverdi is the president's assistant for civil rights.

Iran Friday August 11, 2017:

• Flash floods triggered by heavy rains killed 12 people in the country's northeast. There are 38 people missing in Khorasan Razavi province.
• The country's meteorological organization says the rainfall was expected to continue until next Friday.

Iran Wednesday August 30, 2017:

• Police in western Iran have seized 100 carrier pigeons used to smuggle drugs. Anti-narcotics officers seized homing pigeons trained for delivering drugs carried in small blue plastic bags attached to their legs. ---

Iran Sunday September 17, 2017:

• Iran has manufactured a 10-ton bomb comparable in scale to the United States’ "Mother of All Bombs. These bombs can be launched from aircraft and they are highly destructive.
• This father of all bombs” is similar with the Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) which the US Air Force dropped on tunnels in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province from an MC-130 aircraft in April.

Iran Saturday September 23, 2017:

-    Iran announced that it successfully tested a new medium-range missile capable of reaching Israel and U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf.
-    As long as some speak in the language of threats, the strengthening of the country’s defines capabilities will continue and Iran will not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of missile.
-    The missile, dubbed Khoramshahr, has a range of 1,250 miles and can carry multiple warheads.

Iran Thursday September 28, 2017:

• An Iranian army helicopter has crashed, killing one person and injuring two. The helicopter crashed during a test flight in the West Azerbaijan province, in the country’s northwest. It did not say what caused the crash.

Iran Sunday November 5, 2017:

• At least 14 people have died in a road accident after a bus fell into a valley near the capital Tehran;
• The accident took place in the S18 people were injured and more than 10 ambulances were deployed to the avadkouh area as the bus was on the road from Tehran to Gonbad-e Kavus, some 500 kilometres northeast of Tehran.
• With some 17,000 motorists killed annually, Iran has one of the world's worst traffic safety records, attributed to disregard for traffic laws, unsafe vehicles and inadequate emergency services.

Iran Sunday November 12, 2017:

• At least 400 people were killed in Iraq and Iran when a powerful magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit the region; rescuers searched for dozens trapped under rubble.
• At least 164 people (much more in fact) were killed in Iran. Much more than 1,700 were injured.

Iran Thursday November 16, 2017:

Why has Iran imprisoned Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe?

Behind the grimy frosted windows of an abandoned shopfront in the backstreets of central London lies a plush modern office, full of banks of computer screens monitoring Iran’s internet output. The office is one of many Western media projects working to outwit the censors who seek to suppress all but the official discourse of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Much of the funding comes from America’s Near East Regional Democracy programme, which allocates about $30m a year to promoting democracy and human rights in Iran.

The camouflage is well merited. Iran’s secretive regime has long hounded the country’s journalists. It is one of the world’s worst abusers of press freedom. It restricts visas for foreign reporters and assigns “translators” to those who visit, to monitor their every word. Fearful of regular round-ups, many Iranian journalists have fled to Europe. But the regime has pursued them into exile. Earlier this year it ordered the seizure of the Iranian assets of 152 contributors to the BBC Persian service, which has an audience of 13m Iranians. This month Ahmad Mola Nissi, an Iranian-Arab activist, was shot dead on a street in The Hague. Fellow activists suspect the long arm of Iran.

For the guardians of Iran’s revolution, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian citizen, made an easy catch. She was preparing to board a plane home from Tehran with her toddler after a holiday in April 2016 when goons from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps nabbed her. She had previously worked for the BBC Persian Service and was employed in London for the charitable arm of the Thomson Reuters news organisation. Prosecutors charged her with spying and transferred her to the south-eastern city of Kerman.

They accused her of designing websites to support “the sedition”, a reference to the mass demonstrations that erupted following rigged presidential elections in 2009. They also suspected her of previously training Iranian journalists abroad, including a group from Narenji, a website specialising in new technology, who had received heavy jail terms a year earlier. She was sentenced to five years in prison for working to overthrow the regime.

Remarks by Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, have made matters worse. On November 1st he incorrectly said that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training foreign journalists on her recent trip. Though he belatedly retracted his statement, it provided grounds for a new judge to consider a retrial in prison.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case highlights the power struggle within Iran’s clerical establishment. The president, Hassan Rouhani, wants to improve ties with Europe, particularly in the face of a hostile American president. But he looks powerless against the Revolutionary Guards and the judges who answer to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Since 2015 Iran has detained at least 19 dual nationals with European passports. Most are accused of spying. “Going back to Iran is now out of the question,” says an Iranian journalist in London.

Britain considers negotiating prisoner releases tantamount to paying ransom for hostages. Other governments have fewer scruples. Last year the Obama administration secured the release of Jason Rezaian, a correspondent for the Washington Post in Tehran, who had been sentenced for espionage and spent 18 months in detention. The same day, America delivered $400m in cash which had been frozen in Iranian accounts. After Iran’s deal with six world powers to limit its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions took effect in January 2016, Britain released all but £70m ($90m) of the £728m in Iranian accounts it had frozen. When Mr Johnson heads to Iran later this year to plead for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, the regime might be hoping that he takes the outstanding funds with him.

Is this true? And if it is does it justify Iran arresting this woman? ---

Iran Thursday November 23, 2017:

• Saudi Arabia's crown prince has called Iran's supreme leader "the new Hitler of the Middle East", amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
• Alluding to Iran's growing regional power, Mohammed bin Salman said it was important to avoid a repeat "of what happened in Europe in the Middle East". In response Iran advised the prince to "ponder the fate of famous dictators". Saudi Arabia and Iran are rivals and have increasingly accused each other of fuelling instability across the region.

Iran Saturday November 25, 2017:

• The number of dead in a major earthquake that hit Iran’s western province of Kermanshah this month has risen to 483.
• The rise from a previous toll of 436 reported last week came after some people died from their injuries and authorities identified several dead who were buried in haste.

Iran Friday December 8, 2017:

• Two Iranian hikers were killed in an avalanche in western Iran and seven others (three women and four men) are still missing and hope of finding them alive are fading.
• The hikers were among a group of 14 men and women from the city of Mashhad and a local guide who were trapped by the avalanche on Thursday on Oshtorankooh Mountain. They were heading back from Oshtorankooh, one of the highest ranges in Zagros Mountains and known as the Iranian Alps because of its high peaks which are snow-capped all year round.
• The missing "most probably" have died because of the freezing temperatures. Six other hikers were found alive by the rescue teams.

Iran Wednesday December 13, 2017:

• The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, has warned that Iran may be defying a call to halt ballistic missile development even as it complies with the nuclear deal.
• Guterres said in a report to the Security Council that the United Nations was investigating Iran’s possible transfer of ballistic missiles to Houthi Shia rebels in Yemen that may have been used in launches aimed at Saudi Arabia in July and November.

Iran Thursday December 28, 2017:

• Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Iran to demonstrate against the country's president, mullahs and price rises for the second day.
• Videos show crowds chanting 'Death to the dictator' and 'Death to Rouhani' across the Islamic republic - including Iran's holy second city, Mashhad - as the protests spread to at least eight other cities.
• 52 people have been arrested; tear gas has been thrown into crowds by riot police.

Iran Monda January 1, 2017:

• Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tried to downplay the significance of sometimes violent protests across his country that have left 12 people dead in the biggest challenge to the authority of the Tehran regime since mass demonstrations in 2009.
• Rouhani has called for calm as his government tries to deal with the widespread spontaneous uprising.

Iran Tuesday January 2, 2018:

• Nine people have been killed overnight amid nationwide protests and unrest. The death toll in six days of demonstrations amount to at least 20 people.
• Six rioters were killed during an attack on a police station in the town of Qahdarijan. Clashes were sparked by rioters who tried to steal guns from the police station.
• An 11-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man were killed in the town of Khomeinishahr, while a member of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was killed in the town of Najafabad. It says all were shot by hunting rifles.
• The towns are all in Iran's central Isfahan province, some 350 kilometres south of Tehran. ---

Iran Monday January 8, 2017:

• Iran has banned English from being taught in primary schools after the country’s Supreme Leader said learning the language in the early years paved the way for a Western “cultural invasion”, the Iranian culture of students is established during primary level education.
• The entire 32-man crew of an Iranian oil tanker are missing after the ship collided with a freighter off China’s eastern coast.
• The Iranian vessel Sanchi was involved in a crash with the Hong Kong-registered CF Crystal around 160 nautical miles from Shanghai in the East China Sea on Saturday. The collision caused the tanker to list, throwing the 30 Iranian and two Bangladeshi crew members overboard.

Iran Monday January 22, 2018:

• At least 12 people have been killed in the ongoing protests, and armed protesters have tried to take over police stations and military bases.
• The protests began Thursday in Mashhad over economic issues and have since expanded to several cities, with some protesters chanting against the government and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hundreds of people have been arrested.

Iran Wednesday January 24, 2018:

• A fire at a tar factory in the town of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran killed three people and injured two others. The fire broke out in a fuel storage tank at the factory.
• A fire at an Iranian oil refinery in Tehran’s Shar-e Rey district killed six workers and injured two others last October.

Iran Sunday January 28, 2018:

• Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) says three of its soldiers have been killed and 16 Islamic State (IS) militants captured in clashes in southwestern Fars Province. Several members of the extremist group were killed in the fighting.
• Two of the militants had fled but were surrounded by IRGC forces. The terrorists wanted to carry out attacks on border towns and in the centre of the country.
• The IS fighters had entered the country through Iran’s western border with Iraq.

Iran Friday February 2, 2018:

• Iran has cracked down on women violating its compulsory headscarf decree, arresting at least 29 individuals. Officially the detainees were arrested for "disturbing public security".
• The mandatory headscarf, or hijab, has been in place in Iran since 1979, after the Iranian revolution and the installation of Ayatollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of Iranian women have protested against the law. ---

Iran Monday February 5, 2018:

• A man wielding a machete was shot and arrested after trying to break into the presidential office building. He was carrying the weapon and wearing white shroud, symbolizing his readiness to sacrifice his life. The assailant has been arrested and hospitalized.
• The attacker, 35, was shot at leg when trying to pass the security gate of the presidential office in Pasteur Street in central Tehran. It is a high security area as other key government institutions are also located there.

Iran Sunday February 18, 2018:

• All passengers and crew on board an Iranian commercial flight died after the plane crashed amid severe weather conditions in a mountainous region in the south of the country.
• Aseman Airlines flight 3705, en route from Tehran to the southern city of Yasuj, the capital of the impoverished province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, went off radar 50 minutes into its journey, not far from its destination.
• The twin-engine turboprop ATR-72 plane, which was 20 years old, left the Iranian capital for a 350-mile internal journey.

Iran Tuesday February 20, 2018:

• Search teams have found the wreckage of a passenger plane that crashed on Sunday. The Aseman Airlines flight came down in the Zagros Mountains in the west of the country and all 66 people on board are feared to have died.
• Rescuers travelled to the wreckage on foot after a helicopter was unable to land on the snowy mountainside. Moving the bodies of those who had died would prove difficult in the bad weather conditions.
• Five security personnel have been killed in clashes with members of a Sufi Muslim group. Three policemen were killed by a bus, a security official was stabbed to death and a fifth killed in a car-ramming attack.
• It happened as Gonabadi dervishes protested over the detention of one of their members in northern Tehran. Sufi dervishes are persecuted by the Iranian authorities, who see their practices as a threat.

Iran Monday February 26, 2018:

• Russia vetoed a United Nations draft resolution that would have linked Iran with the transfer of Iranian-made arms to Houthi militias in Yemen.
• The UK-proposed draft, which was strongly backed by the United States and its allies, was blocked by Russia despite being supported by 11 of the 15 members of the Security Council. Two countries, China and Kazakhstan, abstained from voting, while Bolivia also voted against the draft.

Iran Friday March 2, 2018:

• Iran has detained 35 women for trying to attend a football match. They tried to go to a game between Tehran teams Esteqlal and Persepolis but they were temporarily held and were be released after the match.
• Fifa's president, Gianni Infantino, was also in attendance, along with Iranian Sport Minister Masoud Soltanifar. Not nice.

Iran Sunday March 12, 2018:

• A Turkish private jet flying a group of young women from the United Arab Emirates to Istanbul crashed in heavy rain in a mountainous region of Iran, killing all 11 people on board.
• The plane hit a mountain near Shahr-e Kord and burst into flames some 370 kilometres south of the capital, Tehran.
• Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps has killed two suicide attackers and defused their explosives near the border with Pakistan. Two members of Iran's volunteer Basij militia were wounded during the clashes at the Saravan border crossing in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province.
• The terrorists wanted to attack a border post of the Revolutionary Guards. One of them was using an explosive-laden truck and the other assailant had a suicide belt.
• It was not immediately clear whether the assailants had crossed into Iran from Pakistan.
• An unknown attacker armed with a knife was shot and killed by soldiers guarding the Iranian ambassador's residence in Vienna. One guard suffered a cut to the upper arm during the attack and has been sent to hospital.
• The attacker, a 26-year-old Austrian, "died on the spot". ---

Iran Friday March 23, 2018:

• The appointment of John Bolton as his national security advisor signals President Trump is now looking to pursue a more hard-line approach against U.S. adversaries, like Iran or Venezuela.
• Bolton, a former U.N. ambassador, has said the U.S. should act pre-emptively against North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, and his arrival makes it more likely the U.S. will drop out of the Iran nuclear deal.
• Oil should begin to react to geopolitical pressures around the May 12 renewal deadline for the Iranian deal and when Venezuela goes to the polls later in the month.

Iran Monday April 16, 2018:

• Iran said that seven of its soldiers were killed in an Israeli air strike on a military air base in Syria, making it one of the deadliest strikes on Iranian forces by the Jewish state.
• The attack on the T4 military base in Homs province was a plot by “Americans and Zionists” to overshadow the Syrian regime’s recent “victories”.

Iran Tuesday April 17, 2018

• Three members of Iran's security forces have been killed by suspected militants in an attack along the country's border with Pakistan.
• An Iranian police officer was shot dead in an attack on a border post in the border city of Mirjaveh in Sistan-Baluchistan Province on April 17, and two soldiers died when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device.
• Three terrorists were killed by Iranian security forces.
• On April 16, Iran said security forces had seized a large amount of weapons and ammunition from militants in the area.
• A rescue helicopter has crashed in the Persian Gulf, killing at least two people on board. The helicopter was flying from an offshore rig toward Kish Island transporting an oil worker who had suffered a heart attack. The oil worker and a paramedic died in the crash. Another two passengers are missing, and the pilot survived.

Iran Tuesday April 24, 2018:

• A construction worker in southern Tehran may have stumbled across the mummified body of Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Iranian ruler whose son was overthrown in the revolution of 1979. 
• Builders were carrying out construction work at a Shia shrine in Tehran when they found the body amid a pile of rubble. Pahlavi was buried in a mausoleum nearby after his death in 1944 but the tomb was blown up by Iranian revolutionaries as they tried to erase all traces of the previous regime.
• The shah’s body was never found in the ruins and has been missing for nearly 40 years. ---

Iran Monday June 11, 2018:

• Iran arrested 27 members of a "terrorist network" accused of plotting attacks last week to coincide with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The group plotted to "carry out terrorist operations in Tehran and some other important cities.
• The attacks were set to occur last week during the Qadr festival and on Jerusalem Day, held each year in solidarity with the Palestinians. A large number of weapons and ammunition were confiscated.

 

Iran Monday June 25, 2018:

• Three border guards have been killed in a clash with a "terrorist group" in southeastern Iran. The clash took place in Mirjaveh, a town in Sistan and Baluchestan Province near the Pakistani border, some 1,150 kilometres southeast of Tehran.
• During the clash, Revolutionary Guard forces killed three of the militants and wounded an unspecified number of others. Others escaped into Pakistan.

 

Iran Sunday July 1, 2018:

• A peaceful protest over a water shortage in the southern city of Khorramshahr turned violent Saturday, after clashes between police and protesters broke out.
• Police used tear gas to contain the crowd. Protesters responded by throwing stones and other objects, damaging public property, including the Holy Defence Museum and a local bridge. One person was hospitalized with injuries and there were no fatalities.
• The protests broke out due to a clean water shortage that has affected the city and nearby Abadan during the hot Iranian summer. Temperatures in the southern region can reach up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

Iran Wednesday July 11, 2018:

• An overnight passenger bus and a fuel tanker collided in western Iran, killing at least 13 people and injuring several others.
• The tanker carrying tar crashed into the passenger bus in Sanandaj, a city in Iran's Kurdistan province, about 400km west of capital Tehran. The tanker ran into the bus on a highway near Sanandaj. Both vehicles burst into flames following the collision.
• One of the two bus drivers who survived in the crash said that the bus had stopped to pick up passengers when it was suddenly hit by the tanker.

Iran Saturday July 14, 2018:

• Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) killed three suspected militants in a security operation conducted in the western part of the country near the border with Iraq.
• The anti-revolutionary terrorists had planned sabotage attacks after crossing the border into Iran in the Kermanshah region.

Iran Saturday July 21, 2018:

• At least 10 Iranian border guards were killed in an overnight attack by unidentified gunmen near the Iraqi border.
• The attack took place near the town of Marivan, in a Kurdish area of Iran some 620 kilometres west of the capital Tehran.
• All of the causalities were members of the Guard. During the shootout, several of the attackers, described as "bandits and counterrevolutionary terrorists," were killed and others were injured. An explosion in an ammunition depot caused more damage during the fighting.

Iran Sunday July 22, 2018:

• Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is warning the US that war with Iran would be "the mother of all wars" but did not rule out the possibility of a peace agreement. Americans "must understand that war with Iran is the mother of all wars and peace with Iran is the mother of all peace," Rouhani said.
• The Iranian leader also had a message for US President Trump: "do not play with the lion's tail, because you will regret it eternally."
• His comments come months after the Trump administration announced that the US is quitting the Iran nuclear deal brokered during the Obama administration and reinstating sanctions on the country. The sanctions are set to be reimposed November 4, and more than 50 international firms have said they will leave the Iranian market. ---

Iran Tuesday July 31, 2018:

• President Donald Trump is willing to meet with Iran's leadership, without preconditions, "whenever they want," a sharp departure from his threats against the regime last week.
• Monday's olive branch from Trump marks an abrupt shift in tone, and may be little more than theatre with US midterm elections looming on the horizon. The President and his senior officials have ramped up the rhetoric against Tehran, promising to "crush" its economy with international sanctions and accusing it of fomenting terrorism and regional instability, while telling the country's citizens that their leaders are corrupt.
• Iranian President Hassan Rouhani did not address Trump's comments, instead focusing on the "illegal" US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal back in May. After the US's illegal withdrawal from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the ball is in Europe's court in the limited time remaining.
• The international nuclear agreement forced Iran to curtail its uranium enrichment capacity to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, and imposed stringent verification processes, in exchange for relief on crippling sanctions. The remaining members of the Iran nuclear deal are still committed to the international pact, as is Iran.

Iran Wednesday August 8, 2018:

• US President Donald Trump has issued a strong warning to anyone trading with Iran, following his re-imposition of sanctions on the country. "Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States," the president tweeted.
• Some re-imposed sanctions took effect overnight and tougher ones relating to oil exports will begin in November. Iran's president said the measures were "psychological warfare" which aimed to "sow division among Iranians".

Iran Saturday August 11, 2018:

• Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard has killed 10 militants in a Kurdish region near the border with Iraq. The 10 belonged to a “terrorist group; several other militants were wounded in clashes.
• The fighting took place near the Kurdish town of Oshnavieh. The Guard has confiscated a “remarkable” amount of arms, ammunition and communications equipment.
• Last month at least 10 Iranian border guards were killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen near Iraqi border.

Iran Sunday August 12, 2018:

• Troubles are mounting in Iran. Its currency, the rial, has lost more than half its value against the dollar on unofficial markets this year and inflation is soaring. Even middle-class Iranians are struggling to get by, with food prices rising and reported fuel shortages in some cities.
• Sporadic anti-government demonstrations are continuing. Worse, the economic pressure on the country is set to mount. The US government last week reinstated economic sanctions that had been waived as part of the Iran nuclear deal of 2015. These punitive economic measures are set to intensify in November, when the US will seek to ban Iranian oil exports.
• EU nations have pledged to try to preserve economic ties with Iran. But it seems probable that most large European companies will sacrifice trade with Iran, rather than risk suffering from secondary sanctions.
• The US government says its goal in re-imposing sanctions is to force Iran to make deeper concessions on its nuclear programme and to stop its military and political intervention in neighbouring countries, in particular Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
• Tehran charges that the Trump administration’s real goal is “regime change”. It has some justification for its suspicions. John Bolton, the US national security adviser, asserted last week that changing the regime in Iran is not America’s goal. Before joining the government, however, Mr Bolton had explicitly called for the fall of the Iranian government.

Iran Thursday August 23, 2013:

• A British-Iranian woman has been reunited with her family after being granted a three-day release from prison in Iran. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed for five years in 2016 after being convicted of spying, which she denies.
• She said she was "overwhelmed" and it would be "awesome" for her four-year-old daughter to "have a mummy again".
• Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said her imprisonment was a "gross injustice" and the release should be permanent. The Free Nazanin campaign group said a three-day release was "standard practice" ahead of lengthier times out of jail and her lawyer was due to apply for an extension on Saturday. British Airways and Air France have announced that they will stop flying to Iran next month. Both airlines said that the route was "not commercially viable."
• The reintroduction of US sanctions has caused a slump in the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, making it harder for Iranians to travel overseas. BA restarted the service to Tehran two years ago after a four-year gap. The last flight will be on 22 September, returning the next day.
• The airline apologised to travellers planning to travel to Iran and said it was offering refunds for affected customers or a possible rerouting through other airlines.
• Air France, which had transferred its connections with Tehran to its low-cost airline Joon, had reduced the frequency of the flights from three to one a week since the beginning of this month. It will stop all flights on 18 September.
• KLM said last month that it would also suspend flights from Amsterdam to Iran from September.

Iran Saturday August 25, 2018:

• Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has returned to prison in Iran voluntarily following a three-day release. The British-Iranian charity worker was reunited with her family, including her four-year-old daughter, during the temporary release.
• She applied for an extension, but it was denied. The charity worker chose to return to prison "with her head held high" rather than be "dragged out" in front of her child.
• Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was jailed for five years in 2016 after being convicted of spying, which she denies. She was arrested at Tehran airport after visiting her family on holiday. She insists the visit was to introduce her daughter Gabriella to her relatives.

Iran Monday August 27, 2018:

• Iranian security forces killed two militants and arrested 14 in two separate operations carried out in the western part of the country. 
• At least some of the militants were linked to one of the countries on Iran’s western border, but we were not told which.

Iran Wednesday August 29, 2018:

• The British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran has been taken to a prison clinic after passing out. Richard Ratcliffe said his wife had suffered several panic attacks and low blood pressure; the family were "very, very worried".
• Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had just returned to prison after being granted a three-day release over the weekend. ---

Iran Saturday September 8, 2018:

• Unknown assailants fired three Katyusha rockets at Iraq's Basra airport after a chaotic and violent night that saw hundreds of protesters burning tires on main streets and highways and setting ablaze the Iranian consulate in the city.
• Protesters are calling for an end to endemic corruption, soaring joblessness and poor public services and have turned their rage on neighbouring Iran, blaming its outsized influence in Iraq's political affairs for their misery.
• It was not clear who was behind the attack on Basra airport, which also houses the US consulate. The attack did not cause casualties or disrupt flights in or out of the city.
• Hours earlier, protesters shouting anti-Iranian slogans including "Iran, out, out!" stormed the Iranian consulate and set a fire inside. They also burned an Iranian flag and trampled over a portrait of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran Wednesday September 12, 2018:

• Oil has risen above $80 a barrel to its highest level this year amid concerns about supplies from Iran and a fall in US stockpiles.
• The rise reflects concern about the impact of US sanctions against Iran that will target oil exports.
• The last couple of weeks have seen the expected squeeze on Iranian crude flows taking shape, with overall outflows down markedly. There are "real risks" that Brent could hit $100 a barrel.

Iran Saturday September 15, 2018:

• The Iranian foreign ministry is claiming that protesters have tried to attack and damage the country’s embassy in Paris. According to the Iranians the police in the French capital had not responded promptly to the disturbance. Earlier individuals had thrown objects and smashed windows at the embassy.
• Officers were called after the trouble started outside the building and the officers searched 12 people, but did not detain any of them because the embassy did not wish to file a complaint. On the opposite Iran said they had asked the French government to prosecute and punish the people involved.

Iran Saturday September 22, 2018:

• At least 29 people –including at least 12 members of the Revolutionary Guards- have been killed in a terrorist attack on a military parade in south-west Iran, responsibility for which has been claimed by both Islamic State and a separatist group.
• Four assailants disguised as military personnel opened fire from behind the viewing platform during the parade in Ahvaz to mark the anniversary of the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.
• Members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and soldiers from the country’s army, as well as civilians, including children, were among the victims, news agencies reported.

Iran Friday September 28, 2018:

- Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have killed four militants and wounded two while other members flew away to Pakistan at a border crossing with Pakistan in an area where armed Sunni groups often attack military and civilian targets.

• Iran has stepped up security in border areas after five gunmen killed 25 people at a military parade in the southwest on Saturday. The incident happened on the other side of the country in Sistan-Baluchestan province.
• No Iranian forces were harmed, it said.

Iran Monday October 1, 2018:

• Bootleg alcohol has killed at least 27 people in recent days, and poisoned more than 300. 176 people were still in hospital in five provinces. Bootleg booze is widely available in the country, despite the majority-Muslim population being banned from drinking it.
• At least 16 died in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, where a married couple are said to have been arrested on suspicion of producing the alcohol. 123 people had sought help for alcohol poisoning.
• In North Khorasan province, police raided an underground distillery and made 31 arrests. ---

Iran Saturday October 13, 2018:

• Two Kurdish separatists were killed in a clash with members of Iran's intelligence service in the western city of Kermanshah. Along with the two killed, a "separatist terrorist team" was dismantled.
• Some ammunition and documents were uncovered from their house, indicating the militants were supported by some Arab countries. Iran has in the past accused the UAE and Saudi Arabia of aiding separatist groups to cause chaos in Iran. Tehran also says that Kurdish militants have found safe havens in Iraq's northern Kurdish region.

Iran Tuesday October 16, 2018:
 

• Militants abducted 14 members of a border security force near the Pakistan border. Two of those abducted are members of the Guard's intelligence department. The rest include seven members of the Basij force, a volunteer wing of the Guard, as well as regular Iranian border guards.
• The abduction took place near the Loukdan crossing point in southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province. The area, which lies on a major opium trafficking route, has seen occasional clashes between Iranian forces and Baluch separatists, as well as drug traffickers.
• al-Qaida-affiliated group known as Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for the attack.
• In a previous abduction, the militant group killed an Iranian officer and released four soldiers after holding them for nearly two months. The captives were reportedly taken to Pakistan.
• Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had killed the “mastermind” behind an attack on a military parade in the Iranian city of Ahvaz last month which left 25 people dead, nearly half of them members of the Guards.
• The Guards said their forces had killed a man named Abu Zaha and four other militants in Diyala province in Iraq. One news website run by Iran’s state said Abu Zaha was a member of Islamic State.

Iran Tuesday October 23, 2018:

• Iran has dismantled three terrorist groups, which were planning attacks on Muslims during the annual Arba’een pilgrimage, in southwestern Khuzestan Province. Members of the terror outfits had been detained.
• Three terrorist teams were identified in Khuzestan and their members, numbering 15, were arrested. The detainees had said that they were planning to conduct bomb attacks, hurt and kill Arba'een pilgrims.

Iran Wednesday November 21, 2018:

• Iran's Revolutionary Guard says five of 12 Iranian border guards abducted in October by militants near the Pakistani border and freed in Pakistan earlier this month have returned home. The fate of the others remains unknown.
• The guards were abducted in a pre-dawn raid near the Loukdan border crossing in Iran's southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province. The area has seen occasional clashes with Baluch separatists and also drug traffickers.

Iran Sunday November 25, 2018:

• A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck western Iran near its border with Iraq injuring more than 500 people and sending fearful residents running into the streets.
• The temblor hit near Sarpol-e Zahab in Iran's Kermanshah province, which was the epicentre of an earthquake last year that killed more than 600 people and where some still remain homeless.
• 513 people were hurt. Most of the injuries appeared to be minor; only 33 people needed to be hospitalized.

Iran Thursday December 6, 2018:

• A suicide car bomber attacked a police headquarters in the port city of Chabahar, killing at least two people and wounding several others. Such assaults are rare in the Islamic Republic.
• A suicide attacker driving a vehicle loaded with explosives drove up to the police headquarters. Officers blocked the vehicle and started firing at the driver, who then detonated his explosives.
• Ansar al-Furqan is known to operate in Iran’s south-eastern Sistan and Baluchistan province, which sees occasional attacks by Baluch separatists and drug traffickers. A year ago the group claimed to have blown up an oil pipeline in Iran’s southern Khuzestan province. Chabahar is on Iran’s south-eastern coast near the border with Pakistan.

Iran Friday December 7, 2018:

• A suicide bomb that killed four policeman has been claimed by a Sunni militant group. The attack on a police headquarters in the southeastern port of Chabahar was claimed by a faction rooted in Iran’s ethnic Baluch minority.
• The bomb also wounded 35 people. A suicide attacker in a vehicle loaded with explosives drove up to the building. Police officers blocked the vehicle and started firing at the driver, who then detonated his explosives.

Iran Monday December 10, 2018:

• Iran has sentenced two human rights lawyers to six years in prison and a third to 13 years.
• Ghasem Sholeh-Saadi and Arash Keikhosravi were sentenced to five years in prison for taking part in an “illegal gathering” and one year for “propaganda” against the ruling system. They could appeal against the verdict.
• The pair were arrested in August when they took part in a protest outside parliament calling for free elections. They were released on bail last week.
• Sholeh-Saadi, 64, a long-time critic of the political establishment, was barred from running for president in 2017.
• A court in the central city of Arak sentenced another lawyer to 13 years in prison. Mohammad Najafi was sentenced to 10 years for “conveying information to a hostile country” through interviews with foreign media, two years for insulting the supreme leader and one year for publicity in support of opposition groups.
• Najafi was jailed in January when he voiced support for people detained that month during anti-government protests. The demonstrations, which focused on economic grievances, lasted for days and resulted in the deaths of dozens and the arrest of hundreds more. ---

Iran Tuesday January 29, 2019:

• Two bombs exploded in front of a police station in the city of Zahedan in southeastern Iran causing minor injuries to three police officers.
• Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni militant group, claimed responsibility for the explosions. The group said it had targeted a police station with “two strong bombs”, damaging a police car and motorcycle.

Iran Thursday January 31, 2019:

• France, Germany and Britain have set up a financial mechanism designed to avoid US sanctions against Iran and keep the 2015 nuclear deal afloat.
• Through the Instex trade vehicle, they hope to assert European economic sovereignty in the face of Washington’s determination to impose its foreign policy on Europe.
• The strategy would initially focus on trying to ease the flow of humanitarian supplies to Iran. Such supplies, including medicines and foodstuffs, are not supposed to be subject to US sanctions.
• Eventually, the plan is for the vehicle to expand to allow European firms to trade more freely with Iran in a range of goods, including those subject to US sanctions.
• Instex, which stands for “instrument for support of trade exchanges”, was registered this week, and will act as a proposed payment channel from Europe to Iran, and vice versa. It will not be fully operational until later this year. Iran will be expected to establish a parallel organisation. If the scheme works, it is likely to be most useful to small- and medium-sized firms with no links in the US.
• The body is being designed and run by Britain, France and Germany but will receive the endorsement of the entire EU. Further details are expected to be unveiled at a meeting of European foreign and defence ministers in Bucharest.

Iran Saturday February 2, 2019:

• One member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was killed and five were wounded in an attack on a base in southeastern Iran as the country holds official celebrations on the 40th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution.
• A (paramilitary) Basij base in Nik Shahr came under fire this morning and several from the Revolutionary Guards communications personnel who were wiring the base were hit.

Iran Sunday February 3, 2019:

• A fire at the Iranian Space Research Center has killed three scientists. The scientists died as a result "of a fire in one of the buildings of the Space Research Center. The names and positions of the victims were not immediately provided.
• Staffers in another part of the research centre were celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution when the fire broke out. Iran's space program has contributed to heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran.
• President Hassan Rohani has said Iran soon will put two satellites into orbit using domestically made rockets, despite U.S. concerns that the launches could help further develop the country's ballistic missiles.
• U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iran not to proceed with "provocative" plans to launch new rockets, claiming they were "virtually identical" to nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and would violate a UN resolution.

Iran Tuesday February 12, 2019:

• A suicide attack in south-eastern Iran has killed at least 27 members of the Revolutionary Guards and wounded 13 others. The bomber targeted a bus transporting personnel in Sistan-Baluchestan province near the border with Pakistan.
• The Sunni Muslim militant group, Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), has said it was behind the bombing. The Revolutionary Guards, which is a major military, political and economic force in Iran, blamed foreign powers.

Iran Wednesday February 27, 2019:

• Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has rejected the resignation of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
• The nation's top diplomat announced his intention to step down from his post, which he has held since 2013, on Instagram on Monday evening. Rouhani is required to accept the resignation in order for the move to go into effect, according to Iranian law.
• Any speculation about the reasons for Zarif's resignation beyond what appeared on his Instagram page is incorrect.

Iran Monday March 4, 2019:

• Five people were killed when the Iranian rescue helicopter they were traveling in crashed into a utility pole in western Iran.
• The helicopter was on its way to pick up a pregnant woman in urgent need of medical care when it went down in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province.
• Three of the five people on board were flight crew and the two others were rescue workers.

Iran Monday March 25, 2019:

• At least 18 people were killed and around 100 others were injured in flash floods in Iran’s southern Fars province, with more rain forecast following days of devastating floods in the north.
• Some 26 provinces out of 31 now have flood warnings due to torrential rain in a country more accustomed to drought. Villages near rivers and dams in several provinces had been evacuated for fear of the rising water.
• Authorities have warned about possibility of floods in the capital Tehran as well as in the oil-rich southern province of Khuzestan in the next 48 hours.

Iran Tuesday April 2, 2019:

• The risk of floods has forced the Iranian government to order the evacuation of 70 villages in the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan. The villages were close to the Dez and Karkheh rivers.
• At least 45 people were killed in the past two weeks in flash floods in northern and southern Iran after the heaviest rains in at least a decade.
• Iran has announced a state of emergency in southern provinces threatened by flooding and has evacuated dozens of villages already. Floods have affected at least 23 out of Iran’s 31 provinces since heavy downpours began on March 19. Western and southwestern parts of the country are expected to bear the brunt of the storms in the days ahead.

Iran Saturday April 6, 2019:

• Seventy people have died in flooding after record rainfalls began saturating parts of the country last month, state-run media reported. Deaths have been recorded across 13 provinces, with the highest casualties in Fars, Lorestan, Golestan and Hamedan.
• Record rainfalls since March 19 have so far flooded some 1,900 cities and villages across Iran, causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to water and agriculture infrastructures
• Over 140 rivers have burst their banks and some 409 landslides have been reported in the country; 78 roads had been blocked and 84 bridges in flood-stricken areas affected.
• Officials warned residents in the province of Khuzestan of rising water levels and urged them to take evacuation notices seriously.

Iran Monday April 8, 20129:

• President Donald Trump said he would name Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organisation, in an unprecedented step that drew Iranian condemnation and raised concerns about retaliatory attacks on U.S. forces.
• The action by Trump, who has taken a hard line towards Iran by withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing broad economic sanctions, marks the first time the United States has formally labelled another nation’s military a terrorist group.
• The U.S. step, which takes effect on April 15, prompted an immediate response from Iran, whose Supreme National Security Council in turn designated U.S. military forces as a “terrorist organisation”. ---

Iran Sunday April 14, 2019:

• Nearly nine million Iranians are suffering from "absolute illiteracy" a news report compiled by Majles (Iranian parliament) Research Center (MRC) says.
• Iran's population has risen to 82 million from less than 40 million four decades ago, but the country's economy is struggling with high rates of unemployment and poverty.
• Statistics compiled by international organizations, such as UNESCO show that the number of "absolutely illiterate" people in the Islamic Republic is much higher, despite the implementation of three strategic plans for eradicating illiteracy.
• Based on the World Bank statistics, nearly 65% of the population were literate in pre-Islamic Revolution (1979) in Iran (with the same rate in Turkey). The same rate in 2016 reached 85.5% in Iran, while in Turkey it was 96%. Therefore, the World Bank assessment shows that 11.6 million absolute illiterate people are living in Iran, today.
• UNESCO's statistics also show that 2% of under 24-year-old population of Iran are still suffering from absolute illiteracy, whereas the same rate in Turkey and Iran's northern neighbours, Republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Turkmenistan) is almost 0%.
• Furthermore, updated statistics show that in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, 27%, 53%, and 48% of the youth respectively suffer from total illiteracy.

Iran Wednesday April 24, 2019:

• Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian dual national being held in a Tehran jail on espionage charges, could be released as part of a prisoner swap, Iran’s foreign minister has said.
• Mohammad Javad Zarif said that he had the authority to make the swap happen, adding it had already been offered in private six months ago to the US.
• Speaking at the Asia Society in New York, Zarif said: “We have an Iranian lady in Australia who gave birth to a child in prison after an extradition request by the United States because she was responsible as a translator in a purchase of some transmission equipment for an Iranian broadcasting company.
• That’s her charge. She has been lingering in an Australian jail for the past three years.

Iran Thursday April 25, 2019:

• Hopes that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe might be released from a Tehran jail as part of a prisoner swap have suffered a setback after the Iranian foreign minister appeared to retract the proposal and the UK foreign secretary said he could not be party to any deal that presumed she was guilty of spying.
• Mohammad Javad Zarif specifically referred to Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national held in Iran since April 2016, in a speech in New York on Wednesday in which he said he had the power to authorise her release in return for the freeing of an Iranian woman held in Australia.
• But in an interview today he said the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case could not be included in any prisoner swaps, and he seemed instead to focus on bilateral deals between the US and Iran.
• Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard, had earlier spoken of his hope that such a deal could enable his wife to return to the UK with the couple’s daughter, who is living with her grandmother in Tehran.

Iran Saturday May 11, 2019:

• The US is sending a Patriot missile-defence system to the Middle East amid escalating tensions with Iran.
• A warship, USS Arlington, with amphibious vehicles and aircraft on board, will also join the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group in the Gulf. And US B-52 bombers have arrived at a base in Qatar.
• The US said the moves were a response to a possible threat to US forces in the region by Iran, without specifying. Iran dismissed the claim as nonsense. Tehran has described the deployments as "psychological warfare" aimed at intimidating the country.

Iran Wednesday May 15, 2019:

• International worries that the Trump administration is sliding toward war with Iran flared into the open amid scepticism about its claims that the Islamic Republic poses a growing threat to the U.S. and its allies in the Persian Gulf and beyond. The U.S. military rebutted doubts expressed by a British general about such a threat. President Donald Trump denied a report that the administration has updated plans to send more than 100,000 troops to counter Iran if necessary. But Trump then stirred the controversy further by saying: "Would I do that? Absolutely."
• The general's remarks exposed international scepticism over the American military build-up in the Middle East, a legacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq that was predicated on false intelligence. U.S. officials have not publicly provided any evidence to back up claims of an increased Iranian threat amid other signs of allied unease.
• British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said his nation was worried about the risk of accidental conflict "with an escalation that is unintended really on either side." Then on Tuesday, Spain temporarily pulled one of its frigates from the U.S.-led combat fleet heading toward the Strait of Hormuz. That was followed by the unusual public challenge to the Trump administration by the general.
• "No, there's been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria," said Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, a senior officer in the U.S.-backed coalition fighting the Islamic State group. Ghika, speaking in a video conference from coalition headquarters in Baghdad, told reporters at the Pentagon that the coalition monitors the presence of Iranian-backed forces "along with a whole range of others because that's the environment we're in."
• But he added, "There are a substantial number of militia groups in Iraq and Syria, and we don't see any increased threat from any of them at this stage."
• Late in the day, in a rare public rebuttal of an allied military officer, U.S. Central Command said Ghika's remarks "run counter to the identified credible threats" from Iranian-backed forces in the Mideast. In a written statement, Central Command said the coalition in Baghdad has increased the alert level for all service members in Iraq and Syria.

Iran Sunday May26, 2019:

• A member of parliament for Eslamabad-e Gharb in western Iran says the murder of the city's plainclothes police chief during a shootout on Sunday was possibly a terrorist incident.
• Police officers found a vehicle with manipulated registration plate suspicious and clashed with those on board, assuming they were terrorists. The vehicle was approaching a religious gathering that was held on the occasion of Ramadan.
• Plainclothes police chief Kourosh Haji Moradi was killed and another officer was wounded in a clash between the officers and those on board a car in Eslamabad-e Gharb, Kermanshah province.

Iran Tuesday May 28, 2019:

• Police arrested a former Iranian vice president and mayor of Tehran after he confessed to shooting one of his wives dead in her home.
• Police detained Mohammad Ali Najafi after he went to authorities and confessed to killing wife Mitra Najafi. Najafi and his wife were having domestic problems.
• Earlier on Tuesday, Iranian media reported that Mitra Najafi, who is one of Najafi’s two wives, had been killed in northern Tehran.

Iran Thursday June 13, 2019:

• The attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman caused jitters in global markets and unease across a region that has been bracing for conflict throughout much of the year. As with the earlier attacks on 12 May, news of the latest strikes was again broken by media outlets aligned to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran, who broadcast images of the attacks within minutes of them taking place.
• The explosions were bigger and the damage more extensive. But the message and its means of delivery have some similarities.
• Pictures of both ships ablaze show what is at stake in one of the world’s most strategic waterways, as a regional player withering under ever tightening sanctions stares down a global superpower determined to impose its will.
• Even the hint of obstruction in the Strait of Hormuz, where ships pass each other like cars on a four lane motorway, is enough to upset oil markets. Frequent, and seemingly random, bombings of tankers, however, takes fears over energy security to levels not seen since the tanker wars, a by-product of the Iran-Iraq war of the mid-80s, which sunk or damaged 543 ships in nearby waters and caused three years of turmoil in energy markets. By Thursday afternoon, two large shipping companies had suspended bookings from the Gulf oil ports.
• The standoff between Iran and the US, which has brewed over the course of Donald Trump’s administration, has typically played out on terra firma. In Iraq, Iran has consolidated its presence at the expense of Washington, which has little to show for its efforts to reorientate the country in its favour. In Lebanon Iran’s near dominance of the political space has taken place at Saudi Arabia’s – and Washington’s – expense.
• On seas and oceans US interests – and those of its allies – are even more vulnerable, with tankers carrying nearly one third of the world’s oil, or derivatives of it, passing within a few miles of the Iranian coastline as they travel from the Strait of Hormuz to all points of the industrialised world.
• As US sanctions have taken hold, Iran has increasingly struggled to secure revenues from oil exports that use the same seaborne lanes. Iranian leaders have made no bones about how important the Gulf waters are to the country’s economy – and to the coffers of its foes. As was the case in May, the new attacks targeted ships carrying cargo from Saudi and Emirati ports.

Iran Friday June 14, 2019:

• The US military released a video that it says shows Iran's Revolutionary Guard removing an unexploded mine from one of the oil tankers targeted near the Strait of Hormuz. It suggested the Iran had sought to remove evidence of its involvement from the scene.
• US Central Command also released photographs showing the apparent mine, which attaches to the side of a ship magnetically.
• Release of the classified black-and-white images showed US determination to convince the international community that Iran was responsible for Thursday's attacks on the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous, and the Norwegian-owned Front Altair.
• However, the Japanese operator of Kokuka Courageous said the crew saw "flying objects" just before the attack, suggesting the tanker was damaged by something other than mines. Yutaka Katada, the company president, said reports of a mine attack were "false".
• Both vessels suffered explosions, forcing crews to abandon ship and leave them adrift in waters between Gulf Arab states and Iran. All crew members were safely evacuated.

Iran Friday June 21, 2019:

• Donald Trump has said the US air force was “cocked and loaded” to attack three Iranian targets on Friday morning, but he called off the strike with 10 minutes to spare after being told that the airstrike might kill as many as 150 people.
• Trump said that he decided late on Thursday that the death toll was not a proportionate response to the Iranian shooting down of a US spy drone off the Iranian coast 24 hours earlier.
• The tweets revealed how close the world may have come to a Middle East conflagration, and raised questions over why the commander-in-chief was told so late in the planning of a military operation about the predicted loss of life involved. It would be routine for a president to be informed of the likely civilian casualties when the options are first presented. ---

Iran Thursday June 20, 2019:

• The US military launched a cyber-attack on Iranian weapons systems  as President Donald Trump backed away from plans for a more conventional strike in response to Iran’s downing of a US surveillance drone.
• The hack disabled Iranian computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers and were conducted with approval from Trump. A third official confirmed the broad outlines of the strike.
• Two of the officials said the attacks, which specifically targeted computer systems of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had been provided as options after two oil tankers were bombed. The IRGC has been designated a foreign terrorist group by the Trump administration.

Iran Wednesday July 9, 2019:

• Iran's Revolutionary Guard has killed five gunmen who crossed into a mostly Kurdish region from neighboring Iraq. One of its members was killed in the shootout Wednesday in the western Kermanshah province.
• Iranian forces seized weapons, explosives and communications equipment.
• On Tuesday, Kurdish militants killed three Guard members in northern Iran.   Iranian forces occasionally clash with Kurdish fighters and ISIS extremists in areas near the border.
• Three Iranian boats tried to intercept a British oil tanker in the Gulf before being driven off by a Royal Navy warship in a major escalation of tensions in the vital shipping channel off Iran.
• The incident took place in the strait of Hormuz through which the commercial vessel British Heritage was attempting to pass.
• It is the latest in a series of recent incidents in the area which have sent tensions between Iran and the US soaring. It also comes after the UK seizure last week of an Iranian oil tanker, the Grace 1, off the coast of Gibraltar, for which Tehran has threatened retaliation.
• On Thursday, Gibraltar police said the captain and chief officer of the Grace 1 – both Indian nationals - had been arrested in connection to alleged breaching of EU sanctions on Syria, but neither had been charged. Documents and electronic equipment was seized from the vessel.
• Speaking about the latest confrontation, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement: “Contrary to international law, three Iranian vessels attempted to impede the passage of a commercial vessel, British Heritage, through the strait of Hormuz.

Iran Thursday July 10, 2019:

• A Royal Navy warship is offering increased protection to a second tanker in the Gulf in an apparent boost to maritime security following a threat from Iran to seize a British vessel.
• HMS Montrose, a Type 23 frigate, is travelling with the British Heritage tanker off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.
• The warship is not providing an official escort to the Isle of Man-flagged vessel, owned by BP shipping, but it is providing an increased level of monitoring.

 

Iran Friday July 19, 2019:

• There will be "serious consequences" if Iran does not release a British-flagged tanker seized in the Gulf, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.
• The Stena Impero's owners have been unable to contact their vessel, which had 23 personnel on board and was "heading north towards Iran. It was surrounded by four vessels and a helicopter.
• A second British-owned Liberian-flagged tanker was boarded by armed guards but is now free to continue its journey.
• The Mesdar's Glasgow-based operator Norbulk Shipping UK said communication had been re-established with the vessel after it was boarded by armed guards and its crew was "safe and well". There were 25 personnel on board the Mesdar when it was surrounded by 10 speedboats.

Iran Saturday August 3, 2019:

• Iran has captured an oil tanker and seven sailors it accused of “smuggling” fuel through the Persian Gulf to Arab states – the third such seizure in recent months. 
• The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp detained the tanker, its crew and 700,000 litres of fuel.
• The seizure of the oil tanker was in coordination with Iran's judiciary authorities and based on their order. It was taken to the Bushehr port, where its fuel was handed over to the authorities.

Iran Saturday August 10, 2019:

• A clash took place in the northern Mazendran province around an army air force base during which at least two people were killed, and four others wounded. The clash started over a dispute about land ownership in the Mahmoud Abad region.
• Security forces at the base opened fire on the people and government employees who were trying to enforce a court decision over the ownership issue. A court in Mazanderan had ruled that lands occupied by the air force around a village should be vacated in favour of the residents in the area.

Iran Thursday August 15, 2019:

• Gibraltar has freed an Iranian oil tanker detained last month on suspicion of sanctions-busting, despite a last-minute plea by the US authorities. The UK territory received written assurances from Iran that the ship would not discharge its cargo in Syria.
• Grace 1, carrying Iranian oil, was stopped by Royal Marines on 4 July, triggering a standoff with Tehran. Gibraltar's chief justice, Anthony Dudley, said no US application was currently before the court.

Iran Tuesday August 27, 2019:

• Iran will not talk to the United States until all sanctions imposed on Tehran are lifted, President Hassan Rouhani said, a day after President Donald Trump said he would meet his Iranian counterpart to try to end a nuclear standoff.
• Mr Trump said he would meet Iran's president under the right circumstances to end a confrontation over Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with six powers and that talks were underway to see how countries could open credit lines to keep Iran's economy afloat.
• Mr Rouhani said Iran was always ready to hold talks "but first the U.S. should act by lifting all illegal, unjust and unfair sanctions imposed on Iran.

Iran Thursday August 29, 2019:

• An Iranian rocket exploded on the launch pad at the Khomeini Space Center. The explosion most likely occurred during fueling operations.

Iran Tuesday September 3, 2019:

• Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has ruled out holding any bilateral talks with the United States and threatened to further cut commitments to the country's crumbling nuclear deal with world powers within days.
• In an address to parliament on Tuesday, Rouhani, however, said that if Washington lifted all sanctions it reimposed on Iran after withdrawing unilaterally from the 2015 deal, then it could join multilateral talks between the remaining signatories to the landmark accord.
• "Maybe there has been a misunderstanding. We have said it several times and we repeat it - there has been no decision to hold bilateral talks with the US," said Rouhani.
• "In principle, we do not want bilateral talks with the United States," he added.
• Tensions between Washington and Tehran have been rising since May last year following US President Donald Trump's controversial decision to pull out of the deal and the subsequent reimposition of crippling sanctions aimed at strangling Iran's economy.

Iran Friday September 6, 2019:

• A Norway-based Iranian human rights organization reports that 38 people were executed in Iran in August, double the rate in the same period last year.
• Iran Human Rights (IHR) says based on information it has collected 32 of those executed were convicted of first-degree murder, six were hanged for major narcotics and drug trafficking convictions.
• Two prisoners were executed on charges of “Moharebeh”, which in Islamic law means “waging war against God”. The Islamic Republic uses this serious accusation against those who question the basis of the Islamic political system or the legitimacy of clerical rule in Iran.
• Two executions took place in public while the rest were carried out in various prisons around the country.
• Official figures released by the Islamic Republic acknowledge only 13 execution, while human rights monitors reported an additional 25 cases.

Iran Sunday September 8, 2019:

• A tanker suspected of trying to deliver Iranian oil to Syria in defiance of international sanctions has now sold its cargo, Iran says. Satellite images appeared to show the vessel, the Adrian Darya-1, off the coast of Syria on Friday.
• But an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman would only say the ship had delivered its cargo after docking "on the Mediterranean coast".
• The ship has been at the centre of a US-Iran diplomatic tussle. It was seized by British marines off Gibraltar in July and held there until 15 August when Iran gave assurances it would not sail to Syria.
• The US vowed on Sunday to impose sanctions on any buyer of the oil. We will continue to put pressure on Iran and as President (Trump) said there will be no waivers of any kind for Iran's oil.
• Separately, a British-flagged tanker seized by Iran in what many saw as a retaliatory move was being prepared for release. The Stena Impero was going through the final legal processes and would be released "soon".

Iran Monday September 16, 2019:

• Iran has seized a UAE oil ship in the Strait of Hormuz hours after the US accused Tehran of a shocking oil plant attack in Saudia Arabia.
• The Islamic republic's hardline Revolutionary Guard is said to have detained the vessel and its crew of 11 under the pretext of smuggling diesel. ---

Iran Thursday October 10, 2019:

• The five-year-old daughter of a British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran on spying charges has returned to the UK.
• Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 40, a charity worker from London, has been detained for three years over the allegations, which she denies.
• Her British-born daughter Gabriella, who has been living with her grandparents in Tehran, returned to start school in the UK.
• Gabriella's father, Richard Ratcliffe, said she has been "so brave".

Iran Friday October 11, 2019:

• An Iranian-owned oil tanker has been attacked in the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia. The tanker Sabiti had been hit twice, causing some damage.
• Earlier Iran's national oil company (NIOC) said two explosions on the vessel had been caused "likely by missiles". But it dismissed earlier reports quoting it as saying the missiles were likely to have come from Saudi Arabia.

Iran Wednesday October 23, 2019:

• Iran executed seven child offenders last year and two so far this year even though human rights law prohibits the death penalty for anyone under age 18.
• Javaid Rehman also told the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee that he has “credible information” there are at least 90 child offenders currently on death row in Iran.
• Rehman, the U.N. special investigator on human rights in Iran, expressed deep concern at the overall use of the death penalty in the Islamic Republic, saying its execution rate “remains one of the highest in the world” even after a drop from 507 in 2017 to 253 in 2018. So far in 2019, he said, “conservative estimates indicate that at least 173 executions have been carried out.”

Iran Thursday November 14, 2019:

• At least 28 Afghan nationals have been killed in a crash in Iran. Another 21 people were said to have been injured in the collision. Two vans crashed into each other near the town of Khash, in the south-eastern Sistan and Baluchistan province.
• The area is commonly used by traffickers transporting migrants across the Afghan border - often in desperate, cramped conditions.
• Iran is one of the deadliest countries in the world for road traffic accidents, according to the World Health Organization. In May this year, eight people were killed when a bus carrying 44 people overturned on the Qom-Tehran highway - reportedly because the driver fell asleep at the wheel.

Iran Saturday November 16, 2019:

• Thousands of people in Tehran, Shiraz and other cities and towns across Iran took to the streets to protest against the sharp rise in petrol prices.
• At least one person was killed in the southern town of Sirjan. Security forces were out in parts of the capital city and other places where many drivers had stopped their cars at main junctions. There were unconfirmed reports suggesting petrol stations in some cities had been set on fire.
• Security forces used tear gas to disperse the crowd in Tehran and elsewhere while shootings were heard in Shiraz.
• Iranians awoke on Friday to discover that the cost of petrol had jumped 50 per cent overnight as authorities in the Islamic republic reduced subsidies, meaning that each motorist could get 60 litres of petrol a month at IR15,000 a litre, a 50 per cent price increase. Extra fuel would still be available, but at IR30,000 a litre.
• This was part of efforts to offset the sharp fall in income brought about by US sanctions, after Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani acknowledged this week that the country faced a huge fall in its flow of petrodollars — the country’s lifeline.

Iran Saturday November 16, 2019:

• Four people were left dead in Iran following clashes between riot police and protesters in several Iranian cities after the government raised the price of petrol by up to 300 per cent.
• The deaths occurred in separate incidents in the southern cities of Sirjan, Behbahan and Shiraz, while video footage showed protestors had attacked a military barracks used by the regime’s feared Bajis militias in Tehran, setting it on fire.
• Thousands of angry motorists parked their vehicles on major thoroughfares and highways in protest at the price hikes, urging others to stop and “join the national anti-regime movement” as they drove by.
• Iran’s chief public prosecutor, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, called the protestors “saboteurs” and warned they would face “severe punishment” if arrested. He has also alleged that foreign powers were behind the protests.

Iran Wednesday November 20, 2019:

• Dozens of people may have been killed in Iran since Friday during protests against a sharp rise in petrol prices.
• Security personnel were urged not to use excessive force, including firing live ammunition there were calls for access to the internet to be restored.
• Amnesty International said it had received credible reports that at least 106 protesters in 21 cities had died.
• Iran's government has denounced those on the streets as "rioters".
• The current situation is unclear because of the near-total internet shutdown, which started late on Saturday, but protests have been held in dozens of cities and towns.

Iran Wenesday November 27, 2019:

• Iranian security agents arrested at least eight people linked to the CIA during last week's deadly unrest over petrol price increases. These elements had received CIA-funded training in various countries under the cover of becoming citizen-journalists. Six were arrested while attending the riots and carrying out [CIA] orders and two while trying to ... send information abroad."
• Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - in his strongest remarks since the unrest peaked - described the two weeks of violence as the work of a "very dangerous conspiracy". "The people foiled a deep, vast and very dangerous conspiracy on which a lot of money was spent for destruction, viciousness and the killing of people," Khamenei said.
• The Iranian leader was speaking at a gathering of the Basij - a militia loyal to the Islamic Republic's establishment. The Revolutionary Guard's all-volunteer Basij force helped significantly to put down the demonstrations. ---

Iran Tuesday December 17, 2019 :

• At least 304 people were killed and thousands more injured during anti-government protests across Iran last month, according to Amnesty International. The latest death toll was based on credible reports and eyewitness testimonies it had compiled.
• But the real number is likely even higher as security forces used lethal force to crush the protests.
• The high death toll over a period of only a few days may be the highest casualty rate for any protests in the history of the Islamic Republic in the past 40 years.

Iran Monday December 23, 2019:

• Iranian news reported that an Iranian commander rumoured killed in an Israeli missile attack in Syria on Sunday is in "perfect health".
• Theys aid that General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, "is in perfect health". Other Iranian news agencies have almost identical reports, word-by-word.
• Some Arab media have claimed that the IRGC Aerospace commander was martyred in Israel's attack on Seyyeda Zeinab on the southern outskirts of Damascus and T4 Base last night. These rumors have been dismissed.
• Sunday night’s missile attack hit the suburb of Aqraba and the nearby Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said and claimed that probably three people of Iranian nationality were killed in the attack.

Iran Sunday January 5, 2020:

• Hundreds of thousands of mourners have turned out in Iran to receive home the remains of Qasem Soleimani, the general killed by a US drone strike in Iraq.
• In Ahvaz, where Soleimani served during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), mourners chanted: "Death to America."
• Soleimani was the architect of Iran's sphere of influence across the Middle East, and was considered to be the country's second most powerful man.
• His assassination marked a significant escalation between Iran and the US.
• Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who had a close personal relationship with Soleimani, has warned of "severe revenge" for the attack, and analysts say Iran may pursue cyber-attacks against the US or traditional attacks on US targets or interests in the Middle East.
• US President Donald Trump, who authorised the attack on Soleimani on Friday - an option refused by both Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama as too risky - said on Saturday that the US was ready to strike 52 sites "important to Iran & the Iranian culture".
• Esmail Ghaani, 62, has taken over from Major General Qassem Soleimani, after he was killed along with nine others when the US hit his motorcade just outside Baghdad's international airport on Friday morning.
• The new commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard, was Maj Gen Soleimani's deputy and will now answer only to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran Tuesday January 7, 2020:

• Fifty people have been killed and more than 200 injured in a stampede as Iranians gathered for the burial of a leading commander killed in a US drone strike.
• The deaths in Qasem Soleimani's hometown of Kerman led to the ceremony being delayed. The burial is the last in a series of funeral events that have brought millions on to the streets in Iran.
• Soleimani's killing has raised fears of a conflict between the US and Iran. The head of the Quds force was tasked with defending and projecting Iranian interests abroad, and was hailed as a hero by many in his home country. Immediately after his death, Iran threatened retaliation.

Iran Thursday January 9, 2020:

Trudeau believes Iranian missile downed jet

When US President Donald Trump voiced "suspicions" about the fate of the airliner which came down over Iran on the night Tehran launched missiles against air bases housing American forces in Iraq, he won't have been alone. Now Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau says intelligence from multiple sources indicates the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. Of the 176 people killed, 63 were Canadian citizens. Mr Trudeau says it's too early to apportion blame, and that the Ukrainian jet may have been brought down in error, but wants a "thorough investigation".

The timing of the incident prompted US media speculation the Boeing 737-800 was mistaken for a US warplane, as Iran prepared for possible US retaliation for its attack. Tehran, however, has ruled this out. While it initially said it would not hand over the black box flight recorders to Boeing or the US, with relations strained after the American assassination of top general Qasem Soleimani that prompted its missile attack, an official has since told Reuters the US had been invited to take part in the inquiry. Canadian investigators have also been invited to the site.

Iran Sunday February 2, 2020:

- A top commander in Iran’s Quds Force who was close to its slain leader, Qassem Soleimani, has died in battle in Syria

- Asghar Pashapour, a senior member of the Revolutionary Guards’ extraterritorial force, was killed in battle with Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo. (---)

Iran Monday February 10, 2020:

• Iran's space program suffered another setback. The nation launched a communications satellite called Zafar 1 atop a Simorgh rocket at 10:45 a.m. EST Sunday (1545 GMT; 7:15 p.m. local time) from Imam Khomeini Space Center in northern Iran. But Zafar 1 didn't make it all the way to orbit.
• Stage-1 and stage-2 motors of the carrier functioned properly and the satellite was successfully detached from its carrier, but at the end of its path it did not reach the required speed for being put in the orbit.

Iran Tuesday March 17, 2020:

• Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been temporarily released from prison in Iran because of the coronavirus outbreak, her husband says.
• The British-Iranian charity worker will be required to wear an ankle tag and remain within 300m of her parents' home in Tehran.
• “The issue now is to make it permanent,” her husband Richard Ratcliffe said. He added: “It is hard to relax just yet.”
• Iran has temporarily released tens of thousands of prisoners in recent weeks in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus. It had released about 85,000 prisoners who had tested negative for the virus and had posted bail. There had been reports that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe would be released earlier this month, but she was kept in detention.

Iran Sunday May 10, 2020:

• Nineteen Iranian sailors have been killed and 15 injured, some severely, in a friendly fire incident involving two Iranian naval vessels.
• A new anti-ship missile being tested by the frigate Jamaran in the Gulf of Oman hit a support ship, Konarak, setting targets close to the contested Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies are sent.
• The incident is another severe blow to the prestige of the Iranian military still recovering from its unintentional attack on a Ukrainian civilian aircraft departing from Tehran on 8 January, which killed all 176 people onboard.
• Security forces have also been accused of deliberately shooting hundreds of Iranians in November protesting over a petrol price rise.
• A report on state TV said the Konarak was struck “after moving a practice target to its destination and not creating enough distance between itself and the target”.
• Initially Iran said only one sailor had been killed and two injured severely, but the number of deaths rapidly escalated later on Monday.

Iran Friday May 29, 2020:

• Three Iranian border guards were killed in clashes with armed groups near the Iraqi border.
• Clashes erupted between Iranian border guards forces and armed groups in the countryside of Sardasht town in West Azerbaijan Province.
• The clashes resulted in the killing of three soldiers, along with a large number of militants, the news agency reported without disclosing further details.
• Border areas witness sporadic clashes between Iranian forces and PJAK, the Iranian wing of PKK terrorist group.

Iran Sunday May 31, 2020:

• The head of an Iranian parliamentary committee has said 230 people were killed during the November protests triggered by a spike in petrol prices -the first time an official has given an overall death toll for the unrest.
• During these events 230 people were killed, six of whom were official agents and security forces.

Iran Thursday June 25, 2020:

• An industrial gas tank exploded overnight in Tehran; images of the blast were widely shared on social media. A gas tank exploded in the Parchin public area. There were no casualties.
• Firefighters brought the blaze under control and investigations were under way to determine the cause.
• The site of the incident was not related to the military. Fars is close to ultra-conservatives in Iran.
• Parchin is home to a sprawling military base where Iranian technicians were alleged to have tested high explosive components for a nuclear warhead in the early 2000s, a claim Iran has denied.

Iran Tuesday June 30, 2020:

• An explosion from a gas leak in a medical clinic in northern Tehran has killed 19 people. Video posted online showed more than one explosion and thick black smoke rising from the Sina At’har clinic.
• People in nearby Tajrish Bazaar rushed to the scene, impeding a rescue operation. Videos on social media showed people gathered outside of the building.
• A leak from medical gas tanks in the building was the cause of the explosion and fire.

Iran Saturday July 4, 2020:

• An explosion damaged a power plant in Ahvaz, the latest in a series of mysterious blasts in the country that prompted Iran to issue a warning to Israel and the US earlier this week.
• Persian and Arabic media reported an explosion and fire at the Zargan power plant in Ahvaz in Iran’s southwest, near the Persian Gulf and the Iraqi border.

Iran Tuesday July 7, 2020:

• Two men have been killed in yet another explosion, as officials blamed 'human error' for the blast.
• The explosion rocked the Sepahan Boresh factory in the city of Baqershahr, south of Tehran. It was caused by 'workers being negligent whilst filling oxygen tanks'.
• Three people were also injured in the blast, two of them suffering injuries so severe they required hospital treatment. The blast is the latest in a string of explosions to have swept across Iran over the past two weeks, amid suspicions that Israel may have been behind at least one of them.

Iran Thursday July 9, 2020:

• Iranian officials have denied reports of an explosion west of the capital Tehran on Thursday, the latest in a series of mysterious blasts to hit the country in recent weeks.
• Social media users reported hearing explosions in the nearby cities of Garmdareh and Qods. It is not clear where the reported incident took place.
• Key sites including nuclear facilities and oil refineries have been damaged in recent incidents.
• In July Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation confirmed a fire took place at a nuclear plant in Natanz. The incident is reported to have set back Iran's nuclear programme.
• Rumours of the latest incident began circulating online. Locals reported hearing three or four mortar-like sounds similar to anti-aircraft weapons. A small number of social media accounts claiming to be from Garmdareh reported hearing sounds but images of fire and damaged buildings circulating online were found to be old. ---

Iran Tuesday July 14, 2020:

• At least seven boats have caught fire at a shipyard in the port of Bushehr in southern Iran. The head of the local crisis management organisation said that the blaze had been contained and that no casualties had been reported.
• The cause was not clear, but it is the latest in a series of mysterious incidents in Iran in recent weeks. They have included explosions and fires at a missile facility, a power plant, a medical clinic and a nuclear complex. The incidents have led to speculation about a campaign of sabotage.

Iran Thusday July 16, 2020:

• Iranian officials say that some of the explosions at factories and military facilities, and some forest fires, may have been sabotage but blamed weather and accidents for the others.
• A large fire broke out at a shipyard in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr on Wednesday, burning seven ships and sending plumes of black smoke billowing above the city skyline.
• The fire followed dozens of recent fires and explosions across Iran’s forests, factories and military and nuclear facilities in the past three months that have rattled ordinary Iranians. Iranian officials have said that some of the episodes may have been acts of sabotage but blamed weather, accidents and equipment malfunctions for the others.
• On Tuesday an aluminum factory in the industrial city of Lamard, in Fars Province, caught fire. On Sunday, a fire broke out at petrochemical plant in Khuzestan Province.
• An explosion at the country’s top nuclear facility in Natanz two weeks ago damaged the structure where centrifuges were assembled and has been attributed to Israeli sabotage.

Iran Friday July 17, 2020:

• A landmine explosion in western Iran killed three people and injured one more.
• The mine, a remnant of 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, exploded in the Mehram district of the Ilam city that borders Iraq.

Iran Monday 20, 2020:

• Israeli airstrikes killed pro-Syrian government forces. Israel is suspected of carrying out several bombings of Iranian targets in Syria this year.
• The suspected Israeli bombs struck south and southwest of Damascus. Five members of an Iran-backed militia were killed. Four members of the militia and seven government soldiers were also injured. The airstrikes destroyed a missile depot and also damaged weapons and ammunition warehouses.
• Also Israeli missiles hit south of Damascus. Seven government soldiers were hurt, and the missiles were fired from the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Syrian air defenses intercepted some of the missiles.

Iran Tuesday July 28, 2020:

• An explosion occurred at a fuel storage tank in western Iran. The explosion took place in the Dolat Abad industrial area in Kermanshah province, without further details.
• Fires have been reported in various parts of Iran in recent weeks. Flames broke out at a gas plant in eastern Iran on July 13, followed by an explosion in the area. The incident took place at a gas condensate plant in the Kavian Fariman industrial zone in the Razavi Khorasan province.
• On June 26, an explosion was reported near the Parchin military site in the northeastern part of the capital Tehran due to a gas tank explosion. No casualties were reported.
• Four days later on June 30, a massive explosion damaged a clinic in Tajrish, northern Tehran, killing 19 people. Authorities said the incident was due to a gas leak.
• This was followed by an incident at the Natanz nuclear facility, 155 miles south of Tehran in the province of Isfahan on July 2, which damaged an "industrial shed" close to the main facility.
• On July 4, a fire broke out at a power station in the city of Ahwaz in southwestern Iran. The blaze affected an electricity transformer and was swiftly put out by firefighters.
• These strikingly similar incidents in recent weeks triggered speculation in Iran to their causes, with some blaming foreign countries.

Iran Wednesday July 29, 2020:

• Iran has launched ballistic missiles from underground bases at a mock-up of a US aircraft carrier in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.
• The US navy called Wednesday's action "irresponsible and reckless", accusing Tehran of trying to "intimidate and coerce".
• Drone footage captured by Iran's Revolutionary Guard showed two missiles blasting out from covered positions in what appeared to be a desert plateau in central Iran, with debris flying up in the air in their wake.

Iran Wednesday August 5, 2020:

• Four law enforcement personnel were injured in a powerful sound explosion in southeast Iran’s Zahedan city. The incident took place in Zibashahr area of the bustling city and sent shockwaves across the area. The explosion targeted a patrol of law enforcement force near a busy intersection, injuring at least four personnel. They were immediately admitted to a local hospital.
• No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack. However, sources said it could be the handwork of local militant groups active in the restive province.
• The capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, bordering Pakistan, Zahedan has seen several bombings in recent years, many of them targeting Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
• Most recently, on June 30, two IRGC vehicles were targeted in the city, injuring a commander. Jaish e Adl, a militant group based in the area, had claimed responsibility for the attack.
• The biggest of the bombings in Zahedan took place in 2010, when 27 people were killed. Another local militant outfit Jundullah had claimed responsibility for it.

Iran Friday August 14, 2020:

• mAn explosion and ensuing fire injured at least four people in a district with many publishers and bookshops in Iran’s capital Tehran, the latest in a series of blasts and fires, some of which have hit sensitive sites.
• The blast caused the fire that engulfed the four storey building near Tehran University where paper and books were stored.
• Firemen rescued three men and a woman who were rushed to hospital and put out the blaze. The cause of the blast was under investigation.

Iran Wednesday September 2, 2020:

• Iranian security forces committed a "catalogue of shocking human rights violations" against those detained in a crackdown on nationwide protests last November, Amnesty International says.
• Dozens of men and women told the human rights group they were beaten, flogged, given electric shocks, or sexually abused to extract bogus confessions.
• More than 7,000 people -including children as young as 10- were arrested in the crackdown. Hundreds more died.
• Iran has not commented on the report.
• But it has previously rejected criticism of its human rights record as baseless.
• November's protests erupted after the Iranian government increased the price of petrol by 50%.
• The decision was met with widespread anger in a country where the economy was already reeling as a result of US sanctions, and hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets.
• Iran's supreme leader denounced the protesters as "evil-doers" incited by "foreign enemies", and security forces launched a deadly crackdown.

Iran Friday September 4, 2020:

• An explosion has injured more than 200 people in western Iran. No fatalities were reported in the incident, which happened in the rural Ilam Province. The blast was caused by the explosion of a chlorine canister being transported by truck. Driver “carelessness” was suspected.
• Several suspicious fires and explosions have struck military and civilian sites throughout Iran over the course of the summer. On August 24, Iranian officials confirmed that an explosion in July at the country’s main nuclear facility at Natanz was “a result of sabotage operations.”

Thursday Iran September 9, 2020:

• At least one person was killed and several injured in an explosion at a shop in an area near Iran’s capital Tehran; at least 30 buildings were damaged by the blast.

An explosion on Tohid Street, south of Nasimshahr, took place in a battery shop. One person was killed and at least 10 people were injured. Ten cars and 30 buildings were badly damaged as well. The cause of the explosion was being investigated.

 

 

10.1.3 North Korea

In 1994 the USA and North Korea signed a treaty by which North Korea would stop its military nuclear program in exchange for food, 500,000 tonnes of oil each year, and other aid programs. It was also agreed that the US, Japan and South Korea would built two nuclear power stations that could only be used for peaceful purposes. These reactors were not built. In October 2002 North Korea said that it had resumed its nuclear military research programme. The USA did not like it, and stopped the oil delivery. North Korea then said that they would also put their nuclear reactors -supplied by Russia- in operation, as they need them to replace the electrical energy that was supplied by the oil-burning power stations. These reactors can produce plutonium and the USA is very worried. Moreover it looks like North Korea has already enough plutonium to built 2 or 3 atomic bombs. The USA hopes that the problem can be resolved through diplomatic channels with the help of Japan and South Korea. Why did not they follow the same way with Iraq. Would it be the fear that North Korea has atomic bombs? On December 21, 2002, the North Koreans had disabled UN surveillance equipment installed at one of its reactors. They cut most of the seals and impeded the functioning of surveillance cameras. Already in 1994 it was thought that North Korea had enough plutonium to build two atomic bombs. Now, by retreating the spent fuel they have, they could build at least four more. And they have the missiles to launch them on Japan and South Korea and probably farther.

- North Korea received the machinery required to produce enriched uranium from Pakistan in exchange of long-range missiles that could be used in an eventual war between Pakistan and India.
- The US administration is mad at North Korea for restarting their nuclear programme, civil and military. However they do not intend to invade this country or, better, they do not dare really as the cost would be too high as North Korea has atomic bombs and the missiles to deliver them. However, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, boasted on TV that the US could fight two regional wars at the same time meaning Iraq and North Korea. But would these wars remain local?
- On Christmas Day 2002, North Korea warned of an "uncontrollable catastrophe" if the US tried to stop their nuclear programme by force. However, they are ready to negotiate directly with the US and with nobody else.
- The North Koreans are loading fuel in a 5MW reactor that "could produce plutonium suitable for an Atomic Bomb". Like all reactors, of course. The US administration said a few days ago that the North Korean electrical grid cannot accept the amount of electricity produced by a nuclear reactor. What is important, of course, is the re-treatment plant where plutonium is extracted, not a silly 5 MW research reactor. The media said that 7,000 rods are necessary to restart the reactor. This seems a lot for such a reactor. Is there more than one? Around December 26, 2002, North Korea asked the inspectors of the IAEA to leave the country as their job had become useless.
- The list of nuclear reactors in North Korea was clarified as follow on December 27, 2002:
- A 5 MW research reactor in Yongbyon.
- An unfinished 50 MW reactor in Yongbyon.
- An unfinished 200 MW reactor in Taechon.
- Experts believe that the last two reactors, when working, would be able to produce enough plutonium to 50 nuclear weapons a year. But they are far from working.
- The 8,000 irradiated fuel rods mentioned before could produce enough plutonium to built 2 atomic bombs. All the same the US does not intend to attack North Korea in the near future at least. Neighbour countries, besides the USA, will reduce or cancel their economic ties with North Korea. If necessary the USA will ask the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions. Even Russia asked North Korea not to withdraw from the International non-proliferation Treaty and to live by their commitment of 1994 with the US and to stop any research or activities on military atomic weapons programmes. But even President Bush in his New Year message said that he was hopeful that the North Korea problem could be resolved by diplomatic means.
- At the same time South Korea sent its deputy Foreign minister to Beijing to seek China's help close the North Korean atomic bomb programmes. An South Korean envoy went to Moscow on the same mission -and Russia seems to be willing to use its influence- and now South Korea want to mediate between North Korea and the USA but North Korea wants to talk directly to the US and receive some guarantees that the USA will not attack them. On the other hand the US does not want to start negotiations until North Korea stop its nuclear programme.
- Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said on December 29, 2002, that the US does not intend, for the moment, to invade or bomb North Korea. He believes that the problem of North Korea decision to star its nuclear programme can be solved by diplomatic means with the help of neighbouring countries.
- On January 7, 2003, following a meeting in Washington DC between representatives of South Korea, Japan and the USA on the North Korea decision to restart their nuclear reactors and plutonium processing facilities, the USA finally agreed to talk directly to North Korea. However they will not make any concessions to induce the North Koreans to stop their nuclear programme. They are ready to talk but not to negotiate. North Korea will refuse, of course.
- With the agreement of the White House, former US Ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson, democrat and now governor of New Mexico, met on January 9, 2003, two North Korean officials in Santa Fe to discuss the North Korean nuclear problem and its consequences. The diplomats told the governor that North Korea wanted to negotiate with the US, improve the relations between the two countries and, they added, that their country had no plan to build an atomic bomb.
- However, North Korea withdrawal, in January 2003, of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty seems to indicate that they want to become a nuclear power and that, even if the US accepts to negotiate with them, this will not stop their nuclear programmes. In 2003 the US, UK, Russia, France China, India and Pakistan have declared to have nuclear weapons. And others like Israel certainly have the bomb too.
- On January 11, 2003, the North Koreans said that they could resume long range missile testing and start reprocessing irradiated fuel to extract plutonium.
- On January 14, 2003, President Bush changed his politics and said that if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapon programme he would consider giving them the energy they need, and even sign diplomatic and security agreements. The same day China offered to host a meeting in Beijing between North Korea and the USA. The two countries did not accept straight away.
- On January 15, 2003, North Korea firmly rejected President Bush's offer of aid, energy assistance, security agreement and possible diplomatic recognition in exchange of nuclear disarmament.
- On January 16, 2003, South Korea said that they hoped that the North Korean nuclear weapon crisis would be solved by diplomatic means. However, they added that they were ready for a war with North Korea, if attacked.
- On January 18, 2003, the South Korean president elect Roh Moo Hyun revealed that high ranking American officials considered attacking North Korea last month before agreeing to look for a peaceful solution of the nuclear problem. Washington was quick to say that that they had no knowledge those talks took place. Later on Roh Moo-hyun said that he had been misunderstood.
- A Russian envoy, the deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, went to Pyongyang, North Korea capital, on January 18, 2003, to try to resolve the nuclear problem. He is proposing a security guarantee and the renewal of economic aid to North Korea in exchange for keeping the whole of Korea nuclear weapon free. The North Korean, however, do not want to internationalise the conflict that, in their opinion, must be resolved by direct contact between them and the USA. They want a non-aggression treaty with the USA in exchange for disarmament but the US Congress is known to oppose this.
- On January 30, 2003, the US Intelligence services said that they have enough satellite evidences to say that North Korea is moving its 8,000 used nuclear fuel rods out of storage to the reprocessing plant.
- On February 5, 2003, North Korea threatened the USA of a pre-emptive strike before the US has finished with Iraq. The crisis leads the North Koreans to believe that the USA will attack them after they have finished with Iraq; it is their conviction that it is in their interest to strike first rather that to wait for the Americans to be free after the Iraqi problem is solved.
- The North Koreans say that their nuclear programme is mainly for the purpose of producing the much-needed electricity.
- On January 6, 2003, it appears that North Koreans are becoming more and more worried that the USA will attack them when the war in Iraq is finished. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, living to his reputation as a hawk, said that North Korea has a terrorist regime. According to what we know the population goes hungry (food is rationed) and has little heating available in this cold winter (down to -21oC). The prospect of a war is seen as a gloom.
- In the first days of February 2003, starving North Korea is pleading for aid to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe but no country is ready to help.
- Now on February 12, 2003, North Korea is testing the missiles required to send an atomic bomb up to western USA. Alaska, Hawaii and California would be within its range of their Taepo Dong 2 missiles.
- On February 13, 2003, Japan raised the tension in East Asia by saying that they would use force first if they thought that North Korea was preparing a missile attack. The American way is gaining ground!!
- South Korea's new president, Roh Moo-hyun, was inaugurated on February 25, 2003. He warned of a "grave threat to world peace" from North Korea's military nuclear programme. North Korea launched a short-range missile in the Sea of Japan a few hours before his inauguration. Moreover on March 7, 2003, North Korea ordered ships out of an area of the Sea of Japan as they intend to test another missile there. The test took place on March 9.
- On March 3, 2003, four North Korean jet planes intercepted an American reconnaissance aircraft -known also as spy plane- over international water. Their intervention lasted about 20 minutes and the Korean jets came within 50 feet of the RC-135 US craft that aborted its mission and went back to its base in Japan. Others B-52 were sent to the Pacific area as the tension with North Korea increases after Bush said that he would use force if diplomacy failed to curb Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
- At the end of March 2003, North Korea is still reprocessing nuclear fuels, part of its nuclear programme. North Korea also increased it military budget.
- After a six-months crisis the North Koreans and the USA are going to hold talk on April 23, 2003, in Beijing with China as the mediator. This was agreed on April 16, 2003.
- On April 24, during the meeting in Beijing, North Korea admitted that they had atomic weapons and threatened to test them. The USA said that North Korea has one or two nuclear warheads already, and could produce about six more if it can retreat the 8,000 fuel rods for plutonium. The North Koreans believe that a war could soon start on the Korean peninsula due to the tension for which they blame the USA. South Korea and Japan expressed disbelief and dismay at the news that North Korea, a very poor country, has nuclear weapons and is ready to test them.
- On April 28, 2003, North Korea offered a new peace deal to the USA. North Korea would abandon its nuclear weapons programme, stop missiles export, and readmit foreign nuclear inspectors in exchange for an US pledge not to attack their country. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said that what North Korea asks in return is "considerable." What did they expect? A full surrender and an agreement for the US to invade their country? And, of course, on April 29 the US rejected the North Korean proposal, the White House saying that they "will not give reward for bad behaviour." Coming from a country that has all types of weapons of mass destruction, this is unbelievable. After all, North Korea proposed to give up its military nuclear programme in exchange for broad economic concessions and a guarantee that the USA will not attack them.
- On May 5, 2003, the Bush administration said that as it might not be able to stop North Korea developing nuclear weapons, it is limiting itself to prevent selling them to other countries. And on May 12, 2003, North Korea it was pulling out of a 1992 agreement with South Korea to keep the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons. This was the last legal obligation that kept North Korea developing nuclear weapons.
- At the G8 summit in Evian, France, at the beginning of June 2003, the leading industrial nations stepped up the pressure on North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapon programmes and to comply with the global drive against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
- On July 21, 2003, the US Intelligence had found that North Korea might have built secretly a second reprocessing plant, hidden inside a mountain, to produce weapon-grade plutonium.
- At the beginning of July North Korea said that all the 8,000 nuclear rods from its reactors had been reprocessed. This would be enough to make 6 to 8 atomic bombs, but the US intelligence does not believe this claim.
- On October 2, 2003, North Korea boasted that its nuclear arsenal is increasing with the plutonium extracted from the 8,000 fuel rods (perhaps enough for 6 bombs in addition to the one or two they had before). It is ready to start assembling new nuclear weapons. Nobody believe everything Pyongyang said as it could be a negotiating tactic before multinational talks start again in November. North Korea said that they will not sell their atomic bombs to any foreign country but they intend to produce more plutonium allowing them to assemble more bombs.
- On October 20, 2003, President Bush and the South Korean president, Roh Moo-Hyun, urged North Korea to accept a compromise to end the nuclear crisis. On October 24, North Korea's foreign ministry said that it was ready to consider President Bush's proposal of a written security assurance in return for dismantling his country's nuclear programme.
- On December 7, 2003, we were told that the USA, Japan and South Korea are working on a plan to reduce the tension over North Korea's military nuclear programme. If North Korea accepts it, a new meeting of the six nations directly interested would take place in Beijing.
- On December 9, 2003, North Korea said that it will not participate to the next talk on its military nuclear programme if America does not remove it from its list of terror-sponsoring nations, lift economic sanction and provide energy assistance. The USA rejected the proposal.
- On December 20, 2003, the World Food Programme would probably be forced to reduce its aid food to 3 million North Koreans because of lack of donations. On December 24, the US State Department said that the USA would send 60,000 metric tons of food to help avert famine in this country. For the whole year the USA will have given 100,000 tons.
- On December 25, 2003, North Korea said that the country overspent by 0.5% its military budget -15.4 % of the total national budget- to increase both "offensive and defensive" capabilities in front of the tensions with the USA. They want to keep and improve their nuclear deterrent forces.
- On December 27, 2003, North Korea confirmed that it is willing to participate in talks in Beijing with the USA and four other nations (China, Russion, Japan and South Korea) at the beginning of 2004 on ending its nuclear weapon programme.
- On January 2, 2004, we were told that the North Korean government had invited some American nuclear experts to visit its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon next week. It is the first visit by foreigner since North Korea expelled the IAEA inspectors 14 months ago. It is not clear what the experts will be allowed to see. The visit is organised by John Lewis a China expert from the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Dr Hecker, a former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1985 to 1997, is one of the guests. The US government did not object to this visit but insisted that the visitors do not represent the US government, and that they must not interfere with the efforts to reconvene international talks on dismantling the North Korean nuclear weapon programme. On their return the members of the five-men team said that they were shown everything they requested to see, but refused to give any details before reporting to the proper authorities in Washington DC.
- On January 28, 2004, North Korea agreed to sell missile technology to Nigeria. Nigeria said that they were not interested in nuclear technology or weapons of mass destruction.
- On February 10, 2004 we are being told that the World Food Programme has run out of grain and rice to feed 6 millions undernourished North Koreans. There is a sharp decline in donations as the USA and its allies increase the pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme. About 485.000 tonnes were requested, but only 140,000 were pledged as the USA reduced its contribution by 80%, and Japan cancelled its aid. Since the start of the operation in 1995, WFP has provided support to a quarter of the population of 23 millions.
- On February 25, 2004, during a meeting in Beijing of six countries (South and North Korea, China, Japan, USA), South Korea offered North Korea compensation -probably resumption of oil shipments and financial aid- if it scrapped down its nuclear weapons programme.
- On April 13, 2004, we were told that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bombs, previously revealed that he has seen three nuclear bombs in North Korea five years ago.
- On August 3, 2004, it was revealed that North Korea probably had missiles able to strike America's mainland with nuclear warheads. If this intercontinental missile, Taepodong-2, is operative then North Korea represents a real danger to the whole world by becoming a full member of the exclusive club of nuclear.
- British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell has challenged North Korea to answer accusations of widespread human rights abuses after arriving in the country on September 11, 2004, for three days of talks. He also urged North Korea to address fears over its nuclear programme and emerge from international isolation. Mr Rammell is the first British minister ever to visit North Korea.
- On September 12, 2004, the United States and South Korea played down suggestions that a massive explosion in North Korea last week was caused by a nuclear device. A cloud with a radius of up to 4km had been spotted in Yanggang province's Kimhyungjik County, close to the Chinese border. The area is mountainous and thinly populated, and home to an underground military base known to contain medium-range missiles. On September 13 a British diplomat, the ambassador, David Slinn, was allowed to visit the site of the explosion. Pyongyang said the explosion was in fact the demolition of a mountain as part of a huge hydroelectric project.
- On October 26, 2004, it looked like the trip by Colin Powell aiming to create a united front against North Korea is failing. China and South Korea suggested more flexibility in pressing for an end to the North Korea's nuclear programs. The US disagreed, of course.
- On June 3, 2005, it looks more and more probable that North Korea will test a nuclear bomb. Japan and South Korea are afraid -with reason- that the US will not defend them. If only for this reason they will want their own nuclear devices, if North Korea test one.
- On June 19, 2005, North Korea announced that they are ready to resume their participation in the six countries conference 9 China, Japan, USA, Russia, South and North Korea) that aims to convince their country to renounce nuclear weapons. It is not clear if this is a serious suggestion or a mean to gain time.
- On June 23, 2005, the United States promised impoverished North Korea 50,000 tonnes of food aid. It will be the third year in a row the US has donated aid, to be distributed through the UN World Food Programme.
- North Korea has agreed, in principle, to give up all its nuclear activities and rejoin the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. In return, the US stated it had no intention of attacking the North. Aid and electricity are also part of the deal. The agreement came on September 18, 2005, during a fourth round of six-nation talks in Beijing, aimed at ending a three-year standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

- On July 5, 2006, World powers have condemned North Korea for test-firing a series of missiles, including one thought capable of reaching the US. The seven missiles included a long-range Taepodong-2, which the US said failed shortly after take-off. The US called the tests "provocative", Japan announced a range of sanctions, and South Korea, Australia and Russia also expressed concern. The UN Security Council is due to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis. The closed session was requested by Japan, which plans to co-ordinate its response to the missile tests with the US and other countries.

- North Korea has confirmed on July 6, 2006, that it has test-fired a series of missiles and said it would continue launching them. The North launched seven missiles, one of which was a failed test of a long-range Taepodong-2, believed to be capable of hitting Alaska. The UN Security Council is due to reconvene later to discuss a draft resolution in response to the launches.

- Fresh diplomatic efforts were under way on July 11, 2006, to end the increasingly bitter row between international allies over what do about North Korea's missile tests. The senior US envoy on North Korea's nuclear issue is on an unscheduled return visit to Beijing amid China's opposition to the threat of sanctions. A top Chinese team is in North Korea, expressing concern about the situation. But there are still splits at the UN on Japan's draft resolution, backed by the US, France and UK, condemning N Korea.

- North Korea said on October 3, 2006, it will conduct a nuclear test "in the future". The move aim to "bolster" the country's self-defence in the face of US military hostility. The news has been condemned by the US, Japan, South Korea and Russia - all members of the six-nation talks. North Korea gave no time frame for a test, but correspondents say a successful nuclear trial would signal the end of international negotiations on the North's nuclear ambitions, and threaten a dangerous arms race in East Asia.

- China appealed for calm on Wednesday October 4, 2006, following North Korea's announcement that it planned to test a nuclear bomb. North Korea announced the test on state TV, saying it would boost security in the face of US hostility. The US said such an action would be "provocative", while Japan said it would be "unacceptable".

- On October 7, 2006, South Korean troops fired warning shots at soldiers from the North amid rising tension over North Korean plans to test a nuclear weapon. About 40 shots were fired when soldiers crossed into the demilitarised zone.

- North Korea said on Sunday October 8, 2006, it has carried out its first test of a nuclear weapon. The underground test was a success and had not resulted in any leak of radiation. The US said intelligence had detected a seismic event at a suspected test site and Russia said it was "100% certain" a nuclear test had occurred. The US said the reported test was a "provocative act", while China denounced it as "brazen". Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the claimed test "unpardonable" and said the region was "entering a new, dangerous nuclear age". North Korea's claimed test does not necessarily mean it has a fully-fledged nuclear bomb or warhead that it can deliver to a target.

- China called for "appropriate" UN action over North Korea's claim to have carried out a nuclear test on Monday October 9, 2006. Beijing -traditionally Pyongyang's closest ally- said it had not ruled out UN sanctions but that military action was "unimaginable". The UN Security Council is considering a draft resolution that proposes strict financial and trade sanctions. The US ambassador to the UN said while the US would not rule out using force, it was seeking a diplomatic solution. The South Korean Prime Minister, Han Myung-sook, said Seoul would not support a resolution including a threat of military force.

- North Korea's second in command leader threatened more nuclear tests if the US maintains its "hostile" policy. Kim Yong-nam said the decision depended on how the US treated North Korea. North Korea's foreign ministry said the country would consider any increase in US pressure to be an "act of war". France's defence minister said North Korea's claimed nuclear test, on Monday, may have failed or was a fake.

- On Thursday October 12, 2006, the UN Security Council has ended talks on a new draft of a US resolution pushing for sanctions against North Korea over its claimed nuclear test. The US wants a vote on the draft by Friday but China and Russia opposed this. The draft targets the North's missile and nuclear programmes under the UN's Chapter Seven - which makes sanctions mandatory and may allow using force. China and Russia are worried about how sanctions may be enforced. North Korea's underground test reportedly took place at 1036 (0136 GMT) on Monday in Gilju in northeast Hamgyong province. Russia is the only country to have confirmed that it was a nuclear explosion, amid speculation the test was not wholly successful. On Wednesday, Japan imposed its own tough new sanctions on North Korea, including banning all imports from the country. The sanctions are expected to be approved by the Japanese cabinet on Friday. On Thursday, South Korea said it had not detected any abnormal radioactivity levels in its country after the alleged North Korea nuclear test.

- On October 14, 2006, preliminary results of scientific tests appear to confirm that North Korea did carry out a nuclear test last Monday. More tests were needed to reach a conclusion. A vote on sanctions is expected later in the day at the UN Security Council but Russia and China are still querying the US-drafted resolution. Ban Ki-moon who will be the new UN secretary-general, called for a "clear and strong" resolution to be adopted.

- On October 14, 2006, North Korea denounced the UN Security Council resolution, which imposes weapons and financial sanctions over its claimed nuclear test. North Korea's UN ambassador said the Council had behaved like "gangsters" and any further US pressure would be seen as "a declaration of war". The resolution was passed unanimously but China has expressed reservations.

- North Korea said on October 17, 2006, UN sanctions imposed after its nuclear bomb test are a declaration of war. Pyongyang also warned of "merciless" blows against any country infringing on its sovereignty. There are reports of new activity at last week's test site, and South Korea and Japan said they have intelligence of a possible second test. The US says air samples have confirmed the 9 October blast was nuclear. China has appealed to Pyongyang not to escalate tensions, urging its key ally to resolve the issue "through dialogue and consultation".

- Japan and the US have pledged to work together to implement UN sanctions on North Korea, the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on October 18, 2006. She was speaking in Tokyo on the first leg of an Asian tour to rally support for enforcing the sanctions. Ms Rice also reaffirmed the US's commitment to defend Japan if necessary in the light of North Korea's nuclear weapons test last week.

- A Chinese envoy has met North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il as tensions mount over the North's nuclear test 0n October 19, 2006. The envoy was carrying a message from China's President Hu Jintao calling for restraint. The meeting came as a North Korean official hinted at another test. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned of "more grave consequences" if a second test is carried out. China's Foreign Ministry warned on Thursday against "wilfully" expanding UN sanctions against North Korea.

- On October 20, 2006, Japan said it had unconfirmed information that North Korea is not planning a second nuclear test. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was believed to have told a Chinese envoy no more tests were planned. This confirms an earlier report, which also said Mr Kim, told the Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan that no more tests were planned. The first test on 9 October sparked world outrage and led to UN sanctions.

- On Saturday October 21, 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused North Korea of wanting to escalate international tensions over its nuclear weapons programme. She said she doubted claims that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had agreed not to carry out a second nuclear test, or that he regretted the first. Her comments follow media reports that Mr Kim made the pledge to Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan when he visited Pyongyang.

- Russian President Vladimir Putin said on October 25, 2006, that North Korea should not be driven into a corner if the world wants to rein in its nuclear weapons programme adding that some negotiators "failed to find the right tone" with the country.

- On February 13, 2007, North Korea has agreed to take the first steps towards nuclear disarmament, as part of a deal reached during six-nation talks in Beijing. Pyongyang has promised to shut down its main nuclear reactor in return for fuel aid.

- The US said on April 7, 2007, it has found a way to return North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank, possibly ending a row that has stalled progress on a nuclear deal. Diplomats are concerned the row means North Korea will miss an imminent deadline to close a key nuclear plant. Under the 13 February agreement, North Korea agreed to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear plant within 60 days in return for energy aide and other incentives from its dialogue partners -the US, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. But progress on implementing the landmark deal has been delayed because of the financial dispute.

- UN inspectors have verified the shutdown of North Korea's main nuclear reactor, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency confirme on July 16, 2007. The move is part of an deal agreed in February, in which Pyongyang pledged to disarm in exchange for fuel aid.

- Leaders from North and South Korea are to hold their second-ever summit, officials have announced. President Roh Moo-hyun will meet North Korea's Kim Jong-il in the North's capital, Pyongyang, from 28-30 August. The summit comes amid an improvement in North Korea's ties with the outside world, and has been warmly welcomed by the international community.

- On September 1, 2007, envoys from the US and North Korea expressed optimism after a first day of talks on normalising relations. US negotiator Christopher Hill said the two sides had reached a degree of understanding on the way forward. His North Korean counterpart said he expected a fruitful outcome. They follow a deal promising aid and diplomatic benefits if North Korea disables its nuclear programme. It has already shut down a plutonium reactor.

- One of the most eminent US cultural institutions, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, performed a concert in North Korea on February 25, 2008. The concert included music by two US composers and a Korean folk song, and was broadcast live on local television.

- North Korea handed over a long-awaited account of its nuclear programme to China on Thursday June 26, 2008. The declaration, which is six months overdue, is expected to detail North Korea's plutonium production efforts. But analysts say it is not expected to go into detail about the country's nuclear arsenal or its alleged uranium enrichment programme. US President George W Bush cautiously welcomed the move but said the US still had "serious concerns" about Pyongyang.

- US President George W Bush said on July 5, 2008, he remains concerned about North Korea's alleged enrichment of uranium and other security issues. But, speaking after talks with Japanese PM Yasuo Fukuda ahead of Monday's G8 summit in Japan, he acknowledged North Korea had addressed some concerns. North Korea handed over a long-delayed list of its nuclear activities to Washington on 26 June, but it is not thought to have given details of uranium enrichment, which the North denies.

- On July 12, 2008, negotiators from six-nation talks in China have agreed steps to verify North Korea's nuclear disarmament. Officials from China, the US, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas agreed Pyongyang would finish disabling its main nuclear facility by October. The other nations will complete deliveries of fuel and economic aid ahead of visits by verification teams. The deal comes after South Korea's leader proposed reviving direct talks with the North in a major policy shift.

- North Korea is close to completing a second launch site for long-range missiles we were told on September 11, 2008. The site is 30 miles from the Chinese border.

- North Korea welcomed a US decision to remove it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. The North would now resume disabling its nuclear facilities and allow international monitors access. The US removed the North after saying there was an agreement to provide full access to the controversial programme. But Japan called the move "extremely regrettable". It wants information on Japanese citizens the North abducted.

- North Korea went ahead with a controversial rocket launch on April 5, 2009. State media said a satellite had been put into orbit and was transmitting data and revolutionary songs. But there has been no independent confirmation so far. The US, Japan and South Korea suspect the launch was a cover for a long-range missile test.

- On April 14, 2009, North Korea vowed to walk out on international talks to end its nuclear programme, and said it would restore its disabled nuclear reactor. The unusually strong statement follows criticism by the UN Security Council of its recent rocket launch, which critics say was a long-range missile test. North Korea says its launch was part of a peaceful space programme, designed to put a satellite into orbit. China and Russia have appealed for the North to return to negotiations. China, Pyongyang's closest ally, called for "calm and restraint" from all sides.

- On Monday May 25, 2009, North Korea tested a second nuclear bomb. The underground explosion had a power of about 20 kilotons of TNT 9the same power than the Hiroshima bomb).

- North Korea fired two short-range missiles off an east-coast base, on Tuesday May 26, 2009, hours after the UN Security Council unanimously condemned its nuclear test. The move came as UN diplomats began work on a resolution to punish North Korea for its underground nuclear test.

- On May 27, 2009, North Korea says it has abandoned the truce that ended the Korean War, amid rising tension in the region. It blamed its decision on South Korea joining a US-led initiative to search ships for nuclear weapons. It said the South's actions were a "declaration of war", and pledged to attack if its ships were stopped. Steam has been seen coming from a plant at the North's main nuclear facility, a sign that it has made good on its threat to restart efforts to make weapons-grade plutonium.

- North Korea has test-fired a series of missiles on July 4, 2009, in an apparent act of defiance on 4 July, American Independence Day. At least seven Scud-type ballistic missiles were fired, with a range of about 500km. South Korea and Japan called the latest tests, which follow several others in recent weeks, an "act of provocation". North Korea is banned from all ballistic missile-related activities under UN sanctions imposed after a second underground nuclear test in May.

- On Saturday July 25, 2009, Human rights groups in South Korea say North Korea has stepped up executions of Christians, some of them in public. The communist country, the world's most closed society, views religion as a major threat. Only the founder of the country, Kim Il-sung, and his son, Kim Jong-il, may be worshipped, in mass public displays of fervour. Despite the persecutions, it is thought up to 30,000 North Koreans may practise Christianity secretly in their homes. A report by a number of South Korean groups highlights one particular case of a woman allegedly executed in public last month, in a northern town close to the Chinese border.

- On July 27, 2009, North Korea has again insisted it will not return to six-party talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programme. But it was still open to "a specific and reserved form of dialogue. They did not elaborate on what form any new dialogue might take, but Pyongyang has previously said it is open to direct talks with the US. The US has said it will only hold talks within the six-party format.

- On July 29, 2009, a South Korean fishing boat has been towed away by a North Korean patrol boat off the peninsula's east coast. The ship had strayed north of the maritime border due to a problem with its navigation system. South Korea has asked for the boat and the crew, who were fishing for squid, to be returned as soon as possible.

- North Korea said on August 1, 2009, it seized a South Korean fishing boat on Thursday because it "illegally intruded" deep into its territorial waters. South Korea says the boat drifted 11km too far north because of a navigational error. It called for the quick release of the four-man crew.

- Former US President Bill Clinton met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during an unannounced visit to the country on August 4, 2009. Mr Clinton is in Pyongyang to discuss the fate of jailed US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. He is the highest-profile American to visit since his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, in 2000. Mr Clinton may also try to ease the deadlock over the North's nuclear ambitions.

- On August 5, 2009, former US President Bill Clinton left North Korea with two US reporters whose release he has helped to secure. They were flying to Los Angeles where the journalists would be reunited with their families. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il issued a special pardon to the journalists after meeting Mr Clinton on Tuesday. Laura Ling and Euna Lee had been found guilty of entering illegally in March. Mr Clinton offered no apology for the reporters' conduct.
- On August 13, 2009, North Korea has freed a South Korean worker detained for allegedly insulting the North's communist leadership. The engineer, Yoo Seong-jin, was handed over to officials of his company, Hyundai Asan, and has since crossed back into South Korea. Mr Yoo was arrested in March at a joint industrial zone near the border.

- The US said on September 5, 2009 that it is "very concerned" at reports that North Korea has entered the final phase of uranium enrichment. The White House said it would "strongly implement" tougher sanctions passed by the United Nations after a nuclear test conducted by Pyongyang in May. The US said it wanted a denuclearised Korean peninsula. Uranium enrichment would give Pyongyang a second way to make a nuclear bomb. The North says it is also continuing to weaponise plutonium.

- North Korea has completed the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods to extract weapons-grade plutonium we were told on November 3, 2009. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) added that "noticeable successes" had been made in turning the extracted material into weapons-grade plutonium.

- North Korea said on December 11, 2009, that it will continue to co-operate with the US on ending its nuclear programme and agrees that stalled talks need to resume. The country's foreign ministry said Pyongyang would work with the US to "narrow remaining differences".

- On December 13, 2009, Thailand has seized a cargo plane refuelling in Bangkok airport, which it says was carrying weapons from North Korea to an unknown destination. The five crew members were also detained. Rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and other weapons were found aboard, military investigators said.

- On January 1, 2010, North Korea has issued a New Year message calling for an end to hostile relations with the US. Pyongyang also wanted "a lasting peace system on the Korean Peninsula". In response, a US State Department official said North Korea should show its good faith

- North and South Korea have exchanged fire close to their disputed maritime border on January 27, 2010. North Korea twice fired artillery shells into the sea off the South's western coast. South Korean coastal bases responded to the first volley with warning shots, but no injuries were reported.

- On January 29, 2010, North Korea fired artillery shells near its disputed maritime border with South Korea for a third successive day. Pyongyang says the firing is part of an annual military drill but Seoul says it is "provocative" and on Wednesday fired retaliatory warning shots.

- US activist Robert Park has been freed from detention in North Korea on February 6, 2010. Mr Park, a religious activist, crossed into North Korea from China by walking over a frozen river on 25 December.
- On April 18, 2010, North Korea denied sinking a South Korean warship near their disputed maritime border last month in which more than 40 sailors were killed. South Korean media has pinned the blame on the North, but official statements have been more circumspect. There has been speculation in the South that the naval vessel was hit by a North Korean torpedo but the ship could have struck an old mine left over from the 1950-1953 Korean War.

- A North Korean submarine's torpedo sank a South Korean navy ship on 26 March causing the deaths of 46 sailors, an international told us on May 20, 2010. Investigators said they had discovered part of the torpedo on the sea floor and it carried lettering that matched a North Korean design. Pyongyang rejected the claim as a "fabrication" and threatened war if sanctions were imposed. China has urged both countries to show restraint.

- China has held back from censuring North Korea at a summit in South Korea dominated by the issue of a sunken warship. South Korea has accused North Korea of torpedoing the Cheonan, which sank on 26 March with the loss of 46 lives. China did not mention North Korea by name or show support for possible UN sanctions against Pyongyang.

- President Barack Obama has vowed a US response after North Korea's alleged cyber-attack on Sony Pictures. The US leader also said the studio "made a mistake" in refusing to release a controversial satire depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. On Friday December 19, 2014, US authorities linked North Korea to the hack, which saw sensitive studio information publicly released. Sony withdrew the film The Interview following continued threats.

- The North Koreans did it again. The rest of the world is focused on other dangerous places and issues: an unfolding civil war in the Islamic world; spreading jihadi terrorism; refugees streaming by the millions out of war-torn Syria; China’s stock market crashing; and oil prices plummeting. Then, on cue, Kim Jong Un—just as his father, Kim Jong Il, used to—does something that reminds us all: Oh, damn, that place again! North Korea conducted its fourth test of a nuclear weapon on January 6, 2016. Pyongyang immediately announced that the bomb it detonated was a two-stage thermonuclear device, otherwise known as a hydrogen bomb. Is it true or not, we do not know yet.

North Korea boasted Friday September 9, 2016, that is has “successfully” carried out a nuclear warhead explosion test, hours after South Korea reported an earthquake near its neighbour’s northeastern nuclear site. The North Korean regime has been striving to develop military nuclear capabilities and it appears Pyongyang has made a huge leap forward, despite several sets of U.N. sanctions imposed on the country following previous attempts. The blast coincided with the North’s national holiday, an annual occasion that Pyongyang uses to ramp up its shows of military might.

10.1.4 Syria
At the beginning of November 2002 some Americans are wondering if, after all, Syria is not a bigger threat to the US than Iraq. It is well known that Syria is supporting the Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese group that is responsible for the death of 241 US Marines in Beirut in 1983. However, lately, Syria has assisted the US in its fight against terror. If this was the case, will the USA attack Syria instead of Iraq, or perhaps it will attack both countries. One never knows, with such an administration, everything is possible!

- On March 27, 2003, Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, became the first Arab leader, after Saddam Hussein, to express the hope that the US and British forces invading Iraq would be defeated. He added, "they might be able to occupy Iraq, as the USA is a bigger country that Iraq, but they will not succeed in controlling it".
- At the same time Syria has been accused by the USA to go on supplying arms to Iraq. They denied it, of course. Sheikh Ahmad Kiftaro, the Grand mufti of Syria, called on all the Muslims to resist the US and British invasion, and sacrifice their life as martyrs, if necessary. According to him, it is the duty of all Muslims to resist the US and British forces.
- On April 12, 2003, it looks more and more probable that Syria could be invaded next by the crazy Americans warmongers. Washington accuses it to harbour Iraqi leaders who fled their land. They deny it but, as with Iraq and the supposed weapons of mass destruction, Washington believes that they know better. The question is, will Doggy Blair follow again in bush's footsteps?
- On April 14, 2003, Bush vetoed plans to go to war with Syria. Finally he is realising that "enough is enough" even for a super power like the USA.
- All the same Syria has been reminded by the USA and Britain not to harbour any Iraqi leader or their weapons of mass destruction -if any- and to stop helping any terrorist organisations such as the Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
- Colin Powell went to Damascus, Syria, on May 4, 2003, to try to persuade its president, Bashar al-Assad, to collaborate with the US, to participate in the fight against terrorism, and to refrain to give asylum to ex-Iraqi leaders wanted by the USA. Colin Powell asked Syria to change its policy towards Israel and to close its relationship and support of militant Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Hizbullah. Later on he is going to Lebanon with the same aim.
- On July 21. 2003, President Bush accused again Syria of hiding terrorists and told them of the possible consequences.
- On October 15, 2003, Syria denied that terrorists had infiltrated Iraq from Syria. The US authorities say that quite a few "suspects" have crossing the border from Syria tried to infiltrate in Iraq.
- On February 18, 2004, the British embassy in Damascus, Syria, has been closed for a week to the public for security reasons. At the same time the British government advised its citizens living or planning to visit Syria to be prudent and review their personal security.
- On April 27, 2004, many explosions shook the capital of Syria, Damascus. Fighting broke out between Syrian security police and gunmen following explosions close to the Canadian and Iranian embassies and the residence of the British ambassador. Fifteen people are said to have been wounded, and one or two are dead. An unused UN building was also destroyed. It is not known who was responsible but some authorities blamed al-Qaida or some Kurds.
- On May 11, 2004, President Bush imposed economic sanctions on Syria for suspected supporting terrorism and failing to stop anti-US guerrillas from entering Iraq.
- On July 11. 2004, Syria and Iraq agreed to set up a special security force to prevent infiltration of foreign fighters across their shared border. Syria has always denied it allows foreign Islamic militants to enter Iraq from its territories to attack US-led coalition forces there. The infiltration issue has damaged the relations between Damascus and Washington.
- At the end of September 2004, the United States believes Syria is now willing to cooperate with Iraqi authorities and the US-led coalition on patrolling the Syria-Iraq border.
- On December 28, 2004, the USA accused Syria of helping insurgents in Iraq by giving them access to safe haven. The Syrian government rejected the accusations.
- Syria has a destabilizing influence on Iraq and has not done enough to stop foreign fighters crossing its border, the top US commander in the Middle East, Army General John Abizaid, said Tuesday March 1, 2005. He said Syrians were providing safe haven for some Iraqi insurgents, but it was hard to say whether Syria's government was involved.
- On May 15, 2005, we were told that Syria launched a military build up on its Iraq border after the American Army began a wide-ranging military operation near the Syrian border. Witnesses heard canon, warplane, and bombing sounds coming from Al Kaim Township and its surroundings. Local inhabitants reported that Syrian soldiers and armoured vehicles went to the border region. The tension in the region is quite high, and people are anxious due to heavy American bombardment in the Al Kaim region and Husayba Town.
- Syrian authorities made a series of arrests on May 18, 2005, ahead of a planned meeting of the ruling Baath party, at which reforms will be announced. Most of those detained are thought to be Islamists with suspected ties to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which has been banned in Syria since 1980.
- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has criticised Syrian support for the Iraqi insurgency, saying the Damascus government is out of step with the rest of the region.
- A Syrian security officer has died in a shootout with an armed group that includes former bodyguards of Iraq's ex-leader Saddam Hussein on July 3, 2005. The clash erupted early in the morning on Mount Qassioun, which overlooks Damascus. Two members of the group have been arrested in the fighting, in which four policemen were also hurt. Two Syrian security personnel and a militant were also killed in a gunfight along the Lebanese border.
- Syria challenged the US on Wednesday September 14, 2005, that said Damascus failed to control the flow of fighters into Iraq, saying that Washington seeks to make Damascus a "scapegoat" for its failures in Iraq. On Tuesday, the U.S. President George W. Bush warned Syria that it is facing isolation due to its actions in Lebanon and Iraq. Syria asked Washington to provide evidence of its claims and rejected accusations of lax border control.
- The United States publicly criticized Syria on September 23, 2005, for not doing enough to stop insurgents from entering Iraq and, privately, it also pointed a finger at nations such as Saudi Arabia for not publicly supporting Iraq's government.
- On October 18, 2005, Syria denied reports that it is trying to negotiate a deal with the United States to end its international isolation. The idea is that Syria would agree to a number of American demands, including:
· Cutting off alleged support for Iraqi insurgents
· Agreeing to send for trial anyone implicated in the Hariri assassination.
- In return, the US would relax the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad. A Syrian government official said it was "out of the question" that Syria would strike any deals, though he said that Syria did hope for what he described as an "objective dialogue" with the United States.
- A UN inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said on October 21, 2005, many leads point to the direct involvement of Syrian officials. Lebanese collusion in Mr Hariri's death last February has also been found. Both Syria and Lebanon have denied the allegations of official involvement.
- On October 25, 2005, US President George Bush has said using force against Syria would be a "last resort" in the dispute over its alleged role in the death of Rafik Hariri. A UN interim report on the killing of the former Lebanese prime minister implicated Syria and Lebanon -a charge both countries deny. The UN Security Council is to discuss the report on Tuesday. The report says the likely motive for Hariri's assassination was political -the former prime minister was increasingly at odds with pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud at a time when Syria was the main power in Lebanon. International pressure after his death led to Syria withdrawing its forces from the country.
- Moscow said on October 25, 2005, it would block any UN effort to impose sanctions on Damascus over its alleged role in the assassination of former Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri. Syria has rejected a UN report that accuses it of plotting Hariri's death and blocking an investigation into it. Its ambassador to the UN said the team led by German investigator Detlev Mehlis was guilty of bias and some countries were fanning "the flames of hatred against Syria".
- On October 31, 2005, the UN Security Council has unanimously endorsed calls for Syria to co-operate fully with an inquiry into the death of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri. However the resolution's sponsors - the US, France and the UK - dropped a specific threat of sanctions at the last minute in order to win support. Russia and China had expressed deep concern that the sanctions against Syria proposed in an earlier draft of the resolution were too harsh, and the threat was removed in a subsequent version.
- Syria said 0n November 7, 2005, it is considering a formal request from the UN to question six Syrian officials in connection with the killing of Rafiq Hariri. The request was made on Sunday by Detlev Mehlis, head of the UN inquiry into the death of the former Lebanese PM. Last week the UN Security Council adopted a resolution demanding Syria co-operate fully with the inquiry. Mr Mehlis' interim report implicated key Syrian officials in the killing. The huge bomb that targeted Hariri's car killed more than 20 people.
- On November 22, 2005, the US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, accused Syria of obstructing the inquiry in the murder of a former Lebanese Prime Minister. He asked Syria to authorise the UN prosecutor, Detlev Mehlis, to question six Syrian suspects in Lebanon. Syria objected to send the six men to Lebanon and suggested other venues.
- Syria agreed on November 25, 2005, to let 5 or 6 officials to be interrogated by a UN prosecutor, not in Lebanon, as required, but in Vienna. They are on suspicion to be involved in the murder of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri.

-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on August 31, 2006, he got a pledge from Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to increase border security with Lebanon and take steps to stop the flow of arms. He said Mr Assad had given his full support to the UN resolution that ended the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

-Local security forces have foiled a bomb attack on the US embassy in Damascus on September 12, 2006. Attackers tried to drive two cars at the embassy compound but guards killed three men and a fourth was captured. One car bomb went off but a second failed. A member of Syria's security forces was also killed but there are no reports of US casualties.

- Diplomatic relations between Syria and Iraq -severed nearly a quarter-century ago- are to be restored this week during the visit of Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, the government spokesman said Monday November20, 2006. Moallem arrived Sunday in Iraq in the first such high-level visit by a Syrian official since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.

- A senior Iraqi official, Ali al-Dabbagh, said on February 4, 2007, half of all insurgent attacks in Baghdad are carried out by militants from Syria.

- The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, held talks with Syrian leaders in Damascus on Wednesday March 14, 2007. Solana met the foreign minister, the vice president and later spent one hour with President Bashar al-Assad. It was their first meeting since the killing of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri two years ago, which prompted the EU to suspend contacts with Syria. Damascus has denied allegations that its officials were behind the bombing.

- The US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on April 4, 2007, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has assured her in talks that he is ready to resume peace talks with Israel. She gave Mr Assad a similar message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. She also voiced concerns over Syria's alleged connections to Hamas and stressed Damascus' role in peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel. Her visit angered President Bush, who said it undermined US foreign policy.

- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice broke more than two years' worth of diplomatic ice with Syria on Thursday May 3, 2007, holding talks here with a top Syrian official in what amounts to a major diplomatic course change by the Bush administration. Rice said afterward that the meeting, held on the sidelines of an international conference on Iraq, focused on US demands that Syria close its border with Iraq to stem a flow of foreign fighters and arms that's helping fuel Iraq's sectarian violence. Even on those limited terms, the half-hour meeting between Rice and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem marked a major shift for the Bush administration, which has repeatedly disparaged the need for such talks.

- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has overwhelmingly won another seven-year term of office, in a ballot in which he was the only candidate. The interior ministry said he won the backing of more than 97% of Syria's 12 million voters in Sunday May 27, 2007,'s referendum.

- Iraq should set a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, Syria said Monday August 20, 2007, at the start of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's first official visit to Damascus. During talks with al-Maliki, who is looking for help in quelling violence, Syrian Prime Minister Naji Ottri accused US coalition forces of being primarily responsible for the security deterioration in Iraq, and said their withdrawal was the key to national reconciliation.

- Arab states including Syria -a bitter opponent of Israel- will be asked to a Middle East peace meeting in November, the US secretary of state said on September 24, 2007. Condoleezza Rice described the Arab nations as "natural invitees" but said they would have to renounce violence.

- A Syrian cleric suspected of recruiting foreign militants to fight in Iraq has been shot dead in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on September 29, 2007. Sheikh Mahmoud Abu al-Qaqaa was shot several times by a gunman as he left the Imam Mosque after Friday prayers. The gunman tried to flee the scene of the shooting, but was chased by a crowd and later arrested.

- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad brushed aside Saturday September 29, 2007, a US Senate plan to split Iraq along ethnic and religious lines, instead pledging support for Baghdad's "sovereignty". He also reaffirmed "Syria's attachment to the security and independence of Iraq and its support for the sovereignty and unity of the country".
Satellite images released on October 25, 2007, of the presumed site of an Israeli air raid on Syria last month suggest that a large building has been completely removed.

- On December 21, 2007, US President George W Bush said he has long since lost patience with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, and has ruled out opening a dialogue with him. The US and Syria have each accused the other of meddling in Lebanon, where repeated attempts to find a new president have failed. Mr Bush also accused Mr Assad of supporting militant groups.

- Prominent Syrian dissident and former MP Riad Seif has been arrested and charged with harming the image of Syria on January 29, 2008. He was detained for attending a meeting of pro-democratic reformers, they say. It brings to 11 the number opposition activists arrested since the meeting December.

- The Arab League's annual summit opened in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 29, 2008, but key leaders are staying away amid signs of a growing regional rift. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are sending only low-level delegations to the two-day gathering. They blame Syria for the ongoing political crisis in Lebanon, whose government is staying away completely. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem accused the US of trying to divide Arabs by urging allies to stay away.

- The United States accused North Korea on April 24, 2008, of helping Syria build a nuclear reactor that "was not intended for peaceful purposes". The site, said to be like one in North Korea, was bombed by Israel in 2007. Syria must "come clean" about its secret nuclear programme, the White House said in a statement after CIA officials briefed members of Congress. Syria has repeated denials that it has any nuclear weapons programme, or any such agreement with North Korea.

- The Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, began a five-day state visit to India on June 18, 2008. The visit -the first by a Syrian president in three decades- is expected to focus on promoting co-operation in trade and energy. Mr Assad will hold talks with the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. India, which is looking for new sources of energy, has been reaching out to countries like Syria and Iran despite its close relations with the US.

- UN nuclear inspectors arrived in Syria on June 22, 2008 to investigate claims that it was building a nuclear reactor. The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) four person team will spend three days examining the al-Kibar site in the desert in northern Syria. The site was bombed by Israeli jets in September 2007. The ruins were bulldozed after the attack.

- The head of a UN team investigating allegations that Syria has been working on a secret nuclear weapons programme said on June 26, 2008, their work is off to a good start. Inspectors have taken samples at the al-Kibar site in the Syrian desert. The area was bombed by Israeli warplanes last year after Israel and the United States accused the Syrians of building a nuclear reactor there.

- Israeli and Syrian negotiators are taking part in a third round of indirect peace talks in Turkey on July 1, 2008. There have been no face-to-face talks yet -the delegations sit in separate hotels while Turkish mediators shuttle back and forth with messages. Syria and Israel said in May they had resumed talks after an eight-year gap.

- Clashes between guards and prisoners on July 5, 2008, at a jail in Syria resulted in at least 25 people were killed after military police fired live bullets at Islamist inmates. The Syrian authorities have so far not commented on the situation. Prisoners said the clashes were sparked by raids in which guards beat inmates. One inmate believes the death toll was higher. The prisoners are reportedly holding hostages.
- On July 24, 2008, Syria has received the bodies of 114 Arab fighters handed over by Israel as part of last week's exchange with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Their coffins were driven on flatbed lorries over a crossing point between Lebanon and Syria and were later paraded through Damascus. Most were Syrian nationals or Palestinian refugees living in Syria.

- A senior military official close to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been assassinated. The official, identified as Brig Gen Mohammed Suleiman, was shot dead on Friday August 1, 2008, at a beach resort near the port city of Tartus. Damascus has so far refused to comment on the alleged shooting.

- On September 5, 2008, Syria sent a list of proposals to Israel aimed at laying the groundwork for direct peace talks between the two foes, President Bashar al-Assad says.

- At least 17 people have been killed by a car bomb on the outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus on September 27, 2008.

- The head of Syria's nuclear programme said on October 4, 2008, that the country's military sites will remain off-limits to international nuclear inspectors. Damascus said it would co-operate with an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inquiry only if it did not threaten its national security. The watchdog is investigating claims of a secret Syrian nuclear programme.

- Syria protested angrily to both the US and Iraq after what it said was a US helicopter raid inside its territory that killed eight civilians on October 26, 2008. Syria summoned US and Iraqi envoys to condemn the "aggressive act". Iraq said the area targeted was used by militants to launch cross-border attacks in Iraq. The US has neither confirmed nor denied the incident. It has previously accused Syria of allowing militants into Iraq. Syria said the US helicopters attacked a farm in the Abu Kamal border area.

- U.S. commandos crossing into Syria in an unprecedented raid killed a senior Al Qaeda associate - Abu Ghadiyah- accused of funnelling fighters, weapons and cash to the insurgency in Iraq according to the US.

- On October 31, 2008, Syria decided to cut off diplomatic ties with Iraq and suspend the work of the joint security committee as to draw down the number of Syrian troops deployed on common borders. The decision came following the US raid on Abu Kamal region near Iraqi borders. However, the Iraqi government denied reports about cutting off relations with Syria hoping it would not reach that point.

- On November 7, 2008, Syrian state TV has shown what it says are confessions by 11 militants behind the car bomb attack in Damascus in September which left 17 people dead. Among the 10 men and one woman shown was Abdul Baqi al-Hussein, described as being responsible for security for Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni Islamist group. Fatah al-Islam fought the Lebanese army in a refugee camp in Tripoli last year.

- On February 17, 2009, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has urged the US to engage in talks with Damascus and restore full diplomatic ties. He told the signs coming from the Obama administration had been "positive". But he said there had not yet been a definite change of policy from the US.

- A senior US envoy involved in the first high-level contact between the US and Syria since 2005 said on March 8, 2009, that the talks were "very constructive". Jeffrey Feltman met officials including Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in Damascus. Speaking after the talks, he said the US looked forward to progress on bilateral ties and regional issues.

- On May 1, 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has issued a strong warning to Syria over the alleged transfer of sophisticated weapons to Lebanon. Two weeks ago, Israel accused Syria of supplying long-range Scud missiles to Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla movement and political party. No evidence has been offered for the allegations by the Israel or the US. Damascus and Beirut deny this, saying Israel is trying to set the stage for military "aggression".

- On May 3, 2010, Barack Obama has renewed economic sanctions against Syria for another year. He cited what the White House called Syria's "extraordinary threat" to US security and foreign policy in taking the decision. Obama offered a little praise for Syria: he wrote in a message to congress that the Syrian government has made "some progress" towards reducing the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, long a contentious issue between the two countries.

- Syria said Friday March 11, 2011, security forces seized a large shipment of weapons and explosives and night-vision goggles this week in a truck coming from Iraq. The shipment, intercepted at the Tanaf border crossing Monday, was intended "for use in actions that affect Syria's internal security and spread unrest and chaos." The driver of the truck said the weapons had been loaded in Baghdad, and that he had been told he would be paid $5,000 to deliver them in Syria.

- Syria's ambassador to Iraq has defected and joined the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad's rule. In a statement Nawaf Fares urged members of the military to join him, saying there is no honour in killing one's own people. The Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement Thursday July 12, 2012, that Fares has been relieved of his duties and no longer has relations to the ministry or the embassy in Baghdad.

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Syria uprising from March 15, 2011 to July 28, 2012

The Syrian civil war or Syrian uprising is an ongoing internal armed conflict in Syria. The conflict began on 15 March 2011 with public demonstrations as part of the wider Arab Spring and developed into a nationwide uprising, and a civil war in 2012. Protesters have demanded the end to nearly five decades of Ba'ath Party rule, as well as the resignation of Bashar al-Assad.

In the spring of 2011, the Syrian government deployed the Syrian Army to quell the uprising. Several cities have been besieged, and soldiers were reportedly ordered to open fire on civilians. According to witnesses, soldiers who refused to open fire on civilians were summarily executed by the Syrian Army. Civilians and army defectors began forming fighting units, and unified under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, fighting in an increasingly organized fashion; however, the civilian component of the armed opposition lacks an organized leadership. The Syrian government characterizes the insurgency as "armed terrorist groups".

According to various sources, including the United Nations, up to 19,865/27,285 people have been killed, of which about half were civilians, but also including 10,140 armed combatants from both the Syrian army and rebel forces and up to 1,765 opposition protesters. According to the UN, between 500,000 to 1.0 million Syrian have been displaced within the country. To escape the violence, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled the country to neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Iraq has closed its border to Syrian refugees, while no Syrian refugees have yet arrived at the Israeli border. In addition, tens of thousands of protesters have been imprisoned, and there have been reports of widespread torture in the government's prisons. International organizations have also accused the government and Shabiha of using civilians as human shields, and of intentionally targeting civilians.

The Arab League, United States, European Union, GCC states, and other countries have condemned the use of violence against the protesters. China and Russia have thwarted attempts to agree to a UN resolution condemning Assad's actions, and advised against sanctions, saying that such methods could escalate into foreign intervention. The Arab League suspended Syria's membership over the government's response to the crisis, but sent an observer mission in December 2011, as part of its proposal for peaceful resolution of the crisis. A further attempt to resolve the crisis has been made through the appointment of Kofi Annan as a special envoy. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had repeatedly stated that the Syrian conflict could emerge into an "all-out civil war".

On 15 July 2012 the International Committee of the Red Cross assessed the Syrian conflict as a "non-international armed conflict" (the ICRC's legal term for civil war), thus applying the international humanitarian law under the Geneva Conventions in Syria.

When limited protests first began early in 2011, Assad instituted a policy of combining harsh repression with tardy political concessions. For example, in early June 2011, several hundred political detainees were released following the issuance of an amnesty on 31 May 2011, but at the same time Syrian security forces escalated their response to the demonstrations by deploying military forces to areas where protest was most intense. This violence led to a dramatic expansion in both the numbers of people protesting and to an extension of the issues they protested about. Violence began to increase dramatically after March 2012, as Assad moved against opposition fighters who were becoming better armed and organised thanks to substantial external assistance. By June 2012, deaths of Syrian armed forces had increased appreciably; nevertheless, the conflict retained a protracted outlook.

Protests

The protest movement in Syria was at first modest, and took a while to gain momentum. The events began on 26 January 2011, when Hasan Ali Akleh from Al-Hasakah poured gasoline on himself and set himself on fire. According to eyewitnesses, the action was "a protest against the government". Two days later, on 28 January 2011, an evening demonstration was held in Ar-Raqqah to protest the killing of two soldiers of Kurdish descent.

On 3 February, 2011, a "Day of Rage" was called for in Syria from 4 to 5 February on social media websites Facebook and Twitter; however, protests failed to materialize within the country itself. Hundreds marched in Al-Hasakah, but Syrian security forces dispersed the protest and arrested dozens of demonstrators.

Ribal al-Assad said that it was almost time for Syria to be the next domino in the burgeoning Arab Spring. Indeed, on 15 March, the protest movement began to escalate, as simultaneous demonstrations took place in major cities across Syria. Increasingly, the city of Daraa became the focal point for the growing uprising. Late in the month, the first signs were seen that the government was willing to make concessions to the protesters, when al-Assad announced the release of as many as 200 political prisoners.

Protesting was particularly strong in Daraa, Baniyas, Al-Qamishli and Homs. There were also protests in Douma and Harasta, suburbs of Damascus. Tanks and soldiers entered Daraa and Douma and the border with Jordan was also closed. Al Jazeera reported that some soldiers appeared to have been shot by their own comrades-in-arms after refusing orders to fire on protesters. The United States responded with harsh sanctions against the Syrian government.

Domestic response

On 20 March, the Syrian government announced that it would release 15 children who had been arrested on 6 March for writing pro-democracy graffiti.

The government, dominated by the Alawite sect, also made some concessions to the majority Sunni and some minority populations in April.

On 19 April, a bill was approved by the Syrian government to lift the emergency law. Two days later, Assad signed legislative decree 50 into law, together with decrees abolishing the Supreme State Security Court and regulating the right to peaceful demonstration. On 30 April, Prime Minister Adel Safar announced a comprehensive plan for reforms in the coming weeks in three areas: political reform, security and judicial reform; economic reform and social policies; and the development of administration and governmental work.

Parliamentary elections were held in May after the ratification of the new constitution. After the elections, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham was elected as the new Syrian speaker of parliament.

On 15 January 2012, SANA, the official Syrian news agency, announced a "general amnesty for crimes committed" during the uprising. The amnesty covered the period between 15 March 2011 and 15 January 2012. Twelve Syrian human rights organisations called on the government to scrap the state of emergency which had been in effect for almost 50 years.

In October, Amnesty International published a report showing that at least 30 Syrian dissidents living in Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, faced intimidation by Syrian embassy officials, and that in some cases, their relatives in Syria were harassed, detained and tortured. Syrian embassy officials in London and Washington, D.C. were alleged to have taken photographs and videos of local Syrian dissidents and sent them to Syrian authorities, who then retaliated against their families.

On 20 June, in a speech lasting nearly an hour, in response to the demands of protesters and foreign pressure, Assad promised a "national dialogue" involving movement toward reform, new parliamentary elections, and greater freedoms.

On 12 December 2011, local elections under reformed electoral law were held amid the tensions.

Violence and human rights violations

The "vast majority" of human rights violations documented have been committed by the Syrian armed and security forces and their allied militia. Some violations are so serious, deliberate and systematic as to constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. Human Rights Watch accused the Assad government of creating an "archipelago of torture centres". The key role in the repression, and particularly torture, is played by the mukhabarat: the Department of Military Intelligence, the Political Security Directorate, the General Intelligence Directorate, and the Air Force Intelligence Directorate.

With regard to armed opposition groups, the UN accused them of: unlawful killing; torture and ill-treatment; kidnapping and hostage taking; and the use of children in dangerous non-combat roles.

Protests and military sieges

As protests continued, the Syrian government used tanks and snipers to force people off the streets. Water and electricity were shut off in the city of Daraa, and security forces began confiscating flour and food. A similar situation was reported in Homs. In May, the Syrian army entered the cities of Baniyas, Hama, Homs, Talkalakh, Latakia, the Al-Midan and Douma districts of Damascus, and several other towns.

Baniyas was besieged in early May, and divided into zones of de facto control, with protesters largely controlling the south and security forces enforcing the laws of the government in the north. The violent suppression of protests in Homs, Daraa, and other rebellious cities continued throughout the month.

The army also besieged the northern cities of Jisr ash-Shugur and Maarat al-Numaan near the Turkish border. The Syrian Army claimed the towns were the site of mass graves of Syrian security personnel killed during the uprising and justified the attacks as operations to rid the region of "armed gangs", though local residents claimed the dead Syrian troops and officers were executed for refusing to fire on protesters. The siege of Daraa continued in the meantime. On 30 June, large protests erupted against the Assad government in Aleppo (Syria's second largest city) which were labelled the "Aleppo volcano".

In mid-July, pro-government protesters attacked the US and French embassies in Damascus, responding to those countries' support for the opposition. Attacks on protests continued throughout July, with government forces repeatedly firing at protesters and employing tanks against demonstrations, as well as conducting arrests.

Syrian forces continued to bombard Hama in early August 2011, along with attacks in other cities and towns. On the first full weekend of Ramadan, the Arab League and several Gulf Cooperation Council member states led by Saudi Arabia broke their silence on the events in Syria to condemn the government's response. Throughout August, Syrian forces stormed major urban centres and outlying regions, and continued to attack protests.

On 14 August 2011, the Syrian Navy became involved in the military crackdown. Gunboats fired heavy machine guns at waterfront districts in Latakia as ground troops and security agents backed by armour stormed several neighbourhoods.

Throughout the next few days, the Siege of Latakia dragged on, with government forces and shabiha militia continuing to fire on civilians in the city, as well as throughout the country over the following days. On 30 August 2011, during the first day of Eid ul-Fitr, thousands of people demonstrated in Homs, Daraa, and suburbs of Damascus. Protests continued into the following months, with security forces and militia continuing to fire at demonstrators and raid towns and neighbourhoods across the country.

Six months into the uprising, the inhabitants of Syria's two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, remain largely uninvolved in the anti-government protests.

Throughout August, September, and October 2011 Syrian forces continued to suppress protests, with hundreds of killings and arrests reportedly having taken place. The crackdown continued into the first three days of November. On 3 November 2011, the government accepted an Arab League plan that aims to restore the peace in the country. According to members of the opposition, however, government forces continued their suppression of protests. Throughout the month, there were numerous reports of civilians taken from their homes turning up dead and mutilated, clashes between loyalist troops and defectors, and electric shocks and hot iron rods being used to torture detainees.

Since 5 June 2012, the Syrian army has been battling rebels around the city of Latakia, using tanks and helicopter gunships.

On 6 June 2012 78 civilians were killed in the Al-Qubair massacre. According to activist sources, government forces started by shelling the village before pro-government militia, the Shabiha, moved in. The UN observers rushed to the village in a hope to investigate the alleged massacre but were met with a road-block and small arms fire before the village and were forced to retreat.

At the same time, the conflict has started moving into the two largest cities (Damascus and Aleppo) that the government claimed were being dominated by the silent majority, which wanted stability, not government change.

Formation of the Free Syrian Army

On July 29 2011, a group of defected officers announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which would become the main opposition army. Composed of defected Syrian Armed Forces personnel and civilian volunteers, the rebel army seeks to remove Bashar al-Assad and his government from power. The FSA would grow in size, to about 20,000 by December 2011, and to an estimated 40,000 by June, 2012.

On 7 October, prominent Kurdish rights activist Mishaal al-Tammo was assassinated when masked gunmen burst into his flat, with the Syrian government blamed for his death. The next day, more than 50,000 mourners marched in Al-Qamishli to mark Tammo's funeral.

In October, the Free Syrian Army began to get involved in the Siege of Homs, leading to heavy street fighting in several neighbourhoods.

On 23 December 2011 two suicide bombs hit two security facilities in Damascus, killing 30 civilians and soldiers. The government stated the attack "carried the blueprint of al-Qaeda", whereas opposition members blamed the government, and hinted that the government itself may have been behind the attacks to make its case to Arab League observers who arrived in the country only the day before. Government officials brought the advance team of Arab League observers to the scene to see the wreckage.

On 1 February 2012, Riad al-Asaad, commander of the Free Syrian army, claimed that "Fifty percent of Syrian territory is no longer under the control of the regime," and that half of the country was now effectively a no-go zone for the security forces. He said the morale of government troops was extremely low. "That's why they are bombing indiscriminately, killing men, women and children," he said.

Protests have drifted abroad to the doorsteps of Syrian embassies. After the opposition had claimed that more than 200 people perished in the massacre in Homs on 2 February 2012, both Syrian and non-Syrian protesters in Cairo, Kuwait City, and London damaged their respective Syrian embassy.

In early July 2012, Manaf Tlass, a Brigadier General of the Republican Guard, defected from Syria, making him the highest-level military defector yet since the uprising began. Western diplomats said his flight is a sign of Assad's weakening inner circle. Nawaf al-Fares, the Syrian ambassador to Iraq who has sympathized with the opposition movement since it began in March 2011, defected to the opposition in mid-July 2012.

On 19 July 2012, Iraqi officials reported that the Free Syrian Army has gained control of all four border checkpoints between Syria and Iraq.

International intervention

On 27 January 2012, Arab League observer mission reported on attacks carried out by opposition forces.

Kofi Annan's peace plan provided for a ceasefire, but even as the negotiations for it were being conducted, Syrian armed forces attacked a number of towns and villages, and summarily executed scores of people. Incommunicado detention, including of children, also continued. On 12 April 2012, both sides, the Syrian Government and rebels of the FSA entered a UN mediated ceasefire period. It was a failure, with infractions of the ceasefire by both sides resulting in several dozen casualties. Acknowledging its failure, Annan called for Iran to be "part of the solution", though the country has been excluded from the Friends of Syria initiative.

Following the Houla massacre and the consequent FSA ultimatum to the Syrian government, the cease fire practically collapsed towards the end of May 2012, as FSA began nation-wide offensives against the government troops. On 1 June, the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad vowed to crush an anti-regime uprising, after the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) announced that it was resuming "defensive operations."

On 22 June, a Turkish F-4 fighter jet was shot down by Syrian government forces. Both pilots were killed. Syria admitted shooting the fighter down, stating that the Turkish fighter was flying over Syrian territorial waters 1 kilometre away from land when it was fired on by anti-aircraft artillery near the village of Om al-Tuyour. Turkey's foreign minister stated the jet was shot down in international airspace after accidentally entering Syrian airspace, while it was on a training flight to test Turkey's radar capabilities. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed retaliation. Ankara acknowledged that the jet had flown over Syria for a short time and that a second, search-and-rescue jet had been fired at.

Attempts by the international community to agree a transitional government of national unity failed at the beginning of July after Russia insisted the agreement should not preclude Assad from being part of it. Syrian opposition groups rejected the UN-brokered peace plan, arguing that it was ambiguous, and vowing not to negotiate with President Bashar Assad or members of his regime.

On 19 July 2012, Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution that would add sanctions against the Syrian government. Russia and China, who are major trade allies with Syria, want to see a more balanced resolution calling on both sides to equally halt violence.

Battles of Damascus and Aleppo

By mid-July 2012 fighting had spread across the country. Fighting in Damascus intensified, with a major rebel push to take the city.

On 18 July 2012, Syrian Defence Minister Dawoud Rajha, former defence minister Hasan Turkmani, and the president's brother-in-law General Assef Shawkat were killed by a bomb attack in the city. The Syrian intelligence chief Hisham Bekhityar who was injured in the same explosion later succumbed to his wounds. Both the Free Syrian Army and Liwa al-Islam claimed responsibility for the assassination. The fate of the interior minister Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar was initially the subject of conflicting reports. There were also rumours that President Assad may also have been injured in the attack but days after images of the President since the attack surfaced. The assassinations were the first of such high-ranking members of Assad's elite in the 17-month revolt.

The escalating conflict has reached a decisive stage in late July 2012, with the government forces and the armed opposition locked in a high intensity battle over control of the country's largest city of Aleppo. Fighting over Aleppo is acquiring a greater significance after government troops flushed out most of the fighters from Damascus.

On 25 July, multiple sources reported that the Assad government was using fighter jets to attack rebel positions in the cities of Aleppo and Damascus. After driving out the opposition forces from Damascus, the government forces launched assault on Aleppo by tanks and air gunships on 28 July 2012, amid growing world concern about the safety of the civilian population of the country's second city.

Some examples of the killing

- Over 100,000 people reportedly marched in Daraa on 25 March 2011, but at least 20 protesters were reportedly killed.
- Protests also spread to other Syrian cities, including Homs, Hama, Baniyas, Jassem, Aleppo, Damascus and Latakia. Over 70 protesters in total were reported dead.
- #In April 2011, the uprising became more extensive, and more violent. Protesters were shot at on 1 April, leading to at least 10 deaths.
- Well over 30 people were killed in a crackdown on protests on 8 April, activists and human rights groups claimed.
- Firing throughout the country resulted 88 deaths among security forces and protesters, making it the bloodiest day so far.
- According to an activist, 18 people were killed in Daraa.
- On 29 April 2011, more than 60 protesters were killed in demonstrations across Syria.
- Major demonstrations saw nearly 20 deaths on 6 May 2011, and the government said 11 soldiers were shot by "armed groups" on the same day.
- On 31 July 3011, a siege of Hama escalated during a so-called "Ramadan Massacre", in which at least 136 people were killed and hundreds wounded when Syrian forces attacked demonstrators across the country, employing tanks, artillery and snipers.
- On 14 August,2011, in Latakia ground troops and security agents backed by armour stormed several neighbourhoods. Up to 28 people were killed. Eight more civilians were killed elsewhere in the country
- On 30 August 2011, during the first day of Eid ul-Fitr, thousands of people demonstrated in Homs, Daraa, and suburbs of Damascus. Nine people were killed when security forces fired on these demonstrations.
- On 7 October, prominent Kurdish rights activist Mishaal al-Tammo was assassinated. At least 20 other civilians were also killed during crackdowns on demonstrations across the country.
- The next day, more than 50,000 mourners marched in Al-Qamishli to mark Tammo's funeral, and at least 14 were killed when security forces fired on them.
- On 14 November 2011, more than 70 people were killed across Syria as the army clashed with defectors and shot at civilians. Some 34 soldiers and 12 defectors were killed, along with 27 civilians.
- Activists said security forces killed up to 70 army defectors on 19 December 2011 as they were deserting their military posts near the Turkish border.
- At least 30 other people died in other violence across the country.
- On 23 December 2011 two suicide bombs hit two security facilities in Damascus, killing 30 civilians and soldiers.
- On 11 January 2012, a mortar attack on a pro-government rally in Homs killed a French journalist, Gilles Jacquier of France 2, and seven others.
- The opposition had claimed that more than 200 people perished in the massacre in Homs on 2 February 2012.
- In an attack on buildings used by Syrian military intelligence in Aleppo, at least 28 people died and 235 were injured on 10 February 2012. The Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the attacks. However, shortly thereafter another FSA leader denied FSA involvement.
- In April 2012 Syrian armed forces attacked a number of towns and villages, and summarily executed scores of people.
- On 2 June 2012 57 soldiers were killed in Syria, the largest number of casualties the military has suffered in a single day since the uprising broke out in mid-March 2011.
- On 6 June 78 civilians were killed in the Al-Qubair massacre.
- On 18 July 2012, Syrian Defence Minister Dawoud Rajha, former defence minister Hasan Turkmani, and the president's brother-in-law General Assef Shawkat were killed by a bomb attack in the city. The Syrian intelligence chief Hisham Bekhityar who was injured in the same explosion later succumbed to his wounds.

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With tanks and artillery, the Syrian Army pounded opposition strongholds in Aleppo on Saturday July 28, 2012, stepping up its barrage on a city that for days has been steeling for an assault. It was not clear whether the attack, which activists said was focused on the Salaheddiin neighbourhood, was a limited foray by government troops or the beginning of a broader campaign. Activists and residents said that the opposition had at least partly repelled the assault, killing soldiers and destroying several tanks, but those claims could not be immediately verified. The clashes came after days of warnings from the international community about the human toll in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its commercial centre, as President Bashar al-Assad's forces massed on the outskirts of the city. For days, rebel fighters have been pouring into Salaheddiin and other neighbourhoods in Aleppo, which had remained quiet for much of the uprising that started in March 2011. On Saturday, Russia, Mr. Assad's most important ally, joined the chorus, warning of tragedy as it chastised the rebels' foreign backers for failing to pressure the opposition to end the violence.

The Syrian government launched an offensive Saturday July 28, 2012, to retake rebel-held neighbourhoods in the nation's commercial hub of Aleppo, unleashing artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships against poorly armed opposition fighters. Yet after a day of fighting, the rag-tag rebel forces remained in control of their neighbourhoods in Syria's largest city suggesting they had successfully fought off the government's initial assault.

Syrian troops fired tank shells and artillery Sunday July 29, 2012, at neighbourhoods in Aleppo as rebels tried to repel a government ground assault against their positions in the country's largest city, activists said. The bombardment was part of a government counteroffensive to retake control of districts that had fallen into rebel hands last week at the beginning of their bid to capture Aleppo, the nation's commercial hub. Activists said the shelling was most intense in the south-western neighbourhoods of Salaheddine and parts of Saif al-Dawla, some of the first areas seized by the rebels when they started the push last week after being routed in a similar attack against the capital Damascus.

In just a few months, Syria's rebels have transformed themselves from ragtag village defence forces into an armed movement capable of attacking the country's two largest cities, Aleppo and Damascus. Now they are bracing themselves for what one Syrian newspaper has called "the mother of all battles". Both the rebels and the regime are building up their manpower in and around Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, where the rebels have made inroads this past week. Fighting has already begun.

Syria Monday July 30, 2012:
- Syrian government forces mounted new ground attacks against rebel-controlled neighbourhoods in Syria's commercial hub of Aleppo but failed to dislodge the opposition from their strongholds, according to activists.
- The Syrian army has massed its forces around Aleppo, where rebels hold several neighbourhoods after a 10-day offensive, and has been pounding it with tanks and helicopter gunships. There have also been periodic incursions of government tanks but the rebels have held on to their gains.
- Already an estimated 200,000 civilians -almost 10 percent of the population of 3 million inhabitants- have fled the fighting in Aleppo.
- Syrian state media reported late Sunday that the army had "purged" Aleppo's southwestern neighbourhood of Salaheddine and inflicted "great losses" upon the rebels in one of the first districts they took control of in their bid to seize the city.
- There was also a successful operation in Sukhour neighbourhood, in the northeast of the city and another rebel stronghold, the state media said.
- Activists, however, disputed these claims and just described another day of fierce shelling of certain areas, backed up by the occasional foray on the ground.
- Assad's regime has been plagued by a string of defections, including three high ranking diplomats and several military commanders. On Monday, a Turkish official announced that a Syrian brigadier general who was deputy chief of police in Syria's Latakia region, had defected. The general was among a group of 12 Syrian officers who crossed into Turkey late Sunday. His defection raises the number of generals to have left for Turkey since the start of the 17-month-old uprising to 28.
- Rebels captured a government military base on the outskirts of Aleppo. The base had about 200 Syrian troops and appeared to be under attack by rebels from three sides overnight. Six regime soldiers and four rebel fighters were killed. The rebels also gained heavy equipment to supplement the lesser weapons they had been fighting with.
- The Syrian chargé d'affaires, Khaled al-Ayoubi, has informed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today that he has left his post in the Syrian embassy in London. Ayoubi has told us that he is no longer willing to represent a regime that has committed such violent and oppressive acts against its own people, and is therefore unable to continue in his position. Ayoubi was the most senior Syrian diplomat serving in London.

- Syrian combat aircraft and artillery pounded two areas of Aleppo on Tuesday July 31, 2012, as the army battled for control of the country's biggest city, but rebel fighters said troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had been forced to retreat. Large clouds of black smoke rose into the sky after attack helicopters turned their machineguns on eastern districts for the first time in the latest fighting and a MiG warplane later strafed the same area. The battle for Aleppo has become a crucial test for both sides in the 16-month-old rebellion. Neither Assad's forces nor the rag-tag rebels can afford to lose if they hope to prevail in the wider struggle for Syria. Heavy gunfire echoed round the Salaheddine district in the southwest of the city, scene of some of the worst clashes, with shells raining in for most of the day. Reuters journalists have established that neither the Syrian army nor rebel fighters are in full control of the quarter, which the government said it had taken at the weekend. Salaheddine resembled a "ghost town", its shops shuttered, with no sign of life in its apartment buildings and its streets mostly devoid of traffic.

- The Syrian military has deployed fighter jets to attack rebel positions in the northern battleground city of Aleppo, the United Nations confirmed Wednesday August 1, 2012. The U.N. statement confirms various accounts from media outlets and opposition activists that Syrian warplanes have been targeting rebels who are trying to wrest control of the northern city, Syria's most populous. The aircraft fired rockets and heavy machine guns. The Syrian military has already used helicopter gunships against rebels in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria. Scores of Russian-made tanks are reported to be massed outside of Aleppo, waiting to join the government battle to dislodge rebels ensconced in several city neighbourhoods.

- Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is quitting as international peace envoy for Syria in the face of an armed rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad whose violence shows no sign of abating after 17 months of strife. As battles raged on Thursday August 2, 2012, in Syria's second city Aleppo between rebel fighters and government forces using war planes and artillery, U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon announced in New York that Annan had said he would go at the end of the month. Annan's mission, centered on an April ceasefire that never took hold, has looked irrelevant as fighting has intensified in Damascus and Aleppo.

- The fight for Aleppo, the latest battlefield, intensified on Thursday August 2, 2012.
- President Bashar al-Assad's troops meanwhile bombarded the strategic Salaheddine district in Aleppo itself with tank and artillery fire supported by combat aircraft while rebels tried to consolidate their hold on areas they have seized.
- In the capital Damascus, troops overran a suburb on Wednesday and killed at least 35 people, mostly unarmed civilians, residents and activist organizations said.
- About 60 people were killed in Syria on Thursday, 43 of them civilians.
- Other rebel sources said they had pulled back after coming under fire from MiG warplanes from the airport.
- Rebels turned the gun of a captured tank against government forces shelling a military airbase used by war planes in the battle for Aleppo. The rebels' morale was boosted when they turned a government tank's gun on the Menakh airfield a possible staging post for army reinforcements and a base for war planes and helicopter gunships.

- On Thursday August 2, 2012, we were told that Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorising US support for Syrian rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad government. Obama's order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence finding broadly permits the CIA and other US agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust President Bashar al-Assad.

- Fighting intensified Friday August 3, 2012, between Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebels in several provinces a day after United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan abandoned his effort to mediate a cease-fire. Clashes broke out in Hama, Aleppo, Daraa and the suburbs of Damascus. 105 people were killed in the violence today, including 69 in the Arbaeen neighbourhood in Hama and 13 in Damascus and its suburbs. The government is sending massive reinforcements to Aleppo, Syria's most populous city. Assad's troops have been using artillery, helicopter gunships and fighter jets to drive out the rebels, who moved into the city last month.

- Syrian artillery, planes and a helicopter gunship pounded rebel positions in Aleppo on Saturday August 4, 2012, as President Bashar al-Assad's forces tried to break through the insurgents' frontline in Syria's largest city. In the capital Damascus, troops backed by armour stormed the last opposition bastion on Friday in a drive to crush a rebel offensive that coincided with a bombing that killed four of Assad's senior security officials. The onslaught continued on Saturday as jets bombarded the city. Syrian forces battered Aleppo's Salaheddine district, seen as a gateway for the army into the city of 2.5 million people. The fate of the district could determine the outcome of a conflict that has already claimed some 18,000 lives.

- Gunmen snatched 47 Iranian pilgrims just outside Damascus on Saturday August 4, 2012. The abduction came as Syrian troops moved to crush one of the last rebel-dominated neighbourhoods in the capital, shelling the area heavily. The pilgrims were on a bus taking them from the suburb of Sayeda Zeinab to the airport to return home when they were kidnapped. Late Saturday, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency announced that Syrian forces had freed the hostages, but cited no source. There was no confirmation from the Syrians. Just a few miles from the site of the kidnapping, regime forces encircled the southern Damascus neighbourhood of Tadamon, a bastion of rebel support. Heavy explosions shook the capital Saturday, and plumes of smoke rose from the neighbourhood that was attacked by regime forces the night before.
The Syrian army continued attacking rebel positions Sunday August 5, 2012, in the northern city of Aleppo with heavy shelling and helicopter gunships. The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that more than 40 Syrians, including 25 civilians, were confirmed as killed Sunday across the country. The British-based group said more than 24 others were killed a day earlier. Meanwhile, Iranian media said Tehran has asked Turkey and Qatar to help secure the release of 48 Iranian nationals kidnapped Saturday in Damascus. Iran says the victims were religious pilgrims, but a brigade commander with the Free Syrian Army describes them as elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

- U.S. Secretary State of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Istanbul next week to hold talks with the Turkish government on the crisis in Syria we were told on Sunday August 5, 2012. Clinton's planned talks in Istanbul on August 11 will form part of renewed international efforts to tackle the escalating crisis in Syria, where forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are fighting to put down a rebel uprising. Prospects over the possibility of a negotiated solution have dimmed since United Nations peace envoy Kofi Annan resigned this week complaining of paralysis in the U.N. Security Council over the Syria peace efforts.

- On Monday August 6, 2012, Syria's prime minister defected to the opposition seeking to overthrow what fleeing premier Riyad Hijab called the "terrorist regime" of President Bashar al-Assad, marking one of the highest profile desertions from Damascus. Hijab, who like much of the opposition comes from Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, is not part of Assad's inner circle, but as the most senior serving civilian official to defect his departure dealt a heavy symbolic blow to an establishment rooted in the president's minority Alawite sect. His departure is unlikely to have repercussions for Assad's grip on power. That is rooted in the army and a security apparatus dominated by Alawites, which was rocked by a bomb last month that killed four senior officials, including his brother-in-law. Syrian state television said Hijab had been fired, but an official source in the Jordanian capital Amman said he had been dismissed only after he fled across the border with his family.

- Thousands of frightened refugees poured out of the embattled Syrian metropolis of Aleppo on Tuesday August 7, 2012, as the military's fighter jets stepped up bombing raids and rebels said they were struggling to hold some of the city's neighbourhoods while mounting new assaults in others. It was an especially violent day all over the country, with activists reporting shelling and clashes in at least a dozen areas, adding hundreds of new bodies to a death toll that has already surpassed 21,000. Syrian troops and rebels have been sending in reinforcements since the battle for the city started nearly three weeks ago. Gunfire is a constant.

- On Wednesday August 8, 2012, government forces have taken full control of a strategic district in the biggest city, Aleppo, after fierce fighting. However, rebel commanders denied they had retreated from the Salah al-Din district, amid reports of a push by army tanks and armoured vehicles. Opposition activists reported at least 20 deaths across Syria.

- On Wednesday August 8, 2012, Jordanian officials confirmed that former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab had only just crossed into Jordan -two days after his defection was announced. Activists said he and his family had been hiding in the south of the country and that reports on Monday that he had already left Syria were aimed at throwing government forces off the trail.

- Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi called on Thursday August 9, 2012, for "serious and inclusive" talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups, opening a meeting of friendly nations called by Tehran as it seeks to exert its influence over the conflict. More than 25 nations were present at the conference but significantly none of them back the Syrian opposition or have called for President Bashar al-Assad to leave power. State television broadcast the opening statement of the talks, which were attended by delegations from Russia, China, Iraq, Pakistan, Jordan, India, among others.

- Syrian air force jet fired rockets on the farming village of Tel Rifaat on Thursday August 9, 2012. The jet make at least a dozen rounds of the village of a few thousand people, firing missiles and mounted machine guns. A rebel fighter from the Liwa al Fatah brigade, said the jets were targeting rebel bases in the area.. Three rebels fighters fruitlessly fired an old anti-aircraft gun and a rifle at the speeding plane. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad face guerrilla fighters hiding in farm houses, not a traditional army, and war has been brought to small villages like Tel Rifaat across the country. Although the pilots seemed to know where the rebel bases were, their fire was often indiscriminate.

- Just three months after being put out of office by the French electorate, Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked a political firestorm by criticizing his successor's Syria policy. The former president, famous for his hyperactivity, in defiance of the convention that retired leaders should be seen but not heard, issued a statement on Wednesday August 8, 2012, calling for foreign intervention to prevent further massacres by the government of Bashar al-Assad. Laurent Fabius, foreign minister, accused Mr. Sarkozy of wanting to relive the glory days when he spearheaded the international intervention against the Libyan regime, insisting that the Syrian and Libyan cases were not the same.

- Syrian government forces bombed rebel positions from the ground and air in the northern city of Aleppo on Friday August 10, 2012, as protesters across the country appealed for anti-aircraft guns for opposition fighters to offset the regime's increasing use of aerial attacks. The relentless violence triggered a fresh wave of civilians streaming across the border into neighbouring Turkey to escape the civil war in their country.

- Veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi is expected to replace Kofi Annan as the U.N.-Arab League joint special envoy for Syria barring a last-minute change, we were told on Thursday August 9, 2012. The former Algerian foreign minister, who has a long history as a diplomatic trouble-shooter, will have his work cut out for him in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is using his security forces to try to crush a 17-month-old pro-democracy rebellion. Brahimi's appointment could be announced as early as next week. Brahimi, 78, has served as a U.N. special envoy in a series of challenging circumstances, including in Iraq after the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, in Afghanistan both before and after the end of Taliban rule and in South Africa as it emerged from the apartheid era.

- The United States and Turkey indicated on Saturday August 11, 2012, they were studying a range of measures, including a no-fly zone, as battles between Syrian rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's forces shook Aleppo and the heart of Damascus. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said after meeting her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul that Washington and Ankara should develop detailed operational planning on ways to assist the rebels fighting to topple Assad.

- Gunmen detonated back-to-back roadside bombs and clashed with police in central Damascus Saturday August 11, 2012, in attacks that caused no damage but highlighted the ability of rebels to breach the intense security near President Bashar Assad's power bases. The blasts point to the increasing use of guerrilla-style operations in the capital to undermine the government's claims of having full control over Damascus. It also suggests that rebel cells have established a Damascus network capable of evading Assad's intelligence agents and slipping through security cordons. In Aleppo, activists said Syrian forces pressed ahead with an offensive to break rebel footholds in the nation's largest city. A helicopter gunship fired missiles on apartment buildings a day after protesters begged for international shipments of anti-aircraft weapons.

- Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad need the protection of foreign-guarded no-fly zones and safe havens near the borders with Jordan and Turkey, a Syrian opposition leader said on Sunday August 12, 2012. Battles raged on in the northern city of Aleppo, where tanks, artillery and snipers attacked rebels in the Saif al-Dawla district next to the devastated area of Salaheddine.

- Syrian rebels have produced footage of a man they claim is the captured pilot of a fighter jet that went down in the east of the country. The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) say they shot a military aircraft down near the Iraqi border on Monday August 13, 2012. According to Syria's state-run news agency Sana, the plane that went down had suffered a fault with its "control mechanisms" during a routine training mission, forcing the pilot to abandon the aircraft. The aircraft was shot down near the town of al-Muhassan in Deir al-Zour province, the rebels say. The FSA says that one of the two-man crew died and that another has been captured. However, if it was lost due to hostile action, this would be a first, indicating that the rebels do have a basic anti-aircraft capability. Government forces have continued their advance in Aleppo, with reports of clashes in the west of the city.

- Veteran fighters of last year's civil war in Libya have come to the front-line in Syria, helping to train and organize rebels under conditions far more dire than those in the battle against Muammar Gaddafi, a Libyan-Irish fighter said on Tuesday August 14, 2012. The Libyans aiding the Syrian rebels include specialists in communications, logistics, humanitarian issues and heavy weapons. They operate training bases, teaching fitness and battlefield tactics.

- A bomb exploded in central Damascus on Wednesday August 15, 2012, close to several military buildings and a hotel housing United Nations observers, wounding three people and sending a pillar of black smoke into the sky above the Syrian capital. None of the U.N. monitors was hurt in the explosion.

- Spill over from the Syrian conflict hit Lebanon in a frightening new way on Wednesday August 15, 2012, with a mass abduction of more than 20 Syrians inside Lebanese territory, which their captors called revenge for the kidnapping of a Lebanese relative by rebels inside Syria. The captors of the Syrians, who were displayed in a video shown on Lebanese television, threatened to go on an extended kidnapping spree inside Lebanon until their family member was set free.
Syrian government fighter planes fired rockets that struck the main emergency hospital in an opposition-controlled area of Aleppo on Tuesday August 14, 2012, wounding two civilians and causing significant damage, Human Rights Watch said today after visiting the damaged hospital.

- A Syrian government fighter jet bombed a residential neighbourhood, killing more than 40 civilians and wounding at least 100 others in the town of Azaz, including many women and children. In the attack on August 15, 2012, at least two bombs destroyed an entire block of houses in the al-Hara al-Kablie neighbourhood of Azaz, in Syria's northern Aleppo province.

- The Security Council decided to end the U.N. military observer mission that was sent to monitor a cease-fire that never happened and back a small new liaison office that will support any future peace efforts. The move Thursday August 16, 2012, came in the face an escalating civil war in Syria. Members who have been deeply divided on tackling the 18-month conflict were united behind U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's proposal to replace the 300 unarmed observers with a small group of military advisers and political, human rights and civil affair experts. The council agreed that conditions set for possibly extending the observer mission -- a significant reduction in violence and an end to the Syrian government's use of heavy weapons -had not been met and its mandate would end Sunday. In a surprise follow-up, Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin invited U.N. ambassadors from key nations and international organizations who agreed on guidelines for a Syrian-led political transition in Geneva in June to a meeting at U.N. headquarters Friday to press for action.

- On Friday August 17, 2012, government troops fought back rebels near the airport of battle-scarred Aleppo. As fighting raged in both Aleppo and the Syrian capital Damascus, the United Nations announced that Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and veteran U.N. diplomat, would serve as the world body's new peace envoy, aiming to resume efforts for a diplomatic solution to what has become an intractable civil war. The announcement came just as U.N. observers in Syria were beginning to pack their things on Friday in preparation to close down their mission.

- The Syrian government on Saturday August 18, 2012, welcomed the naming of a former Algerian diplomat as the U.N.'s new point-man in efforts to halt the country's escalating civil war. In a statement, the office of Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa not only expressed support for Lakhdar Brahimi,. The new U.N. envoy, Brahimi, takes over from former Secretary-General Kofi Annan who is stepping down on Aug. 31 after his attempts to broker a cease-fire failed. His appointment comes as U.N. observers have begun leaving Syria, with their mission officially over at the end of Sunday. Also on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a television interview that Moscow rejected international intervention in the form of a militarily enforced no-fly zone for government aircraft in northern Syria. It also denied reports circulating in Arab media that al-Sharaa had defected to the opposition. Al-Sharaa "did not think, at any moment, of leaving the country. Activists reported more shelling by regime troops, including an air attack on a northern border town where scores died earlier this week.

- Syrian government forces heavily shelled the cities of Aleppo and Daraa and a suburb of Damascus on the second day of a major Muslim holiday Monday August 20, 2012, killing up to 30 people. There was a relative lull in the civil war on Sunday, the first of three days of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

- Air France, a unit of Air France-KLM, rerouted Flight 562 on Wednesday August 15, 2012, because of clashes on the road between the airport and downtown Beirut. The airline initially decided to divert the plane to Amman, Jordan, its normal diversion airport if Beirut is unavailable. However, the plane couldn't fly directly there due to overflight restrictions and the longer route meant that it didn't have enough fuel to get there with a proper margin of safety. The crew then decided to land the plane in Damascus to refuel. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Monday August 20, 2012, criticized Air France for putting the 174 passengers of a Paris-Beirut flight in harm's way when the plane landed at Damascus airport to refuel. All went well.

- A Japanese war correspondent was shot and killed while covering Syria's civil war. Mika Yamamoto worked for The Japan Press, an independent TV news provider that specializes in conflict zone coverage. She was hit by gunfire Monday August 20, 2012, while she and a colleague were travelling with the Free Syrian Army in the northwestern city of Aleppo.

- Syrian army shells crashed into southern Damascus on Wednesday August 22,2012, and helicopters fired rockets and machineguns during an assault to shore up President Bashar al-Assad's grip on the capital. The United Nations estimates that 18,000 people have been killed in what has become a civil war after a violent state response to peaceful street protests generated an armed rebellion in the pivotal Arab country. Anti-Assad activists said at least 47 people had been killed in Damascus in what they called the heaviest bombardment this month. At least 22 people were killed in Kfar Souseh and 25 in the nearby district of Nahr Eisha. One of the dead was named as Mohammad Saeed al Odeh, a journalist employed at a state-run newspaper who was sympathetic to the anti-Assad revolt. Activists said he had been executed in Nahr Eisha. More than 250 people, including 171 civilians, were killed across Syria on Tuesday, mostly around Damascus, Aleppo and the southern city of Deraa.

- Medecins Sans Frontieres has been secretly operating a field hospital in Syria for the last two months, with doctors performing hundreds of life-saving operations on those caught up in the conflict, the organization disclosed on Wednesday August 22, 2012. The state-of-the-art medical centre, which is equipped with an emergency room, operating theatre, and resuscitation area, was built in a rebel-held area in the country's north. It opened its doors in late June after many months of planning and difficult missions to smuggle the medical equipment into the country. A team of seven MSF medics, including surgeons and anaesthetists, together with 50 Syrian staff, has been working there to provide emergency medical care to casualties of the war raging in Syria's second city of Aleppo and the surrounding provinces. The complex is disguised so that from the outside, it looks no different to a civilian home. Its precise location is being kept secret amid fears it could be targeted by regime forces.

- Syrian government forces fought rebels on Wednesday August 22, 2012, for control of a military base and an airfield near the eastern town of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border. Insurgents have made gains in Albu Kamal in the past week, they now controlled the town, which sits on a supply route from Iraq, where many Sunni tribes sympathies with their Syrian kin fighting Assad's forces. The Syrian army now only held the military base and the area around it. Opposition sources said on Tuesday Syrian state forces had abandoned two security compounds in Albu Kamal that had been run by the Airforce Intelligence and Political Security agencies.

- Government forces supported by tanks raided a suburb of Damascus on Thursday August 23, 2012 killing 15 people. News reports said loyalist forces were conducting house-to-house searches in the Daraya neighbourhood, even though rebel forces had apparently withdrawn from the area. 15 people had been killed by rocket fire, including a mother and two children. The group said 73 people had been killed so far, mainly in the suburbs of Damascus. Meanwhile, Amnesty International said in a new report released on Thursday that civilians in Aleppo, Syria's largest city, were bearing the brunt of fighting there.

- Syria Friday August 24, 2012:
- Syrian government forces are continuing efforts to seize control of parts of the capital and its surrounding areas from rebel fighters. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the military bombed Daraya, on the edge of Damascus, and nearby Moadamiyeh on Thursday. Syrian forces then carried out house-to-house raids in Daraya while fierce clashes erupted in the Hajar al-Aswad district of Damascus.
- About 100 people were killed in violence across Syria Thursday, including nearly 50 civilians in Damascus and its surroundings.
- Britain and France Thursday raised the possibility of military intervention in Syria. British Prime Minister David Cameron joined U.S. President Obama in warning that the transport or deployment of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile was "completely unacceptable" and would force the Western powers to "revisit their approach" to the conflict.
- French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian urged the international community to consider backing a partial no-fly zone over parts of Syria.
- Syria's chief backer, Russia, meanwhile, said it was working closely with the Damascus government to ensure that its arsenal of chemical weapons stays under firm control and has won promises that it will not be used or moved.
- Concern has also mounted over the safety of journalists who have entered Syria without official permission to report on the conflict. The family of U.S. freelance reporter Austin Tice said it has not heard from him for more than a week and is concerned for his welfare.

- Britain said Sunday August 26, 2012, it was deeply concerned by emerging reports of a "brutal massacre of civilians" in a Damascus suburb where activists claim more than 300 people have been killed over the past week in a major government offensive to take back control of rebel-held areas in and around the capital. The British-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 32 more dead bodies were found in the streets of Daraya on Sunday and that they had been killed by "gunfire and summary executions." Among them were three women and two children. It put the toll for the past week at least 320. Another activist group, The Local Communication Committees, claimed 300 bodies were discovered Saturday in Daraya and 633 people have been killed there since the government launched its assault last week.

- The Syrian driver who took Japanese journalist Mika Yamamoto into the war torn city of Aleppo said she had been shot dead by militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, after following rebels on a mission to rescue civilians. Yamamoto and her colleague Kazutaka Sato had crossed the Turkish border with two journalists working for the U.S.-funded al-Hurra television, and asked to be taken to the northern city of Aleppo. The al-Hurra journalists were reported detained by the militiamen in Aleppo and have not been heard of since.

- Syrian fighter planes made rare sorties on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, killing at least 60 people in its eastern suburbs. Aerial attacks by at least two fighter planes late on Monday August 27, 2012, had targeted the neighbourhood of Zemalka and the more easterly suburb of Saqba where Free Syrian Army fighters had attacked and overrun several army roadblocks earlier in the day. The same day a Syrian military helicopter crashed while under rebel fire.

- A car bomb ripped through a Damascus suburb, killing 12 people, on Tuesday August 28, 2012. Activists also said an air strike in the town of Kfar Nabl in Idlib killed at least 13 people as fighting raged nationwide.

- The head of the main Syrian opposition group seeking to oust President Bashar Assad criticized U.S. officials Tuesday August 28, 2012, for saying it was premature to speak about a transitional Syrian government. Abdelbaset Sieda was responding to the U.S. reaction to French President Francois Hollande's assertion that the Syrian opposition should form a provisional government and promise that France would recognize it. Hollande's statement, believed to be the first of its kind, was quickly shot down by U.S. officials who said it was premature to speak about a provisional government when Syria's fractured opposition hasn't even agreed yet on a transition plan.

- Rebel fighters have attacked several security compounds in the northern city of Aleppo as clashes continued in other areas of the war-torn country. On Friday August 31, 2012, one of the assaults in Aleppo sparked a firelight that killed and wounded a number of government troops. Also Friday, government troops and rebels were locked in battle north of the capital, Damascus, and in Albu Kamal, on the Iraqi border. Internet video appeared to show fighting in Homs, Daraa and Damascus.
- The UNHCR said on Friday August 31, 2012, that more Syrians are fleeing as violence increases. Most are heading to the following countries:
      - Jordan: 150,000 refugees
- Turkey: 70,000 refugees
- Lebanon: More than 35,000 refugees
- Iraq: 12,000 registered refugees
- Algeria: 10-25,000 refugees

- Syrian activists said rebels shot down a government warplane over the northern province of Idlib on Thursday August 30, 2012, the second time in a week that opposition fighters claimed to have brought down an aircraft in the escalating civil war. The plane was seen crashing near the Abu Zuhour air base. Rebels shot it down with heavy machine guns.

- Rebels seized an air defence facility and attacked a military airport in eastern Syria on Saturday September 1, 2012. The attacks in eastern oil-producing Deir al-Zor province follow rebel strikes against military airports in the Aleppo and Idlib areas, close to the border with Turkey. Rebels in Deir al-Zor overran an air defence building, taking at least 16 captives and seizing an unknown number of anti-aircraft rockets. Rebels also attacked the Hamdan military airbase at Albu Kamal, close to Syria's eastern border with Iraq, but did not succeed in breaking into it. Assad's forces have carried out numerous air strikes on civilians in rebel-held areas. Helicopters have strafed towns with heavy machineguns, and jets have unleashed rockets and bombs against opposition strongholds. Bombardments of northern towns such as Azaz and Anadan, of which Assad lost control weeks ago, have led to thousands of residents fleeing to safety in Turkey.

- A car bomb near a Palestinian refugee camp in a suburb of the nation's capital has killed at least 15 people. The explosion in the Damascus suburb of al-Sbeineh late Saturday September 1, 2012, also wounded several people and caused heavy damage to buildings in the area. Another explosion was reported Saturday at Rukn Eddin inside capital Damascus, and which targeted a military doctor in front of a hospital. Also on Saturday Syrian rebels launched attacks on the military, in a campaign increasingly targeting its air power. At least 111 people were killed, including 35 in Damascus. Government forces also shelled areas of Homs and Aleppo and used tank fire in the Damascus neighbourhoods of Tadamon and Hajar Aswad.

- Government warplanes bombed a town in northern Syria on Monday September 3, 2012, killing at least 19 people. The new U.N. envoy to the country acknowledged that brokering an end to the nation's civil war will be a "very, very difficult" task. The air strikes targeted a residential area in the northern town of al-Bab.

- A car bomb exploded on Monday September 3, 2012, in a religiously mixed district on the edge of the Syrian capital Damascus, causing casualties including women and children. State media said that attack was a terrorist act while opposition activists said President Bashar al-Assad's security agents were behind the bombing to sow sectarian strife in the district, inhabited by Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze.

- Syrian forces have killed at least 19 people, including seven children, when they shelled rebel-controlled areas of the commercial capital, Aleppo. On Wednesday civilians were killed in the southern neighbourhood of Bustan al-Qasr while a total of nine bodies, including those of the children, were found in the Marjeh and Hanano areas. Other opposition groups said the death toll was as high as 43, including women and children.

- The Syrian Army stormed the village of Tal Shehab near the Jordanian border on Thursday September 6, 2012, raising fears that the forces of President Bashar al-Assad may seek to cut off the torrent of tens of thousands of refugees who have been fleeing across the border.  

- Syrian troops recaptured a rebel-held town along the Jordanian border on Thursday September 6, 2012, cutting off a major crossing for Syrian refugees fleeing to Jordan and putting further stress on the humanitarian crisis resulting from the protracted civil war. 20 Syrian tanks and scores of soldiers attacked Tel Chehab. Nearly 2,000 refugees were in Tel Chehab when the Syrian Army attacked. The territorial loss is a setback for Syrian rebels who claim to control more than half of the country but are facing increasing challenges, such as weapon shortages.

- Two booby-trapped vehicles exploded within hours of each other Friday September 7, 2012, in Damascus, killing at least five police officers. The Red Cross warned after meeting with Assad that the situation in the country was "rapidly deteriorating." Elsewhere in Damascus, shells struck a Palestinian refugee camp, killing 10 people.

- Syrian government troops stormed an area of Damascus populated by Palestinian refugees on Saturday September 8, 2012, after a four-day artillery assault on the southern suburb where rebels have been sheltering. President Bashar al-Assad's forces have largely preferred to use air power and artillery to hit areas where rebels are dug in, deploying infantry only once many have fled.

- Two bombs exploded simultaneously on Sunday September 9, 2012, next to Syrian army compounds in the northern city of Aleppo, killing and wounding scores of President Bashar al-Assad's forces. The bombs targeted makeshift barracks and the military police headquarters, situated in two adjacent sealed off districts in the centre of the city. An explosion near a hospital and a school in the Municipal Stadium district killed 17 people and wounded at least 40. Residents said the facilities were used to house soldiers.

- We were told on Monday September 10, 2012, that the death toll from a car bomb in Aleppo the night before had risen to 30 civilians, including women and children, with 64 people wounded. The blast happened near two hospitals. One of the hospitals, Al-Hayat, was turned into a site for the treatment of government troops shortly after the fighting in Aleppo began in July. The blast was caused by a small truck rigged with more than 1,000 kilograms of explosives, which left a crater 6 meters deep.

- I nternational mediator Lakhdar Brahimi is due to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a visit to Syria, we were told on Tuesday September 11, 2012. The U.N. chief reiterated his call for the Security Council to take action on Syria and for world powers to use their influence over the two warring sides to halt the 17 months of violence in which more than 20,000 have been killed.

- International peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Syria's capital on Thursday September 13, 2012, as state forces pounded its eastern outskirts to flush out rebels trying to retain a foothold in Damascus. Opposition activists reported a fighter jet flying overhead and helicopter gunships firing down on suburbs that have housed insurgents struggling to topple Assad. The 17-month-old conflict is escalating, with more than 27,000 dead.

- Clashes erupted in Syria's main cities of Damascus and Aleppo on Saturday September 15, 2012, following a bloody day in which 132 people were killed nationwide. In Aleppo the army battled with rebels at the entrances to the rebel-held Bustan al-Basha district and helicopter gunships attacked the opposition bastions of Hanano, Qadi Askar, Sheikh Khader, Bustan al-Qasr and Sakhur. After a week of fighting over the central district of Midan, the army had taken most of the area and set up checkpoints for the first time. Clashes between rebels and the army continued in the flashpoint district.

- Syrian rebels have committed war crimes including torture and killing of detainees, Human Rights Watch said on Monday September 17, 2012, calling on countries which support those fighting Bashar al-Assad's rule to press them to respect humanitarian law. The New York-based group said it had documented more than 12 cases where rebel fighters had killed their captured opponents, while at least six detainees said they had been tortured and mistreated. Rights groups have accused Assad's forces of carrying out massacres, summary executions and widespread torture in detention since the outbreak of Syria's uprising 18 months ago.

- Syrian rebels seized another border crossing with Turkey on Wednesday September 19, 2012, consolidating their grip on a frontier through which they ferry arms for battles with President Bashar al-Assad's troops around the northern city of Aleppo. Turkey, Assad's ally turned enemy, confirmed the fall of the Tel Abyad border post, the third of seven main crossings along the Turkish-Syrian frontier to come under rebel control -though Syrian state media spoke only of bloody fighting in the area.

- There has been further heavy fighting in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and the northern city of Aleppo. Government forces had stormed Hajar al-Aswad, a southern suburb of Damascus. State media said troops had killed many of what they called "terrorists". Amnesty International warned that indiscriminate air and artillery strikes were causing a dramatic rise in civilian casualties in Idlib and Hama. The report said the plight of people in the two provinces had been under-reported because world attention had focused on Damascus and Aleppo.

- At least 54 people were killed and dozens wounded when an air strike hit a fuel station in Syria's northern province of al-Raqqa on Thursday September 20, 2012.

- Thursday September 20, 2012, a Syrian military helicopter crashed near the capital of Damascus. The helicopter went down after its rotor accidentally clipped the tail of a Syrian passenger plane with 200 people on board. The larger aircraft landed safely at Damascus International Airport and no one was hurt.

- The leaders of the rebel Free Syrian Army said Saturday September 22, 2012, they moved their command centre from Turkey to Syria with the aim of uniting rebels and speeding up the fall of President Bashar Assad's regime. The group made the move last week. They would not say where the new headquarters is located or give other details. Despite the announcement of the command move, rebels still have to rely on Turkey as a rear base for supplies and reinforcements. In the past few months, rebels have captured wide swaths of Syrian territory bordering Turkey, along with three border crossings, allowing them to ferry supplies and people into Syria.

- Government warplanes again bombed the country's commercial capital Monday September 24, 2012, killing five people including three children. The strikes destroyed two buildings in the Maadi district in southern Aleppo.

- A pair of powerful blasts targeting Syria's military command headquarters rocked central Damascus early Wednesday September 26, 2012. One of the two bombs was placed "inside the fence" of the building. A second, less powerful explosion went off about 10 minutes after the initial blast. Small-arms fire and the sound of sirens could be heard following the blasts. Authorities reportedly blocked all streets leading to and from Umayyed Square.

- Syrian government forces captured several rebel-held districts in the capital Damascus Friday September 28, 2012, as the rebels went on the offensive against government troops in the northern city of Aleppo. Rebel fighters clashed with government forces in at least a half dozen districts of Aleppo, on the second day of a rebel offensive. However the rebels have been unable to gain much ground, and there was heavy rebel casualties. In Damascus, government troops stormed three rebel-held districts amid heavy exchange of gunfire. Tanks and armoured vehicles pushed into the areas as government troops searched houses, making arrests. Heavy street fighting was also reported inside the eastern oasis town of Deir Ezzor for a second straight day.

- Fighting between Syrian rebels and government forces killed at least five people in Aleppo on Sunday September 30, 2012. On Saturday, a fire sparked by battles between Assad's troops and rebels tore through Aleppo's centuries-old covered market, one of the best-preserved bazaars in the Middle East. It was the worst blow yet to the city's historic centre and to a UNESCO World Heritage site in Syria.

- Syria Monday October 1, 2012:

1. The large number of deeply divided rebel groups is one of the main obstacles to a U.N. mission's efforts to broker an end to Syria's 18-month crisis; this was told by Mokhtar Lamani, who represents special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in the Syrian capita
2. Activists reported an air raid on a northern town killed at least 21 people.
3. Fires that gutted a vast historic market have broken out in other areas of the Old City of Aleppo, a world heritage site, as rebels and government forces fight for the ancient heart of Syria's biggest city.
4. A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb near a Syrian security compound in a remote, predominantly Kurdish town Sunday, killing at least four people. Opposition activists said at least eight Syrian intelligence agents were killed and several dozen people wounded in the attack in the northeastern town of Qamishli.

- Three suicide bombers detonated cars packed with explosives in a government-controlled area of Aleppo on Wednesday October 3, 2012, killing at least 34 people, levelling buildings and trapping survivors under the rubble. More than 120 people were injured. A fourth explosion a few hundred yards away struck near the edge of the Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site that has been heavily damaged during more than two months of fierce fighting between rebels and government forces for control of the Aleppo.

- A Hezbollah commander and several fighters have been killed inside Syria we were told on Tuesday October 2, 2012.

- On Friday October 5, 2012, we were told that Syria's city of Homs has been subjected to its most severe bombardment in five months. Aircraft and artillery targeted the neighbourhood of Khaldiya. Fierce clashes also occurred in the second city Aleppo, and government shelling in the capital Damascus, Hama and Idlib. Turkey has meanwhile reinforced its border following a deadly Syrian mortar strike on a Turkish town. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Syria at a large rally in Istanbul on Friday that Turkey would defend its sovereignty.

- On Monday October 8, 2012, a twin blasts at a military base near Damascus by suicide bombers, one driving a bomb-laden ambulance, killed dozens of people while the fate of prisoners held there is unknown. Syrian state-run news agencies have not reported any such blasts in Harasta, the Damascus suburb where the intelligence compound is located. But a suicide bomber has detonated a car bomb near the AFI complex, while pro-government al-Ikhbariya TV reported that the blast was followed by clashes.

- A shadowy jihadi group believed to be linked to al-Qaida fought alongside rebels who seized a government missile defence base in Syria on Friday October 12, 2012. Jabhat al-Nusra, participated in the overnight battle for the air defence base near the village of al-Taaneh, east of Aleppo in northern Syria. A videos show dozens of fighters inside the base near a radar tower, along with rows of large missiles, some on the backs of trucks.

- Rebels battled to hold onto Syria's main northeastern highway on Friday October 12, 2012, as government forces fought insurgents on several fronts across the country. The rebels captured an air defence base east of Syria's biggest city, Aleppo, and government forces unleashed air strikes and artillery bombardments on the western city of Homs. On the Turkish-Syrian border, Turkey scrambled two fighter jets after a Syrian military helicopter bombed the Syrian border town of Azmarin.

- Gunmen have fired on a bus transporting workers to a blanket factory, killing four and wounding eight others. The attack happened at the entrance of the central city of Homs on Sunday October 14, 2012.  Meanwhile a suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden sedan into a coffee shop at a Damascus residential neighbourhood, causing damage but no fatalities. The explosion took place at dawn on the capital's Masseh highway.

- Syria Tuesday October 16, 2012:

1. Government warplanes have shelled a strategic town in the Maaret al-Numan area in Idlib province seized by rebels last week, while the Syrian army clashed with opposition fighters outside the capital.
2. Meanwhile, fierce clashes were reported on the outskirts of Damascus.
3. Some shelling also occurred in Aleppo province.
4. Human Rights Watch alleges that in recent days the Syrian government has begun widespread attacks using Russian-made cluster bombs. The Syrian Army denies the charge, and Russia on Monday also slammed the report - saying the allegation is not confirmed.
5. A Ukrainian woman who worked as an interpreter for a Russian TV crew in Syria has been kidnapped by rebels in the country's west. Ankhar Kochneva was kidnapped in western Syria on October 9 by the members of the Free Syrian Army we were told today. Dikusarov said Kochneva contacted her colleagues at a Russian television channel and said she was being held in "satisfactory conditions."

- The town of Maarat al-Noaman in northern Syria was just last week the scene of a major victory for the insurgents, who drove government forces from checkpoints at a crucial crossroads on a major highway, apprehended scores of soldiers, celebrated atop captured armoured vehicles and declared the town “liberated.”  On Thursday October 18, 2012, jubilation turned to horror as government air strikes sent fountains of dust and rubble skyward and crushed several dozen people who had returned to what they thought was a new haven in a country mired in civil war.

- More than 70 bodies were discovered Friday October 19, 2012, in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor in what opposition activists say was a massacre committed by government forces three weeks ago. The victims, among them women, children and the elderly, were found dumped in a cemetery on the southern edge of a city that is a regular target of shelling and mortar fire from government helicopters and planes. Many of the bodies had been burned and showed signs of torture. Some had their hands tied behind their backs. In Deir Ezzor three weeks ago, security forces raided two neighbourhoods that were under government control and thought to be safe, going home to home and executing people in the streets,. Phone and Internet lines were cut so little information was known at the time about what was happening.

- The U.N. and Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, arrived in the capital, Damascus on Saturday October 20, 2012, to meet with government officials and opposition members in an attempt to broker a cease-fire for the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha. Brahimi has been meeting with leaders of neighbouring countries and Syria’s only regional ally, Iran, to garner support for a four-day cease-fire. But there are serious doubts that it will be successful as past efforts have failed and violence across Syria continues.

- A taxi rigged with explosives blew up near a police station in the Syrian capital Sunday October 21, 2012, killing at least 13 people even as the U.N. envoy to the nation's crisis was visiting Damascus to push his call for a cease-fire in talks with President Bashar Assad. 29 people were also wounded in the blast in the Bab Touma neighbourhood, a popular shopping district largely inhabited by Syria's Christian minority.

- Over the weekend of Sunday October 21, 2012, Syrian warplanes hammered a strategic city captured by rebels, leaving behind scenes of carnage. Air strikes over the past two days on opposition targets across Syria's north have killed at least 43 people. The city of Maaret al-Numan, located strategically on a major north-south highway connecting Aleppo and Damascus city in northern Idlib province, was captured by rebels last week and there has been heavy fighting around it ever since. Rebel brigades from the surrounding area have poured in to defend the town.

- The U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria said on Wednesday October 24, 2012, that the government in Damascus and some rebel leaders have agreed to a temporary cease-fire during a four-day Muslim holiday that starts Friday. The Syrian government, however, did not confirm Wednesday's announcement by Lakhdar Brahimi, saying only that it was still studying the envoy's proposal.

- Syria's army command announced a ceasefire on Thursday October 25, 2012, to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha but said it reserved the right to respond to any rebel attack or moves to reinforce President Bashar al-Assad's armed foes. A Free Syrian Army commander gave qualified backing to the truce, proposed by U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but demanded Assad free detainees. An Islamist group said it was not committed to the truce but may halt operations if the army did.

- A powerful car bomb exploded in Damascus on Friday October 26, 2012, inflicting many casualties and buffeting a shaky temporary truce in the Syrian conflict on the occasion of a Muslim religious holiday. The car bomb killed five people and wounded 32. Opposition activists said the bomb had gone off near a makeshift children's playground built for the Eid al-Adha holiday in the southern Daf al-Shok district of the capital. Fighting erupted around Syria earlier as both sides violated the Eid al-Adha ceasefire arranged by international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but violence was far less intense than usual. The Syrian military responded to attacks by insurgents on army positions, in line with its announcement on Thursday that would cease military activity during the four-day holiday, but reserved the right to react to rebel actions. Brahimi's ceasefire appeal had won widespread international support, including from Russia, China and Iran, President Bashar al-Assad's main foreign allies. The U.N.-Arab League envoy had hoped to build on the truce to calm a 19-month-old conflict that has killed an estimated 32,000 people and worsened instability in the Middle East. In an apparent setback for the regime, activists said rebel fighters pushed into predominantly Christian and Kurdish neighbourhoods in northern Aleppo that had previously been held by pro-Assad forces.

- Syria Saturday October 27, 2012:

1. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had renewed their heavy bombardment of major cities, further undermining a truce meant to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha religious holiday.
2. In the Damascus suburb of Douma, where pockets of rebels are based the army began firing mortars (15 explosions in one hour). Two civilians were killed.
3. Heavy machine gunfire and the sound of mortar bombs could be heard for the second consecutive day along the Turkey-Syria border near the Syrian town of Haram.
4. In the eastern city of Deir al-Zor and in Aleppo, where rebels control roughly half of Syria's most populous city, mortar bombs were being fired into residential areas.
5. Residents in Damascus aired footage of fighter jets which they said were bombing the suburbs of Erbin and Harasta.
6. The Syrian army said it had responded to attacks by insurgents on its positions on Friday, in line with its earlier announcement that it would cease military activity during the holiday while reserving the right to react to rebel actions.
7. A statement from the General Command of the Armed Forces detailed several ceasefire violations in which it said "terrorists" had fired on Damascus checkpoints and bombed a military police patrol in Aleppo.
8. More than 150 people were killed on Friday. Most were shot by sniper fire or in clashes.
9. Forty-three soldiers were killed in ambushes and during clashes.
10. State TV reported a powerful car bomb which had killed five people in

- Iraqi authorities forced an Iranian cargo plane heading to Syria to land for inspection in Baghdad to ensure it was not carrying weapons, we were told on Sunday October 28, 2012. It was the second such forced landing this month. The plane was released after the check.

- Syrian jets bombarded Sunni Muslim regions in Damascus and across the country on Sunday October 28, 2012. President Bashar al-Assad kept up air strikes against rebels despite a U.N.-brokered truce that now appears to be in tatters. Sunni districts in the city of Homs and surrounding countryside also came under Syrian army shelling. Syrian authorities blame "armed terrorists" for breaking the truce and the opposition says a ceasefire is impossible while Assad continues to move his tanks and use heavy artillery and jets against populated areas.

- A car-bombing killed at least 10 people on the last day of a temporary truce in Syria Monday October 29, 2012. Women and children died in the attack in the Jaramana district of Damascus. Activists earlier reported government jets bombed Harasta, in the northeast area of the capital. U.N.-Arab envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said he was disappointed that both sides weren't complying with the cease-fire. The BBC said more than 420 people reportedly died since the cease-fire began Friday.

- Syria Tuesday October 30, 2012:

1. Syrian warplanes bombed rebel targets with renewed intensity after the end of a widely ignored four-day truce between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and insurgents.
2. State television said "terrorists" had assassinated an air force general, Abdullah Mahmoud al-Khalidi, in a Damascus suburb.
3. Air strikes hit eastern suburbs of Damascus, outlying areas in the central city of Homs, and the northern rebel-held town of Maarat al-Numan on the Damascus-Aleppo highway.
4. Rebels have been attacking army bases in al-Hamdaniya and Wadi al-Deif, on the outskirts of Maarat al-Numan. Some activists said 28 civilians had been killed in Maarat al-Numan.
5. The military has shelled and bombed Maarat al-Numan, since rebels took it last month.
6. Two rebels were killed and 10 wounded in an air strike on al-Mubarkiyeh where rebels have besieged a compound guarding a tank maintenance facility.
7. The army also fired mortar bombs into the Damascus district of Hammouria, killing at least eight people.
8. U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said he will pursue his peace efforts despite the failure of his appeal for a pause in fighting for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.
9. The United Nations has sent a convoy of 18 trucks with food and other aid to Homs during the "ceasefire", but had been unable to unload supplies in the Old City due to fighting.

- Syria Wednesday October 31, 2012:

1. Syrian warplanes pounded opposition strongholds around Damascus and in the north. Government jets carried out five strikes in the eastern Ghouta district, a rebel stronghold close to the capital.
2. Three air strikes also hit the rebel-held city of Maaret al-Numan that straddles a key supply route from Damascus to Aleppo. Maaret al-Numan has been under constant bombardment since it fell to the rebels on October 10.
3. No casualties were reported in Wednesday's strikes. However, at least 185 people were killed nationwide in air strikes and artillery shelling the day before, pushing the total death toll from the relentless fighting in Syria to over 36,000 since March 2011.
4. At least 47 soldiers were also killed Tuesday.
5. Syrian rebels said they had formed a brigade of sympathetic Palestinians in a Damascus district to fight armed Palestinians aligned with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
   

- Syrian rebels killed 28 soldiers in attacks on military checkpoints in northern Idlib province on Thursday November 1, 2012, just hours after a wave of bombings hit Damascus and its outskirts. The rebels attacked three military checkpoints near the town of Saraqeb, killing the troops. Five rebels also died in gun battles following the attacks. There was no official confirmation of the deaths from the authorities.

- A new video appears to show Syrian rebels killing a group of captured soldiers, spraying them with bullets as they lay on the ground we were told on Friday November 2, 2012. Rebels are now in full control of Saraqeb after regime troops pulled back during Thursday's fighting.  Reports of serious human rights abuses by elements within the armed opposition have been on the rise, badly damaging the rebels' claims of moral high ground in the civil war and fuelling concerns that they are capable of a brutality matching that of the regime they are seeking to topple. In early August, a video showed several bloodied prisoners being led into a noisy outdoor crowd in the northern city of Aleppo and placed against a wall before gunmen open fire and shoot them to death. There have been other videos of individual summary execution-style killings including the beheading of Iraqi Shiites living in Syria. At the same time, there have been repeated reports of massacres by regime forces and by the pro-government fighters known as shabiha.

- Syrian rebels attacked a military airport in the country's north on Saturday November 3, 2012, in a push to cut off Syria's biggest city Aleppo from the capital Damascus, and secure a strategic north-south corridor. But despite ragged command-and-control and few heavy weapons, the rebels have gained control over the rural north and border crossings to  HYPERLINK "http://www.reuters.com/places/turkey" \o "Full coverage of Turkey" Turkey after 19 months of conflict and now seek to isolate Aleppo from Assad's power fulcrum in Damascus. Syrian warplanes attacked the nearby village of Bennish in retaliation. Further fighting was reported in the eastern, oil-producing province of Deir al-Zor and on the outskirts of Damascus.

- Syrian opposition groups have held their first day of talks in the Qatari capital Doha. The meeting could reshape the Syrian National Council, the main opposition, into a possible government in exile, but differences are already apparent. The talks come amid continuing violence in Syria, with reports of an explosion on Sunday November 4, 2012, near a hotel in Damascus. Also on Sunday, opposition activists said that rebels had seized a major oilfield in the eastern Deir Ezzor province.

- A number of people have been killed in two car bomb attacks in Syria. The first occurred outside a state-run development agency in Ziyara, a village in the central province of Hama. Two people had been killed and 10 others injured, but one activist group said at least 50 soldiers and militiamen had died. The second blast left 11 people dead in Mezzeh 86, a predominantly pro-government district in the west of the capital. The violence came as the main opposition coalition, the Syrian National Council (SNC), announced that it had broadened its membership to more than 400, taking in activists and groups from inside Syria.

- The spate of blasts that have targeted Alawite-dominated areas in the capital Damascus over the past days aims to fan the flames of sectarian tension in the country. On Monday November 5, 2012, at least 11 people were killed and scores of others wounded when a booby-trapped car sliced through Damascus' al-Mazeh 86 district, a district known for being dominated by the Alawite minority, to which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the ruling elites belong. Most of the Damascus-based army and security officers along with their families live in that area. It also houses some Kurds and other factions of the Syrian society. On Tuesday, at least 15 people got killed when three explosive devices rocked al-Wurud Square in the Damascus suburb of Qudsia, another stronghold for Alawites. At early hours Wednesday, mortar shells struck al-Mazzeh 86 for the second time within days and resulted in an unknown number of casualties. Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, make up about 12 percent of Syria's 23-million population. Sunni Muslims, the opposition's backbone, constitute about 75 percent of the population. Syrian analysts said the recent blasts aim to incite one sect against the other, which has already happened in some Syrian areas, most notably in the central province of Homs and now in Damascus. Hussam Shuaib, a political expert, said the recent blasts tried to drag the Alawites to take revenge on the Sunnis "and thus falling in the trap of a civil war planned by some foreign parties.”  Omar Ossi, a Kurdish member of the Syrian parliament, said the blasts had not excluded any component of the Syrian society, pointing out that "the blasts have started targeting the Sunnis, the Druz, Christians, Kurds, Shiites, Alawites and even the Palestinians in the camps." As the Alawite minority are being targeted, the opposition activists, mostly Sunni Muslims, have repeatedly described a more widespread and sectarian-driven government crackdown carried out with pro-government militia known as Shabiha, largely consisting of Alawites.

- Gunmen killed the brother of Syria's parliament speaker in a hail of bullets as he drove to work in Damascus on Tuesday November 6, 2012. Mohammed Osama Laham, the brother of Parliament Speaker Jihad Laham, became the latest victim of a wave of assassinations targeting Syrian officials, army officers and other prominent supporters of President Bashar Assad's regime.  Laham was gunned down in the Damascus neighbourhood of Midan. The government and activists said a series of explosions Tuesday evening rocked the northwestern edge of Damascus. At least 13 people were killed and 30 wounded. SANA said the three blasts occurred in the al-Wuroud district near the town of Qudsaya, causing significant destruction. The bombs were placed in a main square near housing for the country's elite troops from the Republican Guards, which is led by Assad's brother Maher in charge of protecting the capital.

- Insurgents escalated attacks on targets within earshot of PresidentAssad’s hilltop Damascus palace, blowing up a judge in his car and lobbing mortar shells at a neighbourhood that houses central government offices and a military airfield On Wednesday November 7, 2012. The assassination of the judge was the second high-profile killing of a top Assad loyalist in the Syrian capital in two days. The judge, Abad Nadhwah, died instantly when a remotely detonated bomb exploded under his car. On Tuesday, gunmen assassinated Mohammad Osama al-Laham, a prominent agricultural expert and brother of the Syrian Parliament speaker, in a central Damascus neighbourhood while he was driving to work. The news agency attributed both assassinations to terrorists, the government’s catchall term for Mr. Assad’s opponents. The judge’s assassination was part of a particularly violent day in the capital, during which at least four mortar attacks shook the Mezze 86 neighbourhood, a hilltop enclave populated by Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect near the presidential palace. The attackers had been aiming for the palace but the mortar shells hit the administrative offices of the prime minister and a military airfield. It was unclear whether there were casualties. Still, the ability of rebels to strike so close to Mr. Assad’s centre of power, despite his repeated efforts to rout them, appeared to reflect the tenacity of the insurgency. The Houran Freemen Brigade, a unit of the Free Syrian Army, the main armed insurgent group in Syria, took responsibility for the mortar attacks on Mezze 86.

- A mortar bomb fired from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday November 8, 2012. The mortar bomb landed in an Israeli village and had not gone off. No casualties or damage were reported. A military spokesman added that a few mortars had been fired, all of them errant and not aimed at Israeli targets. The incident follows several similar events in the past week, as fighting has flared in close-by Syrian villages between Syrian rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. On Saturday three Syrian tanks entered the demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria and Israel has asked the U.N. Security Council to act on what it said was "a dangerous escalation". Since then an Israeli military vehicle was hit by a stray Syrian bullet, a round of mortar bombs landed in the demilitarized zone and a landmine was set off by more stray firing, sparking a small fire.

- Syrian opposition groups were due to convene in the Qatari capital Doha on Thursday November 8, 2012, to appoint a new and supposedly more representative leadership. But on the eve of the conference three of the dissident bodies included in the US-backed initiative refused to attend. The setback came as Turkey said it was in talks to deploy Nato-controlled Patriot missiles on its border with Syria to ward off the regime's cross-border threat.

- The United Nations is warning on Friday November 9, 2012, that the number of people inside Syria needing humanitarian aid could rise sharply from 2.5 million now to 4 million by early next year if the civil war grinds on at its current deadly pace. The U.N. is also projecting that a failure to end the fighting will lead to an increase in the number of Syrians fleeing to neighbouring countries, from almost 400,000 at present to around 700,000 in early 2013.

- Suicide car bombings ripped through a Syrian government base in a southern city on Saturday November 10, 2012, killing at least 20 soldiers the latest in a series of explosions targeting regime forces and symbols of state security across the country. The explosions in Daraa were followed by clashes between regime forces and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. Daraa was the birthplace of the uprising against Assad, which erupted in March 2011. The conflict began largely with peaceful protests against Assad's rule but morphed into a civil war after rebels took up arms in response to the regime's crackdown.

- Syrian opposition groups meeting in Qatar have inked a hard-won unity deal and agreed to form a national coalition to fight against president Bashar al-Assad, we were told on Sunday November 11, 2012. The deal came after the Syrian National Council (SNC), which had formerly been seen as the main representative of the opposition, heeded Arab and Western pressure to agree to a new structure embracing groups that had been unwilling to join its ranks. The talks were now focused on the makeup of a planned government in waiting.

- Syrian activists say regime forces have attacked a border area with Turkey using helicopters and artillery after rebels captured a crossing point. The Ras al-Ain border area was “under siege” on Sunday November 11, 2012, as tens of rebels tried to hold onto the border crossing.

- Israel fired at and struck two Syrian mortar launchers on Monday November 12, 2012, following the second time in as many days that Syrian artillery shells exploded in Israeli territory. A tank from the 401 Armoured Brigade fired at the Syrian targets in what was an escalated Israeli retaliation to Syrian fire. Unlike Sunday’s exchange, the IDF fired with the intention of hitting its target, as part of a new policy designed to deter Syrian forces from firing into Israel.

- The deeply divided Syrian opposition took a step toward renewed unity Sunday November 11, 2012, forming a new coalition designed to build stronger international support for its goal of ousting the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. After more than a week of sometimes contentious discussions in the Qatari capital, Doha, Syrian dissidents said they had come together and formed an alliance with an unwieldy title: the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces. Activists called it a broad-based coalition representing the diverse Syrian opposition, including members both inside and outside the country as well as various religious and ethnic minorities. The United States and other governments backing Assad's ouster have been pressing opposition groups to work in a unified fashion with both domestic and foreign allies. Dissidents elected a Sunni Muslim cleric, Moaz Khatib, as the coalition's president. Khatib was described as a moderate former preacher at the historic Umayyad mosque in Damascus, the capital, who fled the country during the summer after he was arrested. He is said to retain a considerable following inside Syria.

- A Syrian warplane bombed the rebel-held town of Ras al-Ain on Monday November 12, 2012, just meters from the Turkish frontier, sending scores of civilians fleeing for safety into Turkey. Helicopters also strafed targets near the town, which fell to rebels on Thursday during an advance into Syria's mixed Arab and Kurdish northeast. There was no word on casualties. The plane flew right along the border and appeared at one point to have entered Turkish airspace. It was not clear what the bomb struck, but scores of civilians fled the area, scrambling over the fence into Turkey.

- Israel's army fired tank shells into Syria on Monday November 12, 2012, and scored "direct hits" in response to a Syrian mortar shell that struck the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It was the second time in as many days that Israel had fired across the disengagement line drawn at the end of a war in 1973. Israeli military sources said Syrian army mobile artillery was directly hit in the incident. On Sunday the military said it had a fired a guided missile into Syria in a potent "warning shot" after errant mortar fire had fallen on land that Israel seized in a 1967 war. On Monday Israel upped the ante and carried through with a threat to target directly anyone firing across the lines.

- Nearly all of the Syrian villages along the border with Israel are in rebel hands we were told on Wednesday November 14, 2012. On Tuesday Syrian rebels have seized control over two towns in the buffer zone with Israel. 200 or more rebels took control of Be’er Ajam and Bariqa.

- The United States declined to follow France in fully recognizing a fledgling Syrian opposition coalition on Wednesday November 14, 2012, saying the body must prove its worth, after its predecessor was dogged by feuding and accusations of Islamist domination. Syria decried the new grouping, which it said had closed the door to a negotiated solution with President Bashar al-Assad.

- As the total death toll in Syria marches towards 40,000, the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday November 15, 2012, lambasted the recent U.S. backing of Syria's opposition in its quest to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Homs and Damascus are the deadliest places in Syria. Of the 37,387 who have perished since fighting began, 6,992 were killed in Homs and 6,750 in the suburbs of Damascus. The total number includes 3,061 government soldiers.

- On Thursday November 15, 2012, France says it will bring up excluding defensive weapons from the current arms embargo on Syria in order to help rebels fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  The United States has declined to fully recognize the opposition coalition, saying the group must first prove its worth after its predecessor was dogged by feuding and accusations of Islamist domination.

- Britain is holding talks with Syrian opposition leaders in London Friday November 16, 2012, saying it needs to know more about the opposition's plans before it can formally recognize the group. British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC ahead of talks with the new Syrian opposition leader, Muslim cleric Mouaz al-Khatib, and other opposition leaders that he wanted to hear more about how much support the group has inside of Syria. He said he also wanted to hear how the Kurdish minority is going to be included in the opposition government and who they plan to appoint to particular positions. Britain would decide whether to formally recognize the group "in the coming days."

- Syrian rebels have captured a military airport near the Iraqi border, prompting a retaliatory air strike by regime forces. Video footage published on Saturday November 17, 2012, by rebel groups showed fighters patrolling Hamdan airbase, a former agricultural hub in Deir el-Zour province that the government had only recently converted to military use. The capture of the airbase came as Turkey was said to be on the brink of asking Nato for missiles to help defend its border with Syria.  Control of the base would strengthen recent rebel gains in the civil war that activists say has killed 38,000 people since it was triggered early last year by a government clampdown on peaceful protests. If the rebels retain Hamdan it would leave only one airbase in government hands. It would also consolidate their control of Abu Kamal, a border city of more than 60,000.

- On Saturday November 17, 2012, France became the first western country to formally establish diplomatic links with a new Syrian opposition movement as President François Hollande announced the appointment of a new Syrian envoy to Paris.

- Rebels captured an airport used by Syria's military near the Iraqi border on Saturday November 17, 2012, a move which would allow the opposition to maintain their hold on the recently seized border town of Albu Kamal. President Bashar Assad's forces have retaliated by bombing the airport with fighter jets.

- A Turkish cameraman captured by Syrian forces while covering fighting in the city of Aleppo in August has been released and will return to Turkey we were told on Saturday November 17, 2012. Cameraman Cuneyt Unal and reporter Bashar Fahmi —a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin— had been missing since August. They were believed to have been captured by Syrian government forces. Both were working for the U.S.-based Alhurra TV.

- A total of 42 armed men were killed Sunday November 18, 2012, during clashes with the Syrian troops in the east and north of Syria. 17 members of the al- Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front were killed Sunday at al-Jubaila district in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. Other 25 armed men had been killed in the northern province of Aleppo. Activists reported heavy government troops' shelling on the Damascus district of Darya and the Kafar Souseh orchards, which emerged as strongholds for armed insurgents. Earlier in the day, mortars fired by armed men were most likely from the Kafar Souseh area, which struck parts of the Mazzeh area and seriously injured two people, causing heavy property losses.

- Israel fired artillery into Syria in response to gunfire aimed at its troops in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, and may have killed Syrian soldiers, we were told on Sunday November 18, 2012. There were no reported injuries on the Israeli side from the shootings, which occurred on Saturday, the third case this month of violence seen as a spill over of civil unrest in Syria that has also alarmed other neighbours such as Lebanon and Turkey

- Syria on Sunday November 18, 2012, slammed as “hostile” a French decision to host an ambassador from the opposition National Coalition, as regime forces bombarded southern districts of the capital and clashes raged nationwide. France on Saturday invited the group to send an envoy to Paris, after President Francois Hollande met National Coalition leader Ahmad Muath Al Khatib.

- An estimated 200 Syrian and regional politicians gathered in Tehran on Sunday November 18, 2012, to discuss a possible end to the violence that has engulfed Syria since March 2011. Iran continues to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime despite the bloodshed, which has killed more than 40,000 people since the fighting began. But the presence of delegations from dozens of countries, including representatives of Russia and China, two key Syrian allies, indicate that Iran is seen as able to wield influence in the matter.

- Syrian rebels on Monday November 19, 2012, took control of part of the strategic army base 46 they have besieged for weeks in the northern province of Aleppo. The rebel fighters also captured at least 25 regime soldiers during clashes with the military at the same base. During their assault on the sprawling base, which is situated atop a hill near the town of Atarib, the rebel fighters seized heavy weapons from the military.

- Two mortar rounds struck Syria's Information Ministry building in the capital Damascus on Tuesday November 20, 2012 causing some damage but no casualties. Syrian TV blamed "terrorists" for the attack, referring to insurgents who have been battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad since last year. Fierce fighting has since erupted in Daraya, which is on the southwestern edge of Damascus. The rebels in the area have deployed near the main southern highway leading out of the capital city. Elite Republican Guard troops backed by tanks were trying to storm Daraya but met with fierce resistance from rebels there, who have regrouped after a big army offensive on the area killed an estimated 1,100 people six weeks ago.

- Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Tuesday November 20, 2012, the UK has decided to recognise the Syrian opposition coalition. He told MPs the National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was the "sole legitimate representative" of the Syrian people. He said they were now a "credible" alternative to the Assad government. In the absence of a diplomatic solution, he told MPs the UK would not rule out any action -subject to international law- to save lives.

- Making diplomatic and military advances, a Syrian opposition coalition gained official recognition from Britain on Tuesday November 20, 2012, and showed off one of its largest hauls of heavy weapons from a captured government base inside Syria.

- Syrian rebels seized a key military base with artillery stockpiles in the country's east Thursday November 22, 2012, strengthening their hold in an oil-rich strategic province bordering Iraq. The rebels have been making advances in the Deir el-Zour province recently, and the capture of the base followed the seizure of a military airport in the same area last week. Syrian warplanes flattened a building next to a hospital in Aleppo late Wednesday, killing at least 15 people, including a doctor and three children, and damaging one of the last remaining sources of medical help for civilians in the northern city. Once a private clinic owned by a businessman loyal to President Bashar Assad, the Dar al-Shifa became a field hospital run by volunteer doctors, nurses and aides united by their opposition to the regime and the need to give medical care to both civilians and rebels.

- Activists in Syria say a government jet has dropped a cluster bomb on a playground, leaving 10 children dead. Video posted on the internet showed children's bodies on the ground with their mothers grieving over them. The children were killed when a MiG fighter bombed a playground in the village of Deir al-Asafir, east of Damascus. Moreover intensive fighting has continued around the capital and rebel fighters captured at least part of an airbase on Sunday November 25, 2012.

- Syrian rebels aiming to encircle Aleppo virtually cut off roads to the battleground city from neighbouring Raqa province as the army targeted rebel strongholds around Damascus on Monday November 26, 2012. After several days of fighting, the insurgents took full control of Tishrin dam on the Euphrates River, a route that connects the northern provinces of Aleppo and Raqa.

- Syrian warplanes bombed an olive oil factory packed with farmers Tuesday, killing at least 20 people in the latest regime strike to rip through a crowd of civilians, activists said.

- Syrian warplanes attacked targets close to the Turkish border for the second consecutive day as North Atlantic Treaty Organization officers arrived to select missile sites to counter President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

- U.S., Dutch and German officers representing the three NATO countries with Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries visited Turkish provinces near the Syrian border today, authorities said. As work began, Assad’s jets struck the town of Harim, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. That followed yesterday’s bombing of a Turkish-sponsored refugee camp near the Syrian town of Atma that sent thousands of people streaming toward the frontier.

- Russia renewed its opposition to NATO’s involvement today, with Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Denisov telling a Berlin press conference “we don’t like this plan.” The alliance’s aims were unclear: “Who’s threatened? Where’s the threat coming from?” he said. Iran has also opposed the move.

- Syria, Tuesday November 27, 2012:

1. Fighting raged in the capital Damascus  opposition activists said. Rebels battled government forces in the Damascus suburb of Kfar Souseh, on the edge of the centre of the capital housing the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
2. Syrian aircraft attacked towns in the country's north and east and killed at least five people in a strike on an olive oil press. The victims were civilians but rebel fighters were in the area. A government jet fired barrel bombs -cylinders packed with explosives and petrol- at the Abu Hilal olive oil press west of Idlib city.
3. There was also combat in the Baba Amr district of Homs city, an area that was overrun by government troops in February.
4. There was also fighting in Aleppo, Deir al-Zor, Deraa, Idlib province and Hama province.

- Twin suicide car bombs ripped through a Damascus suburb minutes apart on Wednesday November 28, 2012, killing at least 34 people and injuring 83. Suicide bombers detonated two cars packed with explosives early in the morning in the eastern suburb of Jaramana, a Christian and Druse area known as mostly loyal to President Bashar Assad. Wednesday's bombs were detonated in a parking lot near a cluster of commercial buildings as groups of laborers and employees were arriving for work. The blasts shattered windows, littering the street with glass and debris. Human remains were scattered on the pavement in pools of blood. Six commercial buildings were damaged in the attacks, and dozens of cars were destroyed. After the first explosion, people rushed to help the injured, and then the second bomb went off. Rebels claimed they shot down a Syrian air force fighter jet.

- On Thursday November 29, 2012, we were told that Syrian rebels have acquired as many as 40 shoulder-fired missile systems in recent weeks to counter assaults by Syrian military aircraft. The potential impact of the missiles on the 20-month-old civil war was demonstrated Tuesday with the dramatic downing of a Syrian helicopter, blasted from the sky near Aleppo by what military experts say was almost certainly a portable antiaircraft missile.

- Fighting raged around Syria's main airport Friday November 30, 2012, and an Internet blackout continued throughout Syria. Heavy clashes are reported in towns near the airport and one activist said the government continued its bombing of the suburb of Daraya. The airport road is open but it is not completely secure, due to continuing fighting in various towns along the road. Government forces are using both warplanes and artillery to bomb rebel positions near the airport road. Internet and telephone lines remained cut Friday throughout much of Syria for a second straight day.

- In Tokyo, the Friends of the Syrian People International Working Group -60 countries-on Sanctions issued a statement Friday November 30, 2012, after a one-day meeting, calling on those working with the Syrian regime to distance themselves or “face further isolation from the international community and the international economic and financial system.” While Russia and China were not named in the statement, delegates confirmed it is meant to warn those two countries, who were not part of the Tokyo meeting. The group also asked for a tightened embargo on petroleum products. The United States has banned the import of Syrian oil and gas. The European Union has not.

- Two Austrian peacekeeping soldiers wounded in crossfire in Syria were transferred to Israel for treatment on Friday November 30, 2012; their condition is not life-threatening. The two, members of the United Nations monitoring force that observes a truce between Israel and Syria, were on their way to Damascus airport for a flight home when their vehicle was caught in crossfire between Syrian government and rebel forces. The two were wounded by gunfire when rebels attacked an army position near the airport road.

- New footage posted on the Internet on Thursday November 29, 2012, appears to have been filmed by a Syrian rebel who points the camera along the barrel of his gun as he shoots 10 unarmed prisoners. The video shows 10 men wearing t-shirts and camouflage trousers lying face down next to a building and a lookout tower. Even before the shooting, two of the men are not moving and one has blood coming from his torso. The cameraman then points the camera along the barrel of his Kalashnikov assault rifle as he shoots the men. The gunman gets on the back of a pickup truck and the camera pans to show the man who had been shot in the arm still moving. More shots are fired and his body spasms.

- The Syrian army shelled the outskirts of Damascus on Saturday December 1, 2012, in a drive to establish a secure perimeter around the capital, including the key airport road that has come under sustained rebel attack. The 27-kilometre highway remained perilous a day after troops said they had reopened the key link to the outside world in heavy fighting that followed deadly fire on a bus carrying airport staff and at least two attacks on UN convoys. Syrian Internet and mobile phone links remained cut for a third straight day as the government is deliberately seeking to deprive the opposition of communications. Troops were in action against rebel fighters entrenched in both the southwestern outskirts of the capital and the eastern suburbs, where the airport lies.

- Syrian army forces pounded rebel-held suburbs around Damascus with fighter jets and rockets on Sunday December 2, 2012, killing at least ten and wounding dozens in the town of Deir al-Asafir in an offensive to stop rebels closing in on the capital. Rebels planned to push into the city center from their strongholds on the outskirts and fighting has been fierce. The army sent reinforcements after a week of rebel advances, including the capture of two military bases near the capital.

- Fifteen civilians were killed and 24 wounded in a bomb attack on Sunday December 2, 2012, in a government-held district of the central Syrian city of Homs.

- Syria, Monday December 3, 2012:

1. Syrian warplanes bombed a security building that had been taken over by rebels along the Turkish border, killing at least one person, wounding 20 more and sending dozens of civilians fleeing across the frontier.
2. Turkish ambulances ferried at least 21 wounded Syrians from the border to Ceylanpinar's hospital. One of the wounded later died in the hospital. Witnesses in Ras al-Ayn told him more than a dozen people were killed in the bombing.
3. Lebanese troops exchanged fire with rebels across the border. Lebanese soldiers stationed near the village of Qaa in the Bekaa Valley returned fire into Syria after "armed men" shot at them from across the frontier.
4. There was heavy fighting between rebels and regime troops in the southern suburbs of Damascus.

 

- Syria Tuesday December 4, 2012:

• The NATO alliance warned Bashar al-Assad's government about using chemical weapons and mulling a Turkish request for Patriot missiles to defend its borders.
• Rebel fighters have scored a major gain where government forces once ruled. The rebels have cut off a sprawling military base outside Aleppo with some 450 government soldiers trapped inside. The rebels could easily overrun the base but they want to give government soldiers a chance to defect.
• Already, about 250 soldiers have defected from units at the base since the Syrian uprising began in 2011, and most of them have joined the opposition. It's another indication al-Assad is losing his grip on a country he once firmly commanded.
• The government has tried air-dropping food to its soldiers, often missing the targets. Opposition fighters have shot out their water supply. While the soldiers still have stockpiles of artillery, their options are dwindling.
• In another incident, rebels and the government are reporting deadly shelling on a school in a refugee camp in the Damascus area. The LCC said 30 students were killed there. The school was "showered by mortars leaving between eight and 12 dead, including children and a teacher."

- Washington fears a "desperate" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could use chemical weapons as rebels bear down on Damascus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday December 5, 2012, repeating a vow to take swift action if he does. Rebels fighting to overthrow Assad said they had surrounded an air base near Damascus, a fresh sign that battle is closing in on the Syrian capital.

- The army has bombed two Damascus suburbs and poured in military reinforcements in an effort to try to reclaim territory controlled by rebels. On Friday December 7, 2012, the army fired rockets at the rebel-held Daraya and Moadamiah suburbs southwest of the capital. Troops massing on the suburbs' outskirts could be the prelude to an imminent ground assault. On Thursday, United Nations peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said the United States and Russia agree on the need to find a "creative solution" to bring Syria back from the brink.
 
- Syrian rebels backed by radical Islamists captured a northern regimental command center of President Bashar al-Assad's army, on Sunday December 9, 2012, as Russia dismissed speculation that it is preparing for its ally's possible exit from power. Assad's forces hammered rebel units on the outskirts of Damascus as they tried to drive back opposition fighters rebels seeking to advance toward the embattled leader's seat of power.

- President Obama formally recognized a newly formed Syrian opposition group as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people Tuesday December 11, 2012, a move the administration hopes will speed the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad and the formation of an alternative government. The widely anticipated decision follows similar recognition by France, Britain and others, and it comes on the eve of a meeting of the Friends of Syria group of nations in Morocco on Wednesday that is expected to formally anoint the group. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was to announce the recognition at the meeting, cancelled her trip because of illness.

- Russia acknowledged for the first time Thursday December 13, 2012 that rebels are gaining in their effort to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and a top diplomat said Moscow is bracing for the possibility that its long-time ally could lose the bloody civil war that has dragged on for nearly two years. There was no sign that Russia —Syria’s most powerful patron— would join other nations, including the United States, in supporting the opposition or pressuring Assad to step down. But after Russia’s consistent sheltering of Assad from U.N. condemnation and other attempts to force him out, the statement from Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was an indication that even the strongest allies of the Syrian government are reckoning with the military and diplomatic gains that rebel forces have made in recent weeks.

- On Friday December 14, 2012, at least 24 civilian people have been killed and more than 30 wounded, including women and children, in two separate car bombings southwest of Damascus. Eight people, mostly women and children, were killed by a car bomb in the poor Sunni town of Jdaidet Artuz. Less than eight kilometres away, a similar blast rocked the town of Qatana earlier in the day, leaving 16 people dead, seven of them children.

- On Friday December 14, 2012 U.S. and allied officials say the forces of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad have prepared several dozen bombs and shells loaded with the lethal chemical sarin. The Syrians loaded the weapons with the chemical agents in the past several weeks.  The Americans were particularly alarmed when Assad's forces fired Scud missiles at rebel positions earlier this week, initially believing that the warheads included sarin, one of the most deadly chemical weapons, which can kill victims within minutes. Between three and eight Scuds were fired from the capital Damascus toward rebel positions around the northern city of Aleppo. The U.S. and its allies are preparing for ways to address the chemical weapons threat. CIA contractors are training rebels in Jordan on how to identify and safeguard chemical weapons that are located in dozens of sites around the country.

- The Russian Foreign Ministry distanced itself on Friday December 14, 2012, from comments by its Middle East envoy, who was widely quoted a day earlier as saying that rebels in Syria may defeat the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, and said Russia’s insistence on a political solution to the Syrian crisis, will never change.

- A Palestinian refugee camp in the capital Damascus has been attacked On Sunday December 16, 2012, reportedly by war planes. The number of people killed or injured is unclear, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, reported at least eight deaths. The al-Yarmouk camp houses Palestinians and also Syrians displaced by fighting. Opposition activists say those killed had been sheltering in a mosque as fighting raged in the surrounding area. Yarmouk is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. There are some 500,000 Palestinians in Syria. Their loyalties are divided between the government and the opposition.

- Three workers at a Syrian steel plant, including an Italian, have been kidnapped, we were told on Monday December 17, 2012. The Italian captive works as an engineer at the Hmisho steel plant in Latakia, but he was abducted near Tartus, the Syrian port that is located about 55 miles south of Latakia and contains the only naval base Russia has outside the former Soviet Union. The other two hostages are Russians, but there was no immediate confirmation of that.

- Syrian rebels have captured at least six towns in the central province of Hama. The rebel gains came as the United Nations on Wednesday launched what it said was its "largest short-term humanitarian appeal ever", for $1.5 billion to help millions of Syrians suffering a "dramatically deteriorating" humanitarian situation. The capture of large parts of Hama province could now give the rebels effective control of a stretch of territory from the northern Turkish border 180 km to the north. The towns taken by rebels included Latamneh, Helfaya, Kfar Naboudah, Hasraya, Tibat al-Imn and Kfar Zita, and that fighting had also broken out in the city of Hama itself. At least 100 people had been killed across the country, adding to a death toll in the 21-month-old uprising against Assad of more than 40,000 people. At least 21 people, including 15 rebels, were killed when a car bomb exploded in Aziziyah on the southern approach to Aleppo city.

- Within the past day, the Assad regime in Syria once again launched Scud missiles at rebel-held areas in the northwest part of the country, we were told on Friday December 21, 2012. Last week the Syrian regime fired five missiles from the Damascus area into an area west of the northern city of Aleppo, near the border with Turkey. The latest missile salvos once again targeted the area near Aleppo. The missiles were launched in multiple waves and did not carry chemical weapons.
 
- The Syrian military has continued to fire Scud-type missiles 0n Saturday December 22, 2012. Although none of the Syrian rockets hit Turkish territory, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmusen said the use of the medium-range ballistic rockets showed that NATO was justified in deploying six batteries of Patriot anti-missile systems in neighbouring Turkey. The United States, Germany and the Netherlands will each provide two batteries of the U.S.-built air defence systems to Turkey. More than 1,000 American, German and Dutch troops will man the batteries, likely from sites well inland in Turkey.

- President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday December 21, 2012, added to recent signals that Moscow is slowly distancing itself from the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and its longstanding but now severely weakened ally. Asserting that Russia’s main goal is to avoid chaos, Mr. Putin restated Russia’s position that Syria’s civil war could be resolved only through talks between the parties involved. But he insisted that “we aren’t a defender of the current Syrian leadership” and said Moscow wants “a democratic regime in Syria based on the expression of the people’s will.”

- Syria has consolidated its chemical weapons into one of two locations from its usual places scattered across the country, Russia's foreign minister said Saturday December 22, 2012.

- Dozens of people have been killed and many wounded in a government air strike on a bakery in central Hama province. The incident took place in Halfaya on Saturday December 23, 2012, a town recently captured by rebels. If activists' reports of 90 deaths are confirmed, this would be one of the deadliest air strikes of the civil war.

- Syrian rebels fully captured a northern town near the Turkish border on Tuesday December 25, 2012, after weeks of heavy fighting and attacked a regime air base in a neighbouring province. The air base is in Aleppo province, where opposition fighters have already captured three other large military bases in recent months. Rebels have also laid siege to the international airport in the city of Aleppo, Syria's commercial capital, and launched an offensive on the police academy near the city. With steady rebel gains across the north, President Bashar Assad's regime is having increasing difficulty sending supplies by land to Aleppo province, especially after rebels cut a major thoroughfare from Damascus. It is just another sign that the opposition is consolidating its grip across large swathes of territory in northern Syria near the Turkish border.

- Lakhdar Brahimi, the international envoy on a mission to Damascus seeking an end to the escalating civil conflict in Syria, said on Thursday December 27, 2012, that a transitional government with full executive authority should be established, perhaps within months, and should rule the country until new elections could be held. Mr. Brahimi did not say who would serve in such a government, and he offered no details about the role Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, would play — if any — during a transitional period. But his comments suggested that if Mr. Assad did remain in the country, he would retain none of his authority.

- Twenty people were killed Wednesday December 26, 2012, in fighting in a small Syrian village, according to opposition activists, as the commander of Syria's military police announced he was joining the rebellion in one of the army's highest-level defections. Syrian security forces shelled Qahtaniya village in Raqqah province. At least 20 people were killed, including eight children and three women. The official Syrian Arab News Agency in turn blamed the rebels for the deaths of several civilians, saying an armed terrorist group had attacked them. The news agency, known as SANA, said the army then captured and killed several "terrorists".

- Syrian government forces have pushed rebel forces out of the Deir Baalbeh district of the city of Homs after several days of fierce fighting. More than 200 civilians were killed by regime forces after the fighting, but the claim cannot be independently verified. The death toll across Syria on Saturday December 29, 2012, was reported to be as high as 400.
Syria has blamed rebels for blowing up a natural gas pipeline Monday December 32, 2012, in the country's oil-rich east, disrupting distribution. The blast caused the loss of around 1.5 million cubic meters of gas. The station fed electricity plants and a fertilizer factory and that engineers were repairing the leak.

- Internet video posted by Syrian rebels appears to show fighters loyal to President Bashar al-Assad stabbing two men to death and stoning them with concrete blocks in a summary execution lasting several minutes. Reuters could not verify the provenance of the footage or the identity of the perpetrators and their victims. The video was posted on Tuesday January 1, 2013 but it was not clear where or when it was filmed. However it does clearly show a summary execution and torture, apparently being carried out by government supporters.
- At least 60,000 people have died in Syria's conflict, U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said on Wednesday January 2, 2013, citing an "exhaustive" U.N.-commissioned study.

- Clashes between government troops and rebels on Tuesday January 1, 2013, forced the international airport in Aleppo to stop all flights in and out of Syria’s largest city, while fierce battles also raged in the suburbs of the capital Damascus. The rebels have been making inroads in the civil war recently, capturing a string of military bases and posing a stiff challenge to the regime in Syria’s two major cities — Damascus and Aleppo. In the past few weeks, the rebels have stepped up their attacks on airports around Aleppo Province, trying to chip away at the government’s air power, which poses the biggest obstacle to their advances. The air force has been bombing and strafing rebel positions and attacking towns under opposition control for months.  But the rebels have no planes or effective antiaircraft weapons to counter the attacks.

- At least nine people have been killed by a car bomb at a petrol station in the Syrian capital, Damascus, say activists on Thursday January 3, 2013. The bomb reportedly hit the Barzeh al-Balad district, as large numbers of people were queuing for fuel. The bombing comes a day after dozens of people were killed in an air strike on a petrol station south of the city.

- Fighting raged around the suburbs of the Syrian capital Friday January 4, 2013, as rebels sought to gain control of a ring of farming, residential and industrial communities that are a lifeline for the government of President Bashar Assad. In neighbouring Turkey, the first of 400 U.S. troops arrived to operate Patriot missile batteries intended to keep the violence from spilling over into the territory of the NATO country.
- An explosion struck a gas station in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Friday January 4, 2013, killing at least 10 people in the second attack in three days on people lining up for scarce fuel. The bomb struck the Qasioun gas station in the northeastern Damascus neighbourhood of Barzeh. The news agency blamed terrorists, its shorthand for government opponents. Antigovernment activists said the explosion was caused by a bomb in a car or minibus, and they put the death toll at 9 to 11.

- Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday January 6, 2013, outlined his vision for a road map to end nearly 22 months of violence in Syria but also struck a defiant tone, calling on his countrymen to unite against "murderous criminals" whom he said are carrying out a foreign plot seeking to tear the nation apart. Assad ignored international demands for him to step down and said he is ready to hold a dialogue but only with those "who have not betrayed Syria." He offered a national reconciliation conference, elections and a new constitution but demanded regional and Western countries stop funding and arming rebels trying to overthrow him first.

- The Syrian government and the rebels fighting against it carried out a massive prisoner swap Wednesday January 9, 2013, with the government releasing 2,130 Syrian and Turkish captives in exchange for 48 Iranians who had been seized by rebel forces. The swap appeared to be the largest yet in the nearly two-year-old conflict, which has left up to 60,000 dead. The deal was brokered by the governments of Qatar and Turkey.

- Rebel are reported to have taken control of a strategic military airbase -in Taftanaz airport- in north-western Syria  Friday on January 11, 2013 after weeks of fierce fighting with government forces. Helicopters based there have been used to attack rebel-held areas. Meanwhile, talks in Geneva between the UN envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and senior US and Russian diplomats ended without a breakthrough.

- Russia voiced support on Saturday for international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi but insisted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's exit cannot be a precondition for a deal to end the country's conflict.

- Some 60,000 Syrians have been killed during the 21-month-old revolt and world powers are divided over how to stop the escalating bloodshed. Government aircraft bombed outer districts of Damascus on Saturday after being grounded for a week by stormy weather, opposition activists in the capital said.

- A Russian Foreign Ministry statement following talks on Friday January 11, 2013, with the United States and Brahimi reiterated calls for an end to violence in Syria, but there was no sign of a breakthrough. Brahimi said the issue of Assad, whom the United States, European powers and Gulf-led Arab states insist must step down to end the civil war, appeared to be a sticking point at the meeting in Geneva. Russia's Foreign Ministry said: "As before, we firmly uphold the thesis that questions about Syria's future must be decided by the Syrians themselves, without interference from outside or the imposition of prepared recipes for development." Russia has been Assad's most powerful international backer, joining with China to block three Western- and Arab-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed to pressure him or push him from power. Assad can also rely on regional powerhouse Iran.

- The Syrian government continued an intensifying campaign of airstrikes against rebels in the suburbs of Damascus on Monday January 14, 2013. 15 children were among more than 30 people killed in the past two days.

- Two explosions struck the main university in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday January 15, 2013, causing an unknown number of casualties. There were conflicting reports as to what caused the blast at Aleppo University, which was in session Tuesday. Two rockets hit the university, killing students and people who had fled fighting elsewhere in recent months and taken refuge on the campus grounds.

- A triple car bombing killed at least 22 people in northern Syria on Wednesday January 16, 2013, a day after massive explosions at a university campus in Syria's largest city left 87 dead, with the death toll possibly rising. The bombings targeted security vehicles near the local security headquarters and a checkpoint. Most of the dead belonged to the regime forces.
 
- Two car bombs exploded in southern Syria and a rocket slammed into a building in the north, killing at least 12 people Friday January 18, 2013. Syrian state media blamed on rebel fighters trying to topple President Bashar Assad. The rocket attack occurred in the northern city of Aleppo and the suicide car bombings in Daraa.

- Two journalists covering the war in Syria have died in two regions long engulfed in battle. A long-time globe-trotting war reporter and "battlefield junkie" who once had been a mercenary fighter in Africa has been killed in the conflict-ravaged city of Aleppo, we were told on Friday January 18, 2013. Yves Debay worked for Assaut, a French magazine based in the Paris area. The 33-year-old Syrian journalist, who used the pseudonym Mohamed Al-Hoorani, was struck by three bullets while covering fighting at the front lines in the town of Busra Al-Harir in the countryside of Daraa.

- FIVE members of one family have been killed in air raids on a town in Damascus province, with Syrian warplanes bombarding a battleground town southwest of the capital. A couple and their three children were among seven civilians killed in air strikes on the village of Baraka we were told on Sunday January 20, 2013; the toll may rise as a number of people were buried under debris. Artillery shelling and air raids on Daraya are also reported.

- On Thursday January 24, 2013, Syrian warplanes bombed rebel-held areas near Damascus as Bashar Assad's troops battled opposition fighters for control of a strategic road that links the capital with the main airport. The state-run news agency Sana said that troops had been battling rebels in the oil-rich province of al-Hasaka in the country's north-east, killing and wounding several “terrorists. The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group allied to the official opposition National Coalition, said 71 people had been killed so far today, including 30 in Damascus and its suburbs.
 
- A horrific video has come to light on Thursday January 24, 2013,appearing to show sympathisers or members of the Syrian regime –some in army uniform, some in plain clothes– executing a man who says he is a member of the Free Syrian Army, after beating and taunting him.

- Rebels in Syria have burned and looted the religious sites of minorities, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday January 24, 2013, warning that the 22-month old conflict could become increasingly sectarian. In the village of Zarzour in Idlib province, researchers found evidence of deliberate damage to the local husseiniya, a Shia place of worship, caused by opposition fighters in December. Residents of Zarzour, a predominantly Sunni village, said their Shia neighbours fled fearing retaliation for supporting the government. In the Christian villages of Ghasaniyeh and Jdeideh in Latakia province, residents said that gunmen operating "in the name of the opposition" broke into and stole from churches in November. A resident in Jdeideh said armed men had broken into the local church, stolen and fired shots inside, after government troops had fled. Human Rights Watch has previously documented the destruction and vandalisation of a mosque in Taftanaz, Idlib by government forces. About 70 percent of Syria's population are Sunni Muslims, and a majority of the rebel ranks are Sunnis. Many members of minorities -including Christians, Shias and Alawites- have stayed on the sidelines of the conflict or supported President Bashar al-Assad, who is an Alawite.

- Twin car bombs in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights have killed eight people. Two cars packed with explosives blew up near a military intelligence building in the town of Quneitra on Thursday January 24, 2013, killing eight. Most of the dead were members of the Syrian military. The Syrian government has not commented on the attacks.

- Syrian rebels freed more than 100 inmates as they battled against regime troops in a major prison outside the northwestern city of Idlib on Saturday January 26, 2013. At least 10 rebels were killed on Friday in clashes inside the prison.

- An activist group with opposition contacts in Syria said on Tuesday January 29, 2013, that the muddied bodies of scores of people, most of them men in their 20s and 30s, had been found in a suburb of the northern city of Aleppo. Video shows that many had been shot in the back of the head while their hands were bound. At least 50 bodies had been located, some scattered along the banks of a small river in the Bustan al-Kaser neighbourhood, which is mostly under rebel control. Later reports put the tally at 80.

- Supporters of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Thursday January 31, 2013, condemned a strike by Israeli warplanes near the Syrian capital, Damascus. Iran, Mr. Assad’s closest regional backer, warned of “grave consequences” after the attack. American officials said they believed that the target of the attack on Wednesday was a convoy carrying sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry on the outskirts of Damascus that was intended for Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Syrian military denied that a convoy had been struck. It said the attack had hit a scientific research facility in the Damascus suburbs that was used to improve Syria’s defences, and called the attack “a flagrant breach of Syrian sovereignty and airspace.” The reactions from Iran, Russia, Lebanon and the Shiite militant Hezbollah group highlighted the regional and diplomatic stakes of the war in Syria.

- An Israeli airstrike in Syria last week targeted a shipment of weapons and caused minor collateral damage to a nearby research centre that deals with chemical weapons, we were told on Sunday February 3, 2013. Syrian television showed images of broken glass and other damage at the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre, which is suspected of involvement in developing missiles to carry chemical weapons. But the video contained no evidence of a crater or the type of damage that would have been expected from a direct bombing.

- The Russian and Iranian foreign ministers met the Syrian opposition leader, Moaz al-Khatib, for the first time on Saturday February 2, 2013, in a rare sign of diplomatic progress, but the bloodshed from the conflict continued to worsen, with nearly 5,000 people reported dead in January alone. At Munich, where a global security conference was held this weekend, there was some progress on the diplomatic front towards breaking a deadlock that has prevented a concerted international response to the conflict. Khatib, the leader of Syria's National Coalition opposition group, widely recognised in the west and the Arab world as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, met the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran, the Assad regime's only major supporters on the world stage. The opposition leaders also met the US vice president, Joseph Biden, and the UN special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, at the margins of the Munich conference.

- Israel's defence minister indicated Sunday February 3, 2013, that his country was behind the airstrike on Syria last week, in the first public comments from his government on the attack that U.S. officials said targeted a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for the militant group Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon. In Syria, President Bashar Assad said his military was capable of confronting any "aggression" targeting the country, his first comments since the airstrike.

- Two Russians and an Italian kidnapped by Syrian rebels have been freed in exchange for captured militants, Russia says. Viktor Gorelov and Abdessattar Hassun are in the Russian Embassy in Damascus and were in good health, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Monday February 4, 2013. It added that Italian Mario Belluomo, abducted together with them on Dec. 12, will be handed over to Italian envoys by Syria's Foreign Ministry. The Russian Embassy wouldn't say how many captured militants were set free in exchange for the three hostages, or offer any details about their release.

- About 54 workers at a military factory in central Syria were killed on Wednesday February 6, 2013. The explosion struck their bus as they were preparing to return home at the end of their shift. 11 of the victims from the bombing in Buraq south of the city of Hama, were women. The workers were from cities of Homs, Hama and the town of Salamiyah.

- Rebels have captured Syria's biggest hydro-electric dam and battled army tank units near the centre of Damascus, we were told on Monday February 11, 2013. On the Turkish border, nine people were killed when a car arriving from rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria blew up at the Reyhanli frontier crossing; Turkish officials said it was unclear whether the blast was a suicide attack or an accident. The rebel seizure of the Taqba dam, a prestige project on the Euphrates River completed by Assad's father in the 1970s, may have only limited impact on already patchy power supplies.

- Syrian insurgents seized control of a northern military airfield known as Al Jarrah airfield in Aleppo Province on Tuesday February 12, 2013 and captured usable warplanes for the first time in the nearly two year old conflict. The development, if confirmed, would represent the second strategic setback for President Bashar al-Assad’s government this week.

- The death toll in Syria is likely approaching 70,000 -up almost 10,000 from the start of the year- and civilians are paying the price for the U.N. Security Council's lack of action to end the conflict, the U.N. we were told on Tuesday February 12, 2013.

- An Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander has been killed inside Syria by rebels battling Iran's close ally President Bashar al-Assad, we were told on Thursday February 14, 2013. The dead man, Hessam Khoshnevis, was in charge of Tehran's reconstruction assistance in Lebanon. It said he was killed by "armed terrorist groups on the road to Lebanon as he returned from Damascus. A Syrian opposition commander said the attack was carried out by rebel fighters near the Syrian town of Zabadani close to the Lebanese border.

- On Saturday February 16, 2013, we were told that pro-government gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 people in northwestern Syria in retaliation for the abduction of 42 Shiite Muslims this week. The Britain-based Syrian says the tit-for-tat kidnappings in predominantly Sunni Muslim Idlib province could trigger sectarian clashes in the area. The Observatory said the 42 Shiites, mainly women and children, were snatched Thursday from a bus that was travelling from the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya to the capital Damascus. Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said Saturday it was not clear who kidnapped the Shiites.

- On Tuesday February 19, 2013, mortars have exploded at a stadium in Damascus, killing a footballer and injuring several others. The footballer, from the Homs-based al-Wathba team, was training at the time. One report suggested that rebel fighters were targeting the nearby Ba'ath national command building. It is the second mortar attack in the capital in two days after mortars exploded near Tishreen palace, one of Bashar al-Assad's three presidential palaces, yesterday. The Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the attack on the palace.

- Syrian antigovernment activists said on Tuesday February 19, 2013, that an army rocket had levelled several buildings in a rebel-held neighbourhood of Aleppo, killing at least 19 people and possibly leaving dozens more buried under rubble. Activists also reported that up to seven mortar rounds had been fired by fighters of the Free Syrian Army toward President Bashar al-Assad’s Tishreen Palace in Damascus. There were no immediate reports of casualties, and it was not known whether Mr. Assad was there at the time. Two mortar rounds had landed near two hospitals and the palace’s southern wall, resulting in “material damage only”.

- A car bomb near the Damascus headquarters of Syria's ruling party killed 35 people on Thursday February 21, 2013, while a government airstrike on a rebel field hospital in southern Daraa left 18 dead. The Damascus car bomb was one of at least three attacks in the heart of the city. A second blast shook another neighbourhood and mortar rounds exploded near the Syrian Army General Command. It was the third day of attacks on the centre of Damascus.

- Russia and the Arab League proposed Wednesday February 20, 2013, to broker talks between the Syrian opposition and President Bashar Assad’s regime to try to resolve the country’s civil war, while a government airstrike on a rebellious Damascus suburb killed at least 20 people. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia said the Kremlin and the Arab League are attempting to establish direct contact between the Syrian regime and the opposition. Sitting at the negotiating table is the only way to end the conflict without irreparably damaging Syria, he said.

- A car bomb targeting the headquarters of Syria's ruling party killed 53 people in central Damascus on Thursday February 21, 2013. The explosion was close to a Russian Embassy building complex. No one there was injured or killed, but there was damage to a building. Most of the victims were civilians. It's unclear who is behind the blast. The explosion wounded more than 230 more people and burned 17 cars. The bomb detonated at a checkpoint manned by government soldiers in front of the Baath Socialist Party's main office. The neighbourhood is also home to Iraqi refugees as well as Druze and Christian groups.

- Syria Tuesday February 26, 2013:

1. Combat raged near a historic mosque in the Syrian city of Aleppo while anti-government activists reported fresh clashes near a police academy west of the city.
2. Activists reported fresh fighting near the police academy that has become a key government military installation west of the city of Aleppo. The two sides were shelling each other's positions while the government launched airstrikes in the area.
3. The dead in the last two days of fighting in the area included 26 rebel fighters, 40 soldiers and five pro-government militiamen. The fighting has largely destroyed Aleppo and caused humanitarian conditions for the city's remaining civilians to plummet.
4. Human Rights Watch said more than 141 people had been killed in at least four missile strikes by the Syrian government in and near the city of Aleppo last week. About half of the dead were children. Up to 20 buildings were destroyed in each area hit by a missile.
5. The death toll in a car bomb attack in Damascus had risen to eight. All were regime security officers. The blast late Monday struck a security checkpoint in the neighbourhood of Qaboun. It was followed by several other smaller blasts thought to be mortar shells landing in various districts of the capital. The blast was caused by a suicide car bomber and caused an unspecified number of casualties.

- Syrian government forces fought fierce clashes with rebels attacking a police academy near the northern city of Aleppo on Friday March 1, 2013, while the bodies of 10 men -most of them shot in the head- were found dumped along the side of a road outside Damascus. Rebels backed by captured tanks have been trying to storm the police academy outside Aleppo since launching a new offensive on the facility last week. The school, which activists say has been turned into a military base used to shell rebel-held neighbourhoods in the city and the surrounding countryside, has become a key front in the wider fight for Aleppo. The Syrian state news agency said that government troops defending the school had killed dozens of opposition fighters and destroyed five rebel vehicles.
 
- On Friday March 1, 2013, Russia sharply criticized a decision by Western powers to boost their support for Syrian opposition forces trying to topple President Bashar Assad, saying the promised assistance would only intensify the nearly 2-year-old conflict.

- Ferocious fighting has erupted around the northern provincial capital of Raqqa on Saturday March 2, 2013. Government forces shelled several areas of the city, while running battles on the outskirts of the city since dawn had left dozens dead. Fighting also raged at a police academy near Aleppo, in the rebel enclave of Daraya and around Damascus.

- Syria and Iran said Saturday March 2, 2013, that Washington's decision to provide aid to rebels will only prolong the fighting aimed at toppling President Bashar Assad. In Tehran, Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers accused the U.S. of having a double standard on its policy regarding Syria. They said the U.S. decision to provide rebels with aid will only delay an end to the nearly 2-year-old conflict that has killed at 70,000 people.

- Syrian troops regained control of several villages along a key highway near the embattled northern city of Aleppo, restoring stability to the city's international airport.

- Four stray mortar shells fired from Syria landed in the Israeli Golan Heights on Saturday March 2, 2013. The rockets fell in an open field near the border and no injuries or damage were reported. Security forces were sent to the scene, and Israel informed the UN of the incident.

- Rebels have captured large parts of a Syrian police academy near Aleppo, after a fierce battle resulting in heavy loss of life we were told on Sunday March 3, 2013. Almost 200 fighters had been killed on both sides over eight days. More than 34 government soldiers and police died on Sunday alone, an apparent setback for government forces a day after the army announced it had regained control of villages on a major route linking the central city of Hama to Aleppo, with security "restored" to the northern city's airport.

- Rebels holding 21 U.N. peacekeepers near the Golan Heights in southern Syria say government forces must leave the area before they free their "guests" we were told on Thursday March 7, 2013. The rebels want the Syrian army and tanks to pull back from the area. The capture of the U.N. peacekeepers close to Israeli-held territory was another sign that Syria's conflict, nearing its second anniversary, could spill over to neighbouring countries. Israel has said it will not "stand idle" if violence spreads to the Golan, which it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

- Twenty-one United Nations peacekeepers captured by Syrian rebels and held for three days in a southern Syrian village crossed safely into neighbouring Jordan on Saturday March 9, 2013. The Filipino peacekeepers were taken by the Martyrs of Yarmouk rebel brigade to the border, about 10 km south of the village of Jamla where they had been held since being captured on Wednesday.

- Syria Sunday March 10, 2013:

1. Syrian government airstrikes killed at least 14 people in the northern province of Raqqa less than a week after rebels seized the area's provincial capital.
2. The U.N.'s top official for refugee affairs said the number of people fleeing Syria could triple this year if the war does not end.
3. Some of the fiercest fighting in a year was reported in Baba Amr, the neighbourhood in the central city of Homs that stood for rebel defiance but also for the government's ability to strike back. The Syrian military besieged Baba Amr for a month last year, killing hundreds of people, and eventually retook the area.
4. In the Damascus suburb of Harasta, assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a van carrying preschool children. The attack killed one child and wounded nine, three seriously.

- Syrian warplanes bombed the shattered Baba Amr district in the central city of Homs on Monday March 11, 2013, a day after rebels made a surprise push into their former bastion, which had been in army hands for a year. Sunni rebels punched through army lines in the north and west of Homs on Sunday to loosen a months-long military siege on their strongholds in the centre of the Syria's third biggest city.

- Syrian troops shelled rebel strongholds on the edge of Damascus from multiple rocket launchers based on hilltops Tuesday March 12, 2013, while new clashes erupted in an intensifying battle for control over Aleppo’s international airport and nearby military bases in Syria’s north. Rebels renewed a push to capture Aleppo’s international airport and nearby air bases as part of their campaign to erode the regime’s air supremacy in the 2-year-old conflict.

- A Ukrainian journalist who was kidnapped in Syria is free after more than 150 days in captivity. The reporter, Ankhar Kochneva, is expected to contact the Ukrainian embassy in Damascus later Tuesday March 12, 2013. Kochneva, who has written for Syrian and Russian newspapers, was kidnapped in western Syria on October 9 and reportedly held by members of the Free Syrian Army opposition group. The Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on Tuesday quoted Kochneva as saying she walked away from the house where she was held, skirted a rebel guard post and then walked about 15 kilometres through fields until finding a villager who helped her.

- A European Union staff member has been killed in a rocket attack. Ahmad Shihadeh, a policy officer with the EU delegation in Syria, was killed Tuesday March 12, 2013, in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, where he lived. A spokesman for Ashton said Shihadeh was Syrian, 32 years old, and had worked for the EU for five years. It was the first death in the Syrian civil war of an EU employee. Shihadeh "died while providing humanitarian help to the community of Daraya.

- A top Syrian general has defected from President Bashar al-Assad's government, telling an Arabic news station in an interview that aired Saturday March 16, 2013, that morale among security forces in Syria is at a low. If confirmed, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Ezz al-Din Khalouf's defection is the latest in a series of such moves by high-profile government officials, raising questions about the stability of al-Assad's government two years into the civil war gripping the country. Khalouf is the head of logistics and supply for the Syrian army

- On Sunday March 17, 2013, the United Nations announced that one of its employees, a teacher, was killed during fighting between rebels and government forces at a refugee camp outside Damascus.

- Syrian rebels on Sunday March 17, 2013, seized a Syrian military intelligence compound in the southern Hauran Plain near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

- Syria's government and rebels accused each other of launching a deadly chemical attack near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday March 19, 2013, in what would, if confirmed, be the first use of such weapons in the two-year-old conflict. Syria's state television channel said rebels fired a rocket carrying chemical agents that killed 25 people and wounded dozens. 16 soldiers were among the dead. No Western governments or international organizations confirmed a chemical attack, but Russia, an ally of Damascus, accused rebels of carrying out such a strike.

- On Tuesday Match 19, 2013, we were told that Syria's opposition National Coalition has chosen a prime minister to head a government for rebel-held regions. He is Ghassan Hitto, a Damascus-born IT expert who spent decades in the US. He was elected at a meeting of coalition leaders in Istanbul in Turkey. Mr Hitto's first task will be to form a government to oversee services in areas captured from government forces.

- On Tuesday March 19, 2013, the US and France denounced a Syrian airstrike on the Lebanese border as a "violation of sovereignty". Reports from Lebanon say Syrian aircraft fired four rockets at the border between the two countries, near the Lebanese town of Arsal on Monday. There were no casualties from the raid. Lebanese officials had earlier said it was not clear whether the rockets had landed inside Lebanese territory. The US described the attack as a "significant escalation" of the conflict. France said the raid constituted "a new and serious violation of Lebanon's sovereignty".

- France and Britain failed to persuade the European Union to back their call to lift an arms embargo on Syrian rebels on Friday March 22, 2013, despite warning that President Bashar al-Assad could resort to using chemical weapons. They won little support from other EU member states at a foreign ministers' meeting in Dublin despite raising concerns about chemical weapons to bolster their case.

- Rebels seized an air defence base near Syria's strategic southern international highway on Saturday March 23, 2013, bolstering access to supply routes to the capital Damascus. The rebels on Saturday also seized several military sites along the Jordanian-Syrian border. The developments give fighters control of about 25 km of frontier adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and could fuel tensions in the sensitive military zone. At the air base in Deraa province, which borders Jordan, the brigade's commander was among those killed.

- Israel said it fired into Syria on Sunday March 24, 2013, and destroyed a machinegun position in the Golan Heights from where shots had been fired at Israeli soldiers in a further spill over of the Syrian civil war along a tense front. It was not immediately clear whether Israel held Syrian troops or rebels responsible for what a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said had been a deliberate attack on Israeli patrols in the occupied territory. Shells have fallen several times inside Israeli-controlled territory during Syria's civil war. Some of the incidents have drawn Israeli return fire. One Israeli vehicle was hit late on Saturday by shooting from across the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line on the Golan Heights, but no one was hurt. After a second incident on Sunday, Israeli soldiers "responded with accurate fire toward the Syrian post from which they were fired on".

- Syria's opposition plunged into disarray Sunday March 24, 2013, as its president quit and its military chief refused to recognize the newly elected prime minister of an interim government for rebel-held areas. The moves reflected deep splits in the body the U.S. and its allies hope will emerge as the united face of the opposition and advance the fight to topple President Bashar Assad's regime. The president said he was quitting in frustration over what he called lack of international support and constraints imposed by the body itself.

- A member of the rebel Free Syrian Army said on Sunday March 24, 2013, that Col. Riad al-Asaad, the group's founder, had to have a leg amputated after assailants attacked his car in the town of Mayadeen, just south of Deir al-Zour. The assailants forced al-Asaad's car to stop and then hurled a grenade at it.  al-Asaad has been evacuated across the border into Turkey to recuperate. A Turkish official confirmed the information adding that al-Asaad's life was not in danger.

- On Monday March 25, 2013, the Syrian National Coalition has rejected the resignation of Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib just hours after the former leader announced he was stepping down out of frustrration. Khatib confirmed his resignation from the dissident group recognised by dozens of states and organisations as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people. Khatib is a former imam and moderate Islamist who rose from independent ranks as a respected figure of dissent against the Damascus regime.
 
- To applause from Arab heads of state, a foe of Bashar al-Assad took Syria's vacant seat at an Arab summit on Tuesday March 26, 2013, deepening the Syrian president's diplomatic isolation and diverting attention from opposition rifts. Speaking at an annual gathering of Arab leaders in the Gulf state of Qatar, Moaz Alkhatib said he had asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for American forces to help defend rebel-controlled northern parts of Syria with Patriot surface-to-air missiles now based in Turkey. The insurgents complain that they have few weapons to counter Assad's helicopter gunships and warplanes.

- Mortar shells slammed into a cafeteria at Damascus University's architecture department in the central Baramkeh district on Thursday March 28, 2013, killing at least 15 people and wounding 20. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came two days after rebels barraged Damascus with mortar shells that killed at least three people and wounded dozens.

- Syrian antigovernment activists reported the rebel seizure of the strategically important town of Dael in southern Syria on Friday March 29, 2013, only a few miles from the Jordanian border. Dael was taken after more than a day of clashes in which three military checkpoints were destroyed and more than 24 combatants and at least nine civilians were killed. The town, with a population of about 40,000, sits on an important north-south highway that connects Damascus to Dara’a, the southern city that was the birthplace of the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that turned into a civil war.

- Syrian rebels pushed into a strategic neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo after days of heavy clashes, seizing control of at least part of the hilltop district and killing a pro-government cleric captured in the fighting we were told on Saturday March 30, 2013. There were conflicting reports about the scale of the advance into the Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood by rebel forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad. But the gains marked the biggest shift on the front lines in the embattled city in months.

- Israel's military says a Syrian seeking medical assistance along the border has been brought to an Israeli hospital for treatment. The man was given first aid at the frontier between Israel and Syria on Saturday March 30, 2013. The military says it transferred him to a hospital after assessing his medical condition and says he will be returned to Syria after treatment. Syrians wounded in their nation's civil war have crossed into neighbouring Israel before to seek medical help. Israel says it is increasing the number of medical teams at the border in response. Eleven Syrians have already been treated at Israeli hospitals, including one who died from his wounds this week. The others returned home after their conditions improved.

- Syrian government warplanes and artillery pounded Damascus and its suburbs Tuesday April 2, 2013, as rebels in the northern city of Aleppo launched an operation that aims to free hundreds of political detainees from the city's central prison. The fighting has escalated across Syria in recent weeks, particularly in Aleppo and Damascus, the country's largest cities, as the rebels and President Bashar Assad's regime try to gain the upper hand in the 2-year-old conflict. Some 6,000 people were killed nationwide in March alone, making it the deadliest month since the anti-Assad uprising began.

- Syrian rebels captured a military base in the country’s south on Wednesday April 3, 2013, after days of heavy fighting in the latest advance by opposition fighters near the strategic border area with Jordan.

- A mortar shell fired from Syria landed in the Israeli Golan Heights on Tuesday April 2, 2013, and an Israel Defence Forces patrol came under gunfire in a separate area of the northern territory.

- A Syrian jet flew 20 km into Lebanon and fired a missile into a field on the outskirts of the border town of Arsal on Wednesday April 3, 2013, but caused no casualties. Lebanon has maintained a policy of "dissociation" from Syria's two-year-old conflict. But many Lebanese officials feel their country is increasingly at risk of being dragged into the civil war.

- A Syrian government airstrike on a neighbourhood in Aleppo killed at least five people Saturday April 6, 2013, while several mortar rounds slammed into a residential district in Damascus, leaving at least one person dead.

A member of an Iraq Shiite militant group was killed in Syria we were told on Saturday April 6, 2013. Other Shiite militias in Iraq have acknowledged sending members to Syria, but it is the first time that the Iraqi Hezbollah has hinted that its members are fighting there. The fighter, Afrad Mohsen al-Hemedawi, was killed while defending a Shiite holy shrine in Syria. The man was killed on March 30 and was buried on April 1.

- A Syrian government airstrike on a bitterly contested neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday April 6, 2013, killed at least 15 people, including nine children. The air raid hit Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood, parts of which rebels seized last weekend after days of heavy fighting with government troops.
Four Italian journalists have been detained in Syria. The four are a RAI public television reporter and three freelancers who had entered Syria earlier this month with the intention of working by day in Syria and crossing into Turkey in the evening. They were first reported detained in northern Syria near the Turkish border on Friday April 5, 2013.

- Some 19 people have already been killed in fighting across Syria on Friday April 12, 2013. Twelve of those were in Aleppo and six in Damascus and its suburbs. The LCCs said that 149 people were killed in the civil war yesterday, 41 of them in Homs, in the west of the country, 36 in Aleppo, and 33 in the capital.

- On Friday April 12, 2013 we were told that a Syrian rebel group's pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda's replacement for Osama bin Laden suggests that the terrorist group's influence is not waning and that it may take a greater role in the Western-backed fight to topple Syrian President Basher Assad. The pledge of allegiance by Syrian Jabhat al Nusra Front chief Abou Mohamad al-Joulani to al-Qaeda leader Sheik Ayman al-Zawahri was coupled with an announcement by the al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq that it would work with al Nusra as well. Lebanese Sheik Omar Bakri, a Salafist who says states must be governed by Muslim religious law, says al-Qaeda has assisted al Nusra for some time.

- Shots from Syria were fired at an Israel Defence Forces border patrol in the northern Golan Heights on Friday evening April 12, 2013, and the IDF responded by firing Tamuz missiles toward Syria.

- A Syrian government airstrike on a town in the country's northwest killed at least 20 people Saturday April 13, 2013, shattering store fronts, setting cars ablaze and sending a giant plume of black and gray smoke into the sky. President Bashar Assad's air force has been one of his biggest assets in the two-year-old civil war and he has used warplanes and helicopters to try to check rebel advances, although the regime also frequently hits civilian areas.

- Four Italian journalists held hostage in Syria for more than a week have been freed, we were told on Saturday April 13, 2013, and they were flown home from Turkey. The four, who worked for state television network RAI, arrived in Rome aboard a small government jet. The four —three freelancers and a RAI reporter— had been abducted on April 4 while filming in northern Syria.

- A Syrian opposition group reported shelling in the Damascus suburbs of Jobar, Hazeh and Khan Sheih on Monday April 15, 2013. The Free Syrian Army was attacking a building where regime forces were located in Khan Assal, Aleppo, and there were attacks by warplanes in Raqqa. The group said 124 people had been killed across the country yesterday, including 34 in Damascus.

- A temporary truce in Aleppo –the first in months of fighting– has been organised to allow aid workers to collect more than 30 rotting bodies from the rubble of the front line on Wednesday April 17, 2013. Red Crescent workers and members of an opposition local council drove into the edge of the working class al-Sakhour district in north Aleppo to pick up the mostly civilian dead, many of them hit by army sniper fire, as fighters from the two sides looked on. The majority of the bodies, which included children, had already decomposed. Some had been lying in the streets and between buildings for months. Three bodies were found with their hands tied and four were burnt beyond recognition.

- Syrian rebels captured a military base in the strategic Homs province on Thursday April 18, 2013, as opposition fighters fought to expand territory under their control near the Lebanese border. The central region is important to President Bashar Assad because it links Damascus, his seat of power, with one of his main allies, the militant Hezbollah group in neighbouring Lebanon.

- Syrian government troops have seized a town near Damascus, killing at least 80 people including women and children we were told on Sunday April 21, 2013. The army stormed the town of Jdaidet al-Fadl after five days of heavy fighting.

- Two Syrian archbishops from Aleppo were abducted on Monday April 22, 2013, while travelling outside that besieged northern city making them the most senior church clerics to become entangled as victims in the two-year-old civil war. The government and insurgent groups blamed each other for the abduction of the two clerics, the Syriac Orthodox archbishop, Yohanna Ibrahim, and the Greek Orthodox archbishop, Paul Yazigi. Activists reached by telephone in the Aleppo area said the pair’s vehicle had been waylaid in the countryside by armed men who shot their driver.

- Two Syrian rockets struck Lebanon on Tuesday April 23, 2013, causing damage and heightening tensions between Lebanese Shiite and Sunni communities over neighbouring Syria’s civil war.

- Fighting between Syrian insurgents and government forces in Aleppo left one of the Middle East’s most storied mosques severely damaged on Wednesday April 24, 2013, its soaring minaret toppled by explosives. Each side accused the other of responsibility for the destruction at the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo’s walled ancient city, a Unesco World Heritage site. The mosque is considered an archaeological treasure but has been a battleground for months. It was first heavily damaged by fighting last October, and President Bashar al-Assad promised a restoration. But the military later retreated from the mosque and rebel fighters have occupied it since early this year. Syria’s state media said the Nusra Front, an Islamic militant faction of the insurgency, had placed explosives inside the minaret, which dated from the 11th century. Anti-Assad activist groups said it had been hit by outside artillery fire as part of an attempt by Mr. Assad’s forces to rout them and retake the mosque.

- Syria's prime minister escaped an assassination attempt Monday April 29, 2013, when a bomb went off near his convoy in Damascus. Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi was unhurt in the bombing in the capital's western neighbourhood of Mazzeh.

- Syrian rebels seeking to topple President Bashar Assad fought intense battles with his troops on Sunday April 28, 2013, to try to seize control of three military air bases in the country's north and curtail the regime's use of its punishing air power. Rebels, who have been trying to capture the air fields for months, broke into the sprawling Abu Zuhour air base in northwestern Idlib province and Kweiras base in the Aleppo province on Saturday. Fighting raged inside the two facilities Sunday. At least seven fighters were killed in the fighting in Abu Zuhour, in addition to an unknown number of soldiers. The Syrian air force conducted an airstrike on Abu Zuhour village during the fighting to ease pressure on government troops inside the base. Rebels control much of Idlib and Aleppo provinces, which border Turkey, although government troops still hold some areas including the provincial capital of Idlib province and parts of the city of Aleppo. Rebels also seized 60 percent of the Mannagh helicopter base near the border with Turkey. Rebels from the Islamist al-Burraq Brigades announced that fighters from multiple factions in northern Aleppo have launched a large-scale offensive to seize full control of the facility. Government troops regularly shell nearby areas from the Mannagh base, including a rocket attack overnight on the town of Tal Rifaat near the border with Turkey that killed at least four people, including two women and a child.

- Syria’s prime minister escaped an assassination attempt Monday April 29, 2013, when a bomb exploded near his convoy in Damascus. Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi was not hurt in the explosion in the capital’s western neighbourhood of Mazzeh. The TV showed video of heavily damaged cars and debris in the area as firefighters fought to extinguish a large blaze set off by the blast. Two people were killed and 11 wounded.

- More than 40 people have been killed by government forces in a village in north-western Syria on Thursday May 2. 2013. An online video appears to show seven bodies in pools of blood. State media blamed the incident on "terrorists". The army was bombarding Sunni areas in Baniyas.

- Syria's main opposition group has accused President Bashar al-Assad's regimen Frida May 3, 2013, of committing a "large-scale massacre" in a Sunni village near the Mediterranean coast in which activists say at least 50 people were killed with guns, knives and blunt objects. The killings in Bayda reflect the sectarian overtones of the country's civil war. Tucked in the mountains outside the coastal city of Banias, the village is primarily inhabited by Sunni Muslims, who dominate the rebel movement. But it is in the heartland of Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam that is the backbone of the regime.

- Israeli warplanes bombed the outskirts of Damascus early Sunday May, 2013, for the second time in recent days. Though there was no official confirmation that Israel had carried out the attack, the Israeli military later announced that it had deployed two of its Iron Dome rocket defence batteries near its northern border in response to what it called “ongoing situational assessments.”

- Israel's weekend airstrike on a military complex near the Syrian capital of Damascus killed at least 42 Syrian soldiers. Syrian state media have reported casualties in Sunday May 5, 2013's pre-dawn airstrike, Israel's third into Syria this year. Israel's government has not formally confirmed involvement in strikes on Syria. However, Israeli officials said the attacks were meant to prevent advanced Iranian weapons from reaching Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, an ally of Syria and foe of Israel.

- Armed men detained four United Nations peacekeepers on patrol on the Golan Heights in a tense area that separates Syria and Israel, we were told on Tuesday May 7, 2013. A rebel group claimed it was holding the peacekeepers. The four peacekeepers, all from the Philippines, were taken by an unidentified armed group near Jamla.

- The Syrian army captured a strategic southern town from rebel fighters on Wednesday May 8, 2013, after a ferocious two-month bombardment. The fall of Khirbet Ghazaleh, situated in the Hauran Plain on the highway to Jordan, came after a Jordanian-backed Syrian opposition military council failed to supply weapons to the town’s defenders.

- Syrian rebels on Sunday May 12, 2013, released four Filipino U.N. peacekeepers they abducted last week. Meanwhile, a Syrian official said President Bashar Assad’s troops have the right to enter the Israeli-occupied Golan whenever they wish, a veiled threat at Israel to stay out of Syria’s conflict.

- A gruesome video apparently showed on Tuesday May 14, 2013, a Syrian rebel fighter cutting out the heart of a regime soldier and eating it.

- Syrian troops have stormed the rebel stronghold of Qusair and now control the town centre. 70 "terrorists" have been killed while activists say 40 people have died including many rebels. The town, near the Lebanese border, has been under siege for weeks. Its control would give the government access from the capital to the coast. Lebanese militants are said to be involved - Hezbollah siding with the government, Sunni gunmen with rebels. For the rebels, control of Qusair means they can come and go from neighbouring Lebanon.

- Gunmen in Syria have abducted the elderly father of Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, one of the most powerful voices in the government. The man was seized in the southern province of Daraa on Saturday May 18, 2013.

- Accross-border exchange of fire in the Golan Heights between the Israeli and Syrian armies early on Tuesday May 21, 2013 triggered a claim by the Damascus regime that a jeep manned by Israeli troops had entered Syrian territory and was destroyed. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) denied the claim, saying shots were deliberately fired at a patrol inside the Israeli-controlled the Golan Heights, causing minor damage and no injuries.

- On Saturday May 25, 2013, there has been an upsurge in fighting in the strategic Syrian town of Qusair. The army, which began an offensive to recapture Qusair last Sunday, has now launched a three-pronged attack on the rebel-held town. The rebels are under heavy bombardment from Lebanese Hezbollah militants, who back Syria's government. The main opposition group has said it will attend a peace conference only if the Syrian leader steps down. The international conference, which Russia and the US are attempting to convene, would take place in Geneva next month.

- Syria, Monday May 27, 2013:

1. Heavy fighting raged around the strategic Syrian border town of Qusair and the capital Damascus on Monday May 27, 2013, and further reports surfaced of chemical weapons attacks by President Bashar al-Assad's forces on rebel areas.
2. The Syrian military pounded eastern suburbs of Damascus with air strikes and artillery and loud explosions echoed around al-Nabak where fighting has cut the highway running north to the central city of Homs.
3. Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters were pressing a sustained assault on Qusair, a town long used by insurgents as a way station for arms and other supplies from Lebanon.
4. Hezbollah's deepening involvement in Qusair has raised the prospect of renewed civil war in neighbouring Lebanon, where two rockets hit the Shiite Muslim movement's stronghold in south Beirut on Sunday and one was fired from south Lebanon towards Israel.
5. In Harasta, an eastern Damascus suburb largely under rebel control, dozens of people were afflicted by respiratory difficulties after an apparent overnight chemical attack.
6. The sides in the conflict, now in its third year, have accused each other of using chemical weapons.

- A pro-government Syrian TV correspondent was killed Monday May 27, 2013, while covering clashes near the border with Lebanon. This is the latest death of a journalist in Syria's more than 2-year-old conflict. Yara Abbas, a prominent female war reporter for state-owned Al-Ikhbariyah TV, was attacked by rebels near the military air base of Dabaa in the central province of Homs. Dozens of journalists have been killed, wounded or kidnapped since Syria's crisis began in March 2011. Over that time, more than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

- A British doctor who left his home, family and job in the UK to help civilians wounded by the conflict in Syria has died after the makeshift hospital he was working in was shelled. Dr Isa Abdur Rahman, 26, was working as a volunteer in the north-western city of Idlib with the British charity Hand in Hand for Syria (HIHS) when the facility was attacked. The charity blamed Syrian government forces for targeting the non-military site.

- The head of aircraft maker MiG said on Friday May 31, 2013, that Russia was counting on providing Syria with 10 MiG-29 fighter planes and was discussing details with a Syrian delegation. It did not say when they might be delivered. Meanwhile, there were contradicting reports in Russia on when Moscow is scheduled to deliver the the S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.

- Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad killed a 33-year-old Michigan woman who was a convert to Islam and a British man during an ambush on an opposition scouting mission north of the city of Idlib we were told on  Friday May 31, 2013. Syrian state media also reported that a British subject, named as Ali Manasifi, born in 1990, had been killed in the same ambush. Mansfield and Manasifi were part of a group on a mission to explore a nearby checkpoint. A third opposition militant was reported killed, but the identity was unknown.

- A car bomb exploded near a police station in the Jubar district of Damascus on Sunday June 2, 2013, killing at least eight Syrian security forces as fighting raged between rebels and regime forces. The explosion, in the east of the capital, appeared to have been carried out by the extremist Al-Nusra Front, which is allied with al-Qaida, although there was no immediate confirmation.

- Syrian troops advanced toward the center of the strategic town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon and chased rebels from another key district on the edge of Damascus on Tuesday June 4, 2013 solidifying gains that have shifted the balance of power in the regime's favor in recent weeks. In the past two months, the Syrian army has moved steadily against rebels in key battleground areas, making advances near the border with Lebanon and considerably lowering the threat to Damascus, the seat of President Bashar Assad's government. The Syrian army, which is backed by Hezbollah fighters, is "approaching victory" in Qusair, almost three weeks after launching an offensive to recapture the western town. The troops are advancing from the east and south of Qusair, fighting pockets of resistance along the way. The rebels still have control of the western and northern parts of the town as well as some areas in the center. Later Tuesday troops were in "full control" of the southwestern part of the town and have "eradicated the remnants of terrorists there," using the term used by Syrian officials to refer to rebels seeking to topple Assad.

- The Syrian border town of Qusair has fallen to Hezbollah forces after a three-week siege that pitched the powerful Lebanese Shia militia against several thousand Sunni rebels in what had been billed as a defining battle of the civil war. Rebel groups said on Wednesday june 5, 2013, confirmed that they had pulled out of the strategic. Outgunned since the siege began, rebels inside the town said they had no option but to flee "in face of this huge arsenal and lack of supplies and the blatant intervention of Hezbollah". The fate of residents who remained as the battle raged remains unclear.

- The British and French governments have said on Tuesday June 4, 2013 that medical samples smuggled out of Syria have tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, and added that they have shown the evidence to a UN investigation. The Foreign Office confirmed that body fluids collected from victims of one or more attacks in the country were found to contain a chemical fingerprint of sarin. In Paris, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said he had passed similar evidence to the head of the UN inquiry into chemical weapon use in Syria, Ake Sellström.

- On Thursday June 6, 2013 the Syrian army has taken control of a UN-monitored crossing in the Golan Heights which had been overrun by rebel forces. Tanks and armoured vehicles were used in the fighting at Quneitra, near Israeli-held territory. Austria has said it will withdraw its peacekeepers from the Golan Heights because of the fighting.

- Syria’s army recaptured the only Golan Heights crossing on the ceasefire line with Israel on Thursday June 6, 2013, in another setback for rebels a day after they were blasted out of the strategic town of Qusayr. As the rebels were driven back out of the southwestern plateau, government troops also pursued insurgents who abandoned Qusayr, bombarding a nearby village where they fled to along with hundreds of wounded civilians. The rebels briefly took control of the Quneitra crossing, strategically and symbolically important for its proximity to Israel and to the Syrian capital, before being forced out.

 

- Syrian government troops backed by Hezbollah guerrillas seized the western village of Buwayda on Saturday June 8, 2013, extinguishing final rebel resistance around the town of Qusair in a fresh success for President Bashar al-Assad. Dozens of rebels, including a number of foreigner fighters, were captured alive in Buwayda, but there was no immediate word of their fate. Fighting flared elsewhere, including close to the capital Damascus and in the northern Aleppo province, which is expected to be the focus of renewed attack by Assad's forces following the collapse of the Qusair front. A twin missile strike on the village of Kfarhamra, near Aleppo, sending a huge cloud of smoke billowing into the blue sky. The United Nations estimates at least 80,000 people have died in the conflict. U.N. humanitarian agencies launched a $5 billion appeal on Friday, the biggest in their history, to cope with the fallout from the fighting that has sent some 1.6 million refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries.

- A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car Saturday June 8, 2013, in Syria's central city of Homs, tearing through an area largely populated by the regime's Alawite sect and killing seven people. Meanwhile, government troops took control of a key village as the regime presses its offensive to clear a path between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast. With the help of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, President Bashar Assad's regime has been chasing rebels from long-held strategic areas linking the capital, Damascus, with the government stronghold areas along Mediterranean coast.

- On Tuesday June 11, 2013, two suicide bombers have blown themselves up in the centre of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing 14 people. At least 30 other people were injured in the blasts, in Marjeh Square. The explosions happened at a police building in the busy commercial district. One bomber reached the first floor of the police station and detonated his explosives when he came under fire. A second suicide bomber exploded his device shortly afterwards, on the street below, as police were leaving the station.

- Rebels have attacked a village in eastern Syria, killing dozens of Shia Muslim residents, most of them pro-government fighters. At least 60 people died in Hatla on Tuesday June 11, 2013. The attack appeared to be retaliation for a raid on a rebel position by people from the village.

- Syrian rebels burned homes and killed civilians in a sectarian rampage targeting Shiite Muslims in a village in eastern Syria we were told on Wednesday June 12, 2013. The rebel attack on Hatla, in eastern Deir Elzur province, resulted in the deaths of unspecified numbers of civilians and combatants. The official Syrian government press office said “terrorists” attacked Hatla and killed 30 people, including women and children. The Syrian rebels, predominantly Sunni Muslim, stormed and burned civilian homes in the mostly Shiite village.

- At least 93,000 people have been killed in Syria since the start of the conflict, the United Nations told us on Thursday June 13, 2013. This represents a rise of more than 30,000 since the UN last issued figures covering the period to November 2012. At least 5,000 people have been dying in Syria every month since last July, the UN's human rights body says. Over 80% of those killed were men but more than 1,700 children under the age of 10 were also killed.

- The Obama administration, concluding that the troops of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria have used chemical weapons against rebel forces in his country’s civil war, has decided to begin supplying the rebels for the first time with small arms and ammunition. The assistance, coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency, could include antitank weapons, but supplying the antiaircraft weapons that rebel commanders have said they sorely need is not under consideration yet.

- Syrian artillery and warplanes pounded rebel areas in Damascus on Saturday June 15, 2013, as President Bashar al-Assad's foes pleaded for advanced weapons from the United States, which has promised them unspecified military aid. Western powers have been reluctant in the past to arm Syrian insurgents, let alone give them sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles that might fall into the hands of Sunni Islamist insurgents in rebel ranks who have pledged loyalty to al Qaeda. Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Salim Idriss told Reuters on Friday that rebels, who have suffered setbacks at the hands of Assad's forces in recent weeks, urgently needed anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, as well as a protective no-fly zone.

- On Sunday June 16, 2013, an explosion has shaken a Damascus neighbourhood that houses several embassies and a military airport. A car bomb detonated at a checkpoint near the military airport in the western neighbourhood of Mazzeh. There are reports of casualties. The explosion targeted the military airport in the neighbourhood.

- Rebels attacked a main highway in northern Syria on Wednesday June 19, 2013, to try to choke off a major supply line for President Bashar al-Assad's forces in the region. Assad's troops, backed by battle-hardened Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and emboldened by their capture of a strategic border town, are starting an offensive to regain the rebel-dominated north and remaining rebel strongholds around Damascus. The rebels had seized an army checkpoint on the Ariha-Latakia stretch of an international highway that goes through Syria's biggest city, Aleppo, to the Turkish border. Other rebel groups said opposition forces had seized three checkpoints and needed to capture three more to cut off army access to the M5 highway.

- Syrian rebels have seized a key army position in the central province of Hama, which lies on the road linking Damascus to Aleppo in the north. The military responded by deploying en masse to try to take back the position at Morek and began shelling it we were told on Thursday June 20, 2013. Six soldiers were killed. The position is strategically important because it lies on the main road linking the capital to Aleppo, large swathes of which are under rebel control.

- Syria Sunday June 23, 2013:

• Suicide bombers targeted security compounds in Damascus and a car bomb exploded in a pro-regime district, killing at least eight people.
• In northern Syria, a car bomb killed 12 soldiers in Aleppo.
• Three suicide bombers blew themselves up while trying to break into the Rukneddine police station in northern Damascus, killing five people and wounding several others.
• Three would-be suicide bombers also tried to break into the Criminal Security Branch in the southern Bab Mousalla area but were caught by security forces before they could detonate their explosives.
• A car bomb exploded in Mazzeh 86 district in the capital, killing three people, including a 3-year-old boy.

- Syria's military pounded rebel bastions in Damascus on Tuesday June 25, 2013, and Saudi Arabia demanded an arms embargo on what it called President Bashar al-Assad's genocidal and illegitimate regime. In Damascus, Assad's gunners fired mortars and artillery at Zamalka and Irbin, just east of the government-held city centre, in an assault backed by air strikes. If the insurgents are driven from the capital's eastern suburbs, they would lose arms supply routes and suffer a severe blow in their drive to end four decades of Assad family rule.

- Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces have retaken a town on the Lebanese border as they press an offensive against rebels in a conflict that has now cost more than 100 000 lives, we were told on Wednesday June 26, 2013. The army took full control of Tel Kalakh, driving out insurgents and ending an unofficial truce under which it had allowed a small rebel presence to remain for several months. The fall of Tel Kalakh marks another gain for Assad after the capture of the rebel stronghold of Qusair, and consolidates his control around the central city of Homs, which links Damascus to his Alawite heartland overlooking the Mediterranean coast. Like Qusair, Tel Kalakh was used by rebels as a transit point for weapons and fighters smuggled into Syria to join the fight against Assad.

- A blast in an old Christian quarter of Damascus on Thursday June 27, 2013, has left four people dead. Several people were injured in the attack in the Bab Sharqi neighbourhood, near a church. Rebel sources confirmed the number of dead, but said the attack was caused by a mortar bomb.

- Rebels captured a major army post in the southern city of Daraa Friday June 28, 2013, after nearly two weeks of intense fighting. Islamic militants led by members of the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, captured the checkpoint after a two-week siege. Rebels blew up a car bomb Thursday killing and wounding a number of soldiers then stormed the post, made up of two of the highest buildings in the city.

- Syrian warplanes have hit rebel positions in Homs as part of the military's campaign to push opposition fighters out of the country's third largest city. Regime warplanes bombed two-rebel held areas in Homs on Saturday June 29, 2013, as clashes flared in the heart of the city. The army also fired mortar shells into several central districts of Homs, which have been an opposition stronghold since the uprising against Assad's rule began in March 2011. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the fighting.

- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces launched a major offensive on Saturday June 29, 2013, against rebels in Homs, a centre of the two-year-old uprising, in their latest drive to secure an axis connecting Damascus to the Mediterranean. Jets and mortars had pounded rebel-held areas of the city that have been under siege by Assad's troops for a year, and soldiers fought battles with rebel fighters in several districts. There were no immediate details of casualties but video footage showed heavy explosions and white clouds of smoke rising from what they said were rebel districts. Loud, concentrated rounds of gunfire could also be heard. The attack on Homs follows steady military gains by Assad's forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants, in villages in Homs province and towns close to the Lebanese border.

- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces launched a major offensive on Saturday June 29, 2013, against rebels in Homs, a centre of the two-year-old uprising, in their latest drive to secure an axis connecting Damascus to the Mediterranean. Jets and mortars had pounded rebel-held areas of the city that have been under siege by Assad's troops for a year, and soldiers fought battles with rebel fighters in several districts. At least three civilians, a woman and two children, were killed in the air strikes in the Old City, and dozens of people had been injured since the army assault began on Saturday.

- Syrian troops shelled a rebel-held suburb of the capital Damascus Tuesday July 2, 2013, killing at least 11 people including women and children as government forces forged ahead with offensives against rebel-held areas around the country. The shelling on Kfar Batna appeared to be part of a concerted government push against contested and rebel-held areas around the capital. The state news agency said Syrian troops restored "security and stability" to much of Jobar, a key district near Kfar Batna on the edge of Damascus.

- Syrian warplanes bombed the central city of Homs on Thursday July 4, 2013, with insurgents and troops battling on the ground as regime forces pressed an assault on rebel-held neighbourhoods. Warplanes carried out two raids against the Khaldiyeh neighbourhood of Homs, and both Khaldiyeh and the Old City were under heavy rocket fire producing the sound of explosions and plumes of smoke.

- Shells smashed into a central prison in the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo, killing some prisoners we were told on Sunday July 7, 2013, part of a long battle for control of the ancient city, which has already suffered severe damage in the civil war. The explosions killed six prisoners. The explosives hit on Friday night. It was not clear who fired the shells. An al-Qaida-linked group has been fighting for weeks to seize control of the prison, besieging it. The Observatory estimated some 120 prisoners have died in the Aleppo jail since April from fighting, illness and executions. A number of rebels were killed in the shelling.

- Foreign forces destroyed advanced Russian anti-ship missiles in Syria last week, rebels said on Tuesday July 9, 2013, a disclosure that appeared to point to an Israeli raid. The pre-dawn strike on Friday hit a Syrian navy barracks at Safira, near the port of Latakia after the rebel forces' intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being stored there. This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean. Rebels described huge blasts, the ferocity of which, they said, was beyond the firepower available to them but consistent with that of a modern military like Israel's. Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement. The Syrian government has not commented on the incident, beyond a state television report noting a "series of explosions" at the site. The Israelis previously struck in Syria at least three times this year to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry from President Bashar al-Assad's army to Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

- The opposition Syrian National Coalition on Wednesday July 10, 2013, denied Russian allegations that rebel fighters fired a projectile laden with the nerve agent sarin at a suburb of Aleppo in March, saying U.N. inspectors should be allowed to investigate the attack. Separately, we were told that senior U.N. officials would head to Damascus soon to discuss ways of breaking the deadlock on access for a U.N. chemical weapons investigation team that has so far been unable to visit Syria.

- Syrian rebels said on Friday July 12, 2013, that the assassination of one of their top commanders by al Qaeda-linked militants was tantamount to a declaration of war, opening a new front for the Western-backed fighters struggling against President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Rivalries have been growing between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Islamists, whose smaller but more effective forces control most of the rebel-held parts of northern Syria more than two years after pro-democracy protests became an uprising. Hamami, also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Bassir al-Ladkani, is one of the top 30 figures on the FSA's Supreme Military Command. His killing highlights how the West's vision of a future, democratic Syria is unravelling. Assad appeared close to defeat a year ago when rebels killed top officials in a bomb attack and pushed deep into Damascus. Now, with military and financial support from Russia and Iran, he has pushed the rebels back to the outskirts of the capital and put them on the defensive in the south while radical Islamists assert control over the north. The FSA commander said the al Qaeda-linked militants had warned FSA rebels that there was "no place" for them where Hamami was killed in Latakia province, a northern rural region of Syria bordering Turkey where Islamist groups are powerful. Other opposition sources said the killing followed a dispute between Hamami's forces and the Islamic State over control of a strategic checkpoint in Latakia and would lead to fighting.

- Russia accused the U.S., Britain and France on Thursday July 11, 2013, of inventing several groundless allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria in order to complicate efforts to arrange a U.N. investigation. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin made the accusation following an announcement that Swedish chemical weapons expert Ake Sellstrom and U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane will accept a Syrian government invitation to visit Damascus for talks on the terms of a possible investigation. Churkin said Tuesday that experts from Russia, Syria's closest ally, determined that Syrian rebels made sarin nerve gas and used it in a deadly chemical weapon attack on March 19 in the government-controlled Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal, which he said killed 26 people, including 16 military personnel, and injured 86 others. The rebels have blamed the government for the attack. The U.S., Britain and France reiterated Tuesday that they have seen no evidence to indicate that the opposition has acquired or used chemical weapons. The Syrian government has called for a U.N. investigation of the Khan al-Assal attack but has refused to expand it to include other alleged chemical weapons attacks in Homs, Damascus and elsewhere raised by the U.S. and its European allies. They have asked the U.N. to investigate at least 10 incidents including Khan al-Assal.

- An air raid on Syria's famed Krak des Chevaliers Crusaders’ castle, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has damaged one of the fortress's towers, footage shot by activists showed Saturday July 13, 2013. A separate video filmed inside the fortress purports to show some of the damage caused by the air strike, including a gaping hole in the ceiling and a pile of rubble below. Other videos posted online showed at least one air strike on Friday July 12, 2013, against the castle in central Homs province, where fighting is raging between government troops and rebel forces.

- On Saturday July 13, 2013, U.S. officials said Israel targeted advanced anti-ship cruise missiles near Syria's principal port city in an air attack carried out earlier this month. The attack on July 5 near the city of Latakia targeted a type of Russian-made missile called the Yakhont that Russia had sold to the Syrian government. Russia is a key political ally and arms supplier of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

- Fighters of the mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army on Saturday July 13, 2013, battled jihadists from an Al-Qaeda affiliated group who tried to seize their weapons in the northwest. Tensions have been mounting between the FSA and the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and boiled over after ISIS fighters shot dead an FSA commander two days ago. The clashes erupted at dawn near Ras al-Hosn, in the north of Idlib province, when ISIS fighters tried to seize weapons stored in Free Syrian Army depots. Mainstream rebels fighters and jihadist groups such as ISIS and Al-Nusra Front, whose ranks include non-Syrian fighters, have clashed repeatedly in recent weeks.

- Syria Monday July 15, 2013:

• Syrian government troops pounded rebel-held villages around the northern city of Idlib with rockets, artillery and airstrikes, killing at least 29 people, including six children.
• After seizing the momentum in recent months in Syria's civil war, President Bashar Assad's forces are on the offensive against the rebels on several fronts, including in Idlib province along the border with Turkey. Government forces are in firm control of the provincial capital of same name, while dozens of rebel brigades control the countryside.
• Government shelling overnight targeted five villages near Idlib city. Eight women and six children were among the 29 people killed.
• The deadliest attack took place in the village of Maghra, where a rocket slammed into a row of houses, killing 13 people. Three nearby villages —Bara, Basamis and Kafr Nabl— were hit by artillery shells that killed another 13 people. Three others died in an airstrike on the village Iblin.
• In central Syria, a car bomb exploded outside a police headquarters in the town of Deir Atiyeh killing 13 people, including 10 policemen. One child was among the dead.

- On Syria’s front lines, al-Qaida fighters and more mainstream Syrian rebels have turned against each other in a power struggle that has undermined the effort to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. After violent clashes and the assassination of two rival commanders, one of whom was beheaded, more moderate factions are publicly accusing the extremists of trying to seize control of the rebellion. The rivalries —along with the efforts by extremist foreign fighters to impose their strict interpretation of Islam in areas they control— are chipping away at the movement’s popularity in Syria at a time when the regime is making significant advances on the ground. The rebels’ focus has shifted from toppling the regime to governing and power struggles. The infighting, which exploded into the open in the country’s rebel-held north in recent days, is contributing to a sense across many parts of Syria that the revolution has faltered. It threatens to fracture an opposition movement that has been plagued by divisions from the start. The moderates once valued the expertise and resources that their uneasy allies brought to the battlefield, but now question whether such military assets are worth the trouble —not to mention the added difficulty in persuading the West to arm them. (Tuesday July 16, 2013)

- On Tuesday July 16, 2013, we were told that at least six mediators have been killed by pro-government militiamen in the Syrian province of Homs. The men were trying to broker talks between Sunni Muslims and members of the minority Alawite sect in the area when they were shot dead. Two of the men were retired military officers, and another was an imam. President Bashar al-Assad's government is dominated by Alawites, while the uprising has been predominantly Sunni. The mediators were trying to set up talks in an area where fighting erupted last week; they were killed near the Alawite village of Hajar al-Abyad.

- Mortar fire from inside war-torn Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday July 16, 2013. Several mortar rounds fired from Syria exploded in northern Golan without causing any damage or casualties. It was apparently stray fire from fighting between Syrian government forces and rebels and was not deliberately fired towards Israeli-occupied territory.

- Syrian rebels poured reinforcements into a key Damascus suburb on Tuesday July 16, 2013 in an attempt to push back government troops who have renewed their campaign to secure the capital and build on battlefield gains elsewhere in the country. Fighting centred on Qaboun, a rebel-held district where Syrian troops backed by tanks and artillery had made inroads as part of efforts to consolidate control over Damascus, President Bashar Assad's power base.

- Syrian rebels advanced on the northern town of Khan al-Assal on Saturday July 20, 2013, and appeared close to seizing one of the last towns in western part of Aleppo province still held by President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Elsewhere in northern Syria, Assad's forces launched a third day of heavy air strikes on the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province. Jets had already flown 12 raids over the town. Five people had been killed on Saturday, three of them children.

- Syrian rebel fighters killed 12 members of a pro-regime militia during clashes overnight in the central city of Homs, and troops responded by shelling them on Friday July 19, 2013. Elsewhere, shells hit the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, a Shiite Muslim pilgrimage site on the outskirts of Damascus, killing at least one person.

- Syria Sunday July 21, 2013:

• Violence raged across Syria on Sunday as government forces killed dozens of rebels in an ambush east of Damascus, fighters linked to Al Qaeda battled Kurdish militias and Syria’s military peppered an outdoor market with mortar rounds. Government forces killed 13 members of a family in northwestern Syria.
• In the deadliest attack, government forces ambushed a group of rebel fighters in the town of Adra and left dozens of dead bodies –possibly 49- lying in the sand.
• On Monday that 65 people had been killed in the countryside around Damascus, including 58 insurgent fighters.
• Kurdish fighters surrounded the local leader of one of the groups linked to Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, inside a school he and his fighters were using as a base near the border town of Tel Abyad. The two sides finally reached a deal and the group’s leader was released in return for the 300 detained Kurdish civilians.
• Similar clashes between Kurds, rebels and extremists continued near Ras al-Ain in Hasaka Province.
• In the northern city of Ariha, government forces fired mortar rounds into a market killing at least 23 people, some of them women and children.
• Along the Mediterranean coast 13 members of a family in Bayda were killed by government troops, another area where the war has heightened sectarian tensions. Four women and six children were killed inside a home, and three men were slain nearby. A man unrelated to the family was found dead in a nearby field.
• Clashes between rebel and government fighters raged nearby overnight, killing fighters on both sides; the government held a mass funeral in Tartus on Sunday for 30 fighters killed in battles with rebels.

- Syria's rebels on Monday July 22, 2013, seized the strategic town of Khan al-Assal, a regime bastion situated in the northern province of Aleppo. Khan al-Assal was the last regime bastion in the west of Aleppo province, which lies on the Turkish border.

- Syrian Kurds made rapid advances in the north of the country Tuesday July 23, 2013, expelling jihadists from several villages, as a gulf of mistrust between Arabs and Kurds grew. The fighting hit several villages including Yabseh, Kandal and Jalbeh, which lie in the northern province of Raqa on Syria's border with Turkey and are home to a mixture of ethnic and religious communities. The Kurds expelled the jihadists from Kur Hassu, Atwan, Sarej and Khirbet Alu villages in the same area, which lies near the majority Kurdish town of Cobany. In Hasake to the east, Kurdish-jihadist fighting went into the seventh consecutive day in the Jal Agha area and other villages in the majority Kurdish province. The latest battles come a week after fighters loyal to the Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG) expelled the jihadist Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) from the strategic Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain in Hasake province. Ever since, fighting has spread from Hasakeh in northeastern Syria to several hotspots in Raqa province in the north. At least 70, most of them jihadists, have been killed in eight consecutive days of Kurdish-jihadist fighting.

- Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad killed at least 15 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in a rocket attack on a rebel-held refugee camp on the southern edge of Damascus on Wednesday July 24, 2013. Palestinian militia from the pro-Assad Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) as well as Syrian army and intelligence troops have been surrounding the camp for months. On Saturday they launched a ground infantry assault backed by tanks and multiple rocket launchers to capture the camp but were being met by stiff resistance. The rockets hit a residential and shopping area way behind the front line. The victims were civilians; 45 people were wounded.

- More than 100,000 people have now been killed in the Syria civil war, UN leader Ban Ki-moon said Thursday July 25, 2013 as he appealed for new efforts to convene a peace conference. The UN chief and US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters at the United Nations that there could be no military solution to the 28-month-old conflict.

- A car bomb exploded Thursday July 25, 2013, in the densely populated Damascus suburb of Jaramana, killing 10 people and injuring scores. Jaramana is a working-class suburb with a significant population of Druze and Christians among its more than 200,000 residents.

- Nineteen children were among the 29 killed in the northern city’s Bab Nairab neighbourhood in a surface-to-surface missile strike by regime forces on Friday July 26, 2013. The army was targeting rebel headquarters, including a base of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), in Bab Nairab but the missile fell dozens of metres away.

- Syrian state media accused insurgents on Saturday July 27, 2013, of killing 123 people, the majority of them civilians, during a rebel offensive this week to take the northern town of Khan al-Assad. On Friday the activists said that more than 150 soldiers were killed on Monday and Tuesday in and around the town of Khan al-Assal; 51 soldiers and officers were executed.

- Syrian government forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants forged ahead with their assault on a key rebel district in the central city of Homs Sunday July 28, 2013, as President Bashar Assad’s forces try to crush resistance in the few remaining opposition-held neighbourhoods in the city known as the “capital of the revolution.” The push on Homs is part of a broader government offensive on rebel-held areas that has seen regime troops retake some of the territory they have lost to opposition fighters. Government troops have made headway in Homs in recent days, capturing a 13th century landmark mosque in the contested Khaldiyeh neighbourhood that had been in rebel hands for more than a year. Famous for its nine domes and two minarets, the mosque has been a symbol for rebels in the city, and the government takeover dealt a powerful symbolic blow to the rebellion. On Monday, government troops shelled the mosque, damaging the tomb of Ibn al-Walid, a revered figure in Islam. Video showed the tomb’s roof knocked down.

- Syrian troops drove insurgents from a central district of Homs on Monday July 29, 2013, tightening their siege on remaining rebel bastions in the city, which links Damascus to the Mediterranean heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect. The military's gains in Khalidiya district follow a counter-offensive by Assad's forces, which have pushed back rebels around the Syrian capital and retaken several towns and villages near the border with Lebanon in the last few weeks.

- A mortar attack has killed at least seven people in a government-held district in the embattled central city of Homs. Seven died and 26 were wounded when three mortar rounds hit the neighbourhood of Dablan late Monday July 29, 2013. Many living in the district fled there to escape fighting elsewhere in the city. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 people, including a child, were killed in the attack. The attack came hours after government forces took control of another district in the city, Khaldiyeh that has been a rebel stronghold since the start of the 2-year-old conflict.

- A prominent Syrian Kurdish politician was assassinated early on Tuesday July 30, 2013, outside his home near the Turkish border when a bomb planted in his car exploded. Isa Huso, a member of the foreign relations committee in the Higher Kurdish Council, a group formed to unite Syrian Kurdish parties, was leaving his house in the Syrian town of Al Qamishli when the bomb exploded. Huso, who was in his fifties, was a moderate who was imprisoned several times under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and during the rule of Assad's late father for campaigning for human rights.

- At least 40 people were killed Thursday August 1, 2013, in Homs when opposition rebels attacked a weapons depot with rockets, setting off a series of explosions. Among the dead were government soldiers and civilians. An additional 120 were injured, many of them critically, after the rebels launched rockets into the Wadi Thahab neighbourhood and two other districts, inhabited mostly by Alawites, members of President Bashar Assad’s minority sect. The Haqq Brigade, one of the largest rebel groups in Homs, claimed responsibility for the attack on the country’s Army Foundation Day. The brigade is part of the Syrian Islamic Front, made up of Islamist rebel groups across the country. State media made no mention of a weapons depot and reported that the opposition targeted Wadi Thahab, at the southern entrance to the city, injuring 16 residents.

- Syrian warplanes struck targets near the border with Lebanon on Saturday August 3, 2013, killing at least nine people in the latest attack along the border. The warplanes targeted the rebel-held town of Yabroud inside Syria, just across from Lebanese villages housing Syrians who fled a government offensive in June. Both sides in the Syrian civil war have allies and supply lines in Lebanon. The victims included six members of the same family, while 16 people were wounded. Also on Saturday, rebels captured an arms depot near Damascus, seizing weapons and ammunition from the regime. Militants from the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra group led the assault on the depot in Qalamun district north of the capital. Militants seized caches of ammunition, rockets and anti-tank missiles. It was a rare battlefield success by the rebels in recent months.

- Syrian rebels captured an ammunition depot north of Damascus from President Bashar al-Assad's forces on Saturday August 3, 2013 seizing a hoard of anti-tank missiles and rockets which will strengthen their firepower after a string of defeats.

- Syrian rebels on Monday August 5, 2013, captured four villages in the heartland of President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect as they fought government troops for the second straight day in the mountains overlooking the country’s Mediterranean coast. Opposition fighters captured about 400 villagers and pro-government gunmen in battles in the area. The capture of the villages in the coastal Latakia province was a symbolic blow to Assad, whose forces have been taking territory in recent weeks in central Syria. Rebels captured the villages after attacking government outposts in the Jabal al-Akrad hills on Sunday. At least 32 government troops and militiamen and at least 19 rebels, including foreign fighters, died in Sunday’s fighting.

- Rebels seized control of a key air base (Minnigh air base) in Aleppo province Tuesday August 6, 2013, marking another major advance after overrunning a string of villages in Latakia province, the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect.

- The Syrian Army attacked a large group of insurgents near the capital, Damascus, on Wednesday August 7, 2013, killing more than 60. 18 civilians, including children, died when a car bomb exploded at an intersection in Jaramana on the eastern approaches to Damascus. And in the north, a missile attack in the rebel-held city of Raqqa killed three and wounded dozens.  The rebels killed near Damascus belonged to the Nusra Front, and some were foreigners.

- On Wednesday August 7, 2013, Syria denied rebel claims that they attacked President Bashar al-Assad's convoy. Reports that rockets hit his motorcade were "dreams and illusions we were told. Rebels said they fired mortars at his convoy as it headed towards the Anas bin Malek mosque in the Malki area, where the president has a residence. Pictures showed Mr Assad unharmed at a prayer service at a Damascus mosque to mark the end of Ramadan.

- Air strikes by the Syrian military killed at least 20 people in the northwestern province of Latakia we were told on Saturday August 10, 2013. 10 of those killed were believed to be civilians, although many of the bodies were so badly damaged that it was not immediately possible to identify them. At least six of those killed were Syrian rebel fighters, while four were foreign volunteers. The number of deaths is expected to rise because of the number of wounded and those in serious condition among them. The rebel capture last week of 11 villages in the regime stronghold of Latakia province was a symbolic blow to Assad, whose troops have otherwise been making gains in central Syria and around the capital Damascus. Assad's forces are now trying to retake those villages, predominantly populated by Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.

- On Sunday August 11, 2013, Syrian rebel forces claimed they killed at least 40 Hezbollah and Iranian fighters in Damascus. The rebels say they detonated a car bomb near a compound where the operatives from Iran and Hezbollah gathered for a meeting.

- Syria Sunday August 11, 2013:

• Two citizens were killed and a woman and a child were injured in the blast of an explosive device planted by terrorists in al-Sfeira area in the Eastern countryside of Aleppo.
• Four citizens killed in car bomb blast in Hama countryside
• A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives blew himself up on al-Naqour-al-Bahseh road in the countryside of Hama, killing four citizens and injuring others. The car bomb exploded near al-Thawra farm on al-Naqour-al-Bahseh road.
• Three citizens were injured by a mortar shell fired by terrorists on Souq al-Hal in al-Zablatani area in Damascus.
• Terrorists also fired two mortar shells that fell behind al-Thaqafi Mosque in Bab Touma area, causing only material damage and no injuries.
• Three citizens were killed and others were injured as mortar shells fired by terrorists fell on al-Dukhanieh neighbourhood in Damascus countryside.
• Several citizens were injured in a terrorist explosive device blast in Midhat Basha Souq in Damascus countryside.
• More than 30 people have reportedly been killed in Syrian government air strikes in Latakia province and the northern city of Raqa. Seven children were among at least 13 civilians.
• In the coastal Latakia province of northwest Syria, at least 20 people were killed in several air strikes on the Sunni rebel town of Salma. At least six of those killed were Syrian rebel fighters while four were foreign volunteers.
• Islamist rebel forces have captured about 10 Alawite villages in Jabal al-Akrad, a mountainous area of the province. The army has hit back, sparking fierce fighting that has left dozens dead on both sides.
• Rebels have kidnapped a leading Alawite cleric, Sheikh Badreddine Ghazal.
• In Damascus, a car bomb ripped through the Shaghur district of the capital late on Saturday, wounding several people, three of them children.
• In Aleppo province government troops stormed a village overnight, killing 12 people.
• Al-Nusra Front jihadists and other rebel fighters in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor seized control of the offices of Syria's ruling Baath party in the Howeika district, sparking regime bombardment.

- Al-Qaeda-linked rebels have killed an Italian Jesuit priest who disappeared in the east of the country we were told on Wednesday August 14, 2013. Paolo Dall'Oglio, a vocal supporter of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and some Islamist rebel groups, disappeared in the rebel-held city of Raqqa on July 29. He had served for three decades at the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, or Deir Mar Musa, before being expelled from the country in 2012. Since then he had returned to Syria at least twice.

- Syria Tuesday August 13, 2013:

• At least 18 Syrian rebels and a child were killed in violence in the central province of Hama.
• In the north, a prominent Aleppo-based activist went missing; it is feared the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) was behind his disappearance.
• Near Morek in Hama province, "the number of opposition fighters killed  has risen to 18. They were killed in clashes and army shelling on their positions and ammunition stockpiles.
• In the Sahel al-Ghab area of Hama, a 10-year-old child was killed in army shelling.
• In northern Syria, news broke of the disappearance of an anti-Assad activist known for his chants at weekly protests in the city of Aleppo.
• Among the missing is Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, a charismatic Italian Jesuit priest who went to meet with ISIS' commanders earlier this month to try to negotiate the release of activists, and has yet to return.

- Al-Qaida militants in northern Syria shot dead two Shiite teenagers whom they accused of being pro-government gunmen we were told on Thursday August 15, 2013. The two youths who were shot dead came from the besieged Shiite-majority towns of Nubul and Zahra in Aleppo province. Rebels currently surround the towns and have been fighting against troops and pro-government gunmen in the area for months.

- A jihadist group has expelled rebel Free Syrian Army fighters from their positions in the northern city of Raqa we were told on Wednesday August 14, 2013. For more than a week, clashes have pitted jihadists against the Ahfad al-Rasul brigade, a part of the mainstream Free Syrian Army. The fighting between the two rebel groups erupted when ISIS attacked Ahfad al-Rasul positions in the city. Late on Tuesday, the jihadists blew up a car in front of an Ahfad al-Rasul post in the city, killing at least five fighters, before going on to seize control of all its positions. Islamist fighters captured Raqa in March, making it the only provincial capital to have fallen out of regime hands since the March 2011 start of Syria's uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Residents have since staged several demonstrations against exactions by ISIS, which has links to Al-Qaeda. ISIS has been accused of taking hundreds of anti-regime fighters hostage and imposing their ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam in areas under their control.

- Syria Thursday August 15, 2013:

• More than 10 Syrian soldiers were reportedly killed and injured when rebel fighters targeted them in the northwestern province of Idlib we were told on Thursday August 15, 2013. The soldiers were targeted at the Darwish area near the southern bridge of the town of Marat al-Numan in the countryside of Idlib. The Syrian air force carried out an air raid on the al-Jamieh al-Sakanieh area in Jisr al-Shughour area in Idilb.
• In the northern province of Aleppo, rebels from the al-Qaida- linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant summarily executed two minors over sectarian backgrounds.
• Rebels gunned down two teenage males from the Shiite towns of Nubbul and Zahra of Aleppo. The executioner alleged that the boys were "Shabiha," a term used by the rebels to describe pro- government militia.

- Syrian rebels killed at least 11 people, including civilians, in an attack on a checkpoint west of the city of Homs on Saturday August 17, 2013. Most of those killed were Christians. Some were from the National Defence Army, a militia which fights alongside President Bashar al-Assad's soldiers, and others were civilians, they said. Rebel gunmen had attacked the checkpoint, killing five militia fighters and six civilians, including two women. It said the rebel fighters had also sustained losses.

- Thousands of refugees from Syria are pouring over the border into Iraqi Kurdistan, the UN refugee agency said. Up to 10,000 crossed at Peshkhabour on Saturday August 17, 2013, bringing the total influx since Thursday to 20,000. The UN says the reasons are not fully clear. The UN agencies, the Kurdish regional government and NGOs are struggling to cope.

- Gunmen shot dead 11 people, mostly Christians, in central Syria on Saturday August 17, 2013. The gunmen randomly opened fire on a street as Christians were celebrating a feast day. The attack was described as a “massacre”; women and children were among the dead. But activists said that many of those killed were pro-government militiamen manning checkpoints. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that nine of those killed were Christians. It said rebels attacked checkpoints manned by the pro-government National Defence Forces militia, killing five of them. It said the other six were civilians, including two women.

- The Israeli army fired into Syria after shells from the neighbouring country hit the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan Heights on Saturday August 17, 2013. Several shells fired from Syria landed in the central Golan Heights, adjacent to the Israel-Syria border. Israeli military "forces carried out a pinpoint strike, targeting the source of the shooting. A hit was confirmed. At least three shells were confirmed to have hit Israel. The Israeli attack demolished a Syrian military position.

- The Syrian army has recaptured all rebel-held positions in Latakia, President Bashar al-Assad's home province, we were told on Monday August 19, 2013. The army retook control of the Nabi Ashia mountain range and adjoining areas in the north of Latakia province of villages seized in early August by the rebels. On the other hand rebel fighters on Sunday shot down a military plane over Salma. The pilot bailed out but was later captured, most likely by insurgents.

- A team of U.N. chemical weapons inspectors are in Syria where they will begin an investigation Monday August 19, 2013, into whether chemical weapons have been used during the bloody civil war there.

- Chemical weapons attacks have killed hundreds on the outskirts of Damascus, Syrian opposition activists said. Rockets with toxic agents were launched at the suburbs of the Ghouta region early on Wednesday August 21, 2013, as part of a major bombardment on rebel forces, they say. The Syrian army says the accusations have been fabricated to cover up rebel losses. The main opposition alliance said that more than 1,000 people were killed by the attacks. Activist networks also reported death tolls in the hundreds, but these could not be independently confirmed. It is also not clear how many died in the bombardment of the sites and how many deaths were due to any exposure to toxic substances.

- Syria opposition groups called on Thursday August 22, 2013, for United Nations investigators to immediately visit the suburbs of Damascus where a day earlier a suspected chemical attack killed over 1,000 civilians, many of them children. Syrian opposition groups and residents in the area blame the Syrian regime for using poison gas in shells targeting their towns as part of a military offensive to regain territory from rebels. Syria's government has denied the allegations and said the rebels, a hodgepodge group of fighters that includes Islamists aligned with al Qaeda, staged the attack to rally international support. France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius that the international community must respond with force if it is proven that President Bashar al-Assad unleashed chemical gas against its own population.

- On Thursday August 22, 2013, Western powers demanded Syria give U.N. chemical weapons experts immediate access to rebel-held Damascus suburbs where poison gas appears to have killed hundreds just a few miles from the U.N. team's hotel. President Bashar al-Assad's opponents gave death tolls from 500 to well over 1,000 and said more bodies were being found in the wake of Wednesday's mysterious pre-dawn killer fumes, which the Syrian government insists were not of its making.

- On Saturday August 24, 2013, the international aid group Doctors without Borders said more than 3,000 people were hospitalized in Syria Wednesday with what it called "neuro-toxic" symptoms. About 355 of them died. Now both sides in the conflict are accusing each other of using chemical weapons to wage war. Syrian state TV broadcasted images Saturday of what the government claimed are chemical agents discovered by their soldiers in tunnels used by rebel forces in Damascus. The regime said this is evidence it's the Syrian opposition using chemical weapons, not them though we can't be sure what's inside the small plastic drums.

- U.N. inspectors will be allowed to access the locations of suspected chemical weapons attacks in the Damascus suburbs, Syrian state television said Sunday August 25, 2013, a move that could provide independent verification of the events that unfolded last week. The U.N. said it was preparing to conduct on-site fact-finding activities starting Monday.

- On Monday August 26, 2013, unidentified snipers have opened fire on a convoy of UN experts investigating suspected chemical weapons attacks in Syria's capital. One car was shot at "multiple times", forcing the convoy to turn back. Syrian state media blamed opposition "terrorists" for the attack, though the claim could not be verified. The UN team later resumed its mission, entering the western district of Muadhamiya to gather evidence, before returning to central Damascus.

- As U.N. weapons inspectors came under fire in Syria on Monday August 26, 2013, the evidence of an apparent large-scale chemical weapons attack they are seeking is already fading from the scene. The longer it takes the 20-member team to get to the spot where rockets carrying nerve agents are said to have killed hundreds of people on August 21, the harder it will be for the mission led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom to find meaningful remnants of toxic munitions.

- Rebel forces took control of a strategic town – Khanasir- in northern Syria on Monday August 26, 2013, cutting off government forces' only supply route out of the city of Aleppo. The rebel gain will leave government forces besieged in Aleppo province. Further south, residents in the central province of Homs said rebels also tried on Monday to retake the strategic town of Talkalakh. Its capture would allow rebels in the Homs countryside to replenish their supplies. But the advance near Talkalakh and the purported assassination of an Alawite cleric suggest the rebels are tentatively trying to push back in central Syria.

- Syria on Tuesday challenged the Obama administration to prove its claim that its military forces used chemical weapons in an attack that killed hundreds of civilians, as the United States and its allies prepared for what could be a military assault on the country.

- Syria's state-run Syrian Arab News Agency accused Secretary of State John Kerry of using "fabricated" evidence to claim that it is "undeniable" that Syria used chemical weapons against civilians on Aug. 21.

- Syria Tuesday August 27, 2013:

• Syria Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said that his country would defend itself using "all means available" in case of a U.S. strike. He added that the United States is "jumping over" the work of United Nations inspectors, showing that the Obama administration intends to exploit the deaths of hundreds of Syrian civilians in a suspected chemical weapons attack.
• The Syrian statements come as four U.S. warships neared Syrian shores and British aircraft gathered in the United Kingdom's airbase in Cyprus.
• President Obama's national security team continued to assess military options to follow up on the president's pledge a year ago to take "game-changing" action if Syria uses chemical weapons in its 2-year-old civil war.
• U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said that U.S. forces are ready to act on any order by Obama to strike Syria.
• The United Nations said that its team of chemical weapons experts in Syria delayed a second trip Tuesday to investigate the alleged poison gas attack near Damascus by one day for security reasons.
• The Arab League holds Syrian President Bashar Assad responsible for the chemical attack and that the United Nations should respond. The statement following a meeting of Arab League envoys in Cairo had strong support from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
• A Russian cargo plane delivered 20 tons of food to Syria's port city of Latakia, and will evacuate 180 citizens of former Soviet countries. Russia warned that military intervention in Syria would have "catastrophic consequences" for the region.

- On Tuesday August 27, 2013, we were told that western powers have told the Syrian opposition to expect a strike against President Bashar al-Assad's forces within days. The meeting at a hotel in downtown Istanbul was between senior figures of the Syrian National Coalition, including its president, Ahmad Jarba, and envoys from 11 core "Friends of Syria" alliance members: United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Facing Russian and Chinese opposition that could dampen prospects for proposed peace talks in Geneva, Assad's foes have vowed to punish a poison gas attack in some rebel-held districts of Damascus on August 21 that killed hundreds of people. The 11 nations represented in the Friends of Syria core group a list of 10 proposed targets. They included the Mezze Military Airport on the western outskirts of Damascus, the Qutaifa missile base north of the city and compounds of the Fourth Mechanised Division, an elite unit headed by Assad's feared brother Maher and composed mainly of members of his Alawite minority sect.

- The UK Parliament is to be recalled on Thursday August, 29, 2013, to discuss possible responses to a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. David Cameron said MPs would vote on a "clear motion", amid calls for action against the country's government. The UK is considering military options following last week's suspected attack, which is being investigated by the UN. The Syrian government said it was not responsible and the US and others were using it as an excuse to attack it. The US has said there is "clear" evidence that President Bashar al-Assad's government was behind last week's attack on the outskirts of Damascus but Russia, a key ally of Syria, has questioned this.

- On Wednesday August 28, 2013, the UK has put a suggested resolution to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council "authorising all necessary measures to protect civilians" in Syria. It calls for military action against what Britain has termed Syria's "unacceptable" use of chemical weapons. But Russia has said the UN must finish its investigation into the claims before discussing any resolution. Syria has accused the West of "inventing" excuses to launch a strike.
A team of UN weapons inspectors is currently –Wednesday August 28, 2013-investigating the sites of the attack. UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said the experts were expected to finish their investigation in four days and would need more time after that to analyse their findings. Mr Ban appealed for the team to be given "time to do its job".

- Syrian allies Iran and Russia are working together to prevent a Western military attack on Syria, the Iranian president said, as Russia said it is sending warships to the Mediterranean, where U.S. ships are already in position.

- Both Iran and Russia would work in "extensive cooperation" to prevent any military action against Syria, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in statements. Western military action against Syria would be an "open violation" of international laws, he said. The statements came as Russian state-owned media reported that two Russian warships were sailing for the eastern Mediterranean Sea to protect Russian interests as tensions escalate in the region. The ships, a missile cruiser and a large anti-submarine vessel, are traveling from the North Atlantic and will arrive in a number of days.

- British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a vote endorsing military action against Syria by 13 votes Thursday August 29, 2013, a stunning defeat that will almost guarantee that Britain plays no direct role in any U.S. attack on Bashar Assad's government. A grim-faced Cameron conceded after the vote that "the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action." The main question is: Where's the evidence Assad used chemical weapons? The prime minister said that while he still believed in a "tough response" to the alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad's regime, he would respect the will of Parliament. In response to the vote, the White House said it would continue to consult with the British government. The White House plans to release its Syria intelligence report on Friday.

- President Obama spoke to the American people from the Rose Garden Saturday August 31, 2013, pressing his case for military action against the Syrian regime and calling the chemical attack that claimed more than 1,400 lives in Syria 10 days ago "a menace that must be confronted." But the president also made it clear he does not want to proceed alone and will seek authorization and support for a limited strike from Congress. The president's decision to take this to Congress came as a surprise even to his own advisers. The president called the Congress leaders into the Oval Office Friday night to tell them two things: that he's now decided to use military force, but also that he was reversing course and would seek congressional approval. He wants members on the record, rather than simply criticizing from outside whatever action he takes

- Syrian rebel commanders preparing for possible U.S. missile strikes against the government said Saturday August 31, 2013 that they were concerned President Obama's decision to seek congressional approval would mean one more broken promise of help. The delay appeared to be at least a minor victory for Syrian President Bashar Assad. Rebel commanders say the limited campaign Obama has described in recent days is insufficient, and delaying it further will only allow the Syrian government to protect its military assets.

- The civil war in Syria has forced over 2 million people out of the country and over 4 million others are displaced within its borders, making Syria the nation with the largest number of people torn from their homes right now, we were told on Tuesday September 3, 2013. If the conflict continues 3.5 million Syrian refugees are expected by the end of the year, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said. At this particular moment it's the highest number of displaced people anywhere in the world. Almost 5,000 citizens a day on average are flowing out of Syria —a country of some 23 million people— many of them with little more than the clothes they are wearing.-

- The Assad regime get prepared for a U.S. attack on the capital despite a likely delay in any military action, urging civilian evacuations, moving soldiers into vacant apartments and issuing new threats of retaliation. On Monday September 2, 2013, we were told that both the Syrian army and its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group, would strike back in the event of a U.S.-led offensive by first hitting American warships now in the Mediterranean Sea.

- The White House is making the hard sell for a strike on Syria, meeting with strategically important Republicans, trying to persuade sceptical Democrats and sending top members of the Cabinet to testify before Congress. The administration won a critical show of support Tuesday September 3, 2013, from the top elected Republican in Washington, House Speaker John Boehner, who said he backed President Barack Obama’s call for military action. And the top senators on the Foreign Relations Committee neared agreement on a resolution authorizing the use of force in Syria.

- In Syria, on Wednesday September 4, 2013, anti-aircraft missiles are at the ready. Army battalions have been broken up and relocated from barracks to university dorms and sensitive materiel has been moved to the basements of private residences. But even though congressional approval for an American strike is not certain, Assad is not taking any chances. The past few days have seen an exodus of Syrian soldiers from established military bases to scattered outposts not easily breached by the anticipated missile strikes, according to rebel commanders who have seen convoys of tanks and truckloads of soldiers heading for the countryside. The soldiers have fortified mountain redoubts around the capital with anti-aircraft missiles. The presidential guards “are making a belt of anti-aircraft rockets to surround Damascus in case the strikes start.” Many more soldiers are heading for the coastal province of Latakia, where Assad’s minority Alawite sect has an historic enclave estimating that some 3500 infantry of the regime’s seasoned 5th brigade are now guarding the highway connecting Damascus to the coast. As U.S. President Barack Obama courts Congressional approval for a proposed attack on Syrian security installations in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons, the regime is responding with defensive measures that could change the face of the war.

- An al Qaeda-linked rebel group –the al-Nusra Front- has wrested control of the historic Christian town of Maaloula from regime forces we were told on Sunday September 8, 2013.

- Syria amassed one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons with help from the Soviet Union and Iran, as well as Western European suppliers –prominently among them the British- and even a handful of American companies

- Syria Monday September 9, 2013:

• Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has urged Syria to put its chemical weapons under international control.
• Secretary of State John Kerry said that if President Bashar al-Assad wants to avert an attack on Syria he should hand over all of his chemical weapons within one week.
• There's little doubt Syrians suffered a chemical attack last month. But videos of the aftermath -- including 13 shown to Congress -- do nothing to show who was responsible. President Barack Obama says he has "high confidence" that the regime is to blame -the strongest position short of confirmation. But his administration has not released hard evidence. Secretary of State John Kerry says declassifying any more information could endanger "sources and methods" of U.S. intelligence gathering.
• Britain, France and NATO also blame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the horror in a Damascus suburb last month.
• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied that he was behind a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people.
• The White House on Sunday pressed ahead with the uphill effort of persuading Congress to approve a military strike to punish Assad.

Syria's foreign minister said Tuesday September 10, 2013, that Damascus is ready to sign an international agreement banning chemical weapons and pledged to open its storage sites and provide full disclosure immediately. Syria fully support Russia's initiative concerning chemical weapons in Syria, and is ready to cooperate. As a part of the plan, Syria intend to join the Chemical Weapons Convention.

- Syria accepted a Russian proposal on Tuesday September 10, 2013, to give up chemical weapons but U.S. President Barack Obama said it was too early to tell if the initiative would succeed and he vowed to keep military forces at the ready to strike if diplomacy fails. In a televised address to Americans, Obama pledged to explore Russia's proposal for Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control, while expressing skepticism about the initiative. He also asked the U.S. Congress to postpone a vote on authorizing military action while Washington and its allies try to pass a United Nations resolution requiring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give up the weapons in a verifiable way. In a sign of how hard that will be, Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier that the chemical weapons plan would only succeed if Washington and its allies rule out military action.

- The CIA had begun delivering shipments of lethal aid in the past fortnight we were told on Wednesday September 11, 2013. The US State Department has sent separate shipments of vehicles and other materials, including new types of non-lethal gear, sophisticated communications equipment and advanced combat medical kits. The arms shipments -which the daily said are limited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked- arrived at a crucial moment in the bloody standoff between the rebels and the Damascus government. The goal of the non-lethal assistance is to help foster cohesion among units of Syria's disjointed armed opposition.

- Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels battled more moderate Syrian opposition fighters in a town along the Iraqi border Saturday September 14, 2013, killing at least five people in the latest outbreak of infighting among the forces opposed to President Bashar Assad’s regime. Clashes between rebel groups, particularly pitting Al Qaeda-linked extremist factions against more moderate units, have grown increasingly common in recent months, undermining the opposition’s primary goal of overthrowing Assad. Saturday’s fighting took place in the town of al-Boukamal between the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant against more mainstream rebel groups.

- A high-ranking Syrian official called the U.S.-Russian agreement on securing Syria's chemical weapons a "victory" for President Bashar Assad's regime, but the U.S. warned Sunday September 15, 2013, "the threat of force is real" if Damascus fails to carry out the plan.

- U.N. war crimes investigators know of 14 potential chemical attacks in Syria since they began monitoring Syrian human rights abuses in September 2011, the team's chairman said on Monday September 16, 2013.

- The UN has confirmed "unequivocally and objectively" that chemical weapons have been used in Syria. A UN report says sarin was used in a rocket attack in the Syrian capital, Damascus, last month, although it has not attributed blame. “This is a war crime," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. US allegations that the government was responsible led to threats of military action and then a US-Russia deal for Syria to make safe its chemical arms.

- On Tuesday September 17, 2013, we were told that Russia will give the Security Council evidence implicating Syrian rebels in a chemical attack on 21 August, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said. Syrian officials supplied the evidence, which Mr Lavrov has not yet seen. A UN report released on Monday concluded the nerve agent sarin was used in the attack in Damascus, in which hundreds were killed. The US blamed government forces for the attack, but Russia and Damascus have insisted that rebels were responsible. The UN report did not apportion blame for the attack, which sparked diplomacy that culminated in a deal for Syria to hand over its chemical arsenal by mid-2014. The UK, France and the US now want the disarmament deal enshrined in a UN resolution backed by the threat of military force. But Russia, which has repeatedly cast doubt on the whether the regime carried out the attacks, has objected to any resolution authorizing force. Mr Lavrov said there was plenty of evidence that pointed to rebel involvement in chemical attacks, including the Damascus assault.

- A car bomb exploded on the Syrian side of the main Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey on Tuesday September 17, 2013, killing at least seven people and wounding 20. The explosion occurred at a roadblock manned by hardline Islamist fighters at the entrance of the rebel-held crossing, several hundred metres from the Turkish side. The casualties are all civilians, people queuing to cross. No specific group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Suspects include forces loyal to Assad, although tensions have been rising between hardline Islamist groups linked to al-Qaida and more moderate rebel forces, leading to sporadic clashes and killings. The explosion took place a day after Turkish forces shot down a Syrian helicopter in Turkish airspace. The Syrian army accused the Turkish government, which backs the uprising against Assad, of attempting to escalate tensions along the border.

-Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed at least 15 people in a Sunni Muslim village north-west of the city of Hama. A woman and two children were among those killed in the overnight attack in the village of Sheikh Hadid by soldiers and pro-Assad militia. 26 people –16 soldiers and 10 members of the pro-Assad National Defence Force– were killed when rebels attacked a nearby checkpoint on Thursday. There was also fighting in the village of Jalma, two miles south of Sheikh Hadid, on Friday.

- On Friday September 20, 2013, Syria has begun detailing its chemical weapons arsenal, releasing an "initial declaration" of its stockpile. More details about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons program are expected within the next day or two. The international chemical weapons watchdog has been charged with overseeing the removal of al-Assad's chemical weapons arsenal from Syria, part of a U.S.-Russian plan aimed at averting American military airstrikes. The information submitted by Syria is now being reviewed by the OPCW.

- Syria has handed over information about its chemical arsenal to a U.N.-backed weapons watchdog, meeting the first deadline of an ambitious disarmament operation that averted the threat of Western air strikes. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Saturday September 21, 2013, it had "received the expected disclosure" from Damascus, 24 hours after saying it had been given a partial document from Syrian authorities. The timetable for disarmament was laid down by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a week ago in Geneva when they set aside sharp differences over Syria to address the chemical weapons issue. Their plan set a Saturday deadline for Syria to give a full account of the weapons it possesses. Security experts say it has about 1,000 metric tons of mustard gas, VX and sarin -the nerve gas U.N. inspectors found had been used in the August 21 attack.

- Syrian insurgents pressed a new assault in the strategic, heavily-defended southwestern suburbs of Damascus on Tuesday September 24, 2013, saying they aimed to break an army blockade of rebel-held areas. Rebels fired mortars at government forces while army shelling hit the suburb of Derayya. Insurgents have dug in around a crescent of suburbs outside the capital for about a year and a half, but President Bashar al-Assad's forces have halted or reversed their advances in several strategic districts that are now effectively blockaded. Assad's air power and better-equipped ground forces have so far fended off attacks by rebels whose main arms supply routes into the suburbs were severed by the army earlier this year. Fighting in Damascus subsided when the United States threatened punitive military action against Assad, but picked up after a diplomatic bargain for Syria to give up its chemical weapons averted the immediate threat of a strike.

- On Friday September 27, 2013, we were told that UN inspectors are investigating seven alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria -three of which happened after the 21 August Damascus incident that led to threats of US military action. Little is known about the latest three alleged attacks, which the Syrian government asked the UN to investigate. The 21 August attack left hundreds dead; the resulting outcry led Syria to offer up its chemical weapons arsenal. The UN said its current inspection team in Syria is investigating seven allegations of chemical weapons use this year. The team, led by Ake Sellstrom, arrived in Syria for its second visit on 25 September and hopes to finish its work by Monday 30 September. It is working on a "comprehensive report" into the allegations that it hopes to have finished by late October.

- In Syria the violence goes on. Activists said a car bomb killed at least 20 people near a mosque in Rankus, a town north of Damascus, just after Friday (September 27, 2013) prayers.

The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a breakthrough agreement to eliminate all of Syria’s chemical weapons. The council voted 15-0 on Friday September 27, 2013, to adopt a resolution drafted by the U.S., the U.K. and France in response to an August 21 poison gas attack in near Damascus that killed more than 1,400 people. The resolution lacks immediate consequences if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fails to comply and it doesn’t assign blame for the attack, which U.S., U.K. and French officials attribute to Assad’s regime. Russia, a Syrian ally, has said rebels were responsible for the attack and blocked tougher wording in the resolution. Russian vetoes of previous UN attempts to sanction Assad made last night’s vote the first diplomatic breakthrough at the UN since Syria’s civil war began 2 1/2 years ago.

Syria Sunday September 29, 2013:

• At least 12 people, most of them students, were killed in an air strike that hit a secondary school in the rebel-held Syrian city of Raqqa.
• On the outskirts of the capital, an attack by rebels on military bases in the Qalamoun area killed at least 19 government fighters and wounded dozens of others.

 

Syria Thursday October 3, 2013:

• Syria’s army took back control of a strategic town in the northern province of Aleppo on Thursday after a weeks-long battle pitting troops against rebels.
• Rebels meanwhile made fresh gains in southern Syria, while activists accused an Al Qaeda front group of destroying a symbolic statue in the northern city of Raqa, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
• Dozens of fighters on both sides were killed in the battle for Khanasser, a town located on a key supply route linking central Syria to second city Aleppo.
• At least 25 rebel fighters were killed on Wednesday alone, as were 18 pro-regime militiamen, said the Britain-based Observatory.
• In Daraa in southern Syria rebels took control of Bakar village. Daraa is strategically located between a sensitive area between Jordan, Damascus and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

In the north, meanwhile, activists accused the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) of tearing down a statue of Harun al-Rashid in Raqa city. Rashid was an Abbasid ruler who lived in the eighth century, and whose era was marked by cultural progress.

Syrian rebels led by al-Qaida-linked fighters seized control of a predominantly Christian village northeast of Damascus, sweeping into the mountainside sanctuary in heavy fighting overnight and forcing hundreds of residents to flee we were told on Sunday October 6, 2013. The battle over Maaloula, an ancient village that is home to two of the oldest surviving monasteries in Syria, has thrown a spotlight on the deep-seated fears that many of Syria's religious minorities harbour about the growing role of Islamic extremists on the rebel side in the civil war against President Bashar Assad's regime. After days of clashes in and around Maaloula, rebels captured the village following fierce fighting late Saturday. Around 1,500 rebels were inside Maaloula, while the army had the village surrounded.

On Monday October 7, 2013, Syrian regime war planes on Tuesday October 8, 2013, launched strikes against rebels in northwestern Idlib province after they began an assault against two key military bases there. War planes carried out two air strikes on areas in the town of Maarat Al Numan as clashes continued around the Wadi Daif military base between rebels and regime troops. Regime forces also bombed the areas of Maarshamsha and Deir Al Sharqi in the Maaret Al Numan region, causing casualties. The strikes came a day after rebel fighters launched a major assault against the two bases in Syria’s Idlib province, which is largely controlled by the opposition.

Troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad have broken through rebel forces encircling the northern city of Aleppo to secure a major chemical weapons base that, if they can hold it, will be a big help to U.N. experts sent in to destroy Assad's chemical arsenal. The sprawling facility at al-Safira is one of the most important chemical warfare centres in Syria, and has been one of the most threatened by the rebels, including hard-line jihadist groups like the al-Nusra Front. The capture of al-Safira, which includes a heavily guarded facility where nerve agents are produced and weaponized, could allow the U.N. specialists to eliminate a significant portion of Assad's weapons of mass destruction. The 100 U.N. specialists already in Syria, or scheduled to arrive over the next few weeks, for the eight-month mission, will need all the help they can get in their year of living dangerously. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said they face "unprecedented dangers" in seeking to dismantle Syria's estimated 1,000-ton chemical arsenal in the middle of a 2 1/2-year-old civil war under extreme deadline pressure.

Syria Wednesday October 9, 2013:

• Syrian rebels seized a guard post on the Jordanian border. Rebel fighters took control of the Hajanah border battalion post near the city of Daraa after laying siege to it for two months and fierce clashes around it lasting a month. Some of the border guard battalion had withdrawn, but it was not yet clear how many people had been killed or wounded in its capture. The border post is adjacent to an old customs post seized by rebels days earlier. With its capture, opposition forces now control a ribbon of territory along the border from outside Daraa to the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
• Elsewhere, there was fierce fighting in Damascus province between rebels and troops backed by pro-regime militias and fighters from Lebanon's Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah. The clashes were taking place around Husseiniyah and Al-Thiyabiyeh, south of the capital and near the Shiite holy site Sayyida Zeinab.
• The latest round of fighting had left at least six rebels dead as well as 10 members of the regime forces.
• Government forces have "tightened their control over the towns of Husseiniyah and the outskirts of Al-Thiyabiyeh."
• In the northern city of Aleppo, fighting were reported in the Salaheddin neighbourhood, where opposition rebels were advancing. Clashes killed 10 troops, and deaths were reported among the rebels as well.
• In Damascus province, regime warplanes bombed the town of Irbin, northeast of the capital, and the town of Yabrud, north of Damascus.
• Regime aircraft continued air strikes against rebels trying to seize control of two military bases in the northwestern province of Idlib.
• 15 people, including three women, were killed in a Monday raid on the town of Hamuriyeh.

Rebel shelling of one of Syria's two main oil refineries on Wednesday October 9, 2013, set fire to the plant, already working at barely 10 percent of its capacity. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the bombardment of the plant in the central city of Homs.

Inspectors working under a tight deadline to destroy Syria’s extensive chemical arsenal are off to an encouraging start but may need limited cease-fires to complete their task in the midst of a raging civil war, the head of the international agency overseeing the effort said Wednesday October 9, 2013. The inspectors must visit about 20 sites across the country, including some where access may be dangerous. Syrian officials are reported to have concentrated their chemical stockpiles in areas under government control. Thus far, the Syrian government has cooperated in the initial stages of the undertaking.

Syrian army troops and Shi'ite militia fighters loyal to President Bashar al-Assad captured two southern suburbs of Damascus on Friday October 11, 2013, killing at least 70 people. The fighters, including some from the Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi'ites backed by Syrian army tanks, searched al-Thiabiya and Husseiniya, a Palestinian refugee camp, for pockets of resistance after overrunning them.

The Nobel committee in Oslo, Norway, awarded its Peace Prize on Friday October 11, 2013, to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international chemical weapons watchdog helping to eliminate the Syrian army's stockpiles of poison gas. Its inspectors have just begun working in the active war zone, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it hopes the award offers "strong support" to them as they face arduous and life-threatening tasks. But the OPCW did not receive the prize primarily because of its work in Syria, committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said. "It is because of its long-standing efforts to eliminate chemical weapons and that we are now about to reach the goal and do away with a whole category of weapons of mass destruction”.

A suicide bomber gravely wounded three members of the separatist Southern Movement in an attack in the southern Yemeni province of Lahij on Friday October 11, 2013. The bomber detonated an explosives belt as an activists' cars headed for the port of Aden for a demonstration on Saturday marking the independence of the former South Yemen. The bomber was killed "and three members of the Southern Movement were gravely wounded.

Two mortar shells hit Syria’s capital Saturday October 12, 2013, near a hotel where international chemical inspectors and United Nations staff are staying. An 8-year-old girl was killed and 11 people were hurt in the blasts in the upscale Abu Roumaneh area of Damascus. One shell fell near a school and the other on the roof of a building. The girl was in her family car near the school when she was killed. The blasts struck some 300 meters away from the Four Seasons Hotel where the chemical inspectors and U.N. staff are staying.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says gunmen have abducted six of its workers and one Red Crescent volunteer in north-west Syria on Sunday October 13, 2013. The aid agency has had no contact with the gunmen, an ICRC spokesman says. Earlier, Syrian state media said gunmen opened fire on Red Cross staff travelling on the Sirmin-Saraqeb road in Idlib province.

On Saturday October 12, 2013, intense shelling by Syrian government forces killed at least 11 civilians. At least three children and four women were among those killed when troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad shelled the southern city of Daraa. One of the shells hit a building in central Daraa, which lies close to the Syrian border with Jordan.

The death of 130 rebels and civilians was an execution carried out by the Syrian government and its Shi'ite allies we were told on Saturday October 12, 2013. They were killed in the town of al-Ziyabiya amid battles to control southern Damascus suburbs, which began two days ago. -----

Syrian rebels said they shot a government warplane on Sunday October 13, 2013, near the southern city of Deraa along the border with Jordan but the plane was able to make an emergency landing at a nearby military airport. Fighters used anti-aircraft machine guns to hit the plane in a rural area near the southern city of Deraa, where Syria's uprising against Assad erupted in 2011 after it was flying low over rebel held territory. The fighter jet, which is the second to have been hit this month in the same border area, was spotted going down but safely landing in the Thala airport close to the city of Sweida. There were no reports of the incident on Syrian state media.

A car bombing in a rebel-held northwestern town in Syria killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens on Monday October 14, 2013. The car bomb went off at a market in the town of Darkoush in Idlib province. On Sunday, two car bombs exploded near the state TV building in Damascus. The SANA news agency said the TV's headquarters in Umayyad Square was damaged in the blast, but there was no word on casualties.

Gunmen in Syria released three Red Cross staffers and a Red Crescent volunteer who had been kidnapped in rebel-held territory, the international agency said Monday October 14, 2013. The fate of three other Red Cross workers who were also seized Sunday in the northwestern Idlib province remained unclear. Syrian opposition activists said the seven aid workers were taken at a rebel checkpoint outside the town of Saraqeb, manned by an al-Qaida-affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Meanwhile, the head of the international chemical weapons watchdog said inspectors faced problems accessing some of the chemical weapons sites because of fighting. Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told the BBC President Bashar Assad's government had been cooperating with inspectors had reached five of 20 chemical weapons production sites.

Muslims throughout the world have been marking Eid al-Adha, but in war-torn Syria there is little to celebrate as most people struggle to meet their basic needs: food, water, and shelter. Their plight has been highlighted by Arabic media reports that, on Wednesday October 16, 2013, cite a fatwa, or religious ruling, by a local imam that allows people who are desperately hungry to eat dogs and cats. Eating dog, cat or donkey is forbidden under Islamic dietary laws. The imam in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in the capital, Damascus, said at a mosque that dog, cat and donkey meat could be eaten "after reaching a desperate need and the stores of food were inadequate to feed the population under the siege."

The Syrian government said Thursday October 17, 2013, it has turned over to the United Nations a Canadian staffer who went missing eight months ago, accusing rebels of having kidnapped him. Carl Campeau was kidnapped in February in the Golan Heights, where a ceasefire line runs between Israel and Syria. He is an employee of the UN Disengagement Force (UNDOF) and had been kidnapped in Khan al-Shih in Damascus province.

Syria, what were told on Friday October 18, 2013:

• The Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday was marked with the death of more than 20 people in an explosion in the southern Syrian province of Dara and rebel factions in the area announced a break with the major U.S.-backed opposition coalition.
• Meanwhile, in northern Syria, autonomy-minded Kurdish militiamen battled Al Qaeda-linked Arab rebels, leaving 42 dead. Secular Kurdish fighters for months have been engaged in violent clashes with militant Islamist factions in northern and northeast Syria, homeland of the nation’s Kurdish minority.
• The Turkish press reported that Turkish military units positioned along the Syrian border returned fire from Al Qaeda-linked fighters in the strategic northern Syrian town of Azaz, three miles from the Turkish frontier.
• Militant Islamist rebels overran Azaz a few weeks ago. But fighting between rival rebel factions continues in and around the town, with some errant shells apparently landing in nearby Turkey.
• In southern Dara province, each side in the Syrian conflict blamed the other for the deaths of at least 21 people, most of them apparently civilians, in a bomb blast that occurred Tuesday.
• A mine along a road in the town of Nawa destroyed a bus carrying civilians fleeing from government bombardment nearby. Opposition advocates said the government laid down mines in the area to protect nearby installations under rebel siege.
• On Wednesday, a video emerged from more than 60 rebel brigades in the Dara area declaring that they would no longer recognize the authority of the U.S.-backed Syrian National Coalition. The rebel factions accused the coalition of having “neglected the tenets of the homeland."

Nine Shiite pilgrims from Lebanon kidnapped in Syria more than a year ago were freed on Friday October 18, 2013, as part of a negotiated hostage release that could lead to the release of two Turkish pilots held in Lebanon. The Lebanese were part of a group of 11 hostages taken by a rebel faction in northern Syria in May 2012 while they were on a religious pilgrimage. Two were later released with Turkey’s help, but the nine had remained in captivity, causing friction in the region and prompting the kidnapping of the two pilots in Beirut in August. It is expected the pilots to be released soon and that the Syrian government would release some detainees.

 

Two Turkish pilots kidnapped by militants in Lebanon were freed Saturday October 19, 2013, as part of a three-way deal that saw nine Lebanese pilgrims abducted in Syria released from captivity. Turkish Airlines pilots Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca had been held since their kidnapping in August in Beirut. The Turks' release is part of a negotiated hostage deal that included the freeing of the kidnapped pilgrims, as well as dozens of women held in Syrian government jails.

Syrian rebels assaulted a checkpoint in a pro-government suburb of Damascus on Saturday October 19, 2014, setting off a suicide vehicle bomb that killed 16 soldiers.

A suicide bomber driving a truck packed with 1.5 tonnes of explosives killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens in Syria’s central city of Hama on Sunday October 20, 2013. The man blew himself up inside the vehicle on a busy road on the outskirts of the city.

Government forces have killed a prominent army defector who became a rebel leader. Yasser al-Abboud was killed during fighting on Monday October 21, 2013, in the town of Tafas, in the southern province of Daraa. Al-Abboud was among the first high-ranking Syrian army officials to publicly defect and join the rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad's regime. Most military defectors were low-level conscripts, who formed part of the Syrian Free Army. Al-Abboud once commanded the military council of the FSA and led a rebel brigade in Daraa.

Government warplanes and helicopters struck rebels Tuesday October 22, 2013, as they struggled to advance near Syria's two main cities, Damascus and Aleppo. Shelling by both loyalists and rebels killed civilians across the country, including in the capital.

• Helicopters fired explosives-laden barrels at buildings near the town of Sfeira in the east of Aleppo province.
• Loyalist helicopter gunships also unleashed heavy gunfire on rebel positions near Kwayris military airport, which has been under rebel siege for months.
• In Aleppo city, warplanes carried out an air strike on the battered Bab Nairab neighbourhood.
• Warplanes also raided Masaken Hanano in Aleppo city.
• As clashes raged in Damascus's Jobar, Qabun and Barzeh neighbourhoods, the army pressed its bid to crush the rebels' positions on the city's outskirts.
• Days after advancing rebels broke through near Mleiha, southeast of Damascus, the air force unleashed an air strike on the area.
• At least two people were killed in a shelling attack against Jaramana, a majority Christian-Druze neighbourhood in southeastern Damascus firmly under regime control. One of those killed was a child.
• Violence also raged further south, with army shelling on Inkhil in Daraa province killing a man and a child from the same family.
• In the central province of Homs, warplanes were deployed to strike rebels fighting troops in countryside areas that are important because they lie near the Lebanese border and just northeast of Damascus.

 

The Syrian government has released 13 jailed women we were told on Wednesday October 23, 2013 —a move that is part of an ambitious regional prisoner exchange. Meanwhile, al-Qaida-linked rebels strengthened their hold on an ancient Christian town north of Damascus. The women were released Tuesday morning from the headquarters of the Damascus provincial government, but said they hadn't been able to contact them. The women may have been freed as part of a three-way exchange that began on October 18. It saw Syrian rebels release nine Lebanese men held for a year and a half. Lebanese gunmen simultaneously released two Turkish pilots held since August.

On Wednesday October 23, 2013, the organization tasked with destroying Syria's chemical weapons program and its arsenal said they had visited more than three-quarters of the sites declared by the government. The group said it expected to meet a November 1 deadline to make declared chemical weapons production facilities inoperable.

Syrian government forces killed more than 40 rebels in an ambush in a strategic region east of Damascus we were told on Friday October 25, 2013, as fierce clashes were reported outside the capital. Also, Abu Mohammed Jolani, the leader of Al Nusra Front, or Jabhat al Nusra, said that a group of Islamist fighters, was killed in Latakia province.

Syrian state-run TV reported Friday October 25, 2013, that the leader of a powerful al Qaeda-linked rebel group has been killed, a claim that if confirmed would be a huge blow to fighters trying to topple President Bashar Assad. At least one rebel commander denied the report. However questions remained over whether Abu Mohammad al-Golani, head of Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, had indeed died. State TV said he was killed in the coastal province of Latakia, but did not say when or give details.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said in a statement on Sunday October 27, 2013, that Syria had completed its declaration as part of a strict and ambitious timeline that aims to eliminate the lethal stockpile by mid-2014. Syria previously gave preliminary details to the OPCW when it said it was joining the organization in September.

On Tuesday October 29, 2013, we were told that international inspectors overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile have missed an early deadline in a brutally tight schedule after security concerns prevented them from visiting two sites linked to Damascus' chemical program. The chief of the global chemical weapons watchdog disclosed that Syria has declared 41 facilities at 23 chemical sites where it stored approximately 1,300 tons of precursors and agents, and over 1,200 unfilled munitions to deliver them. Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had corroborated the information provided by Syria at 37 of the 41 facilities. But inspectors were only able to visit 21 of the 23 sites because of security risks which means the tight timeline for visiting all declared sites by October 27 was missed. The OPCW did not say who was responsible for the security problems. The two sites appear to be in rebel-held or contested areas. At least one location is believed to be the town of al-Safira, which experts say is home to a production facility as well as storage sites. It has been engulfed by fighting for months, and many rebels in the area are from Al Qaeda-linked groups.

On Wednesday October 30, 2013, we were told that international powers are unlikely to meet their goal of convening peace talks on Syria in Geneva next month as differences emerge between Washington and Moscow over opposition representation. Failure of the main Syrian National Coalition to take a clear stance over the talks, which aim to find a political solution to Syria's 2-1/2 year civil war, are also expected to contribute to a delay of up to one month. U.S., Russian and U.N envoys are due to meet in Geneva next Tuesday as part of the preparation for the long-delayed peace conference, which was first proposed back in May. A main point of contention is the role of the Western-backed opposition coalition.

Syria's president sacked a deputy prime minister who met Western officials to discuss the possibility of holding a peace conference, saying he acted without permission. The Tuesday October 29, 2013, decree was the latest blow to diplomatic efforts to bring the country's warring parties to the negotiating table. Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil was fired after a weekend meeting in Geneva that Washington says was with its ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford.

The chief of the global chemical weapons watchdog is confirming that Syria wants its poison gas and nerve agent stockpile destroyed outside the country. It is not yet clear where outside Syria the destruction could happen. Norway has turned down a request to have the material destroyed on its territory. Global chemical weapons inspectors will visit the last two unverified Syrian chemical weapons sites as soon as security conditions allow in the midst of an ongoing civil war we were told on Tuesday November 5, 2013.

Troops backed by Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah fighters and other pro-regime militiamen on Thursday November 7, 2013, retook Sbeineh, a major rebel enclave south of Damascus. Sbeineh was one of the most important rebel positions on Damascus' outskirts. Rebels in southern Damascus have now had practically all their supply routes cut off. The takeover of Sbeineh, a rear base for rebels in southern Damascus, comes a year into a suffocating army siege of the town. It also comes nine days into an intense campaign aimed at cutting off one of the main rebel supply lines into southern Damascus.

On Friday November 8, 2013, Syrian troops have recaptured parts of a military base seized by rebels early this year in fierce fighting near Aleppo international airport. The troops were backed by militia and fighters from Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in their assault on rebel groups, including the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Initial reports suggested both sides had suffered casualties while towns near the base had come under heavy bombardment

Two mortar shells hit Syria's capital Saturday November 9, 2013, near a hotel where international chemical weapons inspectors and United Nations staff are staying. In the north, clashes between rival rebel factions left nearly 50 gunmen dead in three days of fighting for control of neighbourhoods in the city of Aleppo. An 8-year-old girl was killed and 11 people were hurt in the blasts in the upscale Abu Roumaneh area of Damascus. One shell fell near a school and the other on the roof of a building. The girl was in her family car near the school when she was killed. The blasts struck some 300 meters away from the Four Seasons Hotel where the chemical weapons inspectors and U.N. staff are staying.

Syrian rebels recaptured a base near the international airport in the northern city of Aleppo in a counteroffensive hours after the Syrian Army had advanced into the area we were told on Saturday November 9, 2013. The rebels were able to recapture the military base of Brigade 80 after government troops seized parts of it early Friday. 40 rebels and more than 20 government troops were killed in the latest fighting, which began Friday and continued early Saturday. The main job of Brigade 80 was to protect the government-held Aleppo International Airport, which has been closed because of fighting for almost a year. A rocket fired by opposition fighters struck near a health centre in Aleppo’s Ashrafieh neighbourhood, killing six children and wounding six.

Syrian military jets Thursday November 14, 2013, launched three air raids on the outskirts of Lebanon's Arsal border town in the east Bekaa. A Syrian military helicopter conducted two raids in the Wadi Ata region on the outskirts of Arsal, launching six rockets while a second Syrian jet targeted the same area with three rockets. Seven houses were damaged during the raids, but no casualties or injuries were reported.

Three people were killed and 22 others wounded Thursday November 14, 2013, in two explosions and a mortar attack against an old district of Syria's capital Damascus. The attacks targeted the al-Kallaseh neighbourhood in the old quarter of Damascus. The incidents came as part of daily attacks by the rebels positioned on the outskirts of Damascus. Separately, SANA said Syrian troops ambushed a rebel group in the southern province of Daraa, killing 20. Some of those ambushed were foreign nationals, including a Saudi citizen

While the political efforts are underway to accelerate the Geneva II conference, the Syrian troops have made significant progress over past months, stripping the rebels of key positions and strategic areas in the countryside of the capital Damascus, the central province of Homs and Northern Province of Aleppo. On Friday November 15, 2013, the Syrian army recaptured three towns in important arms depots in Homs and a town south of Aleppo. Over the past couple of days, the troops also recaptured towns in the countryside of Damascus and Aleppo. The rebels, while finding themselves trapped and besieged particularly in the countryside of Damascus, have unleashed mortar attacks against several districts, causing deaths and injuries as well as property losses.

A Syrian air strike has killed a senior commander of the Islamist Liwa al-Tawhid rebel brigade in Aleppo and wounded its chief and another leader we were told on Friday November 15, 2013. Four more rebel chiefs were killed in other incidents, three in the northern Aleppo province and the fourth in Homs to its south. Yussef al-Abbas, known as Abu al-Tayyeb, was intelligence chief for Liwa al-Tawhid and was killed in a strike Thursday on an army base captured by the rebels a year ago. The brigade's top commander, Abdelkader Saleh, and another senior figure of the group, Abdelaziz Salameh, were wounded.

 

Albania on Friday November 15, 2013, rejected a request from the United States for the tiny impoverished Balkan nation to host the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, a major blow to international efforts to destroy the arsenal by mid-2014. In a televised address, Prime Minister Edi Rama said it was “impossible for Albania to take part in this operation. The announcement was greeted by a loud cheer from some 2,000 protesters camped outside Rama’s office who opposed the plan to dismantle the weapons in Albania. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been discussing a plan to destroy Syria’s estimated 1,000-metric ton arsenal, which includes mustard gas and the deadly nerve agent sarin.

Rebels bombed a government building near Damascus on Sunday November 17, 2013, killing 31 soldiers. The building was destroyed. Three generals and a brigadier general are among the dead. Syrian forces launched a second straight day of air raids on the town of Qara in the mountainous Qalamoun region, close to the Lebanese border.

A bomb exploded Thursday November 21, 2013, near a bus carrying a group of Jordanian writers who met with senior Syrian government leaders on an official visit, wounding five of them. The Syrian state news agency SANA said two Jordanians were wounded. But the Jordanians said five of them were wounded by the late afternoon explosion in Daraa province, east of the Jordanian border. The 20-member delegation from the Jordanian Writers Syndicate was in Syria for four days, meeting with top officials. They had plans to meet President Bashar Assad, but the government “told us the president was busy”.

Rebels in Syria seized a key town Friday November 22, 2013, in Qalamoun province that has been under army control since the outbreak of the conflict. Hundreds of rebels now control most of Deir Attiyeh, with the exception of the Bassel hospital and a small hill. The majority Christian town north of Damascus is home to 10,000 people and is situated on the strategic route linking the capital to Homs in central Syria. It was seized by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front, as well as other Islamist fighters.

A string of government airstrikes on rebel-held areas of northern Syria have killed at least 44 people as al-Qaida-linked rebels captured one of the country's oil field in the east. The attack on the rebel-held town of al-Bab near the northern city of Aleppo is the deadliest of the three raids. He said that strike killed 22 people. Fighter jets also bombed two rebel-held districts of Aleppo, Syria's largest city. Government warplanes missed their target in the Halwaniyeh neighbourhood and sent bombs into a crowded vegetable market, killing 15 people. Seven people died in a third airstrike in the Karam el-Beik district. Meanwhile, fighters from al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra ousted government troops from the al-Omar field on Saturday November 24, 2013 during an overnight battle. ---

Activists said on Sunday November 24, 2013, that at least 160 rebel fighters and Syrian troops have been killed in two days of fighting in the Eastern Ghouta region on the fringes of Damascus. The fighting began on Friday when rebel units launched an assault on military checkpoints around the opposition-held suburbs. The group said the dead included 55 rebel fighters, 41 jihadists from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and the al-Nusra Front, 36 Syrian regime troops, 20 members of a Shiite Iraqi group fighting alongside the army and eight members of a Syrian pro-regime militia. Government troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have been blockading the area for months in a bid to starve out civilians and force rebels to surrender. Local and international aid workers say the blockade has affected civilians along with the rebels. The blockade has cut off weapons supplies to the rebels fighting to oust Assad, whose troops are gradually gaining the upper hand in areas around the capital.

The violence does not show any sign of tapering off. On Tuesday November 26, 2013, a suicide car bombing outside a bus station in the town of Sumariyah near Damascus killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 30. Meanwhile, government airstrikes on the rebel-held town of Nabek, where Assad's troops are waging an offensive, killed at least seven people.

Irish troops serving on the United Nations mission in Syria have come under fire from anti-government armed forces, with a number of their vehicles damaged in a morning ambush. It is the first time Irish troops have been fired on in Syria and the first time an Irish vehicle with troops inside has been hit on any UN mission in recent memory. No serious injuries were reported.

On Friday November 29, 2013, Syrian government forces have recaptured the western border town of Deir Attiyeh, less than a week after rebel forces had seized it in a counteroffensive. Deir Attiyeh, with about 10,000 residents and a significant Christian minority, is viewed as a vital link on the main highway between Damascus, the seat of power of President Bashar Assad, and the city of Homs in the centre of the country. It is also part of a strategic supply corridor for rebel forces.

Five Syrians died and nine others were rescued after a boat sank off the coast of Turkey while trying to cross to the Greek island of Lesbos. The boat, carrying 14 Syrians believed to be fleeing the civil war in their homeland, sank in the early hours of Friday November 29, 2013, some five nautical miles off the western province of Balikesir. A two-month-old baby was among the dead. None of those being treated in a local hospital were in critical condition. Some 700,000 Syrians have taken refuge in Turkey from the war and more than 400,000 of them are living outside refugee camps.

Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have recaptured a Christian town on the main highway north of the capital putting them back on the offensive in the strategic region near the Lebanese border. Assad's forces have made advances in recent months and are trying to secure the highway linking Damascus to the coastal heartland of his Alawite minority sect, but faced a setback last week when they lost the town of Deir Attiya to al Qaeda-linked fighters.

A mortar round struck the front of a historical mosque in Syria's capital Friday November 29, 2013, killing four people and wounding 26. The shell fell in front of the western entrance of the mosque. Most of the casualties were women and children. ---

Syrian rebels including members of al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra entered a predominantly Christian village near Damascus on Saturday November 30, 2013. Rebels broke in to Maaloula in the early hours after starting the offensive the previous night, leaving casualties on both sides. The group says Jabhat al-Nusra members are among those fighting in the area. It was the second attack on the area in nearly three months. Opposition fighters, including jihadis, stormed the village and held it for several days until troops launched a counter offensive in early September and regained control. Since then, most of Maaloula's 3,300 residents fled to safer areas.

Syrian government helicopters dropped barrels full of explosives on a rebel-held town near the northern city of Aleppo, killing at least 50 people in two separate attacks over the weekend we were told on Sunday December 1, 2013. The shelling Sunday hit near a bakery in the town of al-Bab, located east of Aleppo, killing at least 24 people. The attack followed a similar bombing on Saturday, when army helicopters targeted a rebel compound in al-Bab, but missed their target and hit a market, killing 26 people. The army used barrel bombs in both attacks, which contain hundreds of pounds of explosives.

A suicide bomb attack at a Syrian defines ministry office in central Damascus killed at least four people on Tuesday December 3, 2013. The bomber detonated himself using an explosive belt at the office in the Jisr al-Abyad area in the capital's centre. At least 17 people were wounded in the attack.

Opposition fighters abducted 12 nuns from a Christian village overrun by rebels we were told Tuesday December 3, 2013. The nuns join two bishops and a priest who were previously kidnapped by rebels. The nuns and three other women were seized Monday from the Greek Orthodox Mar Takla convent in the village of Maaloula and taken to the nearby rebel-held town of Yabroud, which also has a large Christian population.

A rocket attack on regime-held areas of the Syrian city of Aleppo on Thursday December 5, 2013, has killed at least 18 people including 10 government soldiers. The attack on the Furqan and Meridian neighbourhoods also wounded at least 30 people.

Syrian opposition fighters killed an Iraqi freelance journalist in the armed groupsl-held north of the country, the latest of dozens of reporters who have died in the country over the past three years we were told on Thursday December 5, 2013. Yasser Faisal al-Jumaili was shot dead at armed group checkpoint in the northwestern province of Idlib on Wednesday.

Thirteen kidnapped Lebanese and Syrian nuns appeared in good health in a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera Friday December 6, 2013, with one captive saying they would be released in two days. Asked whether they considered themselves hostages, another nun said they were evacuated from Maaloula into a safer place as a result of heavy shelling on the Christian town. One of the nuns also said they were being treated fairly, urging opposing forces in Syria to refrain from targeting religious sites such as mosques and churches. A group calling itself the Free Qalamoun Battalion demanded the release of 1,000 Syrian women detainees as part of a swap deal to secure the release of the nuns seized from a convent in Syria.

Syrian rebels from an Islamist alliance formed last month have occupied bases and warehouses belonging to a Western-backed rebel group on the Turkish border we were told on Saturday December 7, 2013. Fighters from the Islamic Front, a union of six major rebel groups, took control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) bases at the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the northwestern border with Turkey late on Friday night, the opposition sources said.

Syrian government aircraft on Saturday December 7, 2013, pounded a rebel-held city in the country’s northeast, killing at least 13 people including five children. In northern Syria, meanwhile, a newly formed Islamist coalition of rebel brigades took control of a major crossing point with Turkey from the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. The air raids —eight strikes in total— hit the northeastern city of Raqqa early afternoon. Four women were among the dead and dozens of people were wounded. Rebels captured Raqqa, the capital of the province of the same name, in March. It’s the only major urban centre to fall entirely under opposition control since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011. Rebels also control territory in the north and parts of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and its commercial centre.

Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad secured the highway Sunday December 8, 2013, that links Damascus with northern Syria, paving the way for the potential shipment of chemical weapons overland to a Mediterranean port for destruction abroad. Government troops launched an offensive last month in the rugged Qalamoun region north of Damascus in an attempt to secure the main north-south highway that runs through the area and to cut rebel supply lines that crisscross the mountainous terrain. Fighting in the area had left the road cut for nearly three weeks, but government forces reopened the road Sunday after seizing control of most of the contested town of Nabek that is located along the highway. The government troops seized the towns of Qara and Deir Attiyah and most of the key city of Nabak from rebel fighters along the Damascus-Homs highway.

Masked gunmen abducted a leading Syrian human rights lawyer and three other prominent activists in a rebel-held Damascus suburb Tuesday December 10, 2013. Razan Zaytouni, one of the most outspoken critics of President Bashar Assad as well as Islamic militants who have gained increasing sway over the fight to oust the government, was seized along with her husband and two other colleagues from her office in Douma.

On Tuesday December 10, 2013, the government showed off its victory over rebels in Nabek, taking media to the town a day after it was captured. Nabek lies on the main Damascus-Homs highway. Most of the buildings in the town were partially or totally destroyed, and graffiti promoting the al-Qaida umbrella group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was sprayed on the walls. Glass littered the ground. Telephone and electricity cables torn from overhead poles were strewn across the streets and sidewalks. Some cars were smashed; others were stolen. Some residents who had fled the town were starting to return even though distant gunshots could be heard and black smoke rose from nearby Yabroud as activists said Syrian troops pounded the area with airstrikes and artillery.

Syria's army on Tuesday December 10, 2013 turned its sights to the town of Yabrud, the last rebel stronghold in the strategic Qalamoun region near Lebanon's border, after a string of battlefield victories. The town is believed to be where a group of nuns from the historic Christian hamlet of Maalula have been transferred, reportedly in the hands of jihadist rebels from Al-Nusra Front.

On Tuesday December 10, 2013, we were told that two Spanish journalists, Javier Espinosa and Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, have gone missing in northern Syria. The pair are believed to have been kidnapped in September by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a jihadist group linked to Al-Qaeda.

Syrian authorities have freed for "humanitarian reasons" 366 detainees from Aleppo prison in the north of the country which is under rebel siege we were told on Friday December 13, 2013. A first group of 10 prisoners were freed Thursday and that more would follow, adding that most of the prisoners were convicted criminals.

On Friday December 13, 2013, Islamist rebels linked to al-Qaida have kidnapped at least 120 Kurdish civilians from a village near the Turkish border in Aleppo province. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters entered Ihras and took the captives, including at least six women, to an unknown location. The incident is the latest in a series of kidnappings and killings by Isil this month targeting Kurds in northern Syria, where mainly Sunni Arab Islamist rebels and Kurdish fighters have clashed repeatedly in recent months. Control over north-east Syria, where Kurds predominate, has swung back and forth between them and Islamists, who strongly oppose what they suspect are Kurdish plans to secede.

At least 36 people, including 15 children, were killed in regime air raids on rebel districts of the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday December 15, 2013. They were killed when regime forces unleashed an aerial attack using explosive-laden barrels over six districts in eastern Aleppo, including Sakhur, Ard al-Hamra and Haydariyeh. Fifteen children, an 18-year-old boy and a woman were among 36 people killed. The number could rise because many people were wounded, some in critical condition. Barrel bombs were dropped on some 10 neighbourhoods of the city.

Seventy-six people, including 28 children, were killed on Sunday December 15, 2013, when Syrian army helicopters dropped "barrel bombs" on the northern city of Aleppo. Barrel bombs are explosive-filled cylinders or oil barrels, often rolled out of the back of helicopters with little attempt at striking a particular target but capable of causing widespread casualties and significant damage.

Hospitals in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo are overwhelmed with casualties we were told on Tuesday December 17, 2013, as government warplanes blasted opposition areas of the city as part of a withering three-day air assault that has killed more than 100 people. President Bashar Assad's government is trying to crush opposition in the contested city, Syria's largest, ahead of an international peace conference scheduled for late January in Switzerland.

Syrian government aircraft dumped barrels packed with explosives on at least four opposition-held neighborhoods of Aleppo on Wednesday December 18, 2013, the fourth day of stepped-up airstrikes on the contested northern city. One of them exploded near the Ahmad al-Qassar school, while another landed by a student dormitory, he said via Skype. At least two people were killed in the air raids. They expect casualty figures to rise. The air campaign killed more than 100 people in the first three days alone as Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces are trying to crush opposition in Aleppo ahead of an international peace conference planned for late January in Switzerland.

Syrian army shelling of a mosque in the central city of Homs killed a prominent cleric Friday December 20, 2013, while Islamists rebels in Aleppo to the north made a fresh advance. Two people were killed in shelling by regime troops of the Raees mosque in the Waar neighbourhood" of Homs city. One of those killed was Sufwan Mashraqa, a Sunni Muslim cleric who was leading Friday prayers in the mosque. Mashraqa was a former head of the city's department for religious affairs. ---

Syria Saturday December 21, 2013:

• On Friday Syrian rebels seized control a strategic hospital near Aleppo. The rebels’ capture of Kindi hospital does not drastically alter the broader battle for Aleppo. But it does provide a lift to a rebel movement that has been dogged in recent months by infighting that allowed President Bashar Assad’s forces to chip away at rebel-held territory on several fronts.#
• At least 42 government troops were killed in Friday’s fighting, and at least 19 Syrian rebels and an unknown number of foreign fighters.
• A Syrian freelance photographer who worked for foreign news outlets, including Reuters, also was killed in the fighting. The photographer, Molhem Barakat, was with his brother, a rebel fighter, inside a carpet factory near the hospital when they were both killed.
• Meanwhile, Syrian government forces continued dumping so-called barrel bombs —containers containing hundreds of pounds of explosives and fuel— over opposition-held parts of Aleppo. At least six people were killed in Saturday’s air raids, but other groups gave higher death tolls.
• The aid group Doctors Without Borders has said that over four days this week government airstrikes killed at least 189 people and wounded 879 more.
• Syria’s civil war, now into its third year, has killed more than 120,000 people while millions have been forced from their homes by the fighting.
• The capital Damascus and much of southern Syrian plunged into darkness after a rebel attack struck a gas pipeline that supplies a power plant.

 

Syrian aircraft pummelled opposition areas in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday December 22, 2013, killing at least 32 people and extending the government's furious aerial bombardment of the rebel-held half of the divided city to an eighth consecutive day.

In eastern Syria, students are reported among the dead from a car bomb explosion near a primary school in the province of Homs. The attack in the town of Umm al-Amed killed eight people, including six children. Opposition activists reported at least 12 people killed. Elsewhere, Syrian rebels say government aircraft continue to bomb rebel-held areas in the northern city of Aleppo. The attacks have been going on eight days.  Rebel activists say the government is dropping "barrel bombs" on civilians.

Government forces widened a bombing campaign in rebel-held areas of northern Syria on Monday December 23, 2013, striking the northern city of Aleppo and a town on the Turkish border in raids that left an estimated 45 people dead. The attack on the border town of Azaz was the latest attack using powerful but inaccurate "barrel bombs" on the Aleppo region. Residents in the town said that 15 people were killed in the strike.  The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that multiple air raids on the Aleppo neighbourhoods of Sukkari, Maadi, Marjeh and Nairab left at least 30 people including 12 children dead on Monday. On Sunday, 65 were killed near an Aleppo marketplace in one of the bloodiest days of the air campaign. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Observatory, said that air raids on the northern province of Aleppo have killed at least 301 people including 87 children, 30 women and nearly 30 opposition fighters since mid-December. That figure did not include those reported killed Monday. The aid group Doctors Without borders has said the bombs killed at least 189 people and wounded 879 in the first four days alone.
 
Syrian air strikes killed 15 people, including three children, in Aleppo Tuesday December 24, 2013, as the regime pressed a blistering 10-day bombing campaign that has killed hundreds, threatening planned peace talks. The past 10 days were "the most violent in the whole of the Syrian revolution," a war that has claimed more than 126,000 lives since March 2011 and displaced millions of people. 379 people, among them 108 children, 34 women and 30 fighters, died in the massive air campaign in and around Aleppo.

A Syrian army air strike on a vegetable market in the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 25 people on Saturday December 28, 2013, continuing a campaign of improvised "barrel bombs" that has drawn international condemnation. Hundreds of people have been killed by air raids around the city of Aleppo in recent weeks, scores of them women and children. The 25 victims at least four of them children, were killed by barrel bombing that also destroyed part of a hospital. It said the death toll was likely to rise as dozens more were wounded in the attack.

A missile struck a bus Tuesday December 31, 2013, in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, setting it on fire and killing at least 10 people. Another missile stuck nearby in the al-Bab area of Aleppo as residents rushed to carry out the wounded from the bus. Syrian forces have killed more than 500 people, mainly civilians, since December 15 in a bombing campaign of Aleppo, mostly by dropping crude explosive-filled barrels over rebel neighbourhoods.

Security concerns and bureaucracy have caused President Bashar al-Assad's government to miss Tuesday December 31, 2013's deadline for the removal of deadly toxins from Syria under an international effort to remove its chemical arsenal. Bad weather and a complex multinational procurement effort for equipment have also delayed the operation. Syria agreed to abandon its chemical weapons by next June under a deal proposed by Russia and hashed out with the United States after an August 21 sarin gas attack that Western nations blamed on Assad's forces.

Explosions hit two large Syrian gas pipelines on Friday January 3, 2014, near Damascus and the central city of Homs, cutting electricity supplies around the capital and in Mediterranean provinces. The fires from both explosions, which he blamed on rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad, were subsequently extinguished. The second explosion, near the border town of Tel Kalakh east of Homs, caused a fire which could be seen across the frontier in Lebanon. The pipeline supplied a power station in the Mediterranean city of Banias. Electricity was cut in Banias, Tartous and parts of Homs.

Syria Friday January 3, 2014:

• Syrian rebels in opposition-held areas were engaged in fierce battles with Al-Qaeda-linked elements in what activists say is growing resistance to the jihadists' brutal grip in many places.
• In northern Syria, an unidentified group seized five people working for Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
• In Aleppo and nearby Idlib, 16 pro-Qaeda fighters were reported killed.
• In Idlib alone, at least 42 ISIL fighters were wounded and 20 other civilians hurt in the crossfire, while in Aleppo, a media activist was killed while covering the fighting.
• The fighting comes two days after ISIL reportedly tortured and murdered Doctor Hussein al-Sleiman, known as Abu Rayyan. His death was the latest in a string of beatings, kidnappings and killings that have enraged rebels and activists alike.
• In a separate development, Danish and Norwegian vessels left Cyprus and headed towards Syria to escort a delayed shipment of chemical weapons for destruction.

 

Syrian rebel factions battled fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) across north-west Syria on Saturday January 4, 2014. Dozens of fighters were killed in the clashes between rival rebel groups which have raged since Friday in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, close to the border with Turkey. Rebel infighting has strengthened Assad's hand ahead of planned peace talks in Geneva on January 22. The president, backed by Shi'ite fighters from Iraq and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, has pushed back rebels around Damascus and in central Syria, and faces little pressure to make concessions. In addition the opposition Free Syrian Army is turning against foreign fighters in Syria's civil war, arresting some 200 outsiders with ties to al-Qaeda groups. The FSA had given members of the al-Qaeda-backed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, 24 hours to surrender and leave the country, before arresting around 200 of them.

Syrian rebel fighters loyal to al Qaeda ceded ground near the Turkish border to rival Islamists on Sunday January 5, 2014 in what seemed to be a tactical withdrawal to end clashes between Syrian and foreign-led opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria has moved the first batch of chemical weapon materials out of the country after transporting it from two sites to the port city of Latakia and onto a Danish vessel we were told on Tuesday January 7, 2014. The vessel has been accompanied by naval escorts provided by Denmark and Norway, as well as the Syrian Arab Republic. War, bad weather, bureaucracy and technical issues delayed a December 31 deadline for the removal of the most deadly toxins from Syria. The OPCW did not say what percentage of the "most critical" chemicals, including around 20 tonnes of mustard nerve agent, were on the Danish vessel.

Syrian rebels seized control Wednesday January 8, 2014, of a hospital used as a headquarters by an Al Qaeda affiliate in the northern city of Aleppo. The capture of the hospital underscores the intensity of the rebel infighting that has raged for days between a consortium of Syrian rebel groups and their one-time allies, fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

On Thursday January 9, 2014, we were told that two Swedish journalists who were abducted in Syria were released after a month and a half in captivity. Dozens of local and foreign journalists have been killed or kidnapped in Syria.

Fighting between an al-Qaida-linked group and a loose alliance of more moderate and ultraconservative rebel brigades has killed nearly 500 people over the past week in northern Syria we were told on Friday January 9, 2014. The rebel-on-rebel violence that broke out a week ago has spread across four provinces in opposition-held parts of the north in what amounts to the most serious infighting among opponents of President Bashar Assad since the country's conflict began in March 2011. 240 of the dead were rebel fighters, while another 157 were from the "Islamic State." The remaining 85 were civilians.

Jihadists fighting Syrian rebels killed at least five opposition fighters in a bomb attack in Idlib province on Saturday January 11, 2014. They were killed in a bomb attack targeting their vehicle in Saraqeb. An explosive device had been planted under a pick-up truck used by Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist brigade that has led a week-long battle against the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The attack came as rebel fighters prepared for an assault on Saraqeb, ISIL's last bastion in the northwestern province of Idlib. ---

On Saturday January 18, 2014, Syria's main political opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), has agreed to attend next week's so-called Geneva II peace talks, to be held in Montreux. Its representatives took the decision at a meeting in the Turkish city, Istanbul. The aim of the talks is to start the process of setting up a transitional government to end the war in Syria.

The Syrian government on Friday January 17, 2014, proposed a cease-fire with rebel forces in the city of Aleppo and said it was willing to exchange detainee lists with the opposition as a step toward a possible prisoner exchange. It remains unclear who will attend the conference, scheduled to open Wednesday. Although the Syrian government has accepted the invitation.

Government warplanes on Saturday January 18, 2014, launched raids on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and the surrounding countryside, killing 34 people, including five children. Air raids launched by government jets and helicopters left 23 people dead in the city itself, and killed another 11 in the surrounding countryside. Five of those killed in Saturday's bombing were children.

The main, Western-backed Syrian opposition group voted Saturday January 18, 2014, in favour of attending a peace conference aimed at ending the country’s bloody civil war, paving the way for the first direct talks between rival sides in the nearly three-year conflict. The vote in Istanbul came as food supplies began entering a besieged rebel-held Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus for the first time in months, an apparent goodwill gesture by President Bashar Assad’s government before the conference. The Syrian National Coalition was under pressure from its Western and Arab sponsors to attend the UN-sponsored talks, which begin Wednesday in the Swiss city of Montreux. The Syrian government has already said it will attend. ---

Iran has been invited to attend a meeting of foreign ministers in Switzerland ahead of internationally brokered peace talks between Syria's warring factions, the United Nations said Sunday January 19, 2014. But the Syrian National Coalition, which was under huge pressure from its western and Arab sponsors to attend the peace talks, reportedly blasted the United Nations' announcement. "The Syrian Coalition announces that they will withdraw their attendance in Geneva 2 unless Ban Ki-moon retracts Iran's invitation," the National Coalition said. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had said he would welcome Iran's participation — but only if Tehran endorsed earlier diplomatic agreements that called for a transitional government in Syria that would be created by mutual consent among the Syrian factions.

On Tuesday January 21, 2014, we were told that Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees, according to three eminent international lawyers. The three, former prosecutors at the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime security forces from March 2011 to last August. Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, blood-stained and bore signs of torture. Some had no eyes; others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution. The UN and independent human rights groups have documented abuses by both Bashar al-Assad's government and rebels, but experts say this evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the 34-month crisis.

Peace talks to end the almost-three-year civil war in Syria began Wednesday January 22, 2014, on a bitter and divisive note, with the top American diplomat ruling out any possibility that President Bashar Assad could stay in power while Syria accused Arab nations of financing terrorism. The major players at the talks in Switzerland, including the United States, the Syrian government, Russia and the Syrian opposition, expressed sharp disagreements on issues ranging from Assad’s future to Iran’s exclusion from the conference.

Two days of face-to-face peace talks yielded a narrow and tentative agreement Sunday January 26, 2014, for women and children trapped in the besieged Syrian city of Homs, and the government said President Bashar Assad had no intention of giving up “the keys to Damascus.” The limited agreement to let women and children leave a blockaded part of the old city of Homs, under negotiation for at least two days, fell far short of expectations and was called into question by multiple reports of government shelling. The talks have yet to touch upon the issue of a possible transitional government — their purpose according to terms laid out when they were first conceived. But the government was unequivocal that Assad’s future was assured in the country led by his family since 1970. ---

Fighting in Syria killed nearly 1,900 people, including at least 430 civilians, during the week of U.N.-hosted peace talks in Switzerland we were told on Friday January 30, 2014. The number included at least 430 civilians, killed by bombs, snipers, missiles, and other causes. The rest were rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad. Government helicopters continued to unleash barrel bombs packed with explosives and fuel on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo. The crude bombs cannot strike targets with precision and cause massive damage upon impact. On Thursday, at least 16 people were killed in Aleppo from similar strikes and five died in Friday's strikes.

Syrian military helicopters dropped barrels packed with explosives in the government’s latest air raids on rebel-held areas of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Saturday February 1, 2014, killing at least 23 people, including a family trapped in a burning car.

On Sunday February 2, 2014, mortar shells have hit residential areas and a number of schools in several neighbourhoods of Jaramana city which is located in Damascus suburbs. Twenty-four people, including women and children, were wounded.

At least 16 Syrian rebels have been killed in a double bomb attack carried out by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Another 20 rebels were injured in the attack on Sunday February 2, 2014, some of them seriously. The attack took place in the town of al-Ra'ei, not far from the Syrian border with Turkey. An ISIS fighter blew himself up at the headquarters of an Islamist rebel brigade in the Aleppo town, near the border with Turkey. A car bomb detonated outside at the same time. The bombings came as fighters gathered at the headquarters to discuss the possibility of a truce in the fighting with ISIS that has raged throughout rebel-controlled areas. The bomber had reportedly offered to negotiate with the rebels in the name of ISIL, but detonated an explosive belt inside the headquarters.

Syrian military helicopters dropped more improvised "barrel bombs" on the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday February 2, 2014, bringing the death toll to at least 83 people in the latest episode of a campaign that many consider a war crime. Most of the victims killed since Friday have been civilians from the city's eastern districts, including women and children.

Syrian forces dropped a crude bomb on a mosque that was being used as a school in a rebel-held neighbourhood of a key northern city on Tuesday February 4, 2014, killing at least five people, including children. The bombing —one of at least seven around Aleppo on Tuesday— came amid an intensified campaign by President Bashar Assad's government to take back parts of the city that were seized by rebels in mid-2012.

Assad's biggest international ally, Russia, expressed confidence the government would return to the U.N.-hosted peace talks in Geneva that are trying to find a solution to the conflict. Russian deputy foreign minister and Moscow's special envoy to the Middle East, Mikhail Bogdanov, said Tuesday February 4, 2014, he was sure the Syrian government would take part in the second round of the talks.

The first trapped civilians were evacuated from the besieged rebel-held areas of the Syrian city of Homs on Friday February 7, 2014, as the government confirmed that it will attend a second round of peace talks in Geneva. Homs Governor Talal al-Barazi said the operation to get humanitarian aid in and civilians out of Homs' Old City has gone well so far. Activists said at least 2,500 people in the city's old quarters have endured severe food shortages resulting from a lengthy government blockade. ---

Syrian troops on Friday February 7, 2014, retook most of Aleppo's prison, after losses a day earlier, in fighting that killed at least 47 people in two days. But it was unclear if hundreds of prisoners had been able to flee, as reported on Thursday after Islamist and jihadist fighters had overrun the facility. The regime aircraft were keeping up their daily their assault on rebel-held districts of the northern city with barrel bombs. The crude weaponry has killed at least 260 people since Saturday, including 73 children. The 47 dead over two days were 20 soldiers, 22 rebels and five prisoners.

Syria evacuated 83 civilians on Friday February 7, 2014, who had lived under government siege in the devastated city of Homs for a year and a half, the first concrete result of talks launched two weeks ago to try to end the country's civil war. Buses ferried dozens of weary-looking evacuees, accompanied by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, to a meeting point outside Homs where aid workers, soldiers and police were gathered. The World Food Programme said many appeared malnourished.

Syria's air force launched two strikes on the outskirts of Lebanon's frontier town of Arsal on Monday February 10, 2014, causing no casualties. The raid was the latest in a string of cross-border strikes against Arsal. On January 17, shells rained down on the town, killing eight people, including five children.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces and fighters from Lebanese ally Hezbollah stepped up attacks on Syria's strategic border town of Yabroud on Wednesday February 12, 2014. Pro-government media said the army seized the nearby village al-Jarajeer, while the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Assad's forces had advanced on the area but had not completely taken it. More than 13 air strikes had already hit the mountain border town on Wednesday as overnight clashes between Assad's forces and the opposition on the outskirts of Yabroud continued into the morning.

On Friday February 14, 2014, thousands of people have already fled a rebel-held town in Syria after it was bombed and shelled in an operation that has prompted fears of a major assault by ground troops. Violence has spiraled as each side seeks the upper hand. "Nearly 5,000 people have been killed just since these talks began. Military action in the town of Yabroud, in western Syria near the border with Lebanon, would fit with the government's aim of securing a corridor linking Damascus with President Bashar al-Assad's heartland on the Mediterranean coast. Some estimates suggested as many as 40,000 to 50,000 people were still in the town with thousands of others fleeing over the last few days. Electricity was cut off on Wednesday and field hospitals are short of medical supplies as scores of people require urgent treatment.

85 Saudi military personnel, most of them intelligence officers, are in Syrian jails we were told on Sunday February 16, 2014. 7 of these intelligence forces are high-ranking officers. Riyadh has made strenuous efforts to free its officers through third-party mediation but couldn’t lure the Syrian government to do so. 14 Qatari and 7 Turkish officers are also among those arrested by the Syrian forces.

In December 2013, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) released a report which indicated that between 3,300 and 11,000 militants from over 70 countries have been fighting against the Syrian government from late 2011 to December 10, 2013. These figures include those who are currently present (in Syria) as well as those who have since returned home, been arrested or killed. Eighty percent of the foreign militants are Arabs and Europeans, mostly from France and Britain.

Peace talks between Syria's government and opposition were left in limbo on Saturday February 15, 2014, after the U.N. negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi, declined to set a date for the next round of negotiations, citing his frustration with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In a measure of the deadlock, Mr. Brahimi delivered a solemn mea culpa that appeared to acknowledge what many people involved in the negotiations say privately: That the Geneva talks have broken down irreparably. "I'm very, very sorry, and I apologize to the Syrian people, " Mr. Brahimi said.

U.N.-sponsored peace talks for Syria ended at an impasse Saturday February 15, 2014, with few signs that the parties would resume their negotiations, as the Obama administration lashed out in frustration at Russia, accusing it of prolonging the conflict.

The Syrian army recaptured on Monday February 1`7, 2014, an Alawite village in central Hama province where rebels "massacred" civilians earlier this month. At least 25 members of President Bashar Al-Assad's Alawite sect were killed by Islamist fighters in the village of Maan on February 9.

Two rockets fired from war-torn Syria struck the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights without causing injuries or damage Tuesday February 18, 2014, shortly after a secret visit to the area by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Syrian rebels were engaged in fierce battles Thursday February 20, 2014, with regime forces trying to capture the town of Yabrud, their last stronghold in the strategic Qalamun region near the Lebanese border. Meanwhile, in the northern city of Aleppo, eight soldiers were killed by a rebel suicide bombing at the city's central prison, which rebels have long been trying to capture. Rebels are fighting on Yabrud's outskirts against government troops, backed by National Defence Forces militia and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah. The rebel side included Islamist brigades and Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. There have been many losses on both sides, but there are not exact figures yet. The government said it will seize Yabrud soon. ---

On Friday February 21, 2014, Syrian rebels were engaged in fierce battles with regime forces trying to capture the town of Yabrud, their last stronghold in the strategic Qalamun region near the Lebanese border. Rebels are fighting on Yabrud's outskirts against government troops, backed by National Defence Forces militia and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah.  The rebel side included Islamist brigades and Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. Meanwhile, in the northern city of Aleppo, eight soldiers were killed by a rebel suicide bombing at the city's central prison, which rebels have long been trying to capture. And 18 rebel fighters were killed when they launched a dawn assault against an Alawite village in central Homs province.

Syrian government forces captured Saturday February 22, 2014, two rebel-held areas on the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights after days of intense fighting near a decades-old cease-fire line between Syria and Israel. The violence came as the U.N. Security Council unanimously demanded immediate access everywhere in Syria to deliver humanitarian aid to millions of people in desperate need.

Two suicide bombers killed a senior al-Qaida operative on Sunday February 23, 2014, blowing themselves up inside the militant leader’s compound in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. The killing of Abu Khaled al-Suri, who rebels said was serving as al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri’s representative in Syria, falls against the backdrop of bloody rebel infighting between an al-Qaida-breakaway group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and an array of ultraconservative and more moderate opposition fighters.

Military aircraft have struck a rebel-held town near Damascus, as government forces intensified their efforts to subdue opposition-held communities around the capital. Three strikes targeted homes in the town of Nashabiyeh on Monday February 24, 2014. At least four people were killed, and others are still buried under rubble. Two strikes first hit the homes, and then as people rushed to rescue casualties, another strike hit the same area.

 

A Syrian rebel commander who fought alongside al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and was close to its current chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by a suicide attack on Sunday February 23, 2014, intensifying infighting between rival Islamist fighters. Abu Khaled al-Soury, also known as Abu Omair al-Shamy, a commander of the Salafi group Ahrar al-Sham was killed along with six comrades by al Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It said al-Soury had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five ISIL members had entered Ahrar al-Sham headquarters in Aleppo, engaged its fighters and then one ISIL fighter blew himself up.

Air raids on rebel-held towns in central Syria killed 26 people on Monday February 24, 2014. Two women and 10 children were among the dead in government air raids on the town of al-Neshabieh, in the eastern outskirts of Damascus, near a railway marking the frontline between Islamist fighters and Assad's forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants, and in the province of Homs to the north. Artillery fire from a battalion based at Damascus airport and the nearby town of Mleiha then hit the town. Fifty people were wounded in the combined bombardment. In Homs province air raids hit on al-Hosn, a Sunni town near the Crusader castle of Crac des Chevaliers in a valley mostly inhabited by Christians, six people were killed in the attack, one of whom was identified as a woman. In the town of Talbiseh, on Syria's main north-south highway an air raid killed four children.

Syrian army troops killed 175 rebels in an ambush Wednesday February 26, 2014, south of Damascus, a major attack targeting mostly al-Qaida-linked fighters as part of a government effort to secure the capital. The dawn attack by President Bashar Assad’s forces in the opposition-held area of eastern Ghouta likely will push rebel groups against his rule further away from Damascus. The capital’s suburbs have been opposition strongholds since March 2011, when the revolt against the ruling family began.

Radical fighters staged a strategic retreat from a key Syrian town on the Turkish border Friday February 28, 2014, amid growing tensions with rival rebel factions that threaten to erupt in a new war. The retreat from Azaz of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ended a five-month reign of terror by the renegade al-Qaeda faction, which has used its position in the town to control access to Turkey and compromise supply routes for more moderate rebels.

There were two attempted attacks on Syrian convoys transporting chemical weapons late last month, Syrian authorities told the international mission overseeing the removal and destruction of its toxic arsenal we were told on Thursday February 27, 2014. The attempted attacks were on January 27. It gave no details on the location of the convoys. In addition ongoing military activities rendered two sites inaccessible.

Syrian troops Friday February 28, 2014, killed 20 armed rebels and injured many others in a new ambush in the eastern countryside of the capital Damascus, just a couple of days after killing more than 175 others in the same area.

Government airstrikes in a small northwestern town on the border with Turkey killed at least 13 people we were told on Sunday March 2, 2014. The strikes hit residential buildings in the town of Kfar Tarakhim in the northwest province of Idlib on Saturday.

Syrian troops seized control Monday March 3, 2014, of a village near the strategic rebel bastion of Yabrud as they pushed closer to the town near the border with Lebanon. The army, backed by Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah, was "advancing" in the area, but that "fierce battles are still ongoing there." The army "took control of Sahel village in the Yabrud area, after killing several terrorists."

Syria Monday March 3, 2014:

• Corpses of 150 civilians and militants of the Al-Nusra Front who had been executed by the ISIL have been found in the mass grave in Haritan village in the Northern parts of Aleppo countryside.
• An unknown militant group calling itself Ansar of the Syrian Army hoisted the Syrian army flag over several governmental buildings in Al-Raqqa province in Northeastern Syria.
• Ansar of the Syrian Army group also assassinated an ISIL ringleader named Abu Bakr Al-Tunisi in Al-Raqqa city.
• Elsewhere, the Syrian army launched massive ground operations to capture the strategic town of Yabroud in Damascus countryside. Early reports from the battlefield said the army units started advancing towards Yabroud in different fronts. The army seized back control over the strategic Al-Kuwaiti hill in the same area on Saturday.
• The surrounding Rima farms and Al-Sahl town are also under the Syrian army’s air and artillery attacks now.
• The Syrian army claims it has killed tens of militants and injured dozens more in fierce clashes with the terrorists after they reinforced their positions in Al-Kuwaiti hill and other surrounding areas of Yabroud.
• Meantime, the Syrian army repelled militants’ attempted attack on the locals of Aziza town and destroyed their dens and gatherings along with their weapons and ammunition inside in Aleppo and its countryside.
• Scores of militants were killed or injured in Bani Zaid, al-Marja, al-Hilwania, al-Halk, al-Jandoul roundabout and other areas in Aleppo city.
• Units of the Syrian armed forces killed and injured all members of several militant groups in the villages of al-Khaldiyeh, al-Ghajar, Burj Qa’e and Kissin in Homs.
• The al-Nusra Front terrorist group was destroyed to the East of al-Rastan city.
• Elsewhere, militants' hideouts near Talet Um Shrshouh in Talbiseh countryside and the villages of al-Zara and al-Hosn in Talkalakh countryside were also destroyed.
• Army units killed militants, among them a sniper, in Jouret al-Shaiyyah neighbourhood and destroyed a tunnel extends from Bab al-Sibaa towards the neighbourhoods of the old city of Homs.
• Also, a group of female militants have entered Lebanon from Syria’s border town of Yabroud, tasked with carrying out terrorist attacks inside Lebanon.
• Also, an armed group detonated Deir Ezzur-Palmyra gas pipelines near al-Tim area and work was halted at Deir Ezzur factory which produces 3.4 million cubic meters of gas per day. ---

Israeli troops opened fire Wednesday March 5, 2014, on two suspected militants who were trying to plant explosives on the Jewish state's frontier with Syria. Syrian state media accused the Jewish state of targeting its forces with tank shells, and warned against such "adventures." In eastern Lebanon, Syrian warplanes conducted a series of airstrikes on the outskirts of a Lebanese border town. Israel's military said its forces fired on what it called Hezbollah-affiliated militants on the Golan Heights and that "hits were identified." The military did not explain how it knew of the men's alleged links with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite group that is a sworn enemy of Israel.
 
A car bomb has exploded in the central city of Hama, killing at least four people. An explosives-laden car was detonated remotely in an area on the southern edge of Hama on Thursday March 6, 2014. At least 22 people were wounded in the attack. Government forces killed at least 10 rebels in clashes on the outskirts of Homs also on Thursday.

Syria Friday March 7, 2014:

• The army units conducted operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Tal Al-Souda and Al-Barnas villages in Lattakia countryside, and killed tens of the militants.
• Also in the Past 24 hours the brother of the former army commander of the Central Asian country has been arrested on charges of recruiting youngsters to join other foreign terrorists in Syria. Dolat Chalov, brother of Qorban Chalov, former commander of Tajikistan army is now in custody in Dushanbe. He has been accused of sending young Tajik people to Syria to fight against the Damascus government alongside the foreign-backed militants.
• Elsewhere, the Syrian army continued its military operations in different parts of Deir Ezzur city in Eastern parts of the Muslim country. The army clashed with terrorists in Al-Roshdiya district and Hosn Al-Taha Street, and killed scores of and injured dozens more of the militants affiliated to Al-Fatehoun militant group.
• Meantime, scores of the foreign-backed insurgents were killed by the Syrian soldiers in Daraa and its countryside which has witnessed the army's upper hand in campaign against terrorism in the recent months.
• In army's anti-terrorism operations on Thursday, scores of militants were killed and a huge number of cars loaded with the weapons and ammunition were also destroyed in Hamra village in al-Lajat area in the countryside of the Daraa.
• Army units stormed terrorists’ dens in al-N'aimeh town, killing and injuring scores of them.
• Elsewhere, Syrian troops attacked militant groups active in Damascus countryside, killing and injuring a large number of them in the battlefields.
• The Syrian soldiers who attacked on the anti-government fighters' dens and gathering on Thursday killed over 43 rebels and injured 53 others in al-Rihan area and Adra al-Balad in Damascus Countryside. The army also destroyed several cars loaded with weapons and ammunition in the fighting areas.
• The Afghan terrorist Mohammad Saeed al-Antouni, leader of an armed group, was killed in the Army's operations.
• Elsewhere, militants' explosive-laden car went off in Syria's central province of Homs, killing 13 civilians and injuring others. The car exploded at the Muasalat roundabout in Homs on Thursday, the Syrian al-Ekhbaria reported, spelling no further details.
• Meantime, Syrian Army units attacked more terrorist groups’ gatherings on Friday, killing numbers of them in various areas across the country, particularly in Aleppo.
• Several rebels’ gatherings were destroyed by army members in operations carried out in various areas in Aleppo, including the surrounding of the Central Prison, Kweires, Rasm al-Abboud, al-Jadideh, Erbid, the Industrial City, Handarat, al-Sakhour, al-Ma’sraniyeh, Masaken Hanano, al-Marjeh, al-Sheikh Khudr, Hreitan, Bani Zeid, Bustan al-Qasr, Qastal Harami, al-Mizrbeh and al-Breij intersection. A large number of insurgents were killed and so many others were wounded in the operations.

Syrian forces captured Saturday March 8, 2014, the rebel-held town of Zara near the Krak des Chevaliers castle in the strategic province of Homs, after nearly a month of fighting. The military said the town is strategic because of its location on the road linking central Syria to the Mediterranean coast. Zara was also used as a key passageway for terrorist groups coming from Lebanon.

Rebels in Syria freed more than a dozen Greek Orthodox nuns on Monday March 10, 2014, ending their four-month captivity in exchange for Syrian authorities releasing dozens of female prisoners. The release of the nuns and their helpers, 16 women in all, is a rare successful prisoner exchange deal between Syrian government authorities and the rebels seeking to overthrow the rule of President Bashar Assad.

A Canadian freelance photographer was killed in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday March 9, 2014. Ali Moustafa died along with seven others when government aircraft dropped crude bombs and one exploded where was standing with firefighters in the rebel-held Hadariyeh area of Aleppo city.

On Saturday March 8, 2014, Syrian government forces have regained the control al Zareh in the central province of Homs, as they continue operations to clear more areas from militants. Many militants were killed during the army operation and their weapons were destroyed. ---

Syria Saturday March 15, 2014:

• The Syrian army made major advances in several districts of a strategic town in the Southern parts of the Muslim country after pushing back the foreign-backed militants.
• The army pounded militants’ positions and gathering centres in the town of Yabroud in Damascus countryside before staging a massive raid on the militants' concentration points in the town.
• The Syrian army has now brought Yabroud under its full control and the militants are in a difficult situation because they have lost all their positions in the area.
• Also in the past 24 hours, the Syrian army continued its military operations in Deir Ezzur countryside in Eastern Syria, and killed tens of foreign-backed militants.
• The army units killed more than 100 terrorists and injured over 100 others in Al-Rashidya, Al-Haviqa and Al-Orfi towns in Deir Ezzur near the city’s old airport.
• Meantime, 43 militants gave up fight against Syrian army and handed over their weapons to the authorities across the country, a military source said.
• The Syrian troops also thwarted a terrorist group's infiltration attempt from al-Dar al-Kabira towards al-Dweir village in Homs countryside.

 

Syria's army and Lebanon's Hezbollah seized full control of rebel bastion Yabrud on Sunday March 16, 2014, a day after the third anniversary of the outbreak of Syria's conflict. Exhausted Syrian soldiers sat in the streets after seizing the town in fierce clashes with the support of battle-hardened fighters from Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah and pro-regime militiamen.

Four Israeli soldiers were wounded by a bomb that hit their jeep in the Golan Heights near the Syrian border on Tuesday March 18, 2014. Three of the wounded soldiers were in light and moderate condition, and a fourth sustained serious injuries. They were evacuated to Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa for treatment. The blast was apparently caused by a roadside bomb planted near the border fence in Majdal Shams. The Israel Defence Forces responded to the blast with artillery fire and said it hit several targets.

Rebels seized a prison outside the city where Syria's uprising began three years ago this month and freed dozens of inmates we were told on Wednesday March 19, 2014. They took control of the Gharaz Central Prison on the outskirts of Deraa near Syria's border with Jordan after fighting off President Bashar al-Assad's forces. More than 300 people had been held in the prison but it was not clear how many had been freed although videos showed dozens.

Nearly half of Syria’s chemical stockpile for weapons use has now been removed the organization helping to oversee the elimination of the deadly arsenal reported on Wednesday March 19, 2014.

Syria's air force bombarded a suburb northwest of Damascus on Wednesday March 19, 2014, killing eight people and violating a truce that had been in place since October. Seven men have been killed in air strikes targeting the edges of Qudsaya, and an eighth man was shot dead by an army sniper. Among the dead were an unknown number of anti-regime activists.

Syria's army on Wednesday March 19, 2014, took over a small village in the Qalamoun area on the Lebanon border, four days after it seized the strategic rebel bastion of Yabroud. Army units took over Ras al-Ain, southwest of Yabroud, killing a large number of terrorists. The army was backed by Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah and the paramilitary National Defence Forces. Fierce clashes were raging in Rankus, a rebel village in the Qalamoun area. The army's goal is to secure the Lebanon border by taking over Flita, Ras al-Maarra and Rankus. That would close off rebel supply lines for weapons and fighters, but also crucial routes for food and other supplies to civilians in besieged areas of Damascus province, including Eastern Ghouta. On Monday two children had died in Eastern Ghouta because of food and medical shortages and dire living conditions caused by the regime siege.

The Syrian army has retaken Crac des Chevaliers, a war-damaged Crusader castle and UNESCO World Heritage site, from rebel fighters we were told on Thursday March 20, 2014. The attack on the town of al-Hosn and the castle above it is part of a campaign by the Syrian army and allied militias to secure towns and villages along the Lebanese border as well as a highway from the capital Damascus to the coast that is vulnerable to rebel attack.

Syrian army units ambushed and killed a group of opposition fighters near Damascus we were told on Saturday March 22, 2014. The group had crossed into the country from neighbouring Jordan. The rebels were monitored as they crossed the Syria-Jordan border before being engaged by army units in the city of Adra. The army units killed 12 people, including two civilians and members of the West-supported Free Syrian Army.

Syria accused Ankara of "flagrant aggression" Sunday March 23, 2014, after Turkey shot down a warplane near the border, raising tensions as Syrian loyalists and rebels battled for control of a frontier crossing.

Air and land operations allegedly carried out by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces across Syria killed 89 people. The regime forces raided opposition-controlled areas, killing 26 people in Aleppo, 33 in the suburbs of Damascus, 13 in Idlib, five each in Homs, Hama and Deraa and one each in Rakka and Deyru'z Zor.

Syrian rebels seized control of a seaside tourist site by the Turkish border on Tuesday March 25, 2014, that allowed them a small foothold by the Mediterranean for the first time since the uprising erupted against President Bashar Assad. The reported capture of the rocky, coastal strip known as Samra came after rebels severed one of the Assad government’s last links to the Turkish border by seizing the Kassab crossing and a predominantly Armenian Christian town of the same name on Sunday. Samra, little more than a rocky beach nestled at the foot of forested mountains, straddles the Syria-Turkey border. The Turkish government has allowed Syrian rebels, as well as weapons, to move with relative freedom across the frontier with Syria. Still, Samra has no port, and Syrian military aircraft would likely bomb rebels trying to use any sea passage.

The Iranian-backed Shiite group fighting alongside Assad’s forces on Saturday March 29, 2014, captured two villages near the border with Lebanon continuing a weeks-long advance that has cut a major supply route for weapons and fighters into the country from eastern Lebanon. The villages of Flita and Ras Maara were the latest targets of a government offensive in the rugged Qalamoun border region after troops captured the town of Yabroud earlier this month.

Two Spanish journalists kidnapped in Syria six months ago by radical Islamist rebels have been released on Sunday March 30, 2014,and handed over to Turkish soldiers. Mr Espinosa and Mr Vilanova were seized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) near the Turkish border in September. The two journalists had been trying to leave Syria at the end of a two-week reporting mission when they were taken. Four members of the Free Syrian Army -the main Western-backed rebel group who were protecting them were also captured but later released. ---

Twenty civilians have been killed and dozens wounded, including women and children, after the Syrian regime used vacuum bombs to attack targets in Aleppo’s countryside. Many houses were destroyed or damaged in Aleppo when the bombs -devices which explode above ground and spray out a cloud of fuel which then ignites to create a second blast wave- detonated on Friday April 4, 2014.

Mortar shells slammed into several areas of the Syrian capital on Saturday April 5, 2014, with one hitting near the Russian embassy and the Ummayad area without causing injuries. The regime troops battled rebels in Eastern Ghouta near the capital, while opposition forces tightened their siege of a military base in Idlib province of north-west Syria. There were also mortar fire in the southern Shughur district and nearby Fahama, where a number of security buildings are located. There were at least 17 mortar round attacks across the city, causing damage to a hospital as well as several homes and cars. Mortar shell attacks on the capital on Friday injured 22 people. A mortar shell landed on the Opera House, claiming the lives of two citizens and injuring five others, in addition to causing material damage to the place. Two shells fell down in al-Ghassani neighbourhood in al-Abbasyeen area, injuring three citizens and damaging nine cars and a house.

Saturday April 5, 2014's deadly protest in the sprawling Zaatari camp reverberated around the region. A "heated demonstration" in Zaatari turned to "a violent one" after possibly thousands of refugees started throwing rocks at a police post inside the camp. The protest started over a refugee family being held there after police detained them and a driver who tried to smuggle them out. Police fired tear gas and there were reports of live ammunition being used. Three Syrian refugees were sent to hospital with gunshot wounds and one has since died. 28 policemen were wounded in the protest. Nine tents and five mobile homes were burnt. Jordanian police said in a statement that its troops used tear gas to break up crowds who attacked the police station and set fire to tents. Thousands of refugees fled the east side of the camp where the riots broke out. A 25-year-old Syrian was killed in the violence and at least two other refugees were wounded. Jordan is home to 588,979 registered Syrians refugees, and the numbers grow daily.

Dutch Jesuit priest Father Frans van der Lugt has been shot dead in the besieged Syrian city of Homs by a masked gunman on Sunday April 6, 2014. Van Der Lugt, 72, lived in Syria for decades and had played a key role in publicising the plight of the people of Homs -Christians and Muslims alike. The gunman first beat the Roman Catholic priest, then shot him dead with two bullets to the head. The Jesuit died instantly.

Two car bombs exploded Wednesday April 9, 2014, in a government-held district of Syria’s battleground city of Homs, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100. The blasts hit a commercial street inhabited mostly by members of President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect. One car blew up near a sweets shop in a busy street and about half an hour later another car exploded about 100 meters away. The blasts went off in the Karm el-Loz neighbourhood. The dead and wounded in the explosions included women and children.

The Syrian government and rebel forces say poison gas has been used in a central village, injuring scores of people, while blaming each other for the attack. The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, says dozens of people were hurt in a poison gas attack Friday April 11, 2-14, in the village of Kfar Zeita. State-run Syrian television on Saturday blamed members of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front for using chlorine gas at Kfar Zeita, killing two people and injuring more than 100.

The death toll from infighting between rival Islamic rebel groups in an eastern Syrian town has risen to 68 killed, with some shot after being captured alive we were tol Friday April 11, 2014. The battles raged yesterday for a second day in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province near the Iraqi border. The fighting was concentrated in the village of Haseen after members of the al-Qaida breakaway group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were forced out of the nearby town of Bukamal.

On Saturday April 12, 2014, the Syrian military troops took control over the entire al-Zahraa district and destroyed a column of vehicles carrying weapons for the armed insurgents stationed at the Ma’arat al-Artiq in Northern Aleppo from Idlib. Syrian armed forces further thwarted an infiltration attempt by armed militants in the Northern suburbs of Aleppo and killed dozens of members of insurgent groups involved in the intrusion effort. Army units eliminated numerous members of the so-called "Jaish al-Islam" terrorist group in the Rancous district of Reef Damascus (Damascus countryside) Governorate. Meanwhile, Syrian military operations in chasing armed gangs out of the Northern portion of Daria city and al-Mleiha continues. Government forces have also destroyed huge arms depots of al-Nusra Front insurgents in the al-Atareb district of Western Aleppo. The Syrian army troops fought against foreign-backed insurgents in the major city of Aleppo as well as other region across the crisis-torn country.

Syrian regime troops retook the ancient Christian town of Maalula on Monday April 14, 2014, a day after President Bashar al-Assad said the conflict was turning in his government's favour.

On Monday April 14, 2014, Syrian troops triumphantly swept through some of the last remaining opposition strongholds north of Damascus, including a much coveted ancient Christian hamlet, sending rebel fighters fleeing to nearby hills amid an ever tightening noose. The dramatic capture of Sarkha, Maaloula and Jibbeh was the fastest series of army successes against rebels in the Qalamoun region since the government launched an offensive in November in the strategic area, a wedge of mountainous territory between the capital and the Lebanese border.

A national youth team player has been killed in a mortar attack in the central city of Homs. Tarek Ghrair, 15, died on Tuesday April 15, 2014, when a mortar exploded near his home in Ghouta, a western district of Homs where the city's main stadium is located. It was not clear if Ghrair was specifically targeted.

On Wednesday April 16, 2014, the army regained full control of the mountainous regions in Rankus and advanced towards Asal Al-Vard and Al-Zobdani towns. Also in the past 24 hours, the Syrian army killed a large number of foreign-backed terrorists in Lattakia countryside in the Western parts of the country. Tens of militants were killed in an ambush of the Syrian army in Al-Nabayeen town in the Southwestern parts of Kassab city in Lattakia over the past 24 hours. Meantime, the Syrian army regained control of strategic Sal Derin Mountain in Kassab near the borders with Turkey. Sal-Darin Mountain is strategically important as it oversees the city of Kassab. Also, the Syrian army has taken back many towns in Al-Qalamoun region by pushing back the foreign-backed militants from the area and advancing towards Al-Bokheh and Haramoun towns. The army units are quickly advancing towards Al-Bokheh and as soon as they take control of the town all roads which link Al-Qalamoun to Al-Haramoun would be cut off. The Syrian army regained full control Al-Sarkheh town in Al-Qalamoun region.

Syria's army launched a major ground assault on the central city of Homs on Tuesday April 15, 2014 with troops entering rebel-held districts under government siege for nearly two years. The Syrian army and the (pro-regime militia) National Defence Forces (NDF) have achieved key successes in the Old City of Homs," Syrian state television said, adding that troops were advancing in several besieged neighbourhoods in the area. ---

2014, in a rebel-held town along the Lebanese border. The shelling hit rebels on the edge of the town of Zabadani and wounded 10 people. Syrian forces, bolstered by fighters from the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, systematically took back most other rebel-held towns along the mountainous frontier in a campaign that began in November. On Wednesday, Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad took the town of Housh Arab. It fell after pro-Assad forces took the nearby town of Arsal al-Ward on Tuesday. Rebels still hold the town of Talfita in Qalamoun, but it is now surrounded by Assad-held territory.

Nearly 50 people were killed on Thursday April 17, 2014, when Syrian rebels attacked one of the largest military barracks in the country, in northern Aleppo. At least 27 soldiers and pro-regime militiamen were killed and that the rebel losses of 20 dead included a commander.

A powerful car bomb exploded Friday April 18, 2014, outside a mosque in a pro-government district of central Syria, killing 14 people. The bombing occurred as worshippers left the Bilal al-Habshi mosque on the edge of Akrama after attending Friday prayers and also wounded at least 50 people. The area, populated mainly by Alawites, members of President Bashar Assad’s minority sect, Syrian military airstrikes killed at least four people Wednesday April 16, repeatedly has been targeted by car bombs.

Four French journalists held hostage in Syria for 10 months have been released Saturday April 19, 2014, the latest batch of reporters to be freed in what has become the world's deadliest conflict for the media.

Syria Monday April 21, 2014:

• The Syrian army has killed hundreds of foreign-backed militants since the beginning of their operations in a strategic town in Eastern Ghouta in Damascus countryside.
• Over 1,000 terrorists have been killed in Meliha town in Eastern Ghouta since the army began its clean-up operations in Meliha.
• The Syrian army is on the verge of taking full control over Tamiko military checkpoint that is only 200 meters from Syria's biggest pharmaceutical factory in the entrance of Jeramana.
• A new video clip released on the Internet showed a prison of the Free Syrian Army where FSA used to torture the Al-Qaeda-linked militants that it had taken hostage.
• Meantime units of the Syrian army repelled a militant group's attack on Taloul al-Hawa village in the Eastern part of Homs countryside and killed all its members.
• Elsewhere, residents of al-Qalamoun region in Syria's Damascus countryside started returning to the mountainous region, which has been cleared of foreign-backed militants by the army.
• Residents of Ras al-Ma’ara, al-Jibeh, Assal al-Ward and other towns in the region took to the streets on Saturday, celebrating and shouting slogans in support of the Syrian army.
• The Syrian army units continued its successful military operations against militants across the crisis-hit country.
• The army foiled a militant group's attempt to infiltrate into al-Lairamon and al-Zahraa areas in Aleppo and killed several militants and detonated a tunnel used by militants surrounding the Castle towards al-Swieka area.
• Army units destroyed militants' weapons caches in Khan al-Assal, causing huge explosions and killing scores of militants.
• Meantime, the army inflicted heavy losses on the armed groups in al-Ghanto, al-Mashjar al-Janoubi, Beit Rabia, Talbiseh, Beit Hajjo, al-Sain, Um Sharshouh, al-Dar al-Kabira and Ein Hussein in Homs countryside and destroyed their weapons.
• The army killed or injured all members of an armed group in al-Waer neighbourhood in the city of Homs, while another unit destroyed two cars equipped with heavy machineguns and a rocket launcher in Homs countryside.
• The Syrian Arab Army confronted a militant group's attack on Taloul al-Hawa village in the Eastern part of Homs countryside and killed all its members.
• Also, the Syrian army repelled an attack by the militants on the strategic Aleppo-Damascus international highway.
• The army pushed back an attack by the terrorists stationed in Kafr Yassin town on the Aleppo-Damascus international highway near Ma'areh Al-Naman in Idlib countryside in the Northwestern parts of the country.
• Meantime, the army attacked several positions of the militants near Al-Salehiya town that was used by the terrorists to monitor the movements of the local residents.
• The Syrian army killed several foreign militants in its mop-up operation in Lattakia.
• Also, the armed forces killed numbers of terrorists, including non-Syrian leaders of terrorist groups, in a number of villages and towns in the Northern countryside of Lattakia.
• A pair of mortar shells hit near the parliament building in central Damascus, killing five people.

 

The global chemical watchdog says Syria has handed over more than 86 percent of its chemical weapons stockpiles. The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Tuesday April 22, 2014, that Syria had delivered another batch of chemicals to the port of Latakia to be destroyed offshore on a U.S. ship. The agreed upon deadline to eradicate Syria of its chemical stockpile is June 30. This news comes as U.S. officials have said they have indications toxic chemicals were used in a rebel area of Syria this month. The alleged attack in the western village of Kafr Zita involved an industrial chemical that was probably chlorine.

Syria Thursday April 24, 2014:

• At least 71 people were reportedly killed in separate car bombs and battles between the Syrian army and rebels across the country.
• At least seven people were killed and many others wounded when two rebel car bombs exploded in the countryside of Syria's northeastern province of Hasaka, which is largely populated by Kurds. The first car went off near a school at the entrance of the town of Ras al-Ein, north of Hasaka, killing two people and injuring some others. The second car bomb simultaneously exploded at the al-Khamis marketplace in the town of Tal Halaf, west of Ras al-Ein, killing five people.
• In the capital Damascus, the rebels' mortar shelling continued against a number of districts of the capital, namely al-Amara, Qazzasin, Salhiyeh and Jaramana. The armed militant groups fired 16 mortar shells on Jaramana, wounding at least 22 people.
• The Syrian army fought the rebels in the eastern countryside of Damascus, the central Homs province, Idlib and Aleppo in northwestern Syria. The army killed 30 rebels during the battles in Aleppo. In addition 12 civilians were killed in Aleppo by the government troops' aerial bombardment on the rebel-held Karm al-Beik neighbourhood.
• 22 fighters of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and the Ahrar al-Sham movement were killed during clashes with the Syrian army in the southern province of Daraa.
• Reports estimated that more than 150,000 people have been killed so far since the Syrian crisis started in mid-March 2011.

 

Syria, Saturday April 26, 2014:

• Units of the armed forces continued advance in Bab Hud neighbourhood in Homs city, killing and injuring a number of militants.
• Army inflicts heavy losses upon militants in Aleppo.
• Army units continue to advance on Sheikh Said and al-Ameriyeh crossroads in Aleppo city, killing and injuring a number of militants and destroying their vehicles.
• The army units killed and injured a number of militants in al-Kastilo, al-Rashideen, Alliramoun, al-Sukkari and the old city of Aleppo and in the villages of Kwairis, Jadideh, Rasem al-Abboud and surrounding the industrial city and Aleppo Central Prison, Handarat, Anadan and al-Atareb.
• Units of the armed forces destroyed a number of cars in Azaz, al-Atareb and Khan al-Assal with all weapons inside them. Militants were also killed.

A bloody two days has left at least 88 rebels and Syrian Army personnel dead in a battle for control of the country’s southern Daraa province. ---

Four mortar shells exploded on Tuesday April 29, 2014, in central Damascus, killing 14 people and wounding 86. The attacks in the Syrian capital come a day after President Bashar Assad announced his candidacy for the June 3 presidential elections, a race he is likely to win amid a raging civil war that initially started as an uprising against his rule. Four shells struck in the capital’s Shaghour neighbourhood. Two of the mortar shells hit a school complex.

Syria Tuesday April 29, 2014:

• At least 50 people have been killed in bomb and mortar attacks in two Syrian cities.
• In the besieged city of Homs, two car bombs exploded in a mainly Alawite neighbourhood, killing 36 people and wounded more than 85 people, most of them civilians.
• Meanwhile, in the capital, Damascus, mortar shells killed at least 14 people and injured more than 85 others in the al-Shaghour section. Some of the shells landed near a religious school and that some of the pupils were among the casualties.
• The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it will send a team to Syria to investigate recent allegations the government used chlorine gas in an attack on a rebel area this month.
• Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch says government forces have continued to use barrel bombs in the northern city of Aleppo, despite a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a halt to such attacks.

 

A Syrian fighter jet struck a school with a missile in the northern city of Aleppo Wednesday April 30, 2014, as teachers and students were preparing an exhibit of children’s drawings depicting their country at war, killing at least 19 people, including 10 children. 

On Wednesday April 30, 2014, we were told that Islamic extremists have publicly crucified two Syrian rebels in northeastern Syria in revenge for a grenade attack on members of their group. The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant said it had executed a total of seven prisoners who it claimed had carried out a grenade attack on one of its fighters earlier this month in the Euphrates Valley city of Raqqa.

A total of 24 Syrians have registered to run in next month's presidential election, including incumbent President Bashar al-Assad, the Supreme Constitutional Court announced Thursday May 1, 2014, as the application deadline expired. The vote, scheduled for June 3, is expected to return to power Assad, the embattled president who has faced a three-year-old armed revolt. But there has been no shortage of would-be challengers. The court will now spend five days examining the 24 hopefuls to see if they meet electoral criteria to run for office in Syria's first multi-candidate presidential vote. A maximum of three candidates are expected to figure on the final list.

Syria Friday May 2, 2014:

• Car bombings in two villages in the province of Hama have killed 18 people, including 11 children. 50 people were injured in the attacks, which occurred in the towns of Jibreen and Humayri. The villages are under government control and consist primarily of citizens belonging to the Alawite sect of President Bashar al-Assad.
• On Tuesday, at least 100 people were killed in an al-Qaida double car bombing in an Alawite neighbourhood in the central city of Homs.
• Also this week, opposition groups said airstrikes on two civilian targets killed dozens in the rebel-held district of Aleppo.
• At least 33 people were killed on Thursday when government aircraft struck a busy market in the Hillok area.
• A day earlier, an airstrike on an Aleppo school left 18 people dead, many of them children.

 

About 30 Syrian government fighters were killed when rebels set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint in a northwestern province we were told on Tuesday May 6, 2014. The blast took place outside the town of Ma'arat al-Nu'man in the northwestern Idlib province. At least two officers were among those killed when insurgents from the Islamic Front and the Shields of the Revolution Council set off tonnes of explosives in a tunnel running from the road to the checkpoint.

At least 21 Syrian rebels have been killed, and at least 30 government soldiers were killed or wounded, in fighting Monday May 5, 2014, in Syria's contested northern province of Aleppo. Rockets slammed into a district held by government troops in the provincial capital, killing nine people. In addition Army units killed and injured a number of militants surrounding al-Abassiyeh bakery, the technical institute, al-Hussein Mosque in the Camp neighbourhood in Daraa al-Balad and destroyed a weapons and ammunition warehouse in al-Kark neighbourhood. Army units destroyed militants’ gatherings and vehicles equipped with heavy machineguns in the area surrounding al-Derkhawi Mosque to the South of al-Mteleh, in al-Zubairah village and Rosum al-Dahra in Allajat area. The army units also killed a number of militants among them non-Syrians.

Syrian rebels from the southern province of Daraa have kidnapped a presidential hopeful whose bid was turned down by the constitutional court we were told on Tuesday May 6, 2014. Three armed, bearded rebels wearing fatigues were seen in a room with Mohammad Kanaan, a military officer who had registered to run in June 3 elections that are widely expected to return President Bashar Al Assad to power. Kanaan says he is a colonel in the army’s First Division tank battalion, and that he was stopped by a rebel Free Syrian Army patrol while travelling from Damascus to Daraa. Asked why he registered for an election that the opposition has mocked as a “farce,” Kanaan, who appeared tense and was flanked by gunmen, said the regime coerced him into running.

Carrying their rifles and small bags of belongings, hundreds of exhausted Syrian rebels withdrew Wednesday May 7, 2014, from their last remaining strongholds in the heart of Homs, surrendering to President Bashar Assad a blood-stained city that was once the centre of the revolt against him. For Assad, it is a powerful victory ahead of presidential elections. For the rebels, the dramatic exit after two years of enduring gruelling assaults and siege captures their sense of abandonment amid world reluctance to help shift the balance of power on the ground. The exit of some 1,200 fighters and civilians marks a de-facto end of the rebellion in the war shattered city, which was one of the first places to rise up against Assad's rule, earning its nickname as "the capital of the revolution."

Syrian rebels detonated a huge bomb underneath an Aleppo hotel used by President Bashar al-Assad's forces on Thursday May 8, 2014, destroying it and damaging other buildings on the edge of the city's medieval citadel. Up to 50 soldiers were killed in the blast including at least 14 members of the security forces. Islamist fighters had placed explosives in a tunnel underneath the Carlton Hotel, which it said was used by Assad's forces as a military base in the government-controlled area of the city. ---

On Thursday May 8, 20124 the rebels levelled a once luxurious hotel in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo near the ancient Citadel. Government troops used it as a military base. The explosion struck the Carlton Hotel in a government-held area on the edge of a contested neighbourhood in the old part of Aleppo. At least 14 soldiers were killed in the blast.

Hundreds of Syrians wandered down paths carved out of rubble in the old quarters of Homs on Friday May 9, 2014, getting their first glimpse of the horrendous destruction that two years of fighting inflicted on rebel-held parts of the city. The scenes that greeted them were devastating: City blocks pounded into an apocalyptic vista of hollow facades of blown-out buildings. Dust everywhere. Streets strewn with rebar, shattered concrete bricks, toppled telephone poles and the occasional charred, crumpled carcasses of cars. For more than a year, President Bashar Assad's troops blockaded these neighbourhoods, pounding the rebel bastions with his artillery and air force. Under a deal struck this week, the government assumed control of the old quarters, while in return some 2,000 rebel fighters were granted safe passage to opposition areas north of Homs. The final piece of the agreement fell into place Friday afternoon as the last 300 or so rebels left Homs after an aid convoy was allowed into two pro-government villages in northern Syria besieged by the opposition. The aid delivery was part of the Homs agreement.

An international human rights group said Tuesday May 13, 2014, it has strong evidence that Syrian army helicopters dropped bombs carrying chlorine gas on three rebel-held towns last month. The report by the New-York based Human Rights Watch adds to concerns that chemical weapons are still being used in Syria, eight months after a chemical attack killed hundreds of civilians in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus.

French police arrested six people Tuesday May 13, 2014, in northeastern France in a roundup of suspected jihadists who recently travelled to fight in Syria's civil war. The sweep around dawn in Strasbourg came weeks after authorities announced a new push to prevent French militants from traveling to Syria. The six were suspected of participating in a jihadist network, and recently travelled to Syria.

International efforts to end the war in Syria faltered further on Tuesday May 13, 2014, as the UN mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, quit, citing frustrations over the moribund political negotiations. France’s top diplomat said there was evidence the Syrian government used chemical weapons more than a dozen times after it had signed the treaty banning them. These pointed to the failings of the West’s efforts on Syria: finding a diplomatic way out of a civil war in its fourth year — and a pact that was proudly touted as stopping the Syrian government from using chemical weapons. Though a US military strike was called off when Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons, Fabius said there were indications that Syria had since waged 14 chemical attacks.

Two British journalists were recovering in Turkey on Thursday May 15, 2014, after being shot and beaten by rebel kidnappers while covering the Syrian conflict, the Times reported. Times writer Anthony Loyd was shot twice in the leg while being held captive and photographer Jack Hill suffered a severe beating after trying to escape.

Syria Thursday May 15, 2014:

• Syrian rebel fighters have blown up a government military base in northern Idlib province by tunnelling under the besieged outpost and setting off explosives. Rebels recently used a similar method to destroy a checkpoint near the same base and a government army barracks in a hotel in Syria's largest city of Aleppo.
• An enormous explosion destroyed part of the government-controlled Wadi al-Deif military base near the rebel-held town of Ma'arat al-Na'aman in Idlib province.  The 850-meter tunnel beneath the Wadi al-Deif base took rebel fighters seven months to dig. Opposition activists claim that dozens of government soldiers were killed and wounded in the blast, but it was impossible to confirm the figures.
• Rebel forces destroyed an historic hotel in a government controlled district of Aleppo last week by setting off an explosion in a tunnel beneath that structure. Dozens of casualties were reported in the blast, after much of the building housing government forces collapsed.
• At least 29 people were killed when a car bomb went off near the border with Turkey. The explosion occurred at a garage near the Bab al-Salameh border crossing in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo.
• Residents of the rebel-held town of Sarmada were seen pulling bodies from under rubble, after a government helicopter bombed buildings in a residential district. Blankets covered what appeared to be bodies piled onto a flatbed truck.
• A video showed a billowing, black mushroom cloud rising over a government-held building in Daraa province, near the Jordanian border, after a powerful blast destroyed the structure. It was not clear if rebel forces blew up the building.

Syrian rebel rocket fire hit a government-held neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo Friday May 16, 2014, killing at least 13 people. Earlier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least seven people killed and five hurt in the attack on the western neighbourhood. Regime war planes have waged an aerial offensive on the eastern, rebel-held districts, frequently dropping barrel bombs on the area.

The head of Syria's air defence was killed in clashes near the capital, Damascus, one of a few high-ranking military officers to be killed in the country's 3-year-old civil war. Lt. Gen. Hussein Ishaq died Saturday May 17, 2014, as rebels attacked a Syrian air defence base near the town of Mleiha.

A veteran Army soldier who helped rescue Pfc. Jessica Lynch at the beginning of the Iraq War was killed in action in Afghanistan as the U.S. effort there winds down. Command Sgt. Maj. Martin R. Barreras, 49, of Tuscon, Arizona, died May 13, 2014, after being wounded by small arms fire a week earlier in Herat province in western Afghanistan. He was the top enlisted soldier of 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armoured Division, out of Fort Bliss, Texas. Barreras had already been wounded in combat several times over multiple tours to both Iraq and Afghanistan. ---

On Tuesday May 20, 2014 we were told that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had dropped a chlorine bomb on a rebel-held village, Kfar Zeita in the central province of Hama, killing a teenager, the sixth alleged poison gas attack there in two months. Damascus denies that forces loyal to Assad have used chlorine or other more poisonous gases and blames all chemical attacks on rebel forces fighting them in the three-year-old uprising.

Syria Wednesday May 21, 2014:

• Fierce clashes between Al-Qaeda-linked militants continued in Deir Ezzur in Eastern Syria resulting in the death of large numbers of militants from both sides, including a notorious commander.
• Abu Omar Checheni, commander of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), was among tens of militants killed in Deir Ezzur clashes between ISIL and the Al-Nusra Front.
• The Syrian military sources said the ISIL has managed to defeat rival groups and come in control of Al-Bariha and Al-Salehiyeh towns in Deir Ezzur, adding that the clashes were part of the infighting going on  between the ISIL and a coalition of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Al-Nusra Front and Islamic Front.
• Elsewhere, Syrian soldiers killed more foreign-backed militants in another phase of their operations in Daraa countryside.
• Army units destroyed a tunnel with all militants inside it in al-Sibeh neighbourhood to the West of al-kark neighbourhood in Daraa al-Balad.
• Units of the armed forces targeted militants' concentration camps surrounding al-Khalil Mosque and the post office in Daraa al-Balad, in Etman town roundabout, to the East of al-Center in al-Nua'imeh, al-Msaikeh and to the South of al-Khawabi in Daraa.
• The army killed a terrorist while he was planting an explosive device on Sheikh Maskin road in Daraa.
• Cameraman of the Political Administration Hassan Omran was killed during the coverage of the army's pursuit of the armed groups in Daraa. Omran was killed by the terrorists' bullet while he was performing his field duties in Nawa, Daraa.
• The army units gained full control over the area of Old Sajna Neighbourhood in Daraa al-Balad after eliminating dozens of militants, among them non-Syrian nationals.
• The terrorists Ammar Abu Sarya, a Jordanian terrorist heading the so-called "al-Tawhid brigade", and Abdul-Salam Taqtaq were identified among the dead.
• The army advanced apace in Nawa city from many paths and dozens of dead and injured militants are accumulated in the militants' field hospitals, with the militants asking for help from the armed groups in Daraa city and its Western countryside.
• They army completed encirclement of Nawa, with infantry and armoured units advancing in its neighbourhoods. The army seized control over the Eastern neighbourhood and is moving towards the National Hospital on the Western-Northern side in the city.
• In Daraa city, the army units killed and injured dozens of militants who tried to attack the city.
• Syrian government troops killed large groups of terrorists in operations in several parts Aleppo countryside.
• Army units foiled militants' infiltration attempt from Karam al-Tarrab and al-Maysar towards safe areas in Aleppo and killed many militants and injured others.
• A military source said that other army units targeted militants' concentration camps in Hanano, Baeidin, al-Jandoul, al-Castello, al-Lairamoun, al-Mansoura, Tal Showehneh, al-Dweihi, Bayanoun, Handarat, hailan, Jbeil and industrial area, the surrounding area of the thermal station in Aleppo and its countryside, killing many of them and injuring others, in addition to destroying their weapons.

 

Rebels have killed at least 21 people at a campaign rally for President Bashar al-Assad in the southern city of Daraa. The rebels shelled a tent where Assad's supporters had gathered late Thursday May 22, 2014. The victims include both civilians and pro-Assad militiamen. Twenty-one were killed. At least 11 of them are civilians. One of them was a child under 18. The other 10, six of them were pro-regime fighters.

Syria Sunday May 25, 2014:

• The army infantry units advanced in central Zobdin and killed a large number of militants in a series of ambush operations in there.
• Also in the past 24 hours, the Syrian army is making major advances in Damascus countryside.
• Several groups of militants have surrendered to the Syrian army in the Damascus Countryside in the last several months. The last one of such groups gave in to the authorities in the region in mid-February.
• The Syrian army pushed back militants' raid for breaking the siege of the strategic city of Nawa in Daraa province in the Southern parts of the country.
• The Syrian air force launched extensive airstrikes on the positions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Al-Mosana Islamic Movement in Al-Makhim and Al-Sa'ad road in Daraa Al-Balad that were used to launch mortar attacks on the civilian population in different parts of Daraa province.
• Elsewhere, the Syrian army on Saturday continued its mop-up operations after its successful operations in the vicinity of Aleppo Central Prison where it ended months-long siege on the troops defending it.
• Units of the army killed a number of militants and injured many others in a number of Aleppo and Daraa regions.
• Meantime, Syrian military forces launched a well-arranged offensive against foreign-backed insurgents in the outskirts of the Southern city of Daraa near the Israeli-occupied Golan Height that caught the armed militants off-guard.
• Syrian troops purged several buildings in the Ankhil and Nawa regions of Daraa from terrorists during the Friday operation.

 

An American citizen carried out a suicide bombing in Syria on behalf of an al Qaeda-linked militant group on Sunday May 25, 2014, apparently the first time a U.S. citizen has carried out such an attack in the Syrian civil war. The bomber was identified only by his Arabic nom de guerre, “Abu Hurayra al-Amriki,” (Abu Hurayra the American) and said he carried out one of four suicide bombings of Syrian government sites in Jabal al-Arbaa'in in Idlib Province.

A convoy of chemical weapons inspectors came under attack Tuesday May 27, 2014, while traveling to the site of a suspected chlorine gas attack in Syria, but all staff members were safe, the international watchdog agency said.

A former officer with Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been killed in the fighting in Syria. Abdollah Eskandari had travelled to Syria to defend the Sayida Zeinab shrine located in the southern suburbs of Damascus. The shrine is a centre of pilgrimage for Shi'a from around the world. Eskandari, who headed the Martyrs Foundation in Fars Province until 2013, was "martyred" on May 26, 2014. ---

Syrian rebels blew up a tunnel in Aleppo on Friday May 30, 2014, killing at least 20 pro-government fighters. The blast took place near the Zahrawi market not far from the citadel in Old Aleppo. A powerful rebel alliance called the Islamic Front claimed responsibility for the blast. It said in a tweet that it killed at least 40 government gunmen

Syrian President Bashar Assad has been re-elected in a landslide we were told on Wednesday June 4, 2014, capturing another seven-year term in the middle of a bloody 3-year-old uprising against his rule that has devastated the country. Syria's parliament speaker, Jihad Lahan, announced the final results from Tuesday's election, saying Assad garnered 10,319,723 votes, or 88.7 percent. Assad's two challengers, Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar, won 4.3 percent and 3.2 percent respectively. The Supreme Constitutional Court put turnout at 73.42 percent. Assad's victory was always a foregone conclusion, despite the presence of other candidates on the ballot for the first time in decades. The opposition and its Western allies denounced the election as a farce, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry calling it a "great big zero."

Redwan Tamru, one of the leading commanders of a terrorist group known as "Leva’el-Towhid", was killed in a major battle with Syrian army units in Aleppo suburbs. Intense battles also continue between Syrian armed forces and foreign-backed insurgents in Daraa countryside in Al-Lutf village near al-Lajat region. Further in the outskirts of capital Damascus dozens of foreign-backed insurgents perished during battles with government troops in Khan-al-Sheikh, Daria and Zakiya regions. Syrian army units also targeted insurgent staging grounds in al-Qusoor and al-Mazara’a regions of Khan-al-Sheikh suburb of Damascus countryside, killing many of the armed insurgents. Scores of insurgents, including a number of non-Syrian elements, were also killed by government troops in battles near the town of Jubair, also in Damascus outskirts.

President Bashar Assad has declared a general amnesty for prisoners in the country. The decree comes just five days after Assad won a third, seven-year term in office amid the 3-year-old civil war in his country. It was not clear how many prisoners will be freed. The report did not say if the amnesty would apply to the tens of thousands of opposition supporters and their relatives activists say are held in the country. It is possible that the decision would reduce prisoners' sentences without freeing them. Government officials could not be immediately reached to explain the decision. ---

Syria Thursday June 12, 2014:

• A car bomb exploded in a pro-government neighborhood in the central Syrian city of Homs killing at least seven people. The blast occurred in the Wadi Dahab district. Some 25 others were wounded. Six of the dead were civilians, but it was not clear whether the other two were civilians or pro-government gunmen.
• In Damascus, a mortar shell hit a residential neighborhood in the south of the capital, killing one person and injuring four others.
• The Syrian government has released around 530 detainees under a "general amnesty" announced Monday by President Bashar Assad following his re-election. Thousands more prisoners are expected to be released under the presidential pardon.

 

At least eight people were killed on Saturday June 14, 2014, when a car bomb exploded in a market in eastern Syria near the border with Iraq. The blast occurred in the town of al-Mayadin, which lies on the Euphrates River in the Deir al-Zor province. A number of people were seriously wounded in the blast. Pakistani fighter jets have carried out air strikes against militant hideouts in the north-west of the country. Scores of militants were killed in the raids. Among them was a suspected Uzbek leader of the deadly attack on Karachi airport a week ago. The strikes were in the mountainous Dehgan area in North Waziristan, a stronghold for Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants. It is the second set of strikes in the region this week in response to the attack by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) on Karachi airport last Sunday. Uzbek fighters took part in the assault on the international airport, which killed at least 28 people. The Taliban said the assault was in revenge for the killing of their leader last year.

Syrian military helicopters dropped barrel bombs on a rebel-held neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo on Monday June 16, 2014, cleaving the fronts of apartment buildings and killing at least 27 people. Monday’s air raids targeted the Sukkari neighborhood on the southern side of the city. Scores of wounded were rushed to makeshift hospitals in the city.

On Monday June 16, 2014, the Syrian military has recaptured the strategically important border town of Kessab. The predominantly Christian-Armenian town was overrun by jihadist rebels in March, with much blame placed on Turkey for reportedly allowing the crossover to happen. Syrian armed forces have been carrying out systematic assaults on the Al-Nusra Front and associated rebel positions across several provinces, including northern Lattakia, where control was reestablished on Saturday. The army seized weapons and ammunition and took out dozens of terrorists in the operation, mostly non-Syrians. The jihadists withdrew from Kessab leaving behind only a small number of men. Tanks were deployed in the surrounding areas and government forces eventually closed in on militants’ positions. The jihadist groups were reportedly pushed back toward the Jabal al-Akrad area.

A 16 years old girl was killed on Tuesday June 17, 2014, due to terrorist mortar shells fired on the makeshift in al-Kashef neighborhood in the city, while 6 other citizens, among them children were hospitalized. Militants targeted a makeshift in the deaf and the dumb center affiliated to the social affairs department, causing the killing of a girl and the injury of 6 other citizens among them children and material damage to the building.

Syrian army helicopters killed at least 20 people, mostly children and women, in the first attack on a refugee camp in southern Syria along the border with Jordan. The army dropped several barrel bombs on the camp in the village of Shajra. At least eighty people were injured, many seriously.

Syria Friday June 20, 2014:

• A powerful truck bomb exploded in a government-held village in central Syria, killing at least 34 civilians and wounding more than 50. The truck bomb - loaded with about three tons of explosives- exploded in Horrah village in the countryside near the central city of Hama. The attack "caused the destruction of a large number of houses and buildings in the village. The toll was likely to rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition.
• An al-Qaida breakaway group captured a major town to the east, near the Iraqi border. Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant stormed the town of Muhassan on the Euphrates river after rebels from the Western-backed Supreme Military Council defected to the jihadi group. The village is in the eastern oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour where the Islamic State has been on the offensive since late April against rival jihadi and Islamic groups.
• The capture of Muhassan, about 100 kilometers from the Iraqi border, and two nearby villages, comes a week after the group swept across wide areas in northern and central Iraq, capturing that country's second largest city of Mosul, and carving out a large region straddling the border.
• The Islamic State's seven-week offensive in Deir el-Zour against rival groups including the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham has killed more than 640 people and uprooted at least 130,000.

 

Sunni fighters seized a border post on the Iraq-Syria frontier we were told on Saturday June 21, 2014, smashing a line drawn by colonial powers almost a century ago with the aim of creating an Islamic Caliphate stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Iran. The militants, led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), first moved into the nearby town of al-Qaim on Friday, pushing out security forces. Once border guards heard that al-Qaim had fallen, they left their posts and militants moved in. ---

The Syrian army has carried out a series of airstrikes against a town in eastern Syria that was captured by fighters from an al-Qaida breakaway group a day earlier, killing 16 people we were told Saturday Jyne 21, 2014. The warplanes pounded parts of Muhassan with six airstrikes; the casualties included three civilians.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant stormed Muhassan along the Euphrates River on Friday June 20, 2014, raising their black flags around the town after rebels from the Western-backed Supreme Military Council defected to the jihadi group activists said. The town is in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq and where the Islamic State has been on the offensive since late April against rival jihadi and Islamic groups. It comes as militants from the group seized an Iraqi crossing on the border with Syria after a daylong battle in which they killed some 30 Iraqi troops. The capture of the Qaim border crossing deals a further blow to the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has struggled to push back against Islamic extremists and allied militants who have seized large swaths of the country, including the second largest city Mosul, and who have vowed to march on Baghdad.

A 14-year-old boy on Sunday morning June 22, 2014, became the first Israeli killed on the Syrian border since it heated up about a year ago as a consequence of the civil war to the north. Muhammad Fahmi Krakara was killed when an anti-tank projectile fired from Syria struck near the border fence on the Golan Heights. He was sitting in a truck with his father, who was doing maintenance work on the fence for the Defense Ministry along with two other contract workers. One employee suffered serious injuries, the father was moderately wounded and the third employee was lightly injured. It was not known whether Syrian government forces or rebels fired the anti-tank missile, though the segment of the border fence where it landed is under rebel control. In any event, the IDF retaliated with tank fire at positions held by government forces.

The Syrian army has carried out a series of airstrikes against a town in eastern Syria that was captured by fighters from an al-Qaida breakaway group a day earlier, killing 16 people, we were told Saturday June 21, 2014. The warplanes pounded parts of Muhassan with six airstrikes; the casualties included three civilians. Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant stormed Muhassan along the Euphrates River on Friday, raising their black flags around the town after rebels from the Western-backed Supreme Military Council defected to the jihadi group. The town is in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq and where the Islamic State has been on the offensive since late April against rival jihadi and Islamic groups. It comes as militants from the group seized an Iraqi crossing on the border with Syria after a daylong battle in which they killed some 30 Iraqi troops.

Syria on Monday June 23, 2014, handed over the remaining 100 tonnes of toxic material it had declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog, but the country cannot be declared free of the weapons of mass destruction. The chemicals, roughly 8 percent of a total 1,300 tonnes reported to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), had been held at a storage site which the government of President Bashar al-Assad previously said was inaccessible due to fighting with rebels.

Israeli airstrikes on Syrian troops in retaliation for a deadly cross-border attack killed four people and wounded nine others on Tuesday June 24, 2014. The air raids came after an Israeli civilian vehicle was struck on Sunday by what the Israeli military said was a Kornet anti-tank missile fired from the Syrian side of the border as it drove in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. A teenage Israeli boy was killed and two other people were wounded in the first deadly incident along the volatile Israeli-Syrian frontier since the start of the Syrian civil war.

Syrian government warplanes on Wednesday June 25, 2014, struck about seven times the eastern city of Raqqa that is a stronghold of an Islamic militant group, killing at least 12 people. The jets struck targets around the provincial capital of Raqqa, including a market and the headquarters of the Islamic State. An activist group, the Syria-based Local Coordination Committees said that five people were killed in a single strike that targeted the Islamic State building.

Syria has joined the conflict in Iraq by launching air strikes against the insurgents. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki confirmed Thursday June 26, 2014, that Syria bombed Islamic militants in the Iraqi border town of al-Qaim. Though Maliki claimed he didn’t request Syria’s support, he said he “welcomed” any action against the insurgents, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who now control large parts of northern and western Iraq. Syria’s strikes may displease U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Wednesday warned outside actors in the Middle East against intervening in Iraq.

On Saturday June 28, 2014, a car bomb has exploded in the Syrian town of Douma, leaving dozens of causalities. The bomb blast went went off in a popular town market.

A car bomb exploded in a busy market in a rebel-held suburb of the Syrian capital Saturday June 28, 2014, killing at least two people and wounding dozens as Muslims went shopping a day before the start of their holy month of Ramadan.

Up to 7,000 people, mostly rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad, have been killed since January in infighting among rival Islamic groups in Syria across opposition-held territory in the north we were told on Sunday June 29, 2014. The death toll also included 650 civilians who got caught in the crossfire of the fighting between the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and its rival, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant —a group which formally broke with al-Qaida earlier this year and has in recent weeks become a major fighting force in neighboring Iraq. More than 160,000 people have been killed and nearly a third of Syria's population of 23 million has been displaced.

Syria Monday June 30, 2014:

• A barrage of mortar shells hit government-held areas of the northern city of Idlib killing 14 people and wounding at least 40.
• Mortars shells fell on several parts of Idlib including a residential area and a market. Children were among those who died in the attacks, and at least 40 people were wounded.
• Activists reported heavy clashes between several Syrian rebel factions and an al-Qaida breakaway group fighting for control of a border crossing with Iraq in eastern Syria.
• The fighting in the town of Boukamal, on the border between Syria and Iraq, was between rebel groups and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
• Rebel-on-rebel clashes intensified in Boukamal as the Islamic State brought reinforcements from Iraq into Syria.

 

The Jihadist Islamic State seized control of the key Syrian border town of Albu Kamal on Tuesday July 1, 2014, after a fierce three-day battle with rival fighters. The takeover comes two days after IS declared a "caliphate" in territory they seized in both Syria and Iraq, and ordered the world's Muslims to obey its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Islamic State took total control of Albu Kamal in the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor, after fierce fighting pitting it against rebels backed by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

On Monday June 30, 2014, the UN children's agency and Human Rights Watch has appealed for the release of more than 100 Kurdish schoolboy and girls kidnapped by jihadists in Syria at the end of May. The militants from the Islamic State (IS), formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), abducted some 153 schoolchildren on 19 May. The children, who included around 10 girls, were on their way back from taking year-end school exams in the northern city of Aleppo. They were heading to the town of Ain al-Arab on buses when they were stopped in the IS-controlled town of Manbij. Since their capture, IS has released around 15 children, including all the girls. Another five boys escaped.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant marched across eastern Syria near the border with Iraq on Thursday July 3, 2014, seizing towns, villages and the country's largest oil field as rival rebel factions gave up the fight. The extremist group -which controls large parts of northern Syria and captured vast swaths of northern and western Iraq last month- is now in almost full control of a corridor stretching from the Syrian border town of Boukamal to the government-controlled provincial capital of Deir el-Zour to the northwest. Led by an ambitious Iraqi militant known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant this week unilaterally declared the establishment of an Islamic state, or caliphate, in the lands it has seized in Syria and Iraq. It proclaimed al-Baghdadi the head of its new self-styled state and demanded that all Muslims pledge allegiance to him.

The extremist Sunni militant group that recently declared a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq wrested control of a major Syrian oil field in a sweeping land grab Thursday July 3, 2014. A string of villages and towns along the Euphrates River fell like dominoes to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, bridging the Syrian province of Deir Ezzour with the group's recently gained territories in Iraq's Sunni heartland. ---

The army units regained control of Aleppo Industrial City after it liberated the surrounding hills and towns, including Al-Moqbeleh and Al-Mohseniya. The army units are now in full control over Aleppo Industrial City and Al-Sheikh Najjar region as well as its neighboring hills. The army units have regained control of several strategic areas in Aleppo, including Tal Qazan as well as air defense bases and a major part of the region that was previously under fire by the militant groups. Also in the past 24 hours, the Turkish border forces clashed with armed militants in border regions of Idlib in Northwestern parts of the country. The Syrian jet fighters targeted the terrorists near border with Syria and Lebanon, specially in Arsal region. Arsal is a region in Balbak township on Beqa'a province in Northeastern Lebanon.

Syrian warplanes bombed gunmen inside Lebanese territory on Sunday July 6, 2014, on the border between the two countries. Syrian warplanes targeted groups of gunmen in the Wadi al-Khayl area in Arsal firing four rockets. Syrian aircraft carried out two further raids in the same area.

On Sunday July 6, 2014, the militants were pushed back from Ma'ar Tabyee strategic hill in the Eastern parts of Jebel Al-Zawiya in Idlib countryside. The Syrian army's control over the strategic hill cuts the supply route of the militants to Saraqeb and Ariha countrysides. The Syrian army can now control all movements of the militants in Jebel Al-Arbaeen and Al-Qormid and also bring the terrorists' concentration centers in Kafr Lateh, Na'ar Belit and Majd Lya under fire. Last week in Idlib province, army units targeted militants' gatherings in the villages of Maarzaf, Nahleh, Bennish and Bakfaloun, killing many and injuring many others. The army also targeted rebels' positions in the villages of Om Sahrij, Abo Hawadid and Kharijeh in the province.

At least 14 people, among them women, were killed by Syrian rebels in the village of Khatab in central Hama province overnight. Rebels carried out a "massacre" that included women and children. The seven men and seven women had been "executed" by rebel fighters as an armed terrorist group infiltrated the village of Khatab at dawn and committed a massacre among the civilian residents, killing 14 of them.

Syrian Kurdish forces have demobilised scores of child soldiers from their ranks over the past month we were told on Tuesday July 8, 2014.  A total of 149 militia members under the age of 18 have been demobilised. But there are still believed to be up to 100 under-age fighters in the ranks of the YPG (People's Protection Units) and its women's arm, the YPJ (Women's Protection Unit).

Veteran United Nations official Staffan de Mistura, a former U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq, will replace Lakhdar Brahimi as the international mediator seeking an end to Syria's civil war we were told on Wednesday July 9, 2014. However consultations were still continuing on the appointment. The move comes amid worsening violence as Islamist militants seized swathes of Syria and Iraq and after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was re-elected in a June 3 poll described by Ban as a blow to international efforts to end to the conflict.

The death toll in Syria’s three-year war has reached 170,000 people, one-third of them civilians we were told on Thursday July 10, 2014. The deaths of 171,509 people have been documented. Among the dead were 56,495 civilians, including 9,092 children. Another 65,803 were regime troops and pro-regime militiamen, while 46,301 were rebels seeking the president Bashar Al Assad’s ouster and members of the Islamic State militant group. The rebel toll includes 15,422 foreigners who travelled to Syria to join the war. Among the ranks of loyalists killed were 39,036 regular troops, as well as 24,655 members of pro-regime militias, 509 fighters from Lebanon’s Hizbollah, and 1,603 other non-Syrians fighting for Mr Al Assad. Meanwhile, the deaths of 2,910 unidentified victims were also documented. Another 20,000 people detained by the regime were completely unaccounted for as were some 7,000 regime troops held by rebel fighters. More than 2,000 other people are currently in the captivity of Islamist rebels and Islamic State, accused of “collaborating” with the Assad regime. Another 1,500 Islamic State, rebel and Kurdish fighters have been kidnapped in recent months during battles among each other. The conflict has forced nearly half Syria’s population to flee their homes.

On Saturday July 12, 2014, Syrian army units managed to retake parts of the strategic town of Mleiha in Damascus countryside after around 100 days of heavy fighting with the terrorists from the so-called al-Nusra Front and other Takfiri groups. Syrian soldiers have fully encircled the town and are in control of buildings near the Fateh Mosque in Mleiha. Syrian troops had foiled attempts by the foreign-sponsored armed groups to release over 500 of their fellow militants being trapped inside the town. A number of militants, including some Chechen and French nationals, had reportedly been killed in the army operation. On July 4, the Syrian army said it had regained control of the strategic Sheikh Najjar Industrial Zone in the Northern city of Aleppo after killing a large number of Takfiri militants.

Syrian soldiers clashed with Islamic State militants outside a government-controlled army airport on Friday July 18, 2014. On Thursday, the rebels seized the Sha'ar oilfield, east of the central city of Homs, in one of its bloodiest clashes with President Bashar al-Assad's forces. On Friday, the death toll from the raid rose to 115. The fate of 250 others was unknown, it said. ---

Across the broad swath of territory they control bridging Syria and Iraq, extremist militants from the group known as the Islamic State have proven to be highly organized administrators. Flush with cash, they fix roads, police traffic, administer courts, and have even set up an export system of smuggled crude from oil fields they have seized. But the extremists –a mix of Iraqis and Syrians but also foreign fighters from Arab countries and non-Arab regions like the Caucasus– run the risk of provoking a backlash from the people they have come to rule. Unlike Lebanon’s Hezbollah or the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which have deep roots in their communities, the Islamic State group is not a grass-roots movement and its sway over its populations is ultimately based on violence, not necessarily a groundswell of support for its vision of a hard-line Islamic caliphate. While it has been welcomed by some disenfranchised Iraqi Sunnis as potential saviors from the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, many consider the group an alien entity. In recognition of that, the group has varied the imposition of the radical version of Islamic law they advocate. In their main stronghold in Syria, the city of Raqqa, they have unleashed it without reserve, killing perceived offenders and cutting off the hands of thieves in public. But in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, they have been more cautious. They’ve taken some steps like banning alcohol and painting over street advertisements that show women’s faces but have held off on strict punishments.

Islamic extremists killed at least 115 Syrian troops, guards and workers while capturing a gas field in central Syria after a long day of clashes we were told on Friday July 18, 2014. More than 20 insurgents also died in the fighting for the Shaer gas field. ISIS fighters had previously captured much of Syria’s oil-rich eastern province of Deir al-Zour. The large assault on the Shaer gas field, which lies in the desert region of Palmyra in the central province of Homs, began with a suicide bombing and an attack on army checkpoints. After fighting with government forces for 12 hours, the jihadis took complete control of the gas field.

On Saturday July 19, 2014, Syrian government forces have launched a counter-attack to recapture a gas field seized by Islamic extremists as the death toll from three days of fighting there rose to more than 200 people killed.

Syria Sunday July 20, 2014:

• Terrorists' mortar attack in Damascus claimed the life of a citizen and injured 14 others. The attack, which included two mortar shells, hit a market in al-Zablatani area.
• Three other shells landed near a hospital, a school and a mall in al-Abbassiyeen area, causing material damage to a number of houses and cars, without hurting anyone.
• In Damascus Countryside, three mortar shells fired by militants fell in Block 26 in Harasta suburb, causing only material damage.
• In the town of Talfita, an armed group assassinated member of the local national reconciliation committee, lawyer Ahmad Mazhar Shalhoum. The militants opened fire on the lawyer’s car near the town’s entrance as he was driving home, injuring him and his two uncles who were in the car with him. Shalhoum was transported to a hospital where he passed away after succumbing to his injuries. His uncles sustained severe wounds in the attack.

 

Syria Monday July 21, 2014:

• Militants fired a number of mortar shells killing two citizens, one of them is a 3-year-old child, and injuring 9 others, including 5 children.
• Earlier, four civilians, among them a mother and daughter, were wounded due to terrorists attacks in Damascus.
• Militants detonated an improvised explosive device they planted in a taxi near Victoria Bridge in Damascus, wounding the driver and a citizen.
• Meanwhile, militants fired a mortar shell that landed near a bakery in al-Dweil’a neighborhood, wounding a mother and her daughter, and causing material damage to several buildings and cars nearby.
• Another shell hit a house in al-Soufaniya area in Qassaa’, inflicting material damage.

 

Six children from the same family were killed in an air strike by government forces on a village in the northern province of Aleppo we were told on Wednesday July 23, 2014. Three boys and three girls from the Moslem family died in yesterday's raid on Wahshiyeh. The village is located in a rebel-held area of Aleppo province that has come under constant aerial bombardment since late last year.

A Syrian Air Force strike on the border with Lebanon killed around 20 Syrian rebel fighters on Friday July 25, 2014. The strike hit just inside Lebanese territory in a barren area east of the town of Arsal. Rights groups have repeatedly slammed the regime for its air strikes, saying them fail to discriminate between military targets and civilian areas.

The Syrian army said on Sunday July 27, 2014, that it has recaptured a gas field east of the central city of Homs that was seized by hard-line Islamic State fighters this month. The army retook the field after a “precise operation in which dozens of terrorists were killed.” However, the Islamic State said the fighters pulled out after destroying the field’s equipment and capturing at least 15 tanks and dozens of rockets that were used to guard the field. ---

The Syrian government is still indiscriminately bombing civilians with explosives-filled barrels in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution we were told Wednesday July 30, 2-014. Syria has launced over 650 strikes on rebel-held neighborhoods in the northern city of Aleppo since the resolution's adoption. Opposition fighters also carry out indiscriminate attacks, including mortar strikes and car bombings. Barrel bombs on Aleppo have killed more than 2,000 people this year. The latest killed include six people in the Aleppo neighborhood of Bab Neirab overnight, including an elderly man, three women and a child. Another barrel bomb hit the Aleppo neighborhood of Saliheen, killing five people, the Observatory said. Tens of thousands of Syrians have fled Aleppo since the barrel bombings began in earnest in December.

Twelve people were killed, among them a child and a woman, in Syrian army shelling late Wednesday July 30, 2014, on Douma, a rebel-held town near Damascus. Several dozens more, including children. Douma is a rebel bastion northeast of Damascus, which has been under suffocating army siege for more than a year.

A fierce battle between Syrian Kurds and Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) jihadists has killed nearly 50 fighters from both sides as the Kurds seized several ISIS positions we were told Thursday July 31, 2014. Wednesday's fighting in Ain al-Arab (Kobane in Kurdish) killed 14 members of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and 35 jihadists. Dozens of fighters were wounded. In the battle, Kurdish fighters took several hills which ISIS jihadists had seized and set up positions.

The ISIL terrorists withdrew from the villages of Abu Hamam, Kashkiyeh and Ghranij following heavy clashes with the Shaitat Sunni tribe we were told on Friday August 1, 2014. The tribesmen also set fire to an ISIL headquarters in a fourth village and that the terrorists had fled from a fifth village in the area. The tribesmen launched the offensive against ISIL on July 30 after the Takfiri group detained several members of the tribe. Nearly ten ISIL militants were killed in the clashes. ISIL militants are accused of committing gross human rights violations and war crimes in Syria and Iraq, ranging from rape to summary executions, mass kidnappings, and massacre.

A notorious ringleader of the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front has been killed in Idlib in Northwestern Syria we were told on Saturday August 2, 2014. Yaqoub Al-Omar was killed in Khan Al-Sabal district in the Southern parts of the Idlib city. Al-Omar was killed after a bomb went off inside his car near Khan Al-Sabal district.

At least six people were killed and five others injured as gunmen ambushed a wedding party in Al-Maslol Bait Al-Meshraqi neighbourhood, Suwayr district we were told on Friday August 1, 2014. The dead included the groom and five well-wishers and wounded are the bridegroom and four well-wishers. All victims are from the nearby Hajjah Governorate. Separately three brothers were shot dead by a gunman in Tor Al-Baha district in the southern governorate of Lahij. The attacker has been arrested and is being investigated.

Rebels fighting in Syria’s civil war crossed into Lebanon and raided a border town Saturday August 2, 2014, killing and capturing security force members in the most serious incursion into the tiny country during its neighbor’s 3-year-old conflict. The rebels, who included foreign fighters, demanded to trade soldiers and police officers it captured in Arsal for some of the most dangerous detainees. Masked gunmen roamed the streets as Lebanese helicopter gunships flew over the town. The gunmen attacked army positions near Arsal and troops returned fire. The gunmen also took control of the main police station in the town.

On Saturday August 2, 2014, Syrian rebels have killed 10 Lebanese troops and likely captured over a dozen more in an ongoing raid on a Lebanese border town. It is the most serious spill over of violence yet into the tiny country from its neighbour's civil war. The capture raised fears Lebanon could become further entangled in the Syrian civil war and could worsen already-brewing sectarian tensions.

Again on Saturday August 2, 2014, Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters have killed at least 50 jihadists from the Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front groups in the border region of Qalamun near the border with Lebanon. Among the dead were at least seven pro-regime fighters, including government soldiers and members of Hezbollah.

Syria, Sunday August 3, 2014:

• Nineteen people were killed and many injured in airstrikes by Syrian warplanes on the town of Kafr Batna, in the governorate of Rif Dimashq (the Countryside of Damascus), southern Syria, also a suburb of Damascus.
• Two similar strikes targeted the city of Douma, the centre of Rif Dimashq, but no casualties have been reported.
• Meanwhile, sporadic clashes are taking place in Al-Meliha, a town in the same province, between fighters of Islamist groups, among them Al-Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda in the Levant), on one hand and the regime forces supported by the National Defence Force and Hezbollah fighters on the other.
• A loud explosion has also been heard in the town, but no details have yet been revealed, as the Syrian jets shelled areas in Al- Qalamoun region.
• Locals in Al-Tiana town in the governorate of Deir-Ezzor, killed two elements from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during an attack the latter launched on the town following an airstrike by Syrian warplanes.

Lebanese troops battled rebels from Syria for control of a border town Monday August 4. 2014, the deadliest challenge in years for the armed forces of this tiny country whose own sectarian tensions could boil over from the incursion. Dozens of armoured personnel carriers, tanks and elite troops arrived to surround the town of Arsal. Meanwhile, thousands of Lebanese civilians and Syrian refugees fled the clashes in vehicles packed with all they could carry. The fighting in Arsal, which began Saturday, marks the first time that militants battling Syrian President Bashar Assad have carried out a large-scale incursion into Lebanon. The clashes have killed 17 soldiers over three days, while 22 others remain missing after attacks on army positions in the town. ---

Militants from Syria who overran a Lebanese border town mostly withdrew back across the rugged hills separating the two countries as a cease-fire appeared to hold Thursday August 7, 2014, allowing Lebanese troops to free seven fellow soldiers and ambulances to evacuate dozens of casualties. The seizure of Arsal over the weekend marked the first time that Islamic extremists from Syria carried out a large-scale incursion into Lebanon and raised fears of a further spill over of the conflict across the porous border. The majority of the fighters had withdrawn by mid-Thursday.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadists captured the key Brigade 93 Syrian army base in Raqa province overnight we were told on Friday August 8, 2014. The ISIS took Brigade 93 after fierce fighting and a triple suicide bomb attack; the government forces now hold just one position in the province at Tabqa airport. Some troops had already pulled out of Brigade 93 in July after IS captured Division 17, another base in the region where at least 85 people were killed in fighting or summarily executed shortly afterwards. In the fighting for Brigade 93, 36 soldiers were killed, some of whom were beheaded, while others died in the fighting or in the initial triple suicide bombing that launched the attack. At least 15 jihadists were killed, including the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the entrance to the base at the start of the attack on Wednesday night.

Militants with the Islamic State group seized several towns in northern Syria’s Aleppo province early Wednesday August 13, 2014, dealing a blow to rival rebel factions who were forced to withdraw from areas they took this year. With the capture of the strategic town of Akhtarin and a few surrounding villages, fighters with the breakaway Al Qaeda group have moved farther west and now threaten to cut off the rebels' main access highway to neighbouring Turkey. The Islamic State's rivals are fighting on two fronts as they try to fend off a government attempt to seize control of the city of Aleppo. Since capturing large swaths of territory in northern Iraq and declaring a caliphate in June, the extremist fighters have been making gains in neighbouring Syria as well. Rebels fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad this year expelled Islamic State fighters from parts of northern Syria.

Syrian forces have retaken a key district of Damascus from opposition forces. Security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad moved in on Mleiha, which is 10km from the centre of the capital, on Thursday August 14, 2014. The operation followed a campaign of air strikes on the town, which sits on the main road to Damascus airport. On Wednesday, Islamist militants were said to have seized several towns from rebels in the northern Aleppo province.

Two female Italian aid workers who ignored their parents’ pleas and snuck into Syria have been kidnapped by Islamist militants. Greta Ramelli, 20, and Vanessa Marzullo, 21, were working in city of Aleppo. They have been involved in humanitarian projects in Syria since 2012. Unknown Islamist group are believed to have taken the women to nearby village.

Fighters from the Islamic State extremist group have captured three villages in northern Syria as they close in on a stronghold of rival rebels. The jihadi group's gunmen overran the village of Maled near the town of Marea in Aleppo province late Friday August 15, 2014. The group also captured two other villages near Marea —Hamidiyeh and Sonbol. Those gains come days after the extremists overran several other villages and two towns in Aleppo province. The Islamic State group's ultimate goal appears to be Marea itself, which is a stronghold of the once-powerful Islamic Front rebel group that has been fighting the jihadists since January. ---

The Islamic State militant group has executed 700 members of a tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria during the past two weeks, the majority of them civilians, we were told on Saturday August 16, 2014. Beheadings were used to execute many of the al-Sheitaat tribe, which is from Deir al-Zor province. Those who were executed are all al-Sheitaat. Some were arrested, judged and killed.

The Obama administration said Monday August 18, 2014, that U.S. military and civilian personnel had completed the destruction of the Syrian government’s declared chemical weapon stockpile, heralding the neutralization of chemical agents aboard an American ship as a watershed moment in the Syrian conflict. The effort was conducted under the auspices of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations. In early July, a Danish container ship transferred the Syrian government’s stockpile of chemical agents to the MV Cape Ray, a gun-metal grey 648-foot-long American vessel, in the Italian port of Gioia Tauro. The Cape Ray made for international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, where it used custom-made equipment to diffuse the chemical agents —620 tons of substances used as precursors for sarin and other chemical weapons– into polluted water.

On Tuesday August 19, 2014, the 636th day of James Foley's captivity, and roughly the 1,250th day of Syria's uprising-turned-civil-war, a video surfaced online that claimed to show the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria beheading the American photojournalist, in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes against the Sunni extremist group in Iraq (the militants also threatened to kill the missing American journalist Steven Sotloff, who seems from the footage to be an ISIS captive as well).

The death toll from three years of Syria's civil war has risen to more than 191,000 people, the United Nations reported Friday August 22, 2014. Men comprised 85 percent of the victims, women more than 9 percent, while the sex was unknown in the remaining cases. The records show at least 8,800 child victims, although the age of most victims is unknown.

An American journalist abducted by rebels in Syria was freed Sunday August 24, 2014, after nearly two years in captivity, but his release appears to have little bearing on the fates of other hostages under threat of death from their kidnappers because of the U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. Peter Theo Curtis went missing in October 2012 shortly after he crossed the Turkish border into northern Syria. He was handed over to the United Nations in Syria on Sunday and is now safely out of the country. Curtis, 45, had been kidnapped by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra.

Extremist fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria seized a military base in northern Syria on Sunday August 24, 2014, from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, further solidifying control inside their self-declared Islamic state spanning the Syria-Iraq border. The fall of the Tabqa air base followed the group’s seizing of two other Syrian military bases and gave it effective control of Raqqa Province, which abuts the Turkish border and whose capital city, Raqqa, has long served as the group’s de facto headquarters.

The Islamic State militant group is holding hostage a young American woman who was doing humanitarian aid work in Syria we were told Tuesday August 26, 2014. The 26-year-old woman is the third American known to have been kidnapped by the militant group. The 26-year-old woman was captured last year while working with three humanitarian groups in Syria.

Syrian rebels, including fighters from an al-Qaida-linked group, seized control of a frontier crossing with Israel in the Golan Heights on Wednesday August 27, 2014, after heavy clashes with President Bashar Assad's forces. The capture of the post along Syria's de facto border in the Golan held more symbolic value than strategic, but rebels said it would provide relief to nearby villages that were under siege by government troops. There was heavy fighting that left at least 20 Syrian soldiers and an unknown number of rebels dead. Clashes also raged in the towns of Jaba, Tal Kroum and Rawadi in Quneitra province. Syrian forces still control another crossing nearby, typically used to search products entering from the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights into Syria —usually, crates of apples. Rebels aim to push Assad's troops from all of Quneitra.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed more than 160 troops captured in recent fighting for a string of military bases in northeastern Syria, shooting some and slashing others with knives in the past 24 hours in the latest mass killing attributed to the extremists we were told Thursday August 28, 2014.

In southern Syria gunmen detained 43 U.N. peacekeepers Thursday August 28, 2014, during fighting on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. Another 81 peacekeepers were trapped in the area by the heavy clashes between rebels and Syrian troops.

The number of refugees from the Syrian civil war has risen above three million, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday August 29, 2014, calling the crisis “the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era.” More than a million people have fled in the last 12 months alone. The total number is believed to be significantly higher. Countries surrounding Syria that have borne the brunt of the exodus estimate that several hundred thousand more Syrians have escaped across their frontiers seeking safety. Lebanon, with a population of less than five million, has taken in more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees, while Jordan has 608,000 and Turkey 815,000. Tens of thousands more fled to Iraq over the past three years only to face new dangers from the onslaught of Islamic militants based in Syria.

Hundreds of Yazidi women abducted by ISIS have either been sold or handed out to members of the Sunni extremist group we were told Sunday August 31, 2014. In the past few weeks, ISIS has “distributed” to its rank and file about 300 female members of the persecuted religious minority. Those women were initially kidnapped in Iraq before being taken to Syria. In ISIS’ eyes, the girls and women are “captives of the spoils of war with the infidels” claiming that some had converted to Islam so ISIS fighters can marry them. In at least 27 cases in which women were “sold and married” for about $1,000 each to ISIS militants in Aleppo and Raqqa suburbs and Al-Hassakah.

Eighteen foreign fighters from the Islamic State, including an American jihadist, were killed in a Syrian air raid on a town near the militant group's main stronghold city of Raqqa in eastern Syria we were told on Thursday September 4, 2014. Top Islamic State leaders who happened to be in the municipal building of Gharbiya at the time of the raid were among the foreign fighters killed. The building had been used as a headquarters of the hard-line group. Another air raid on Thursday that hit a former intelligence headquarters in the city of Abu Kamal near the border with Iraq that was used by the Islamic State also killed an undisclosed number of their members. The Syrian raids allowed 13 detainees held by the IS fighters to escape during the chaos.

Syria launched a series of airstrikes targeting a stronghold of the Islamic State extremist group on Saturday September 6, 2014, killing at least 29 people, most of whom died when one of the missiles slammed into a crowded bakery. The eight airstrikes smashed parts of buildings, set cars alight and crushed people under rubble in the northeastern city of Raqqa. At least 20 civilians were killed, alongside nine Islamic State fighters. Most of the civilians were killed after at least one strike hit the Andalous bakery on a busy street, and the death toll was likely to rise. Other strikes hit a government finance building that the Islamic State used as its headquarters and another building used as a jail.

Syrian air strikes against the northern Islamic State (IS) bastion of Raqa on Saturday September 6, 2014, killed 53 people. At least 31 of the dead were civilians, among them five women and three children, in Raqa and its surroundings. Another 15 militants were confirmed dead in a string of eight air strikes, as well as seven other unidentified people. Eight of the civilian victims were from one family. Similar strikes on Tuesday in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor killed 16 people, including 10 children. Meanwhile, President Francois Hollande on Friday said France was ready to join a coalition to counter IS militants while respecting international law, but would not commit to taking action in Syria.

An explosion tore through a secret meeting of one of Syria’s strongest and most enduring rebel groups on Tuesday September 9, 2014, killing a dozen of its top leaders, including its head, and striking another blow against the forces seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad. The blast hit a basement where the leaders of the group, Ahrar al-Sham, had collected to plot strategy. It remained unclear who had carried out the attack, which reportedly killed dozens of people and occurred in Idlib Province in Syria’s north.

The United Nations has confirmed the release of all 45 Fijian peacekeepers who had been held for two weeks by the rebels in the Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border. A UN statement said the soldiers, all in good condition, had been freed on Thursday September 11, 2014, and would undergo medical assessment. The Fijians were kidnapped last month by the Nusra Front battling the Syrian army after the rebels overran a crossing point in the so-called disengagement zone that the UN peacekeeping mission known as UNDOF has monitored since 1974. Israel said the soldiers had crossed into Israeli-held territory after their release.

Islamic State fighters backed by tanks have captured 21 Kurdish villages over the past 24 hours in northern Syria near the Turkish border, prompting civilians to flee their homes amid fears of retribution by the extremists sweeping through the area. Since Wednesday September 17, 2014, Islamic State militants appear to have gained the upper hand in Syria's northern Kurdish region of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, overrunning 21 Kurdish villages. There were casualties on both sides and Kurdish civilians were fleeing their villages for fear that Islamic State group fighters will commit massacres against civilians.

The U.S. military expanded its war against the Islamic State late Monday September 22, 2014, by sending waves of warplanes and launching Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria to attack an array of targets. U.S. commanders deployed a mix of fighter jets and bombers and had also launched ship-based Tomahawk missiles against Islamic State targets in Syria. Partner nation forces were also involved in the attacks that is Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Qatar also sent military aircraft to play a supporting role but did not carry out strikes.

Israel’s military shot down a Syrian fighter jet Tuesday September 23, 2014, after the aircraft strayed less than a mile into airspace that Israel controls over the Golan Heights. Israeli officials assumed that the warplane had made a mistake, albeit one they would not allow to go unpunished. The Israeli army fired a U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air missile at the Syrian jet, a Soviet-made Sukhoi-24. According to the Israeli military, the two Syrian crew members ejected and came down safely inside Syria. Local media reported that the aircraft crashed near the Syrian town of Quneitra, which is controlled by rebels linked to al-Qaeda.

U.S. missile strikes against an obscure al-Qaeda cell in Syria is thought to have killed at least one of the group’s leaders on Wednesday September 24, 2014. This is a significant but not decisive blow to a terrorist group accused of plotting attacks against Europe and the United States.

On Wednesday September 24, 2014, we were told that a 19-year-old from Brighton who “dreamed about martyrdom” is believed to be the latest British jihadi to be killed in Syria, having died in the past 48 hours. Khalil al-Britani, whose real name is Ibrahim Kamara, died after a US air strike on Aleppo this week.

U.S.-led coalition warplanes bombed oil installations and other facilities in territory controlled by Islamic State militants in eastern Syria on Friday September 26, 2014, taking aim for a second consecutive day at a key source of financing that has swelled the extremist group’s coffers. The strikes hit two oil areas in Deir el-Zour province a day after the United States and its Arab allies pummelled a dozen makeshift oil producing facilities in the same area near Syria’s border with Iraq. The raids aim to cripple one of the militants’ primary sources of cash —black market oil sales that may generate up to $2 million a day.

U.S. and allied warplanes hit sites near the northern Syrian city of Ayn al-Arab we were told on Saturday September 27, 2014. A missile struck an ISIS compound near Kobani, the Kurdish name for Ayn al-Arab. In other airstrikes near Ayn al-Arab, coalition forces hit two armed vehicles at a border crossing with Turkey. The airstrike hit an unofficial border crossing near the village. The strikes are believed to be the first known coalition attacks near the border with Turkey. That country is not participating in the airstrikes and has repeatedly pressed for an international buffer zone separating the combat in Syria from the Turkish border.

The United States and partner nations conducted airstrikes against ISIS-held oil refineries on Saturday and Sunday September 28, 2014, as part of a series of twelve strikes in Syria and Iraq. Four modular oil refineries in Ar Raqqah, Syria, were targeted. Strikes on the oil refineries aim at degrading ISIS' finances. The terror group earns an estimated $3 million a day from the refineries. The weekend airstrikes also destroyed ISIS armed vehicles and Humvees in Syria, and an ISIS safe house and checkpoints in Iraq. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also participated in the strikes. Three other Arab allies are also taking part in aerial campaigns against ISIS, and some European countries —including France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Britain— are also assisting to combat the terror group.

U.S. warplanes attacked Islamic State targets in Syria, in raids that a group monitoring the war said killed civilians as well as jihadist fighters. The strikes hit mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij, in an area controlled by Islamic State, killing at least two civilian workers. Strikes on a building on a road leading out of the town also killed a number of Islamic State fighters. While raids in Iraq and Syria have taken a toll on Islamic State equipment and fighters on the ground, there is no sign yet that the tide is being turned against the group, which controls large areas of both countries.

Twin bombings near an elementary school in Syria killed at least 32 people on Wednesday October 1, 2014, including at least 10 children, with the second blast going off as screaming parents frantically searched for their sons and daughters in a street littered with school bags and body parts. The first vehicle exploded as children were leaving school, and the second struck as adults carried away bodies, sending a new wave of panic through the crowd. The attack occurred outside the Ekremah al-Makhzoumi elementary school in a government-controlled area of the central city of Homs dominated by minority Alawites, the Shiite offshoot sect to which President Bashar Assad's family belongs.

Protesters in the western Syrian city of Homs on Thursday October 2, 2014, demanded the ouster of the provincial governor and posted images of their demonstrations on social media before protests and crackdowns turned to war. But this time, the demonstrators were supporters of the government, angry that security forces did not prevent a double bombing of an elementary school on Wednesday that killed several dozen children in the Akrama district.

Syrian military forces have taken control of villages in the northern part of Aleppo we were told on Friday October 3, 2014. Syrian army forces "eliminated big numbers" of militants and destroyed scores of vehicles used by them in three villages in the northern countryside of Aleppo. One of the seized villages, Handarat, which is crucial because it sits on a hill overlooking the only entry point into the area. However, later the rebels had retaken the hill of Handarat amid heavy clashes, which continued Friday. It is estimated that there are up to 300,000 people in the rebel-held areas, and it's unclear if the militants will allow civilians to leave the war-torn region. The number of people who have fled Syria and registered as refugees amid the country's civil war surpassed 3 million in August, and a further 6.5 million are believed to be displaced within the nation.

More than two dozen militants belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) were killed overnight in air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition we were told on Saturday October 4, 2014, as Canada and the Netherlands were set to join the fight against the militant group in neighbouring Iraq. About 30 militants were killed around the town of Shadadi in northeastern Hasakeh, and another five outside the embattled town of Kobane, on the border with Turkey in northern Aleppo province.

The United States carried out three airstrikes against ISIS militants in Syria on Saturday and Sunday October 5, 2014, using fighter jets. In a separate offensive, U.S. military forces used bombers, fighter jets and helicopters to conduct six airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. The strikes in Syria destroyed an ISIS bulldozer, two ISIS tanks, another ISIS vehicle and six ISIS attack positions. The strikes in Iraq hit two mortar teams, a large ISIS unit, two smaller ISIS groups, and destroyed a total of three ISIS Humvees.

When the Free Syrian Army pushed Assad’s soldiers out of a town south of Damascus, the last thing they expected to find was a Russian spy post, a few miles from the Golan Heights. Syrian rebels have overtaken a joint Russian-Syrian secret facility that they claim was a covert intelligence collection base. Opposition fighters say the post was used to snoop in on the communications of opposition groups and perhaps even the nearby Israelis.

Syria has declared four chemical weapons facilities it had not previously disclosed, the United Nations secretary general has told the Security Council on Tuesday October 7, 2014. The news heightened concerns that the Syrian government has not been fully open about its chemical weapons program. Three of the facilities are for research and development and one is for production, and that no new chemical agents have been associated with the four sites. ---

On Sunday October 12, 2014, Syrian armed forces have regained full control of a strategic area near the capital, Damascus, as they continue to gain more ground in the fight against Takfiri militants. The Syrian army engaged in fierce fighting with the Takfiri terrorists operating in the Ein Tarma valley, located in the eastern al-Ghouta region, and managed to push them back from the area. During their mop-up operations in the valley, Syrian soldiers confiscated weapons and medical equipment in a hideout earlier used by the extremists. The Ein Tarma valley is strategically important to the Takfiri groups as it connects militant-held towns to safe zones near the capital.

On Wednesday October 15, 2014, the Syrian army has captured a village in the countryside of Aleppo. The Syrian army troops took control of Kfar Najad village as they fight to cut the last supply route for the foreign-backed militants in Aleppo. The army killed many terrorists in the operation. The recent gains enable the Syrian army to control the areas of the city that fell to the militants two years ago. On October 12, the Syrian army engaged in fierce fighting with the Takfiri terrorists operating in the Ein Tarma valley, located in the eastern al-Ghouta region, and managed to push them back from the area. Late last month, Syrian forces also regained control of Adra al-Omalia, located northeast of the capital, after killing large numbers of extremist terrorists. In recent months, the Syrian army has gradually been liberating a corridor of territory from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, recapturing towns and villages along the main north-south highway and in the mountainous Qalamoun region along the border with Lebanon.

Iraqi pilots who have joined Islamic State in Syria are training members of the group to fly in three captured fighter jets we were told on Friday October 17, 2014. It is the first time the militant group had taken to the air. The group has been flying the planes over the captured al-Jarrah military airport east of Aleppo.

Could ISIS fighters be training as warplane pilots capable of turning their weapons on coalition aircraft? That's the worrying prospect suggested by an unverified report from the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that ISIS has three warplanes in its possession in northern Syria. The Syrian opposition group also claims that former Iraqi military officers are training members of the Sunni extremist militant group to fly them.

On Saturday October 18, 2014, we were told that Isis fighters have executed a 17-year-old boy and left his body on display on a cross in Syria. Pictures being shared online show a banner attached to the teenager’s chest saying the boy has been crucified for taking photos of Isis military bases, as well as receiving “500 Turkish lira” for any footage taken.  The alleged execution comes after it emerged Isis militants had beheaded their own fighters for spying and espionage.

A U.S.-led coalition airstrike on a gas distribution facility in a stronghold of the Islamic State group set off a series of secondary explosions and killed at least eight people in eastern Syria we were told Saturday October 18, 2014. The airstrike targeted a distribution station in the town of Khasham in the oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour late Friday. The collective named four of those killed and said another four charred bodies were placed in a nearby mosque. The slain men were mostly fuel tanker drivers. Other airstrikes late Friday targeted oil wells in the Deir el-Zour province.
 
The US military has airdropped weapons and supplies to Kurdish fighters defending the Syrian city of Kobane against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, despite its ally Turkey’s declarations opposing such a move. The airdrops on Sunday October 19, 2014, were the first of their kind and followed weeks of US and coalition air strikes in and near Kobane, a city located near the Turkish border. The detail of the weapons included in the delivery is not known. Turkey rejects any arms transfers to the Kurdish fighters in Kobane despite the fact that the group has repeatedly fired mortar rounds near the Syrian-Turkish border. C-130 cargo planes made multiple drops of arms, ammunition and medical supplies provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq. The Central Command said that it had launched 11 air strikes overnight in and around Kobane.

ISIS has apparently taken a heavy hit over the past several days. The bodies of at least 70 fighters for the terror group have been dropped off over four days at a hospital in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad.

The Syrian military has stepped up air strikes on rebel areas dramatically, carrying out more than 200 in recent days, opposition activists say. The raids took place mostly in western areas between midnight on Sunday and noon on Tuesday October 21, 2014. There were many casualties, but no figure are available. The intensified strikes come as US-led forces continue to bomb Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria and Iraq. US and Arab jets have been attacking IS positions around the northern Syrian town of Kobane, where Kurdish fighters are under siege.

Still under siege despite gains against ISIS, fighters defending the Syrian city of Kobani are getting more help, in addition to U.S. airstrikes. U.S. military cargo planes dropped much-needed weapons, ammunition and medical gear in the dead of night Sunday October 19, 2014. And on Monday, Turkey's foreign minister announced his country would let Kurdish Peshmerga from Iraq use Turkish territory to enter Syria and reinforce fighters in Kobani. The help is desperately needed. Even though defenders control some 70% of the city, Kobani is cut off and ISIS forces continue to shell it with mortars from the east and south. Tens of thousands of civilians have fled to Turkey as a result of weeks of intense fighting between Syrian Kurdish forces and the Free Syrian Army for control of Kobani, a border town that's one of the last in the region to resist falling to ISIS. The city appeared to be close to falling before U.S. and allied airstrikes helped drive back ISIS forces. Still, the city remains cut off from the ground. The Turkish decision to allow Iraqi Peshmerga to enter Syria through its territory could provide an influx of much-needed ground forces to help. On Monday two car bombers detonated their explosives in the city's eastern industrial area. One killed two Syrian Kurdish fighters, and the other was shot at by Kurdish forces and detonated explosives before reaching intended targets.

On Thursday October 23, 2014, we were told that the Syrian Air Force has destroyed two fighter jets belonging to the Islamic State just days after observers claimed to have witnessed the terror group training fighters to use them. Monitoring groups last week claimed to have seen the fanatics flying three captured warplanes over short distances from an airbase in Aleppo. ---

Air strikes by U.S.-led forces have killed 521 Islamist fighters and 32 civilians during a month-long campaign in Syriawe were told on Thursday October 22, 2014. The vast majority of the deaths, 464, were militants from Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot which has grabbed large areas of Syria and neighboring Iraq. The attacks also killed 57 members of the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. Six of the civilians were children and five were women.

Turkey's president said on Friday )ctober 24, 2014, he will allow Syrian rebels to transit through his country to help the town's beleaguered defenders, but both the Kurds and the rebels denied any such plan was in the works, underscoring differences over strategy that are hindering efforts to roll back the extremists.

On Monday October 27, 2014, members of the al-Qaeda-linked group Nusra Front and other Syrian rebel factions have launched attacks on multiple army checkpoints and the governor's office in the Syrian city of Idlib. The ensuing clashes have left at least 35 soldiers and rebels dead. Rebels managed to temporarily take over the governorate building and kill a number of soldiers, before they withdrew. The Nusra Front and other groups shelled the city and simultaneously attacked army checkpoints there. Four Nusra Front members blew themselves up inside the city, targeting checkpoints there and causing casualties among the troops. The attackers took advantage of a power cut before dawn after to hit the checkpoints and also the governor's office. The troops repelled the attackers.

U.S. forces staged four air strikes on Islamic State militants in Syria on Tuesday October 28, 2014. In Syria, U.S. attack and fighter aircraft went after targets near the border city of Kobani, destroying a small Islamic State unit and four fighting positions.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria group militants have attacked an oil and gas field in Syria, killing at least 30 pro-regime gunmen and security guardswe were told on Wednesday October 29, 2014. ISIS managed to control parts of the field after Tuesday's assault at Shaer, in Homs province. An unknown number of militants were also killed. An earlier attack by ISIS fighters on Shaer in July left 270 people dead, including soldiers and pro-regime fighters. Most were reportedly executed at gunpoint after being taken prisoner. ISIS has targeted oil and gas facilities in Iraq and Syria as it seeks funds for its fight to seize territory for a self-proclaimed Islamic “caliphate.”

A Syrian army helicopter dropped two barrel bombs on a displaced persons camp in the northern province of Idlib on Wednesday October 29, 2014. Video footage appeared to show charred and dismembered bodies and corpses of women, children and burning tents while people scrambled to save the wounded.

Syria Monday November 3, 2014:

• Islamic State (Isis) fighters in Syria claim they have taken control of a gas field in the central province of Homs, the second it has seized in a week after battles with government forces.
• They also captured vehicles and weaponry: two tanks, seven four-wheel drive cars and several heavy machine guns.
• Isis fighters, who control up to a third of Syria as well as swaths of Iraq and have declared a ‘caliphate’ in the territories they control, seized the larger Sha’ar gas field on 30 October.
• Yesterday Isis tightened control over Jahar village and the Mahr gas pumping company, and nearly nine (positions) supported by heavy weaponry such as tanks, armoured vehicles, and heavy machine guns of various calibres.
• A US-led coalition has conducted air strikes against Islamic State since September but it is not coordinating with forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to combat the Islamist group.

 

On Monday November 3, 2014, we were told that Syria's regime has in recent weeks stepped up its use of deadly barrel bomb strikes, killing civilians and wreaking devastation. In less than a fortnight, warplanes have dropped at least 401 barrel bombs on rebel areas in eight provinces. At least 232 civilians have been killed in regime air strikes, including barrel bomb attacks, since October 20.

Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) beheaded eight Syrian rebels who had surrendered in a town on the border with Iraq last week we were told on Monday November 3, 2014. The men were executed and their bodies hung on makeshift crucifixes in Albu Kamal in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

Wednesday's attack in the town of Qaboun marked the most serious violence against Syrian minors since a twin suicide bombing killed at least 25 children in a government-controlled neighborhood in the central city of Homs in October. Three mortar shells struck the Haya School in Qaboun before noon. 13 children were killed, but the number likely would rise. A local activist collective, the Qaboun Media Office, put the death toll at 17 children. Conflicting casualty figures are common after such incidents.

At least 20 civilians, including women and children, have been killed after Syrian government helicopters dropped explosive-packed barrel bombs on a district in Aleppo city we were told on Thursday November 6, 2014. The attack hit the Muwasalat district of Shaar neighbourhood in the rebel-held city. Barrel bombs a particularly indiscriminate weapon that often kills civilians. Barrel bombs are typically constructed from large oil drums, gas cylinders or water tanks filled with high explosives and scrap metal. ---

Syrian government helicopters and warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes overnight on a northern town controlled by the Islamic State group, killing at least 21 people we were told on Sunday November 9, 2014. The air raids struck the town of al-Bab in Aleppo province late Saturday and lasted through early Sunday morning. There were 10 strikes in total, including seven so-called barrel bombs dropped from helicopters. At least 21 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.

A video has been circulated online to show members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group beheading several Syrian soldiers and a US aid worker. The footage, released on Sunday November 16, 2014, showed the beheading of at least 12 people whom ISIL said were pilots and officers in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's military.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or ISIL) released a graphic video on Sunday November 16, 2014, in which a black-clad militant claimed to have beheaded U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig, who was captured last year and changed his name to Abdul-Rahman while in captivity. The militant was standing over a severed head, but it was not immediately possible to confirm that it was Kassig, 26, who was pictured in the video. President Obama confirmed Kassig's death in a statement released Sunday aboard Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland offering prayers and condolences to Kassig's parents and family.

Syrian aircraft dropped crude explosives on a neighborhood in the northern Aleppo province on Tuesday November 18, 2014, killing at least 14 people, including 5 children and 3 women, and wounded another 20. The Qabr al-Inglizi neighborhood was struck by several so-called barrel bombs. Syrian aircraft have dropped hundreds of barrel bombs on rebel-held neighborhoods over the course of the civil war, killing thousands of civilians and causing widespread destruction. The crude tactic -which often involves hurling explosives-filled canisters from helicopters- has been widely criticized by human rights groups because the bombs cannot be precisely targeted.

Syrian rebels declared their control over the city of Nawa in the western countryside of Daraa —85 kilometers south of Damascus and only 10 kilometers from the border with Israel— on November 9, 2014, after battles began November 1 against the regime’s forces in the region. The fighting ended with the “liberation” of areas formerly controlled by the Syrian army.

An overnight American-led airstrike struck al-Qaida militants in northwestern Syria on Wednesday November 19, 2014. The strike hit a storage facility controlled by the Nusra Front near the town of Harem. It was one of five airstrikes conducted by the coalition in Syria since Monday. The strike targeted the so-called Khorasan group, which Washington says is a special cell within Nusra that is plotting attacks against Western interests. ---

Air strikes by U.S.-led forces in Syria have killed 910 people, including 52 civilians, since the start of the campaign against Islamic State and other fighters two months ago we were told Saturday November 22, 2014. The majority of the deaths, 785, were Islamic State fighters. Islamic State, a hard-line offshoot of al Qaeda, has seized land in Syria and neighboring Iraq, where it has also been targeted by U.S.-led strikes since July. Eight of the civilians killed were children and five were women.

The United States and its allies have conducted two dozen strikes against Islamic State militants since Friday, launching nine strikes in Syria and 15 strikes in Iraq. On Monday November 24, 2014, we were told that the strikes in Syria near the border town of Kobani and Raqqa took out three of the militant group's fighting positions, targeted several staging areas and hit one of its headquarter buildings. In Iraq, the strikes hit targets near Mosul, Asad, Baghdad, Ramadi, Tal Afar and Hit. The strikes destroyed checkpoints, various Islamic State fighter units, struck numerous vehicles and hit several buildings, Central Command said.

Seven people, including five members of one family, and three fighters have been killed in air strikes carried out by Syrian government jets on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-held city of Raqqa. The strikes on Thursday November 27, 2014, targeted the districts of al-Jisr al-Qadeem, al-Mashlab, al-Handada al-Madaniya and buildings of the National Hospital and the municipality, in addition to al-Daraya district in southern Raqqa. The 10 people were also killed during a government bombardment of a bridge on the Euphrates River, in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria. Army units also destroyed a 30 metre tunnel and an ISIL headquarters in the al-Jubaila neighbourhood. Also gatherings of ISIL, including vehicles, were also hit in some neighbourhoods of Deir Ezzor

Raqqa, an ISIL stronghold, had come under intense  Syrian government bombardment on Tuesday November 25, 2014, killing 135 and injuring dozens. The majority of the dead and injured were said to be civilians, including women and children. Raqqa is the only provincial capital to be taken from the government since the outbreak of a 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

On Friday November 28, 2014, we were told that Syrian rebels backed by the United States are making their biggest gains yet south of the capital Damascus, capturing a string of towns from government forces and aiming to carve out a swath of territory leading to the doorstep of President Bashar Assad’s seat of power. The gains are a contrast to northern Syria, where U.S.-backed rebels are collapsing in the face of an assault by Islamic militants. Notably, in the south, the rebels are working together with fighters from al-Qaida’s Syria branch, whose battle-hardened militants have helped them gain the momentum against government forces.

The Islamic State group launched an attack Saturday November 29, 2014, on the Syrian border town of Kobani from Turkey. The assault began when a suicide bomber driving an armored vehicle detonated his explosives on the border crossing between Kobani and Turkey. ---

The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) said it has taken control of a village near a key government airbase that it now plans to target in the province of Deir Az Zor. ISIL on Thursday December 4, 2014, claimed it was advancing towards the strategic military base, located just outside of the provinical capital, which has long been used by government forces to launch air raids on opposition fighters. Gaining control of the area surrounding the base is also important to access its rich oilfields. Another one of ISIL's main targets in the region is a large weapons depot. ISIL currently governs over most of Deir Az Zor, including half of the provincial capital, but the Syrian government has maintained control over some parts of it. Losing the strategic airbase could be a major blow to government forces in the province.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria seized part of the key regime air base at Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria in fierce fighting on Saturday December 6, 2014. ISIS mounted a dawn attack on Deir Ezzor military airport and entered several areas as fierce clashes unfolded between the jihadists and regime forces there.

Earlier on Saturday December 6, 2014, we were told that 19 members of the regime army were killed when an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up in a booby- trapped vehicle overnight near the airbase of Deir Ezzor. The suicide bombing was followed by ISIS shelling of regime-held positions inside the airbase.   The clashes resulted in the death of 7 militants and seizing 2 tanks, an armored vehicle, an artillery and machineguns. ISIS fighters control most of Deir Ezzor province, but half of its capital remains in government hands.

Syria has called for UN sanctions against Israel over alleged air strikes on Syrian soil, including one on Damascus' main international airport. There was no threat of retaliation, but the Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Monday December 8, 2014, it had asked Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, and the Security Council to impose sanctions on Israel, describing Sunday's alleged attack as "a heinous crime against Syria's sovereignty". Israel has said it will not allow "sophisticated weapons" to fall into the hands of its enemies. It has refused to confirm or deny the reports of the attack. The Syrian army said air strikes by "the Israeli enemy" targeted two areas near Damascus, including Damascus international airport, which is used by both civilian and military aircraft. The attack caused damage but that nobody was hurt.

Three Lebanese soldiers have been captured by gunmen near the border with Syria days after the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, the Nusra Front, executed a Lebanese policeman it was holding captive. The three soldiers were reportedly taken on Monday morning December 8, 2014, in the town of Brital in the Bekaa Valley, which borders Syria, after the gunmen infiltrated an army position.

Alleged Israeli air strikes near Damascus killed at least two Hezbollah members, including a senior official we were told on Monday December 9, 2014. Eight Israeli fighter jets attacked two sites, one located near the Damascus airport and the other at another airport in Dimas, Al-Akhbar. It is believed that one of the warehouses attacked had anti-aircraft missiles and another site contained drones belonging to Hezbollah. Israel deemed the weapons, if passed to Hezbollah, would have upsetted the current balance of forces. ---

The militant Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) beheaded a man in northern Syria after accusing him of blasphemy we were told on Tuesday December 9, 2014. The man was killed in a public square in the town of Sulouk on Monday in front of a crowd that included children. We were told that he man admitted to blasphemy before being killed in the countryside of Raqqa province, which the hardline group controls.

The United States launched 20 airstrikes against Islamic State militants in recent days we were told on Wednesday December 10, 2014. Since Monday, U.S. forces conducted seven strikes against the militant group in Syria and led 13 strikes in Iraq with its partner nations. The strikes, centered in the Syrian border town of Kobani as well as near Sinjar, Qaim, Ramadi, Mosul and Samarra in Iraq, hit numerous Islamic State fighting positions, buildings, vehicles and fighting units.

The Syrian army has regained control of Deir ez-Zor Airport after succeeding in thwarting an attack by the Islamic State (IS) on the military airport a few days ago. Although clashes are still ongoing in the areas surrounding the airport, they have lessened to a large degree.

Islamic State's police force in western Syria decapitated four men after accusing them of blasphemy we were told on Saturday December 13, 2014. The men were beheaded in the countryside east of the city of Homs by the militant group's "Islamic Police.

Kurdish forces killed at least 16 Islamic State group fighters in an attack on Saturday December 13, 2014, in northeast Syria near the border with Turkey. The assault targeted IS positions south of the town of Ras al-Ain in Hasakeh province.

Syria's army seized  an area north of Aleppo on Sunday  December 14, 2014,  and killed insurgents as fierce battles raged over the strategic territory. Syria's second city is at the heart of clashes between pro-government forces and a range of insurgents, including al Qaeda's Syria wing, Islamist brigades and Western-backed rebels. Insurgent-held districts have been flattened by Syrian air force bombardments, including barrel bombs -crude explosive devices packed with shrapnel and nails. Pro-government forces captured an area east of al-Malah farms outside Aleppo and is now aiming to secure parts in the west and cut off insurgent supply lines into the city.  34 fighters from Islamist groups including al Qaeda's Nusra Front were killed when Syria's army attacked their positions with backup from local and foreign militias. It added that there were also battles south and east of the city. Pro-government forces have captured all of the al-Malah area as well as areas south and west of Handarat town in the countryside and a "huge number" of enemy fighters have been killed.

Around 100 Syrian soldiers and 80 Islamist fighters were killed during a two-day battle in which insurgents took the Wadi al-Deif military base we were told on Tuesday December 16, 2014. Islamist insurgents including al Qaeda's Syria wing, the Nusra Front, on Monday took the base next to the country's main north-south highway linking Aleppo with Damascus. Around 120 soldiers were also captured in the assault. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had previously managed to repel numerous attacks on Wadi al-Deif, which has been surrounded by insurgents for two years.

More than 230 bodies of people believed killed by Islamic State militants have been found in a mass grave in Syria's eastern Deir al-Zor province we were told on Wednesday December 17, 2014. The bodies were thought to be members of the al-Sheitaat tribe which had battled Islamic State militants. Their deaths would bring the number of Sheitaat members said to have been killed by the ultra-hardline Islamist group to over 900. Sheitaat tribespeople had discovered the mass grave as they returned to their homes. ---

On Saturday December 20, 2014, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant group has publicly executed a Syrian it accused of planting tracking devices for deadly government air strikes. The accused was paraded before a crowd before an ISIL fighter pulls his head back and holds a knife to his neck. ISIL claimed that that more than 190 people had been killed in the air strikes that the man had abetted.

Kurdish fighters advanced on the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq and Syria on Saturday December 20, 2014, pushing into the contested, refugee-packed Sinjar mountains and gaining ground in the embattled Syrian border town of Kobani after heavy clashes. In Syria Kurdish fighters advanced in six neighborhoods and have besieged the IS-held cultural center east of Kobani. Kurdish fighters captured the Yarmouk school, southeast of Kobani where eight bodies of IS fighters were found. The main Syrian Kurdish force known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, killed 10 IS fighters.

At least 30 members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group were killed in clashes with Kurdish troops in northeastern Syria on Thursday December 25, 2014. The fighting pitted ISIS militants against members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the village of Qassiab in Hasakeh province. The YPG regained control of the village, two days after it was seized by the militants. The Kurds also lost three fighters in the clashes. Elsewhere, Syrian air force raids killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens in ISIS-held Al-Bab and Qbasin in Aleppo province. Nearly four years of civil war ravaging the country have killed an estimated 200,000 people and also displaced half of the population.

Syrian planes and helicopters have dropped barrel bombs on Islamic State-held areas in the north-east, killing some 40 people. The barrel-bombs, crudely made drums of explosives, were dropped during Thursday December 25, 2014 and overnight, targeting al-Bab and Qabaseen near Aleppo. Some 200,000 people have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad erupted in 2011. Another 3.2 million people have fled Syria and 7.6 million have been displaced inside the country. On Friday, the Combined Joint Task Force said that the US-led coalition had carried out another 31 air strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria. Sixteen of Friday's strikes were in Syria, with 13 of those targeting areas around Kobane on the Turkey border. The 15 air strikes in Iraq were in seven different areas.

Syria said on Saturday December 27, 2014, it was willing to participate in "preliminary consultations" in Moscow aimed at restarting talks next year to end its civil war but the Western-backed opposition dismissed the initiative. But there are many obstacles to peace. The most powerful insurgent group, the hardline Islamic State, controls a third of Syria but has not been part of any initiative to end the fighting. Other rebel factions are not unified. The opposition is also suspicious of Russian-led plans as Moscow has long backed President Bashar al-Assad with weapons.

At least eight people, including four soldiers, have lost their lives in a car bomb explosion near a gas plant in Syria's central province of Homs we were told on Monday December 29, 2014. At least 15 people were injured in the attack on a checkpoint guarding the Firqlos gas plant in Homs. The two attackers, both Moroccan, were killed.

A mass grave, which contains the bodies of scores of Syrian people killed by the ISIL Takfiri militants, has been found in the Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor. The corpses of 70 citizens were discovered by the families of the victims in al-Bahra village in the eastern province on Monday December 29, 2014. Most of the bodies belonged to the members of the Shaitat Sunni tribe that picked up arms against the ISIL militants in the eastern province in the summer.

Islamic State group jihadists have murdered nearly 2,000 people in Syria -half of them from an important Sunni tribe- since announcing their "caliphate" in June we were told on Sunday December 28, 2014. ---

On Thursday January 1, 2015, we were told that more than 76,000 people were killed in fighting in Syria in 2014 making it the deadliest year in the four-year-old civil war. The 2014 death toll of 76,021 is slightly up from 2013's toll of 73,000. More than 200,000 have been killed since the conflict began in 2011. Civilians accounted for 17,790 of the deaths, while about 17,000 were fighters from militant groups, including the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front. Another 15,000 fighters killed in fighting came from moderate rebel groups and other Islamist factions. Syrian soldiers and militias loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad accounted for 22,627 of the deaths.

A Saudi cleric with the Islamic state group has been killed in the northern Syrian town of Kobani that has been witnessing intense clashes for months between jihadis and Kurdish gunmen we were told on Friday January 2, 2015. Othman al-Nazeh al-Assiri was killed Thursday while battling Kurdish fighters in Kobani. He was killed in an airstrike on Kobani by the U.S.-led coalition.

At least 19 people were killed overnight by Syrian rebel fire on government-controlled parts of the northern city of Aleppo we were told on Friday January 2, 2015. The dead included at least five children, three of whom were killed with their mother when a rocket hit the car they were in. 32 people were wounded in Thursday night’s violence in the western part of the city.

A top figure in Islamic State's self-declared police force, which has carried out beheadings, was himself found decapitated in eastern Syria. The man was an Egyptian national and was known as the deputy "emir" of the al-Hesbah force in a Syrian province we were told on Tuesday January 6, 2015. His body, which showed signs of torture, was found near a power plant in al-Mayadeen city in the Deir-al-Zor province. It is not known whether Islamic State killed him or whether it was local people or other fighters. ---

Syria's al-Qaida branch on Thursday January 8, 2015, launched an attack on two predominantly Shiite towns in northern Syria. The Nusra Front and several Syrian rebel groups fighting President Bashar Assad's government have besieged and tried to take the towns of Nubul and Zahra since spring 2013. There are fears that if the towns, strategically important because they lie just off a highway linking the city of Aleppo with the Turkish border, fall into militant hands, there could be reprisals against its Shiite residents. The predominantly Sunni al-Qaida sees minority Shiites as apostates who are worthy of death. Underscoring the sectarian hatreds, Nusra militants claimed to have destroyed Shiite mosques while shelling the towns, which have a combined population of about 40,000 people.

Al Qaeda's Syria wing, Nusra Front, shot dead a woman in the northwest of the country after accusing her of adultery we were told on Wednesday January 14, 2015; it showed such execution-style killings were not confined to the militant Islamic State group.

Two Italian female aid workers abducted in Syria last year have been released. Greta Ramelli and Vanessa Marzullo are free, they will return to Italy soon. Ms Ramelli, 20 and Ms Marzullo, 21, have been held since being captured by gunmen in Aleppo province while working for aid group Horryaty, which specialises in health and clean water projects. They were last heard of on December 31, when a video allegedly recorded on December 17 was posted online showing them dressed in black robes and headscarves. --

On Sunday January 18, 2015, an Israeli helicopter strike in Syria killed a commander from Lebanon's Hezbollah and the son of the group's late military leader Imad Moughniyah. The strike hit a convoy carrying Jihad Moughniyah and other Hezbollah members including commander Abu Issa, in the Syrian province of Quneitra, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killing five Hezbollah members in all.

An airstrike on a crowded market in a Syrian village controlled by the Islamic State group killed dozens of people on Tuesday January 20, 2015. The attack occurred in the village of Khansaa, in far eastern Syria near the Iraq border. Khansaa is held by the Islamic State militant group. Somer activists said dozens were killed and wounded.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has been wounded in an airstrike in Iraq’s northwestern town of al-Qa’im along the border with Syria we were told on Tuesday January 20, 2015. The ISIS leader is “sometimes present in Mosul, but most of the time he’s in Syria.

On Friday January 23, 2015 more than 30 people have been killed in air strikes by Syrian government warplanes near the capital Damascus. Six children were among 32 people who died in several raids on the suburb of Hamouriyeh. The strikes hit a busy public square in a rebel-held district of Hamouriyeh in eastern Ghouta.

A video released Saturday January 24, 2015, announced the execution of one of the two Japanese hostages being held by the militant group Islamic State in Syria. Japanese officials condemned the apparent execution of Haruna Yukawa, a 42-year-old unemployed widower who went to Syria in July and was captured the next month. The video, which was released on YouTube before being deleted, showed an image of Goto, a veteran war correspondent, wearing an orange t-shirt over an audio recording of Goto apparently speaking in English, saying that Yukawa had been executed and that ISIS demanded a prisoner exchange by Jordanian authorities for Goto to be spared.

Jubilant Kurdish fighters ousted Islamic State militants from the key Syrian border town of Kobani on Monday January 26, 2015, after a four-month battle, a significant victory for both the Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition. The Kurds raised their flag on a hill that once flew the Islamic State group’s black banner. On Kobani’s war-ravaged streets, gunmen fired in the air in celebration, male and female fighters embraced, and troops danced in their baggy uniforms. For the U.S. and its partners, Kobani became a strategic prize, especially after they increased the number of airstrikes against IS fighters there in October.

At least two rockets from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday January 27, 2015, and Israel returned fire. This happened nine days after an Israeli air strike in Syria killed an Iranian general and several Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas. ---

At least two rockets fired from Syria struck the Israeli-controlled portion of the Golan Heights on Tuesday January 27, 2015, and Israel responded with artillery toward the suspected launching sites in Syria. No casualties were reported on the Israeli side, where sirens warned of the incoming rockets, which fell on open ground. The military ordered the evacuation and closure of the ski slopes of the Mount Hermon resort and the police briefly closed some roads in the area. The rocket attack came nine days after a deadly airstrike on a convoy in the Syrian portion of the Golan Heights that was attributed to Israel. The airstrike killed five fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah organization, including the son of the group’s slain military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, as well as an Iranian general.

A newly distributed ISIS release appears to show the decapitated body of captive Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. The video, 67 seconds long, was released Saturday January 31, 2015. Japan said it will continue to provide humanitarian aid to countries affected by the bloody fight against ISIS.

A bomb placed on a bus ferrying Lebanese pilgrims around Shiite holy sites in Damascus exploded Sunday February 1, 2015, killing at least seven people. The attack wounded at least another 20 people as it shattered the vehicle near the Damascus citadel and the centuries-old Hamidiyeh bazaar. The pilgrims were travelling from the shrine of Sayidna Ruqqaya in central Damascus to the southern shrine of Sayidna Zeinab when the bomb detonated. Another bomb was found near the bus and was dismantled by security forces. The Nusra Front, claimed responsibility for the blast, and accused the bus passengers of being Hezbollah fighters. The Nusra Front also claimed it was a suicide bombing, while Syrian state media and al-Manar both said the blast was caused by a bomb placed on the bus.

The Islamic State group has acknowledged for the first time that its fighters have been defeated in the Syrian town of Kobani and vowed to attack the town again. In a video released by the pro-IS Aamaq News Agency late Friday January 30, 2015, two fighters said the airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition were the main reason why IS fighters were forced to withdraw from Kobani. One fighter vowed to defeat the main Kurdish militia in Syria, the People's Protection Units known as the YPG. On Monday February 2, 2015, activists and Kurdish officials said the town was almost cleared of IS fighters, who once held nearly half of Kobani. A video from inside the town showed widespread destruction, streets littered with debris and abandoned neighborhoods. The video also showed a new cemetery with fresh graves. The town's famous Freedom Square, with a statue of an eagle spreading its wings, stood intact in the middle of the destruction.

Syria Februay 2, 2015:

• Syrian warplanes struck several rebel-held areas across the country killing over 40 people.
• Air raids on the village of Jassem in the southern Daraa province killed at least 14 people - including four children and two women- and wounded 25.
• Other strikes hit villages in the northern province of Idlib, in the northern city of Aleppo, and in the town of Douma near Damascus. In some raids government forces used crude bombs hurled out of helicopters.
• A pro-government group known as the National Resistance Movement shot dead a man after accusing him of spying for Israel. The dead man was a Syrian army defector from the central province of Hama who was recently wounded in a battle against government forces and later detained as he was returning to his hometown. The killing occurred on Saturday in Daraa province.
• Syria's conflict has killed more than 220,000 people since the start of the uprising in March 2011.

 

A man has reportedly been blindfolded and thrown off a tower block in Syria for ‘being gay’ before being stoned to death after surviving the fall. Images have emerged appearing to show ISIS militants hurling the man off the seven-storey building in the town of Tal Abyad in Raqqa. The man, who was supposedly being punished for having a ‘homosexual affair’, apparently survived the fall, but was stoned to death by a waiting crowd at the foot of the tower block.

Kurdish militia backed by U.S.-led air strikes are making rapid advances against Islamic State forces in rural areas around Kobani after driving the group from the Syrian border town last week we were told on Monday February 2, 2015. Islamic State forces are collapsing around Kobani and Islamic State fighters were putting up little resistance in the face of the Kurdish advance and may be pushed back even further.

Islamic State has killed 50 people this year in Syria who it accused of insulting God, spying or being enemy fighters, including a Jordanian pilot it burned alive, we were told on Wednesday February 4, 2015. The ultra hardline group killed them mainly through beheadings and shootings. An Islamic State video showing the burning to death of pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh, released on Tuesday, sent shockwaves through Jordan which is part of the U.S.-led alliance against the group. Islamic State also published footage last month purporting to show the killing of two Japanese captives. Other groups in Syria have killed captives. Al Qaeda's Syria wing Nusra Front killed six while around 20 others were put to death by other insurgents or pro-government groups. Four of those killed were women. Islamic State controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. The group had killed 1,432 captives since declaring a caliphate in June.

Syrian government forces and rebel forces traded salvos of rockets and mortar shells Thursday February 5, 2015, around Damascus, killing at least 21 people in tit-for-tat violence. Anti-government forces struck first, after a rebel commander vowed to hit government-held areas of the Syrian capital to avenge the past week's strikes by government warplanes on opposition-held suburbs. That commander, Zahran Alloush of the Army of Islam rebel group, said that his forces would keep firing mortars and rockets "until the capital is cleansed." At least five people were killed in the rebels' barrage. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll higher at nine, and said rebels fired at least 60 mortar shells toward the city. Later, government batteries rained shells and rockets on to rebel-held districts outside the city, including the suburb of Douma, a power base for the Army of Islam. Government forces have targeted that area heavily over the past week, including the use of barrel-sized bombs that are dumped from helicopters. At least 16 people were killed in Thursday's government counterattack.

The death toll after nearly four years of civil war in Syria has risen to 210,060, nearly half of them civilians, but the real figure is probably much higher we were told on Saturday February 7, 2015. 10,664 children and 6,783 women were among the dead. 35,827 Syrian rebels killed and 45,385 from Assad’s army. But the true toll on both sides was likely to be much higher –perhaps by more than 85,000. ---

The young American hostage who Islamic State says was killed in a Jordanian air strike was condemned to death by the militant group last year. Islamic State seized aid worker Kayla Mueller in 2013 in northern Syria and initially gave her a "life sentence" in retaliation for the jailing in Texas of a Pakistani woman. The militant group said on Friday February 6, 2015, that Mueller was killed when Jordanian fighter jets bombed a building where she was being held. Jordan expressed doubt about the claim and U.S. authorities said they could not confirm it.

The death toll after nearly four years of civil war in Syria has risen to 210,060, nearly half of them civilians, but the real figure is probably much higher we were told on Saturday Februar 7, 2015. 10,664 children and 6,783 women were among the dead.

On Tuesday February 10, 2015 the US has confirmed the death of aid worker Kayla Mueller, the last American hostage known to be held by Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria. Paying tribute to her, President Obama said "she represents what is best about America". Last week, Islamic State said she had died in a Jordanian air strike, without providing proof. Ms Mueller, 26, was abducted while working in Aleppo, Syria in 2013.

Foreign fighters are streaming into Syria and Iraq in unprecedented numbers to join the Islamic State or other extremist groups, including at least 3,400 from Western nations among 20,000 from around the world. Intelligence agencies now believe that as many as 150 Americans have tried and some have succeeded in reaching in the Syrian war zone. Some of those Americans were arrested en route, some died in the area and a small number are still fighting with extremists. U.S. officials fear that some of the foreign fighters, who come from 90 countries, will return undetected to their homes in Europe or the U.S. to mount terrorist attacks. At least one of the men responsible for the attack on a satirical magazine in Paris had spent time with Islamic extremists in Yemen. Meanwhile, the White House circulated a proposal Tuesday February 10, 2015, that would have Congress authorize the U.S. military to fight Islamic State terrorists over the next three years. A formal request for legislation is expected on Wednesday.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said third parties including Iraq were conveying information to Damascus about the U.S.-led campaign of air strikes against the Islamic State militant group in Syria. In an interview on Tuesday, Assad said there was no direct cooperation with the United States, whose air force has been bombing Islamic State in Syria since September as part of a strategy aimed at rolling back the group. Asked if there was indirect cooperation, Assad said: "That's true, through third parties, more than one party, Iraq and other countries, sometimes they convey a message, a general message, but there is nothing tactical."

U.S.-led air strikes killed at least 20 Islamic State fighters in northeastern Syria near the border with Iraq we were told on Friday February 13, 2015. 19 explosions were heard during the air strikes in al-Shadadi in the northeastern province of Hasaka on Thursday. One civilian was also killed in the air strikes. Jordanian war planes participating in the alliance carried out bombing raids against Islamic State targets on Thursday.

A bomb detonated by remote control rocked an area near a Turkish police checkpoint close to the Syrian border on Friday February 13, 2015, wounding three people. The explosives were placed under a car and detonated near the town of Suruc, some 15 km north of the Syrian town of Kobani, where Kurdish fighters forced out Islamic State militants after a four-month siege. There were no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.

Intense clashes in southern Syria have killed scores of pro-government and insurgent fighters in the past week we were told on Sunday February 15, 2015, forecasting even fiercer violence as the weather clears. Syria's army and allied combatants from Lebanon's Hezbollah launched a large-scale offensive in the region last week against insurgent groups including al Qaeda's Syria wing Nusra Front and non-jihadist rebels. More than 50 rebels have been killed in the fighting. 43 members of the Syrian army and allied groups had also died, including 12 officers. Around 5,000 pro-government troops were taking part in the offensive which aims to take a triangle of rebel-held land from rural areas southwest of Damascus to Deraa city to Quneitra. The offensive aims to shield Damascus, the capital a short drive to the north. The insurgents had made significant gains in the south in recent months, taking several army bases.

On Monday February 16, 2015, a rocket attack on a government-held neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo has killed at least nine civilians, including three children. The rockets slammed into the Suryan neighborhood. The number of fatalities could rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition. ---

Syrian government forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters captured several villages –probably 6- near Aleppo in heavy fighting Tuesday February 17, 2015, that left more than 100 dead on both sides, bringing them closer to their goal of besieging rebel-held neighborhoods in the country's largest city. The troops were able to cut off the highway linking Aleppo with the Turkish border. At least 65 opposition fighters and 50 soldiers and pro-government gunmen were killed in Tuesday's clashes. Later on the  rebels had regrouped and managed to retake at least one village they lost earlier in the day.

The United States and Turkey have reached a tentative agreement to train and equip moderate Syrian opposition fighters and expect to sign the pact soon we were told on Tuesday February 17, 2015. The U.S. military is planning to send more than 400 troops, including special operations forces, to train Syrian moderates at sites outside Syria as part of the fight against the Islamic State. The U.S. plans to train about 5,000 Syrian fighters a year for three years under the plan. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as Turkey, have publicly offered to host training sites. Turkey hopes the training will also bolster the weakened and divided Syrian opposition in their struggle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The United Nations envoy to Syria said Tuesday February 17, 2015, that he has received a commitment from the Syrian government to suspend airstrikes and artillery shelling on the city of Aleppo for six weeks to allow a proposed U.N. plan to "freeze" hostilities in the country's largest city to be tested. There was no indication of when the suspension of airstrikes would begin, but the envoy said he will return to Syria "as soon as possible" to assess whether the government's commitment is possible and to announce a start date.

Battles in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo have killed at least 70 pro-government fighters and more than 80 insurgents after the army launched an offensive there we were told on Wednesday February 17, 2015. The army backed by allied militia had captured areas north of Aleppo on Tuesday in what the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said was an attempt to encircle the northern city and cut off insurgent supply lines.

Thw English police are appealing for help to find three schoolgirls who have gone missing and are thought to have travelled to Turkey with the intention of crossing the border into Syria. They are Shamima Begum, 15, who could be using the name Acklina Begum, and 16-year-old Kadiza Sultana. The third girl, 15, is not being named at the request of her family. Police fear the girls, all pupils at the Bethnal Green Academy, in east London, might be heading to join terror group Isil - Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as Islamic State. They travelled from their homes on Tuesday, February 17 and boarded a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul.

Syrian rebels on Friday February 20, 2015, seized back territory from regime forces north of Aleppo. Rebel forces have taken back the strategic Mallah Farms area outside the city, as well as several villages seized by government troops in an offensive that began Tuesday. The advances were a setback for the regime, which had hoped to block the highway leading to the Turkish border from the rebel-held east of Aleppo. The offensive was also intended to break a rebel siege on two Shiite government-held towns that have been blockaded for more than 18 months. But the regime had failed to achieve either goal in the bloody offensive. All but one of the villages taken by government troops in the initial fighting have been recaptured by rebels and fighters from Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front. The fighting killed 129 regime forces, including five members of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group, as well as 116 rebel and jihadist forces, among them a military chief from Al-Nusra. In Aleppo city, meanwhile, a civilian was killed and 11 others wounded in rebel fire on the government-held Khaldiyeh and Hamdaniyeh districts.

A monitoring group said on Saturday February 21, 2015, Syrian government forces and allied militants killed 48 fighters and family members during last week's offensive against opposition-held areas in Aleppo province, but the army denied it. The dead were shot mainly in their homes in the village of Raitan on Tuesday shortly after the village fell to the army and loyalist forces including Iranian fighters and members of Lebanese Hezbollah. Five women and 10 children were among those killed. ---

Syria  Saturday February 21, 2015:

• A suicide bomber killed four people in a hospital in an attack that took Syria's civil war to the ruling Assad clan's hometown for the first time.
• The explosion that hit the town of Qardaha was caused by a suicide bomber driving a car along with another person; the passenger, likely an accomplice, also died in the blast. Two women and two soldiers were killed in the attack.
• Human Rights reported that troops had executed 48 people earlier this week in a northern village, among them 10 children.
• By Friday all but one of the villages taken by government forces had been recaptured by the rebels, who include fighters from Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
• The heavy fighting claimed the lives of 129 loyalists and 116 rebels, including an Al-Nusra commander, according to an Observatory toll.
• Two women and two children were among eight people killed when a barrel bomb hit a building in an opposition-held area of Aleppo city, once Syria's commercial capital.
• Six people were also reported killed in rebel shelling of regime-held areas of the city.
• The air force also killed at least 10 people in rebel areas east of Damascus.

 

Islamic State (IS) has abducted dozens of Assyrian Christians from villages in north-eastern Syria. At least 90 men, women and children were seized in a series of dawn raids near the town of Tal Tamr. IS fighters swept through a string of villages along the south bank of the Khabur river before dawn on Monday February 23, 2015. The militants have reportedly taken the male captives to nearby Abdul Aziz mountain, while the women are being held in the village of Tal Shamran.

The British Metropolitan police believe that three London schoolgirls they were trying to prevent from joining Islamic State have entered Syria. Scotland Yard launched an international search last week to find the teenagers, who had been lured by jihadi propaganda and flown to Turkey, which is a common entry point to war-torn Syria. The Met said on Tuesday February 24, 2015, it believed that Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, had crossed from Turkey into Syria.

Islamic State militants have abducted at least 150 people including women and the elderly from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria they had raided on Tuesday February 24, 2015. Earlier we were told that 90 were abducted when the militants carried out dawn raids on rural villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority west of Hasaka, a city mainly held by the Kurds. Hundreds of others remain trapped in villages surrounded by Islamic State fighters in violence that has displaced more than 3,000 people.

Kurdish forces dealt a blow to Islamic State by capturing an important town on Friday February 27, 2015, in the latest stage of a powerful offensive in northeast Syria. Islamic State has been forced into retreat across parts of the strategic region, a land bridge between territory it controls in Syria and Iraq, even as its fighters have mounted new raids this week on Assyrian Christian villages, abducting more than 200 people. The capture of Tel Hamis was announced by the Kurdish YPG militia. The flag is flying over Tel Hamis and the troops are combing the city for terrorists and mines. Daesh continue to have a considerable number of territories and forces. The Kurdish forces killed at least 175 members and commanders of the ultra-hardline Islamist militants in an offensive which began last weekend.

Backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, Kurdish fighters fought their way Friday February 27, 2015, into a northeastern Syrian town that was a key stronghold of Islamic State militants, only days after the group abducted dozens of Christians in the volatile region.

The Syrian troops on Friday February 27, 2015, recaptured a key town in the southern province of Daraa. The Syrian government forces wrested back control over the village of Habariyeh, killing many fighters of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. The Syrian troops have also moved closer to strategic hilltop of Tal al-Hara, where a Syrian military observatory was stormed by the rebels late last year. The Syrian troops on Friday eliminated the “last remaining gatherings” of the rebels in the town of Tal Majda in the countryside of the southern province of Swaida near the Jordanian borders. Controlling Tal Majda will enable the Syrian army to expose the rebels’ supply lines via Jordan.

One of the last moderate Syrian rebel groups trusted by Washington is waving the white flag—and picking up the Islamists’ black one. The Syrian rebel group Harakat al-Hazm, one of the White House’s most trusted militias fighting President Bashar al-Assad, collapsed Sunday Masrch 1, 2015, with activists posting a statement online from frontline commanders saying they are disbanding their units and folding them into brigades aligned with a larger Islamist insurgent alliance distrusted by Washington.

The Islamic State group released at least 19 Christians on Sunday March 1, 2015, who were among the more than 220 people the militants took captive in northeastern Syria last week. 16 men and three women arrived safely Sunday at the Church of the Virgin Mary in the city of Hassakeh. All of them are from the village of Tal Ghoran; they had traveled by bus from the Islamic State-held town of Shaddadeh south of Hassakeh.

About 180 Americans have traveled to Syria to join Islamist militants and around 40 of them have returned to the United States we were told on Monday March 2, 2015. Not all those who went to Syria, where Islamic State militants and other factions are fighting each other and the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, had engaged in the Islamist campaign. Some might have been aid workers.

A former Royal Marine has become the first Briton to be killed while fighting alongside Kurdish forces against Islamic State in Syria we were told Tuesday March 3, 2015. He was known as Konstandinos Erik Scurfield, from Barnsley. The "British volunteer martyr" died in an area west of the city of Qamishli on Monday.

On Tuesday March 3, 2015, Malaysian authorities have identified two Malaysians in a video by the Islamic State of a beheading that is believed to have taken place in Syria. Mohd Faris Anuar and Muhamad Wanndy Muhammad Jedi, aged 20 and 25 respectively, were identified as the men involved in the beheading of a Syrian man in a video posted to Facebook. ---

Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate and other radical Islamic factions launched an assault Wednesday March 4, 2015, on a government intelligence building in the northern city of Aleppo, blowing up part of it before trying to storm the facility amid heavy fighting. A massive blast hit the Air Force Intelligence branch in the Zahra district on the western edge of the city. The assault began with the rebels detonating explosives placed in a tunnel dug under the security building. Part of the building was destroyed. 20 government troops and 14 militants were killed in the attack, which was led by the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and other radical Islamic armed groups.

Al Qaeda's Syrian branch military chief was killed in an apparent army air strike, adding to confusion over the future path of the most powerful group opposing both President Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State. Abu Humam al-Shami, who trained in Afghanistan alongside plotters of the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States and whose Nusra Front controls wide parts of northwestern Syria, was killed by an explosion at a meeting of commanders on Thursday March 5, 2015, in Idlib province. The Sunni Muslim militant group, loyal to the successors of Osama bin Laden, is one of the two most powerful anti-Assad forces in Syria, having split from Islamic State which rejects al Qaeda as insufficiently radical.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday March 6, 2015, approved a United States-drafted resolution that condemns the use of toxic chemicals such as chlorine in Syria, while threatening militarily enforced action in the case of further violations. All members of the 15-seat council approved the resolution except for Venezuela, which abstained. The OPCW did not assign blame, but some council members such as Britain, France and the United States have blamed Syria's government for the attacks, pointing out that the fact-finding reports linked chlorine attacks to helicopters and that only Syria's government has helicopters.

On Saturday March 7, 2015, we were told that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) destruction of the ancient city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is part of a systematic campaign to destroy archaeological sites it says promote apostasy. Some of the world's most precious cultural treasures, including ancient sites in the cradle of civilization, are in areas controlled by the group and at the mercy of extremists bent on wiping out all non-Islamic culture and history. The rampage, targeting priceless cultural artifacts often spanning thousands of years, has sparked global outrage and accusations of war crimes. The militants are also believed to be selling ancient artifacts on the black market in order to finance their bloody campaign across the region. The region under ISIS control in Iraq has nearly 1,800 of Iraq's 12,000 registered archaeological sites. Among the most important sites under the militants' control are four ancient cities -Ninevah, Kalhu, Dur Sharrukin and Ashur- which were at different times the capital of the mighty Assyrian Empire.

The Syrian army has captured a strategic town in the western province of Lattakia from Takfiri terrorists. On Friday March 6, 2015, the Syrian soldiers managed to take full control of the mountainous town of Doreen and Tal Doreen (Doreen Hill) in northwestern Lattakia after carrying out airstrikes on the terrorists’ positions. The operations to liberate Doreen started on Wednesday and the Syrian troops successfully cleared the area from the terrorists of Al-Nusra Front, killing two dozens of the Takfiri militants.

On Sunday March 8, 2015, Syrian Christians have put out a desperate appeal for help as ISIS launches new attacks against them along the Khabour River in northeast Syria. Members of the community who have taken up arms to defend themselves are without ammunition, and 17 Syriac Military Council fighters are surrounded by ISIS in the town of Tel Maghasneh. This wave of attacks by ISIS on the Christian towns along the Khabour River began with a pre-dawn raid twelve days ago, on February 23rd. Over the next several days, ISIS abducted between 262 and 373 Syriac Christians. On March 1st, 19 of those hostages were released, and on March 3rd, another 2 were released, including 6-year old Mariana Mirza. While the hostages reported that they had not been mistreated, they were told that they must convert to Islam, pay the jizya [a tax on Christians], or they would be killed.

A U.S.-led coalition air strike in Syria hit an oil refinery run by the Islamic State militant group near the border with Turkey on Sunday March 8, 2015, killing 30 people. The dead were refinery workers and Islamic State militants. The targeted refinery was just northeast of the town of Tel Abyad near the Turkish border.

U.S.-led coalition warplanes targeted the local headquarters of al-Qaida-linked militants in northwestern Syria near the Turkish border on Sunday March 8, 2015, killing at least nine people. The airstrikes hit a compound belonging to al-Qaida's Syria branch, known as the Nusra Front, close to the village of Atmeh in Idlib province. At least nine Nusra Front militants were killed in the strikes. Atmeh, located some 2 kilometers from the frontier with Turkey, is home to a camp where thousands of Syrians displaced by the country's civil war have found refuge.

Also Sunday March 8, 2015, Syrian government airstrikes on a rebel-held suburb of Damascus killed at least 10 people. The air raids on the Arbeen district just east of the Syrian capital also wounded dozens possibly 50. Syria's conflict has killed more than 220,000 people since it began in March 2011.

A German woman fighting with Kurdish militiamen was killed battling the Islamic State group in Syria we were told on Monday Mach 9, 2015, the third foreign national known to be killed fighting with Kurdish forces against the extremists. Ivana Hoffmann, 19, died Saturday while fighting alongside the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, known as the YPG, near the Syrian village of Tel Tamr. Elsewhere in Syria, airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition hit an oil refinery held by the Islamic State group outside the town of Tel Abyad. The strikes killed about 30 people, including Islamic State militants and refinery workers. ---

The Islamic State jihadist group launched a major offensive Wednesday March 11, 2015, to try to capture a strategic town, Ras al-Ain on the Syrian-Turkish border, leaving dozens dead in clashes. They already took over a village nearby. At least 12 fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which control Ras al-Ain and the surrounding villages, were killed in the IS onslaught.

Syrian government forces and allied militia have repelled an insurgent attack on a village in western Syria of strategic importance to both sides, with dozens of combatants killed we were told on Thursday March 12, 2015. The army had repelled the attack on Wednesday on Doreen. The army took Doreen a week ago from groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Doreen is important because of its high elevation overlooking surrounding areas. It lies in the coastal area. The insurgents entered Doreen on Wednesday night but were driven back to its outskirts. Between 25 and 40 insurgents were killed and a small number of Syrian soldiers suffered light wounds.

On Monday March 16, 2015, US Secretary of State John Kerry says he wants to "re-ignite" negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad to end the conflict in Syria. He said the international community was upping pressure on Syria's regime to hold new peace talks, saying "we have to negotiate in the end" with Mr Assad. More than 215,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the conflict.

A Chechen mother has taken her two young children to Syria to join Islamic State, in the first known case in the Netherlands of kidnapping by one parent to join the militant group. The divorced father, a Dutchman, and Dutch authorities were unable to stop the 33-year-old woman, who was not identified, leaving the country. They probably travelled across Europe with false passports with the help of foreign recruiters. The mother, originally from Russia’s southern province of Chechnya, and her two Dutch children, aged seven and eight, had been living in the southern town of Maastricht, but have not been seen since 29 October last year. They are now believed to be in Raqqa, an Isis stronghold in north-east Syria. Prosecutors suspect the woman was helped by others to travel because she managed to dodge an international arrest warrant. Dozens of families with children have left the Netherlands over the past two years to join Isis but this is the first known case of one parent leaving without the other’s consent. About a dozen minors have also left the Netherlands on their own to join the Islamic extremist group. 180 Dutch jihadis are known to have left the Netherlands for Syria. About 35 returned and 21 were killed in the civil war, which has left more than 200,000 dead and sent millions more fleeing.

Syrian forces killed civilians in airstrikes on the northern town of Raqqa last November in attacks that violated human rights law, according to a new report Tuesday March 17, 2015, from Amnesty International. Amnesty said those attacks amount to either direct attacks against civilians, indiscriminate bombings or disproportionate strikes, all of which are barred under international human rights law. ---

The United States lost one of its Predator drone aircraft over northwest Syria on Tuesday March 17, 2015. Syrian state media reported its air defenses brought down the spy plane in the government-controlled Latakia province. If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces took down the U.S. aircraft it would raise the stakes in the U.S.-led bombing campaign against Islamic State militants that began in Syria in late September.

The Predator drone that went down over Syria on Tuesday appears to have been shot down, most likely by Syrian air defense systems near Latakia in northwest Syria we were told on Wednesday March 18, 2015. The evidence so far points to a Syrian surface-to-air missile that brought down the MQ1 Predator. If confirmed, it would be the first American aircraft to go down over Syria since the U.S. expanded its aerial campaign against the Islamic State extremist group in the country in September.

Syria's military took control of a village north of partly insurgent-held Aleppo on Wednesday March 18, 2015, giving it increased control of an area which armed groups have used as a supply route into the city. The army, backed by militia, took Handarat after 10 days of fierce fighting with al Qaeda's Syrian wing and other Islamist brigades.

The death toll from a twin bombing targeting Kurds celebrating their new year in the northeastern city of Hassakeh has risen to 49. The Friday evening (March 20, 2015) blasts also wounded 177 others, some of whom remain in critical condition. The first blast was caused by a bomb planted in the area while the second was a car driven by a suicide bomber.

A group of foreign medical students, including seven Britons, an American and a Canadian, are thought to have travelled to Syria to work in hospitals controlled by Islamic State we were told on Sunday March 22, 2015. Ten of the group, aged between 19-25, flew from the Sudanese capital Khartoum to Istanbul on March 12. An 11th member of the group -which also includes two Sudanese- flew to Istanbul from Toronto before they crossed together illegally into Syria. Britain's security services estimate that some 600 Britons have gone to Syria or Iraq to join militant groups, including the man known as "Jihadi John", who has appeared in several Islamic State beheading videos.

A Syrian military helicopter crashed in northwestern Syria on Sunday March 22, 2015, and at least four of its crew were captured by rebels. One of the crew was apparently executed on the spot and an injured pilot taken by rebels from the wreckage. At least four of the six crew were taken hostage by the al Qaeda offshoot, the Nusra Front.

Forty-five people, including five children, were killed in attacks on Syrian Kurds as they celebrated their new year we were told Saturday March 21, 2015. The attacks occurred Friday. Two explosions struck as members of Syria's Kurdish minority took part in festivities on the eve of Nowruz, the Kurdish new year, in the northeastern city of Hasakeh. Pople were lighting the candles at night, and there were a lot children around. The explosions were a few hundred metres apart from each other, with at least one caused by a suicide bomber in a vehicle.

On Tuesday March 24, 2015, we were told that the Nusra Front, Syria's al-Qaida affiliate, is consolidating power in territory stretching from the Turkish border to central and southern Syria, crushing moderate opponents and forcibly converting minorities using tactics akin to its ultraconservative rival, the Islamic State group. The Nusra Front quietly has become one of the key players in the four-year civil war, compromising other rebel groups the West may try to work with while increasingly enforcing its own brutal version of Islamic law. Its scope of influence now abuts the Golan Heights bordering Israel, and its membership largely composed of Syrian nationals refuse any negotiations with the government of embattled President Bashar Assad, further complicating the brutal conflict. The Nusra Front will most likely outlast ISIS in Syria, and will represent a severe and existential threat to the aspirations of the Syrian people in terms of a pluralistic, democratic society.

Syrian rebels fired mortar rounds into government-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo during rush hour Monday March 23, 2015, killing 13 people and wounding dozens, as many as 30.

Insurgents seized a historic town in southern Syria from the government on Wednesday March 25, 2015, part of a rebel counter-attack to stop Damascus reclaiming the border zone near Israel and Jordan. Heavy fighting with armed groups on Tuesday night in and around Bosra al-Sham, whose ancient city is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. An alliance of mainstream rebels who are backed by Western and Arab foes of President Bashar al-Assad said they had taken Bosra and declared the start of a new attack against government forces in another area of Deraa province to the northwest. Bosra's historic sites include a citadel built around a second century Roman amphitheatre. The area was the capital of the Roman province of Arabia.

Islamic State militants have killed dozens of pro-Assad regime fighters in a two-pronged offensive in western Syria that threatens the ancestral homes of the Ismailis, a minority Muslim sect. The assault, which began over the weekend in the rural areas east of Homs and Hama, is one of the rare occasions when forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad and Isis have battled each other on a large scale. 70 pro-government soldiers had died so far in the attack on checkpoints and positions held by the regime. Isis also attacked the Tadmor military airport near Homs, leading to fierce clashes with the regime, which responded on Tuesday with air strikes near Homs and Hama.

Syrian government airstrikes and shelling in the country's south killed at least 18 people on Thursday March 26, 2015, including three children. The attacks come amid heightened clashes in southern Syria between government forces and rebels who seized the nearby ancient town of Busra Sham the previous day. Thursday's shelling struck an area known as Daraa al-Balad in the city of Daraa. Busra Sham, a town classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its historic citadel and well-preserved Roman theater, had been in the hands of President Bashar Assad's troops throughout the four-year-old conflict. It was considered to be a stronghold of pro-government forces in Daraa province.

The fighting in southern Syria coincided with rebel gains in the north near the city of Idlib, where a consortium of rebels launched an offensive earlier this week. Heavy fighting raged around Idlib in northwestern Syria on Thursday March 26, 2015. The opposition groups have advanced through the outskirts of Idlib since launching their campaign Tuesday. Rebels have long controlled most of the surrounding towns and countryside, but Assad's forces have maintained their hold on the city. The rebels have seized at least 17 checkpoints and military outposts from pro-Assad troops. At least 11 government fighters and 17 rebels have been killed over the past 24 hours. ---

Islamic fighters led by al-Qaida's branch in Syria seized almost full control of the northwestern city of Idlib on Saturday March 28, 2015, taking over major roundabouts and government buildings in a powerful blow to President Bashar Assad whose forces rapidly collapsed after four days of heavy fighting. Idlib, a major urban center with a population of around 165,000 people, is the second provincial capital to fall into opposition hands after Raqqa, now a stronghold of the Islamic State group. Its capture by the Nusra Front underscores the growing power of extremist groups in Syria who now control about half the country. Opposition fighters including Nusra have controlled the countryside and towns across Idlib province since 2012, but Assad's forces have managed to maintain their grip on Idlib city, near the border with Turkey, throughout the conflict. On Saturday, Islamic fighters jubilantly swept in, taking over key buildings and tearing down posters of Assad. "Allahu Akbar!" — God is great they shouted.

A new video released by the Islamic State group on Sunday March 29, 2015, shows its fighters cutting off the heads of eight men said to be Shiite Muslims. The men were beheaded in the central Syrian province of Hama. In the video, the men, wearing orange uniforms with their hands tied behind their backs, were led forward in a field by teenage boys. They were then handed over to a group of IS fighters. A boy wearing a black uniform hands out knives to the fighters, who then behead the hostages.

Islamic State fighters on Tuesday March 31, 2015 killed over 40 people, mostly civilians but including women and children, in an attack on a central Syrian village. The army repelled the ISIS attack and pushed them back.

On Wednesday April 1, 2015, ISIS militants have stormed the besieged Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp in the Syrian capital of Damascus and seized control of most of the compound. Fighters from ISIS launched an assault on Yarmouk and they took over the majority of the camp. During the four-year-long civil war, the refugee camp’s population has shrunk from approximately 150,000 to only 18,000 as thousands fled the civil war to neighbouring countries or other areas of Syria.

It was a bruising week for Syria's Bashar Assad. The rapid collapse of his forces on two fronts in the north and south brought the opposition its biggest victories in two years. After losing the capital of Idlib province in northwestern Syria this week, government forces on Thursday April 2, 2015, lost major ground in the south, where rebels captured the only functioning border crossing with Jordan, a crucial gateway for Syria's government. The successive losses represent a shift in Syria's four-year civil war, suggesting Assad's forces were overstretched and pointing to a new unity and assertiveness by opposition forces, which had long been plagued by divisions. ---

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group have re-entered and taken control of most of a southern neighbourhood in the Syrian capital, Damascus. Members of the ISIL stormed the district known as the Yarmouk camp on Wednesday but were expelled on Thursday before re-entering the camp on Friday April 3, 2015. ISIL was in control of half of the district. ISIL members were fighting a Palestinian faction called Aknaf Bait al-Maqdis. Bait al-Maqdis had been surrounded by ISIL and confined to a few streets. Yarmouk, set up as a camp for Palestinian refugees in 1957, has with time developed into a residential neighbourhood inhabited by both Palestinians and Syrians.

On Monday Islamist insurgents have released 300 Kurdish men in the country's north who were taken captive on Sunday April 5, 2015. However around 200 more had been held, taken at several checkpoints over the past two days. They were kidnapped by al Qaeda's official Syrian wing, the Nusra Front, as they were traveling from the town of Afrin, which is under Kurdish control, to the cities of Aleppo and the capital Damascus. They left women and children but they kidnapped 300 men and young people. They captured them in Tuqad village, 20 km west of Aleppo and then they moved them to al-Dana town in Idlib province.

As Assyrian Christians were celebrating Easter Sunday, militants from the Islamic State blew up the 80-year-old church of the Virgin Mary in Tal Nasri village in the western countryside of Hasaka province, in northeastern Syria. The ISIS jihadists booby-trapped the church with explosives before detonating it. The Church of the Virgin Mary was originally built in 1934 and is one of three main churches in the Assyrian village of Tal Nasri, which is located to the south of Tal Tamr town that was earlier overrun by ISIS. The church has been leveled. Christians are a small minority in Syria, comprising just 10% of Syria’s mostly Muslim Sunni population. ---

Two car bombs set off by Islamic State insurgents killed at least 31 people in northern Syria including a senior rival fighter from al Qaeda's Nusra Front we were told on Wednesday April 8, 2015. The bombs were detonated on Tuesday in the town of Marea north of Aleppo city, targeting the headquarters of rival insurgents and another area where they were operating. Among the dead were a "local emir" from Nusra Front, and two leaders of insurgent Islamist factions in the area. Nusra Front said that one of its leaders was killed in the Islamic State car bomb attack.

On Thursday April 9, 2015, the Islamic State group has released chilling images purporting to show a man stoned to death in western Syria for being gay. It shows a blindfolded man who was accused of homosexuality in a field in Homs with his hands bound behind his back, as a crowd of supposed ISIS militants throw rocks at him from behind.

Talks in Russia between the Syrian government and the opposition ended in acrimony Friday April 10, 2015, with the parties blaming each other for the breakdown. The Russian mediator of the weeklong meeting, Vitaly Naumkin, said the parties agreed on a set of principles for a political settlement, including the condemnation of foreign support for terrorist groups, a call for preserving state institutions and lifting economic sanctions. But some opposition representatives later reversed their support for the initially approved document because of a failure to agree on moves to improve mutual trust, such as prisoners' release.

Syrian rebels shelled a government-held neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo early Saturday April 11, 2015, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens. Hours after the shelling, helicopter gunships struck a market in Aleppo's rebel-held neighborhood of Maadi in apparent retaliation.

At least two Lebanese men have lost their lives when a car bomb explosion ripped through a residential area in Syria’s conflict-ridden central province of Homs. Foreign-sponsored militants set off an explosives-laden car in the village of Huwayk on Saturday April 11, 2015, killing two civilians. The force of the explosion damaged the facade of a number of buildings in the area. The development came a day after a ten-year-old child lost his life and nine others sustained injuries when a car bomb went off on a road in the al-Arman neighborhood of the provincial capital, Homs. At least five civilians were killed and several others injured in a car bomb attack near Nahr al-Bared village on April 8.

Syrian militants, including members of al-Qaida's local branch, attacked a government intelligence center in the northern city of Aleppo, damaging much of the building by blowing up a tunnel under it we were told on Tuesday April 14, 2015. The attack killed more than government troops and 13 militants.

On Thursday April 16, 2015, we were told that the man in charge of the troubled U.S.-led program to train and equip a new Syrian rebel army is leaving his job, yet another sign of the deep troubles with the Barack Obama administration’s plan to fight the Islamic State in Syria. Major General Michael Nagata, who has been leading the Syrian training program since last year, will leave his post as commander of Special Operations Command Central in May or June, having completed two years in the job. ---

Syria Tuesday April 21, 2015:

• Fierce clashes between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters in the country's south killed dozens on both sides over the past two days as rebel factions regained much of the ground they lost earlier.
• The fighting, which began Monday in the southern province of Daraa, killed 37 rebels as well as 22 government troops.
• The Syrian air force struck several areas in Daraa province.
• Opposition fighters and members of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front have made major gains in southern Syria in recent weeks, capturing large swaths of territory and a border crossing point with Jordan.
• On Monday, the Syrian army said government troops captured several villages in Daraa and cut a major supply line to Jordan for opposition fighters.
• A counteroffensive by opposition fighters has clawed back most of the territory lost the previous day. The rebels captured several soldiers and pro-government gunmen.
• Syria's civil war, now in its fifth year, has killed more than 220,000 people.

 

Several hard-line Syrian rebel groups pushed a new offensive against government forces in northwestern Syria on Thursday April 23, 2015, less than a month after seizing control of the provincial capital there. The conservative Islamic factions, including the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, are coordinating a multi-pronged campaign whose main target appears to be the town of Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province. Opposition fighters are also attacking government checkpoints in a sprawling agricultural plain south of the town as well as nearby military facilities. The operation keeps the pressure on beleaguered government forces in the area just weeks after the rebels captured Idlib city, the provincial capital. Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad maintain control of Jisr al-Shughour as well as towns and military facilities in the province, but their hold looks increasingly shaky.

Hard-line Syrian rebel groups entered the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province Saturday April 25, 2015, in northwestern Syria, sending government troops fleeing after intense clashes that have seen them take nearly all of a crucial province. If they can hold the town of Jisr al-Shughour likely they have cut government supply lines by land leading to the Mediterranean coast and a refuge of embattled President Bashar Assad. The town is one of the last bastions of the Assad's government in the area.

Sweden says that two of its nationals, held hostage in Syria, have been released and are reunited with their families we were told on Saturday April 25, 2015.

Rustom Ghazali, Syria’s last chief of intelligence in Lebanon who was a suspect in the killing of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, has died in Damascus. Ghazali had died on Friday April 24, 2015. The cause and circumstances of his death were not immediately clear. He was one of Syria’s key operatives in Lebanon when Damascus was the country’s main power broker and deeply involved in internal political affairs after the end of civil war in 1990.

A coalition of Islamist rebels seized an army base in northwestern Syria at dawn on Monday April 27, 2015, after a suicide bomber from al Qaeda's Nusra Front drove a truck packed with explosives into the compound and blew it up. The capture brought the coalition closer to seizing most of Idlib province and moving toward Latakia, the ancestral home of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ---

Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies advanced in the southern city of Aden on Wednesday April 29, 2015,, capturing parts of an upscale neighborhood and seizing men they accuse of fighting them from their homes. The Houthis, aided by military forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, had moved up the seaside road in the neighborhood of Khormaksar, taking an area stretching from the Russian Consulate to the Crater business district.

The hardline Ahrar al-Sham group in Syria and other insurgents seized a crossing in the southwest frontier area near Israel on Thursday April 30, 2015, from a small group of rival Islamist fighters. If confirmed, the capture would represent a further advance for Ahrar al-Sham, one of the main jihadist groups in Syria alongside Islamic State and al Qaeda's Syria wing Nusra Front.

Suspected chlorine gas attacks by Syrian government helicopters injured some 40 people and killed a child in the country's northwest we were told Saturday May 2, 2015. The attacks overnight Friday injured at least 40 civilians, including children. A child was killed.

An air strike by U.S.-led forces on the northern Syrian province of Aleppo on Friday May 1, 2015, killed at least 17 civilians including two children, and wounded dozens more. It appears that the air raid had mistakenly struck civilians in a village on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River in Aleppo instead of militant targets. There were entire families among the dead and wounded. The U.S.-led strikes has killed at least 66 civilians in Syria since they started on September 23. The campaign had killed nearly 2,000 Islamic State fighters.

Mortar bombs launched from Syria wounded two United Nations peacekeepers in the Golan Heights on Monday May 4, 2015.

A small group of insurgents, including a suicide bomber, carried out an attack in Damascus on Monday May 4, 2015, targeting a Syrian military logistics and supply facility. The bombing took place in the Rokn al-Deen neighborhood; the militants were killed. The bombing appeared to target a general who is responsible for army logistics and supplies. The general and two of his guards were wounded in the blast, and one guard was killed.

Fierce battles between Syrian regime forces and the Islamic State jihadist group in eastern Syria have left 34 fighters dead in 24 hours we were told Friday May 8, 2015. 19 pro-government forces and 15 IS extremists had been killed since clashes began late Wednesday in the city of Deir Ezzor and around its nearby military airport. The head of aerial defence at the airport -one of the few areas left in regime hands in Deir Ezzor province- was killed in the fighting. Four government soldiers were beheaded by IS Thursday as the jihadists seized a key checkpoint in the city near the air base. An IS suicide bomber detonated himself by the checkpoint, which IS then seized. Seizing the checkpoint gets them closer to the military airport.

International inspectors have found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at a military research site in Syria that had not been declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog we were told on Friday May 8, 2015. Samples taken by experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition and Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in December and January tested positive for chemical precursors needed to make the toxic agents.

Suicide bombers attacked a hospital in northwestern Syria on Sunday morning May 10, 2015, where around 250 soldiers and civilians have been trapped for two weeks. Rebels, including members of a branch of Al-Qaeda, stormed the complex in the town of Jisr al-Shughur, having already captured the surrounding area a fortnight ago. ---

Syrian government helicopters dropped a barrel bomb Tuesday May 12, 2015, in a neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo, hitting a busy bus depot in the Jisr al-Haj neighborhood that killed at least 15 people; 30 were wounded, including women and children.

U.S. Special Operations forces killed a key ISIS commander during a daring raid in eastern Syria overnight Friday to Saturday May 16, 2015. The ISIS commander, Abu Sayyaf, was killed in a heavy firefight after he resisted capture in the raid at al-Omar. Sayyaf's wife, an Iraqi named Umm Sayyaf, was caught and is being held in Iraq. The ground operation was led by the Army's Delta Force. There were about two dozen members of Delta Force involved. They were part of a multi-branch force of about 100.

Islamic State militants have been pushed back from the ancient Syrian site of Palmyra. Militants seized part of the town of Tadmur on Saturday May 16, 2015, which is located on a strategic east-west route next to Palmyra's World Heritage-listed ruins. At least 295 people had been killed since IS began advancing on Palmyra on Wednesday, mainly militants and government troops, though 57 civilians were also killed, including dozens executed by IS. Militants had pulled out of the northern parts of Tadmur, but still held a village north of Palmyra.

The number of militants reported killed in a rare US ground raid in Syria on Saturday May 16, 2015, rose to 32. Among those killed were IS oil chief Abu Sayyaf, the deputy IS defence minister, and an IS communications official. 12 militants were killed at the scene of the raid in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. Abu Sayyaf had been killed in a firefight during the special forces raid, and his wife was captured. ---

Rebels including Al-Qaeda's local affiliate seized the Syrian regime's largest remaining military base in northwestern Idlib province on Tuesday May 19, 2015. The loss of Al-Mastumah base leaves only a few positions in regime hands in Idlib, a region that borders Turkey and neighbours the government stronghold of Latakia province on the Mediterranean coast. All regime forces have withdrawn from Al-Mastumah leaving it completely in the hands of opposition fighters. The capture of the base followed a huge blast inside and heavy clashes, though the cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.

Islamic State militants are reported to have seized a third of the Syrian town next to Palmyra, one of the Middle East's greatest archaeological sites. IS had overrun much of the north of Tadmur after fierce clashes with government forces. Hundreds of statues had been moved to safety, but large monuments could not be moved. IS militants have ransacked and demolished several ancient sites that pre-date Islam in Iraq, including Hatra and Nimrud, leading to fears that it might attempt to damage or destroy Palmyra.

On Wednesday May 20, 2015, Islamic State militants in Syria have taken near complete control of the ancient city of Palmyra. Government troops have almost entirely withdrawn from the city. There are fears that the militants will destroy ruins considered among the most important in the Middle East and named by Unesco as a World Heritage site.

Fears mounted over the fate of one of the Mideast's most prominent archaeological sites after Islamic State militants overran the historic Syrian town of Palmyra, seizing control Thursday May 21, 2015, of its temples, tombs and colonnades within hours. The militants overran the famed archaeological site early Thursday, just hours after seizing the nearby town in central Syria. They also captured Palmyra's airport and the notorious Tadmur prison. Hundreds of Palmyra residents fled the town of 65,000. An oasis set in the Syrian desert, Palmyra is a strategic crossroads linking the capital Damascus and cities to the east and the west. Its capture raised alarm over some of the world's most important ancient ruins, whose fate remained unknown.

Two children were likely killed during an American airstrike targeting al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria last year, and two other adults were wounded, according to an investigation released Thursday May 21, 2015, by the U.S. military. The strikes were designed to destroy Khorasan Group extremists, bomb-making experts, meeting places and facilities where explosives were made and stored. The investigation found that the killed and wounded civilians probably lived near one of the targeted locations.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants took control of the Syrian side of the the Al Waleed border crossing which connects the country with Iraq. Earlier on Thursday May 21, 2015, a fire erupted at the crossing after Iraqi troops blocked access from their side after Syrian regime forces had withdrew from Al Waleed.

Islamic State militants have seized the last Syrian government-controlled border crossing between Syria and Iraq on Friday May 22, 2015. Government forces withdrew from al-Tanf -known as al-Waleed in Iraq- crossing as IS advanced. The loss of al-Tanf to IS follows the group's takeover of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra on Thursday. The US says that fighting the militants will be a "difficult challenge". Islamic State now controls "more than 95,000 sq km (36,679 sq miles)" of Syria, which is 50% of the country's entire territory. The militants dominate the provinces of Deir al-Zour and Raqqa and have a strong presence in Hasakeh, Aleppo, Homs and Hama.

Islamic State group militants hunted down Syrian government troops and loyalists in the newly captured town of Palmyra, shooting or beheading them in public as a warning, and imposing their strict interpretation of Islam we were told Friday May 22, 2015. The purge, which relied mostly on informants, was aimed at solidifying the extremists' grip on the strategic town that was overrun Wednesday by IS fighters. It also was part of a campaign to win the support of President Bashar Assad's opponents, who have suffered from a government crackdown in the town and surrounding province in the last four years of Syria's civil war. The strategy included promises to fix the electricity and water grids.

Islamic State fighters have killed at least 400 people, including women and children, in Palmyra since capturing the ancient Syrian city four days ago on Sunday May 24, 2015. The Sunni Muslim militants seized the city of 50,000 people, site of some of the world's most extensive and best preserved ancient Roman ruins, on Wednesday, days after also capturing the city of Ramadi in neighboring Iraq. The two near-simultaneous victories were Islamic State's biggest successes since a U.S.-led coalition began an air war against its fighters last year, and have forced an examination of whether the strategy is working.

Weakened by years of war, Syria's government appears ready –on Sunday May 25, 2015- for the country's de facto partition, defending strategically important areas and leaving much of the country to rebels and jihadists. The strategy was in evidence last week with the army's retreat from the ancient central city of Palmyra after an advance by the Islamic State group.

Hezbollah fighters have captured two hilltops from al Qaeda's Syria wing Nusra Front in areas close to the Lebanese border and have killed dozens of enemy combatants we were told on Monday May 25, 2015. The Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group had captured the hilltops of Quba'a and Naqar in Syria's southwestern Quinetra province, which lies in sensitive territory close to Lebanon and Israel. ---

On Wednesday May 27, 2015, the leader of al-Qaeda's Syria branch said the group will not target the country's Alawite minority despite their support for Bashar al-Assad's government. This group is aiming to capture Damascus to fasten the fall of Assad.

On Wednesday May 27, 2015, we were told that the Islamic State group militants have shot dead a group of detainees in the Roman theater in ancient ruins of Palmyra. Islamic State gunmen killed at least 15 men after accusing them of having fought with President Bashar Assad's troops. The militants gathered people in the theater to watch. The theater is part of the 2,000-year-old Roman-era ruins in Palmyra.

A Syrian Christian fighter has beheaded an Islamic State group (IS) militant to avenge people "executed" by the jihadists in northeastern Syria we were told on Friday May 29, 2015. The incident took place on Thursday in Hasakeh province, where IS holds large areas of the countryside.

At least 72 people have been killed in Syria's northern Aleppo province by barrel bombs dropped from government helicopters. 60 people died in the strike on al-Bab -a town currently held by Islamic State (IS) militants. 12 were killed in a rebel-held quarter of the city of Aleppo.

Meanwhile, Islamic State is reported to have blown up Tadmur prison near the ancient city of Palmyra. The prison was for decades a symbol of state oppression in Syria. It had held thousands of political prisoners, who faced years of torture and disease in its cells. Many were executed.

The Syrian army has pulled back from the northwestern city of Ariha after a coalition of insurgent groups seized the last city in Idlib province in northwestern Syria near the Turkish border that was still held by the government. A coalition of rebel groups called Fatah Army has taken over the city. The army admitted its forces had pulled back from the city, the latest string of defeats for the Syrian army and a big blow to the morale of President Bashar Al-Assad’s government forces who have vowed to defeat the Sunni militants who seek to overthrow his rule.
 
A fire at a medical clinic in northeast Syria has killed 27 people, mostly children. Around 30 people were also injured when a fuel tank exploded at the Maysalun clinic in Qamishli, a Kurdish city on the Turkish border. The clinic was packed with children waiting to get vaccinated against polio. ---

On Thursday June 4, 2015, we were told that the Iranian government has sent 15,000 fighters to Syria to help the Syrian government. The force, made up of Iranians, Iraqis and Afghanis, arrived in the Damascus region and in the province of Latakia. The fighters hope to reverse recent setbacks Syrian government troops have experienced on the battlefield by the end of June. The fighters are expected to spearhead an effort to seize areas of Idlib province, which has been taken over by a rebel jihadi-coalition.

A rebel alliance including Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Al Nusra seized more territory in northwestern Syria in the early hours of Saturday June 6, 2015, strengthening its position on the borders of two key largely regime-controlled provinces. The rebel alliance had made a series of sweeping gains in the province of Idlib.

A couple and their five children were killed overnight in Syria's northern Aleppo province we were told on Monday June 8, 2015. The family was killed in a coalition strike on the village of Daly Hassan, in the northeast of Aleppo province. Their deaths "bring the number of Syrian civilians killed in coalition air strikes since September 23 to 148, including 48 children and 32 women.

At least 49 civilians, including six children, have been killed in air strikes by government forces in north-western Syria. Missiles hit a public square in the rebel-held village of al-Janudiya. Many people had gathered there to shop.

Hezbollah gunmen repelled an attack Tuesday June 9, 2015, by Islamic State group fighters in an area on the Lebanon-Syria border as a major battle between the two groups looms in the rugged mountainous region. The IS attack targeted several Hezbollah positions outside the northeastern Lebanese border village of Ras Baalbek. The enduing battle left several IS fighters dead or wounded and three vehicles, including a bulldozer, destroyed. We were not told if there were casualties among Hezbollah fighters.

Syrian rebels seized a sprawling military base in a lightning assault Tuesday June 9, 2015, the latest in a series of defeats for President Bashar Assad's increasingly embattled forces. The Western-backed rebel alliance known as the Southern Front led the dawn assault on the army base in the southern Daraa province, known as Brigade 52. It is the biggest Syrian military base in the province and lies near a major highway running from Jordan to the capital Damascus. Rebels also captured the nearby village of Mleiha al-Sharqiyeh. ---

Syrian rebels seized most of a military airport in regime-controlled Sweida province Thursday June 11, 2015, and shot down a warplane nearby. They have control of parts of the airport, which is used by the regime for aircraft that bomb Daraa and Damascus provinces. But Syrian state television denied the claims.

Al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria killed at least 20 Druze villagers in the country's north and Western-backed rebels entered a predominantly Druze enclave in the south we were told on Thursday June 11, 2015.The Druze villagers were killed Wednesday in Qalb Lawzeh village in the Jabal al-Summaq region, where Nusra Front fighters have dug up historic graves and destroyed shrines in recent months. The militants have also forced hundreds of members of the sect, whom they consider to be heretics, to covert to Sunni Islam.

Syrian army troops regained full control of an airbase in southern Sweida province on Friday June 12, 2015, a day after rebels overran large parts of it. Rebels from the Southern Front alliance withdrew from the al-Thalaa base under heavy government fire. There were casualties on both sides in the fighting.

Two bombs have exploded in government-held neighbourhoods in the central city of Homs, wounding more than two dozen people. The first attack Sunday June 14, 2015, was a car bomb outside a school that wounded 27 passers-by. Sunday's second blast was a bomb placed inside a taxi that wounded five students from Homs' Baath University on the busy Tijara Street.

Dozens of civilians were wounded when two bombs exploded on Sunday June 14, 2015, in Homs, which lies on a crucial supply route between the capital Damascus and the Mediterranean coast. At least 27 people were wounded when a car bomb was detonated in a busy commercial street in the central Karm al Loz neighbourhood. Another bomb later exploded on the southern edge of the city, wounding ten civilians. Residents said the two districts targeted were inhabited mainly by Assad's Alawite minority sect in the city of around one million inhabitants.

More than 30 people have been killed in the most lethal rebel bombardment of the city of Aleppo since Syria's conflict started four years ago we were told on Tuesday June 16, 2015.

Kurdish fighters seized control of a key border town from ISIL on Tuesday June 16, 2015, cutting off a major supply line in the biggest setback yet for the militants in Syria. The capture of Tal Abyad –used by ISIL as a gateway from Turkey to the city of Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital– is “the biggest setback to ISIL since it announced its caliphate one year ago. Tal Abyad was a key entry point for foreign fighters and supplies into ISIL-held territory in Syria and for exports of black market oil from extremist-held fields in eastern Syria. Kurdish YPG forces and their Syrian rebel allies launched a two-pronged attack on the frontier town on June 11, backed by air strikes by the US-led coalition fighting ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The anti-ISIL forces encircled the town from the south-west and south-east before capturing the border crossing just north of it on Monday. By early Tuesday, these forces had seized full control of Tal Abyad.

The Syrian army said on Wednesday June 17, 2015, it had repulsed a major rebel offensive to capture remaining positions held by the Syrian military in Quneitra province, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Quneitra sits in a sensitive region around 70 kilometres southwest of the capital Damascus and has been the scene of frequent fighting between insurgent groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad and the army backed by allied militia. The army had beat back an insurgent assault to take over several hilltops and the government-controlled villages of Tel Shaar and Tel Bazaq, north of the deserted provincial capital of Quneitra.

Three Bradford sisters and their nine children split into two groups to cross the border into Syria. The smuggler in charge of some of IS's border operations said the first group went early on Wednesday June 17, 2015, and the second on Thursday. An unidentified woman friend said that one of three sisters believed to have taken their children to Syria didn't want her daughters to grow up in England because it was becoming "more like America". ---

Islamic State (IS) militants have planted landmines and explosives around the ancient Palmyra ruins. It was unclear whether IS had laid the bombs to destroy the ruins or make the site secure from Syrian government forces.

On Sunday June 21, 2015, a suicide attack hit the headquarters of the Asayish forces in the city of Qamishli, northeastern Syria. The attack was carried out by a suicider wearing an explosive belt, who blew himself up in the Kurdish security centre. The attack killed a Kurdish security member and injured several others, as well as causing a huge damage in properties in the vicinity of the explosion area. Also on Sunday, the Media Centre of Asayish reported the death of one of its members, Mohammed Alwan, when an IS-linked gunman opened fire against an Asayish patrol in the town of Chel Agha (Jawadiya) in the province of Hasakah.

Kurdish-led forces said on Monday June 22, 2015, that they had captured a military base from Islamic State in Syria's Raqqa province, advancing deeper into territory held by the group and showing new momentum after they seized a border crossing from the jihadists last week. The Kurds, aided by U.S.-led air strikes and smaller Syrian rebel groups, pushed on Monday to within 7 km of Ain Issa, a town 50 km north of Islamic State's de facto capital Raqqa city.

ISIS fighters have destroyed two ancient Muslim shrines in the oasis city of Palmyra we were told Wednesday June 24, 2015, the latest act of cultural vandalism by the Sunni extremists.

Islamic State fighters have attacked the Syrian city of Kobane, months after being driven out in a symbolic battle that made international headlines. They detonated car bombs and launched an assault. At least 50 civilians have been killed, including 20 in a nearby village. But in another attack on Thursday June 25, 2015, it seized parts of the key north-eastern city of Hassakeh. The apparent two-pronged IS offensive came as Kurdish fighters from the Popular Protection Units (YPG) cut a major supply line for IS near Raqqa. Raqqa is the de facto capital of the caliphate whose creation IS announced a year ago after it captured large swathes of northern and western Iraq.

Syria Thursday June 25, 2015:

• The militants of the Islamic State carried out two new offensives in northern Syria entering a provincial capital and detonating large bombs in the border town of Kobani, where intensive airstrikes by a United States-led coalition helped Kurdish forces rout the jihadists last year.
• In southern Syria, rebel groups began a new campaign to push government forces from the city of Dara’a.
• The new attacks by the Islamic State came more than a week after its fighters lost the town of Tal Abyad, on the Turkish border, to Kurdish militias and Arab rebels in what was seen as a strategic setback for the group.
• In striking back, ISIS appeared to be trying to counter losses in one place with attacks on other sites it considers vulnerable, a tactic it has employed before.
• Islamic State fighters disguised in the uniforms of Kurdish militiamen had sneaked into the town of Kobani at dawn. Then a large truck bomb exploded at the town’s border crossing with Turkey, setting off clashes between the Islamic State militants and local Kurdish forces. They entered the neighbourhoods and started killing civilians on their way. About 100 Islamic State fighters disguised as locals had taken up positions in Kobani, a small, strategic frontier town near the Syrian border with Turkey.

 

The Islamic State group on Thursday June 25, 2015, sold 42 Iraqi women it had abducted from the Yazidi religious minority to its fighters in eastern Syria. The women were being treated as slaves" by the jihadists and were sold "for between $500 and $2,000 dollars. The women were kidnapped last year in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq where IS had launched a wide offensive. Earlier this month they were brought to the IS-held town of Mayadeen in Syria's eastern Deir Ezzor province. Some were abducted with their children but their fate is unknown. The Yazidis, a religious minority which lives mainly in Iraq's Sinjar region, are neither Muslims nor Arabs and follow a unique faith. They are considered infidels by the jihadists.

More than a dozen Syrian children recruited by the Islamic State (ISIS) group have been killed in suicide bombings and US-led coalition air strikes in Iraq. The 14 dead children were among some 400 so-called “Cubs of the Caliphate” who were recruited by ISIS over a six-month period this year, and sent for missions in Iraq after training. The underage recruits undergo a 40-day training course before being sent on missions. ISIS uses children to work as spies and agents to gather news and as guards on its own posts, as well as for suicide bombings.

Islamic State (IS) militants have killed more than 120 civilians since launching a fresh attack on the Syrian border town of Kobane. IS fired at everything that moved after entering on Thursday June 25, 2015. A separate IS attack on the north-eastern city of Hassakeh has displaced 60,000 people. IS launched an apparent two-pronged offensive on Thursday after Kurdish fighters from the Popular Protection Units (YPG) cut off one of the militants' major supply routes near Raqqa. Kobane became a symbol of Kurdish resistance in January after an IS siege lasting several months was repelled.

Kurdish fighters have retaken the key Syrian border town of Kobani just one day after it was seized by Isis militants who murdered more than 200 civilians. The fighters announced they fully secured the town killing more than 60 Isis militants in the process just two days after the hardline group attacked the town with suicide bombers and machine guns. Around eight members of Isis managed to escape north towards the Turkish border after the Kurds successfully pushed back.

As Kurdish rebels in northern Syria rack up wins against the Islamic State group, Turkish media is abuzz with talk of a long-debated military intervention to push the Islamic militants back from the Turkish border —a move that will also outflank any Kurdish attempts to create a state along Turkey's southern frontier. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began chairing a National Security Council meeting Monday June 20, 2015, only days after he vowed to prevent the Kurds from establishing a state in Syria. Pro-government newspapers are rife with purported proposals, ranging from loosening the rules of engagement to give Turkish troops a freer hand to fire into Syria, to a tanks-and-troops invasion aimed at occupying a 110-kilometer long, 33-kilometer wide buffer zone.

The hard-line Islamic State group has beheaded two women in Syria, the first time it has decapitated female civilians we were told on Tuesday June 30, 2015. The beheadings took place in the eastern Deir al-Zor province this week. One of the women was beheaded along with her husband in Deir al-Zor city. In Mayadin city to the south east, the group beheaded another woman and her husband. All of them were accused of sorcery.  ---

The Syrian military has carried out a series of air strikes after rebel forces launched a major assault to take control of the northern city of Aleppo. The rebels fired hundreds of rockets and shells into at least seven government-held areas late on Thursday July 2, 2015. By Friday morning, they had made small advances. But the Syrian state news agency Sana said the assault had been repelled and more than 100 "terrorists" killed. Aleppo has been divided roughly in half between government-held areas in the west and rebel-controlled eastern quarters for almost three years. Fighting on the ground and government air strikes have left thousands dead, and destroyed more than 60% of the Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

A senior Islamic State leader who coordinated suicide bombings and recruited funds and fighters for the jihadists has been killed in a coalition air strike in Syria we were told Thursday July 2, 2015. Tariq bin Tahar al-Awni al-Harzi was killed in the northern city of Shaddadi on June 16. His brother Ali, an IS recruiter and person of interest in the 2012 Benghazi attack, was killed by an air strike in Iraq a day earlier. Washington had put a $3-million bounty on the head of Harzi, a 33-year-old Tunisian, and described him in the past as the IS group's emir of suicide bombers. As of late 2013, Harzi was a key figure in suicide and car bombings in Iraq.

Syrian rebels have launched a new offensive to capture Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city. The new push to take the city builds on a series of rebel victories in the country’s north. Much of the fighting is being done by Ansar al-Sharia, a new coalition of Islamist militias including Jabhat al-Nusra. The regime has responded with airstrikes.

Syrian elite forces backed by Hezbollah fighters besieged a rebel-held mountain resort near the border with Lebanon on Saturday July 4, 2015, under the cover of intense airstrikes by Syria's air forces. The capture of Zabadani would tighten Hezbollah's grip on Syrian territories bordering Lebanon and strengthen the Syrian government's control over of the Beirut-Damascus highway. In what appeared to be retaliation for the Zabadani offensive, rebels shelled Damascus, striking several neighbourhoods including the central Baghdad Street district. Another shell hit Damascus' famous Dama Rose hotel, previously Le Meridien, near the posh neighbourhood of Abu Rummaneh. Some of the hotel's windows were shattered. One person was killed and two wounded.

An explosion at a mosque in Syria's Idlib province on Friday July 3, 2015, killed at least 25 members of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. The blast in the town of Ariha in northwestern Syria went off as members of the Nusra Front gathered at the mosque for iftar, the meal with which Muslims break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan. The explosion in Salem Mosque in Ariha, also killed a senior non-Syrian member of the hard-line jihadist organization.

On Thursday July 2, 2015, we were told that Islamic State group militants have destroyed six archaeological pieces from the historic town of Palmyra that were confiscated from a smuggler. The six busts were found when the smuggler was stopped at a checkpoint. The issue was referred to an Islamic court in the ISIS-held northern Syrian town of Manbij, which ordered that they be destroyed and the man be whipped. Released photographs show ISIS militants destroying the busts with large hammers. Another photo shows the smuggler being whipped. However it is unclear if the busts were authentic or if the militants destroyed fake busts as a cover for the ISIS group's own antiquities smuggling.
 
ISIS has sent a 14-year-ld boy to his death in a suicide bombing that killed 50 Kurdish militants in northern Syria we were told on Monday July 6, 2015. The boy drove a truck filled with explosives into a military checkpoint in Hasakah. 

A Franciscan priest serving in northern Syria has been released after almost a week in the hands of allegedly jihadist kidnappers, his church announced on Friday July 10, 2015. Father Dhiya Aziz, a parish priest at Yacoubieh, in the north-western province of Idlib, was "treated well" during his ordeal. The priest went missing last Saturday.

Syria's regime killed at least 28 people, mostly civilians, on Saturday July 11, 2015, when its warplanes dropped massive makeshift bombs on a town held by the Islamic State group. The bombs used in the attacks on Al-Bab, in the northern province of Aleppo, were three times more destructive than so-called barrel bombs. Among those killed in the bombardment were 19 civilians, including three children and three women. ---

A bomb explosion has caused part of the walls of Aleppo's ancient citadel to collapse. Built in the 13th Century, it overlooks Aleppo's Old City and is part of an UN-listed World Heritage site. Syrian government forces have been using the citadel as a military position. Fighting on the ground and government air strikes have left thousands dead, and destroyed more than 60% of the Old City.

Two senior Islamic State leaders - Abu Osama al-Iraqi, and a Syrian named Amer al-Rafdan- were killed in an air strike in northeastern Syria on Monday July 13, 2015.

A double suicide bombing in northern Syria on Tuesday July 14, 2015, targeted the headquarters of an ultraconservative Islamic rebel group, killing its leader and several other high ranking members. This is the second time in less than a year that a bombing takes out the leadership of Ahrar al-Sham, one of the most powerful Islamic groups fighting both President Bashar Assad's forces and its rival, the Islamic State group, which holds wide swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq. The attack struck the headquarters of Ahrar al-Sham northwest of the town of Idlib, killing the group's leader, Abu Abdelrahman Salqeen; six others Ahrar al-Sham members also died.

One senior Tunisian Islamic State leader alongside five other foreign jihadists were killed in an air strike near the northeastern city of Hasaka we were told on Monday July 20, 2015. The fighter jets hit a car carrying the foreign militants in a location near a village called Faouj al-Maylabeih in the southern countryside of the city.

More than 20 people have been killed, many of them children, and dozens of others wounded Monday July 20, 2015, in airstrikes that targeted the northern Syria town of Manbej in Aleppo province held by the Islamic State group. The airstrikes were most likely carried out by Syrian army warplanes.

The Kurdish militia said on Monday July 20, 2015, it was in near full control of the northeastern city of Hasaka. Full control of Hasaka -which was split between the Kurds and Damascus until last month- would be a major gain for the autonomous Kurdish administration that is fighting Islamic State in Syria in partnership with Washington.

A missile attack on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Maghayer in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday July 21, 2015, killed at least 10 people - including women and children- and wounded many others. ---

The leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria with a history of attacks against U.S. targets was killed in a U.S. airstrike on July 8 we were told on Tuesday July 21, 2015. Muhsin al-Fadhli, who led the Khorasan Group in Syria, was killed when the vehicle he was riding in northwest Syria near the Turkish border, was destroyed. The group's sophisticated bomb-making acumen has been a particular concern of military officials. Al-Fadhli had deep roots with al-Qaeda, having been one of the few operatives who had received advance notice of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Davis said in a statement.

Three Spanish freelance journalists who travelled to Syria have gone missing in the war-torn city of Aleppo we were told on Tuesday July 21, 2015. They are Antonio Pampliega, Jose Manuel Lopez and Angel Sastre. The three disappeared while working in the Aleppo area. They have not been heard from for at least several days.

On Thursday July 23, 2015, gunfire across the border from Syria killed a Turkish non-commissioned officer and wounded two sergeants in the village of Elbeyli, east of the Turkish border town of Kilis. Five militants "opened fire from a Daesh-controlled Syrian border region. The shots came from near the Syrian village of Al-Raaee in Aleppo province. Turkish units returned fire, killing one militant and heavily damaging three pickup trucks.

On Monday July 27, 2015, the YPG and Syrian rebels captured the town of Sareen in northern Syria, which had been held by the Islamic State group.

The U.S. has declined to confirm that a Syria “safe zone” was to be created in the northern part of that country despite reports that it was part of a recent agreement between the American and Turkish governments in the fight against ISIS. On Tuesday July 28, 2015, we were told that the U.S. is not calling for a “safe zone” or a “no fly zone” to be created in northern Syria, despite the insistence of the Turkish government that this was the case.

An Israeli drone attack in southern Syria killed three people on Wednesday July 29, 2015, while another Israeli airstrike targeting an outpost for a pro-Syrian Palestinian group in eastern Lebanon wounded six members of the group. The Syrian government said that a pilotless Israeli plane struck a civilian car near the predominantly Druze village of Hader, killing the three villagers. The strike targeted a car carrying members of the Syrian National Defence Committees, a pro-Assad militia, near Hader. The village is surrounded by Syrian opposition-controlled territory. The attack killed three NDC and two Hezbollah fighters.

An Israeli drone attack in southern Syria killed three people on Wednesday July 29, 2015, while another Israeli airstrike targeting an outpost for a pro-Syrian Palestinian group in eastern Lebanon wounded six members of the group. The pilotless Israeli plane struck a civilian car near the predominantly Druze village of Hader, killing the three villagers. The strike targeted a car carrying members of the Syrian National Defense Committees, a pro-Assad militia, near Hader. The village is surrounded by Syrian opposition-controlled territory.

The leader of a U.S.-backed rebel group - Col. Nadim al-Hassan- and several of his men have been abducted in the northern Aleppo countryside in northern Syria by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front we were told Thursday July 30, 2015.

The U.S.-led coalition launched airstrikes against al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate Friday July 31, 2015, after the jihadis acknowledged the abduction of members of an American-backed rebel group.  The al-Qaida-linked group Nusra Front claimed Thursday the capture of Nadim al-Hassan, commander of the rebel group known as Division 30, which it said had received U.S. training and was acting of "agents of America" in Syria. Division 30 includes about 60 Syrian fighters that the United States trained in recent months in Turkey and calls the New Syrian Force. They were sent into Syria two weeks ago to help build Syria's moderate opposition and participate in a new U.S.-Turkey effort to drive the Islamic State from northwest Syria. ---

Air raids and the subsequent crash of a Syrian warplane in a residential area in the northwestern town of Ariha on Monday August 3, 2015, killed and wounded dozens of people. The warplane crashed in a busy market in Ariha destroying several homes and killing at least 12 people. It was not immediately clear whether the warplane was shot down. At the time of the crash, the town was under attack by the air force of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.

On Wednesday August 5, 2015, Islamic State (IS) militants have captured al-Qaryatain town, in the province of Homs. The militants launched the attack with suicide bombings at the town's checkpoints. The capture of the town links IS-held Palmyra with the Qalamun area. Separately, the US launched its first drone strike against IS from Turkey.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have abducted scores of people, including several Christian families, after seizing the strategically located town al-Qaryatain in the central Syrian province of Homs. We were told on Friday August 7, 2015, that at least 230 people had been kidnapped, including 60 Christians, some of whom were taken from a church in Qaryatain, which was captured overnight after heavy fighting with the Syrian army. ISIL started the attack on Wednesday morning when three suicide bombers targeted pro-regime checkpoints at entrances to the city. A total of 37 regime soldiers and loyalist fighters were killed, while 23 ISIL fighters also died.

The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Friday August 7, 2015, that will establish an investigative body to assess who is responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The resolution, however, stops short of saying what action will be taken, if any, when the entity responsible for the numerous deadly attacks is identified.

Islamic State fighters killed at least 37 rival insurgents in an overnight attack in Syria's Aleppo province and 20 fighters remain missing we were told on Sunday August 9, 2015. Late on Saturday a suicide bomber from the hardline group blew himself up in a military post held by a group of rival insurgents in the Umm Housh village in northern Aleppo countryside. Islamic State fighters then seized the village after heavy clashes with rival groups.

Islamic State militants on Tuesday August 11, 2015, released 22 Christians they had held captive since February, following mediation by tribal leaders. The 22 were part of more than 220 Assyrian Christians captured at the time by the IS group after it overran several farming communities on the southern bank of Khabur River in the northeastern province of Hassakeh. Money has been paid for the released group. 14 of those released were women. Tuesday's release brings the total number of freed Assyrians to 45. Last week, IS abducted about 60 Christians from the central town of Qaryatain, hours after it was captured by the group. Nearly half of them were later released but the fate of the rest remains unknown. Christians make up about 10 percent of Syria's prewar population of 23 million people. ---

A U.S.-backed rebel group says al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria has released seven of its members abducted last month. The Division 30 rebel group says it hopes the Nusra Front will release the group's commander who has been held since July 30. Days after the abduction, the Nusra Front attacked the Division 30 command in northern Syria, leading to the near-collapse of the group that has dozens of fighters. The Division 30 statement released late Saturday August 15, 2015, described Nusra Front fighters as "brothers" and thanked them for the release, saying "we value this noble step."

Syrian government warplanes attacked a busy market in a rebel-held suburb of the capital Damascus on Sunday August 16, 2015, killing at least 82 people and wounding more than 200. Syrian government air raids on rebel-held areas throughout the country have killed thousands over the past few years.

Syrian rebel groups have repelled advances by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIL) in a series of villages along the Turkish border and cleared ISIL fighters from a nearby gas factory. Fighting was raging on Monday August 17, 2015, between ISIL and a loose coalition of Syrian rebels in villages near the towns of Azaz and Marea in the northern province of Aleppo. Backed by US-led coalition strikes targeting ISIL positions, the rebels took the gas factory in Doudian village, which had been used as a base for ISIL.

A suicide bomber set off a truck bomb outside offices of a Kurdish security agency in northeastern Syria on Wednesday August 19, 2015, killing at least 11 people –mainly civilians- and wounding 29 others. The attack in northeastern city of Qamishli near the Turkish border hit a headquarters of the Asayish, an internal security force set up by the autonomous Kurdish administration that runs large areas of northern Syria.

Four rockets were fired into Israel from Syria Thursday August 20, 2015, and the Israeli government accused an Iranian-backed group as being responsible. No injuries were reported in the rocket attack in the Upper Galilee and Golan Heights, and the Israeli military responded by launching airstrikes and artillery attacks against 14 targets in the Syrian Golan Heights. Israel said the rocket attack was launched by a group calling itself Islamic Jihad, which it said was an Iranian proxy force commanded by Saed Izadi, an Iranian.

The Islamic State group on Friday August 21, 2015, demolished a monastery founded more than 1,500 years ago in central Syria. The destruction of the Saint Elian Monastery near the town of Qaryatain comes days after IS militants in the town of Palmyra publicly beheaded an 81-year-old antiquities scholar who had dedicated his life to studying and overseeing Palmyra's iconic ancient ruins. A Christian clergyman said that IS militants also wrecked a church inside the monastery that dates back to the 5th century. ---

Syrian airstrikes on a Damascus suburb Saturday August 22, 2015, killed more than 20 people and wounded dozens. President Bashar Assad's forces have been pounding Douma from the skies for over a week. The sprawling suburb is home to the Jaysh al-Islam rebel group, also known as Islam Army, which has claimed responsibility in the past for firing rockets on Damascus, seat of Assad's presidency.

Islamic State militants have destroyed a temple at Syria's ancient ruins of Palmyra we were told Sunday August 23, 2015. The militants used explosives to blow up the Baalshamin Temple on its grounds, the blast so powerful it also damaged some of the Roman columns around it.

Syrian airstrikes on the Douma Damascus suburb Saturday August 22, 2015, killed more than 20 people and wounded dozens. Pesident Bashar Assad's forces have been pounding Douma from the skies for over a week. The sprawling suburb is home to the Jaysh al-Islam rebel group, also known as Islam Army, which has claimed responsibility in the past for firing rockets on Damascus, seat of Assad's presidency.

Wednesday August 26, 2015, we were told that Islamic State has seized new territory from Syrian rebels in northern Syria, advancing in an area where Turkey and the United States are planning to open a new front against the group. IS had seized five villages including two near the Turkish border from other Syrian insurgents. Islamic State announced it had captured three villages in the area and that its fighters had nearly encircled the rebel-held town of Marea, some 20 km south of the Turkish border. ---

Islamic State fighters on Sunday August 30, 2015, pushed into a large district in southern Damascus, clashing with rival militants just a few kilometers from the center of the Syrian capital. More than two dozen militants were killed in the clashes on the edges of the Qadam neighborhood. The IS fighters seized half of Qadam. IS fighters were holding two streets and fighting is continuing.

Islamic State (ISIS) militants severely damaged a 2,000-year-old temple –the Bel Temple- in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra Sunday August 30, 2015. The temple, consecrated to the Semitic god Bel, had been well-preserved and was a source of much pride for Syrians. It was consecrated in 32 A.D. It stood out among the ruins not far from the colonnades of Palmyra, which is affectionately known by Syrians as the "Bride of the Desert." ---

A car bomb exploded Wednesday September 2, 2015, in a square in the Syrian port city of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 25. Also Wednesday, rocket fire struck an engineering college in the capital, Damascus, killing two students and wounding 15 people. A day earlier, mortar rounds killed one student and wounded six at the same college.

A prominent Druze cleric known for criticising Syria's regime and Islamists was assassinated in a car bomb attack that killed 25 others and sparked riots outside the city of Sweida on Friday September 4, 2015. Sheikh Wahid al-Balous was killed in a car bomb attack as he was driving on the outskirts of Sweida city. Asecond car bomb struck near the hospital in the Dahr al-Jabal neighbourhood where the wounded were being taken. The toll from the two attacks had risen from eight people to 26, and that 50 others were wounded. Balous was a popular leader in the southwestern city of Sweida, the heartland of Syria's Druze minority which made up around three percent of the country's pre-war population of 23 million. His death sparked riots in Sweida city, where protesters smashed a statue of Hafez al-Assad, the deceased ruler of Syria and father of its current president, Bashar al-Assad.

Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in Syria in support of government troops we were told Wednesday September 9, 2015. Russia sent two tank landing ships and additional cargo aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and deployed a small number of naval infantry forces. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to his Russian counterpart for the second time in four days to express concern over reports of Russian military activities in Syria, warning that it could fan more violence.

Russian military experts have expanded their presence in Syria over the last year, a Syrian military official said on Wednesday September 9, 2015. Russia confirmed that it had military experts on the ground in Syria but said they were there only to help the Syrian authorities receive arms shipments which it has acknowledged sending in the past. ---

Two car bombings half an hour apart killed 26 people on Monday September 14, 2015, in a predominantly Kurdish city in northeastern Syria. One suicide bomber targeted a graduation ceremony for Kurdish cadets and another had hit a base for a pro-government militia. Two neighborhoods in the city of Hasaka were hit, with the worst bombing killing at least 21 people and trapping victims in a collapsed building. 13 civilians, six Kurdish fighters and seven militia members supporting President Bashar al-Assad had been killed.

Syrian warplanes carried out a wave of airstrikes in the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa we were told on Thursday September 17, 2015. Warplanes carried out at least 12 airstrikes across the ISIS-held city of Raqqa in northern Syria. The city is the self-declared capital of the Islamic State group’s self-styled caliphate, which includes large parts of Syria and Iraq.In the country’s south, helicopters dropped barrel bombs that struck a busy marketplace, killing at least 17 people. The explosives were dropped as the market was packed with shoppers and people buying necessities for children who go back to school this week. Around 24 people were killed and many others wounded.

Syrian government war planes have launched one of the heaviest bombardments yet on the city of Palmyra, which is held by Islamic State (IS) militants. About 25 air strikes left at least 26 people dead, including 12 militants. Elsewhere, air strikes on Idlib killed 17 people. Syria is using new types of very accurate weapons supplied by its ally, Russia. Earlier on Friday September 18, 2015, the US and Russian defence ministers spoke by phone for the first time in more than a year to discuss the crisis. The US has said Russia is building up its military presence in Syria as President Bashar al-Assad loses ground to the various rebel groups confronting him.

On Saturday September 19, 2015, we were told that Russia has sent at least four fighter jets to Syria as it continues to bolster the embattled forces of Bashar al Assad. Moscow had already sent troops and military hardware, including helicopter gunships, tanks and as many 500 Russian marines, to an airfield near the Syrian port city of Latakia.

A batch of 75 rebels newly trained by US and coalition forces in Turkey to fight jihadists have entered northern Syria we were told on Sunday September 20, 2015.

Russia has sharply increased the number of combat aircraft at an air base near Latakia giving its forces a new ability to strike targets on the ground in the war-stricken country. Over the weekend, Russia deployed a dozen Su-24 Fencer and a dozen Su-25 Frogfoot ground-attack planes, bringing to 28 the number of warplanes at the base we were told on Monday September 21, 2015. Until the weekend, the only combat planes there had been four Flanker air-to-air fighters. The deployment of some of Russia’s most advanced ground attack planes and fighter jets as well as multiple air defense systems at the base near the ancestral home of President Bashar al-Assad appears to leave little doubt about Moscow’s goal to establish a military outpost in the Middle East. The planes are protected by at least two or possibly three SA-22 surface-to-air, antiaircraft systems, and unarmed Predator-like surveillance drones are being used to fly reconnaissance missions.

At least 38 fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) group have been killed over the last 24 hours as Syrian government warplanes bombarded the group's strongholds in central Syria. Monday Sptember 21, 2015's strikes hit Palmyra and two other towns in Homs province. The Syrian air force has been increasing its strikes against ISIL in recent days as it received reinforcements from Russia. ---

A Syrian rebel commander who recently completed a U.S. training program said that he surrendered six coalition-provided trucks and ammunition to an intermediary linked to the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front. U.S. Central Command said on Friday September 25, 2015, that roughly 25 percent of the equipment assigned to that unit was apparently turned over earlier this week in exchange for safe passage within the region.  However the Syrians insist that they have not relinquished any actual weapons to the Nusra Front and that all of their personnel are still accounted for. The report underscores persistent problems with the U.S.-led coalition's effort to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State.

Russian jets have launched 18 attacks against 12 facilities of the Islamic State terrorist group inside Syria on Friday October 2, 2015.

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government we were told on Thursday October 1, 2015. Russian warplanes, in a second day of strikes, bombed a camp run by rebels trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Two Lebanese sources said that hundreds of Iranian troops had reached Syria in the past 10 days with weapons to mount a major ground offensive. They would also be backed by Assad's Lebanese Hezbollah allies and by Shi'ite militia fighters from Iraq, while Russia would provide air support. So far, direct Iranian military support for Assad has come mostly in the form of military advisers. Iran has also mobilized Shi'ite militia fighters, including Iraqis and some Afghans, to fight alongside Syrian government forces.

Islamic State militants have blown up another major monument in the ancient city of Palmyra we were told Sunday October 4, 2015. In recent months, the militants destroyed two ancient temples in the central Syrian city. The monument, the Arch of Triumph, a jewel in the exquisite collection of ruins in the oasis city, had been blown up.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander has been killed in Syria in an incident that sheds light on Tehran’s growing, shadowy role in bolstering Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Iranian forces confirmed on Friday October 9, 2015, that Hossein Hamedani, described as an elite and exceptional commander and a defender of the Shia holy sites in Damascus, was killed in the vicinity of Aleppo on Thursday evening. He was the most senior Iranian military officer on a foreign operation to be killed in 36 years since the 1979 Islamic revolution. His death comes at the time when Russia, Tehran’s regional ally, has launched a military campaign in Syria in support of Assad, adding a new dimension to an already bruising conflict. Hamedani was operating in “an advisory capacity” when “takfiri terrorists” killed him. The extent of Tehran’s military involvement in Syria is not clear but the increasing number of Iranian deaths and funeral ceremonies has revealed its continuing support for Assad.

Russia has denied cruise missiles fired at Syrian targets from a warship in the Caspian sea fell short of their target and landed in Iran. Anonymous US sources claimed on Thursday October 8, 2015, that four of 26 missiles had landed in a rural part of the country although it was unclear exactly where. Russia claimed that all 26 missiles fired from the warship hit their targets in north and north-west Syria. ---

Two shells have struck the Russian embassy compound in the Syrian capital Damascus as hundreds of pro-government supporters rallied outside in support of Russian air strikes. No-one was killed but some people were injured. In another development on Tuesday Octobet 13, 2015, Amnesty International accused Kurdish forces in northern Syria of carrying out a wave of forced displacements and mass house demolitions that amounted to war crimes. It said the Popular Protection Units (YPG) had razed entire villages after capturing them from IS.

On Monday October 12, 2015, the US military has delivered more than 45 tonnes of ammunition to rebels fighting the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) in north-eastern Syria. C-17 transport aircraft, accompanied by fighter escorts, dropped pallets of supplies overnight in Hassakeh province. The consignment comprised small arms, ammunition and grenades.

Two senior commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been killed in Syria. Hamid Mokhtarband and Brigadier General Farshad Hassounizadeh died while assisting the Syrian government's battle against ISIL on Monday October12, 2015. Their deaths come after another top commander, General Hossein Hamadani, was killed on Thursday night on the outskirts of Aleppo. Hassounizadeh was in Syria to "defend the holy shrine of Hazrat Zeinab, the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), in the country’s capital of Damascus. The Islamic Republic denies having any military forces in Syria, but says it offers "military advice" to Assad's forces in their fight against terrorist groups. Hamadani had been advising the Syrian military and defend Shia shrines in the country.

Cuban military operatives reportedly have been spotted in Syria, where they are advising President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S. On Wednesday October 14, 2015, the US confirmed that Cuban paramilitary and special forces units are on the ground in Syria. Cuban troops may have been training in Russia and may have arrived in Syria on Russian planes.

Iran has sent hundreds of troops into northern and central Syria in the first such open deployment in the country's civil war, joining fighters from its Lebanese ally Hezbollah in an offensive against rebels and taking advantage of cover from Russia's air campaign we were told Wednesday October 14, 2015. Their arrival could fuel a civil war in Syria which has already claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and displaced half of the country's population. It also highlights the far-reaching goals of Russia's military involvement in Syria.

Turkey shot down an unidentified drone in Turkish airspace near Syria on Friday October 16, 2015, in an incident highlighting the dangers of multiple air combat operations over Syria, where government troops and their allies backed by Russian jets have launched an offensive against rebels near Aleppo. The army offensive south of the city, backed by Hezbollah and Iranian fighters, further expands its 10-day-old counter-attack in western Syria against insurgents battling to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. The army campaign has been coordinated with Russian jets, which began air strikes in support of Assad on September 30, and Syria's own air force. A U.S.-led coalition of Western and Arab forces has been flying combat missions over Syria for more than a year, while Israeli jets have also struck targets in Syria during the four-year-old civil war. That has left Syria's airspace crowded with warplanes from rival, or even hostile powers, pursuing competing military strategies, heightening the risk of aerial confrontation.

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air strikes, have launched an offensive in the province of Homs. The assault on a rebel enclave north of the city of Homs began early on Thursday October 15, 2015, and was preceded by intense bombardment. Casualties were reported in the towns of Teir Maaleh, Talbiseh and Ghantu. The Syrian military and its allies have launched a number of ground offensives on rebel-held areas since Russia launched an air campaign two weeks ago.

On Friday October 16, 2015, Syrian troops backed by Iranian fighters have launched a long-awaited offensive to retake the strategic city of Aleppo, in an attempt to wrest back control from rebel groups. The assault marks the first time Iranian fighters had taken part on such a scale in the Syrian conflict. The main core is the Syrian army but hundreds of fighters from Iran and Hizbollah were taking part. ---

The Pentagon said on Sunday October 18, 2015, Sanafi al-Nasr, a Saudi citizen and the leader of Khorasan Group, an al-Qaeda offshoot, was killed in an air strike by the U.S.-led coalition. Nasr organized routes for new recruits to travel from Pakistan to Syria through Turkey and played a significant role in the group's finances. He was killed in an air strike on Thursday in northwest Syria. He is the fifth senior Khorasan Group leader killed in the last four months.

At least 40 militants with the Islamic State have been killed in air strikes in Syria on Saturday October 17, 2015. A convoy of 16 vehicles was hit as it drove through an eastern part of Hama province overnight. The planes could be Russian or Syrian but were not from the US-led coalition.

Syria Sunday October 18, 2015:

• Russian and Syrian warplanes pounded targets in central and northern Syria, killing at least four civilians as ground troops battled insurgents and seized new territory. Warplanes believed to be Russian targeted mourners at a funeral in Homs province's al-Ghanto village, killing four civilians. The civilians were burying a man who died from wounds sustained a day earlier when the planes struck.
• Al-Ghanto, the town of Talbiseh and other areas north of the city of Homs were pounded with more than a dozen airstrikes Sunday, including government helicopters dropping barrel bombs in the village of Ter Maela, the activists said.
• Intense clashes were reported on the edges of Wadihi, a village the government firmly controlled, a day after entering it during an offensive in southern Aleppo. The area is controlled by mainstream rebels, some Islamist groups and al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria.
• Government ground forces, backed by allied militias, opened another front in eastern Aleppo, where the Islamic State group has a strong presence. Government forces seized control of al-Jabriyeh village. Government warplanes had bombed areas in eastern Aleppo near the Kweiras military air base, which the IS group has besieged for months.

 

At least 45 people have been killed in Russian air strikes on a rebel-held area of north-western Syria. Russian warplanes bombed the rugged Jabal al-Akrad region of Latakia province on Monday afternoon October 19, 2015. The commander of a Western-backed Free Syrian Army brigade and the families of rebels were among the dead.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has visited Moscow on his first overseas trip since the civil war broke out in his country in 2011. During the surprise visit, he had talks with President Vladimir Putin. Russia launched air strikes in Syria last month against the so-called Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups battling Mr Assad's forces. Mr Assad said Russia's involvement had stopped "terrorism" becoming "more widespread and harmful" in Syria. For his part, Mr Putin said Moscow's hope, in providing a "positive dynamic in the fighting", was that a "long term resolution can be achieved on the basis of a political process with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups". The visit happened on Tuesday evening October 20, 2015, but was not announced until Wednesday -after Mr Assad had returned to Damascus. ---

Two members of a unit of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have been killed in Syria, including an ex-bodyguard for Iran's former president we were told on Friday October 23, 2015.

Russia, an ally of the Assad regime, began carrying out airstrikes in Syria on September 30. According to the Kremlin, the strikes are aimed at weakening the Daesh militant group, an avowed enemy of the regime. Turkey and several western countries, however, accuse Russia of targeting moderate groups in Syria opposed to Assad, many of which enjoy the support of Ankara and Washington.

Western-backed rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have rejected an offer of military support from Russia. They believe that Moscow cannot be trusted and that its help was not needed.

Iran is increasing its military presence in Syria, we were told Monday October 26, 2015. Iran is increasing the quality and quantity of its presence in Syria. Their mission is as an advisory role to help the Syrian army loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The Iranian officers were providing tactical help for Syrian commanders of battalions in direct battles, as well as weapons and ordnance, operational assistance and help with strategic planning. The number of Iranian casualties in Syria had increased.

A missile slammed into the field hospital in the rebel-held Syrian town of Sarmeen, killing a physiotherapist inside. Five minutes later, the aircraft returned, firing another missile that hit nearby just as the first responders were arriving. A total of 13 were killed, and the hospital organizers blamed Russian warplanes.

The Islamic State militant group is advancing in central Syria, seizing control of Mahin that lies near a highway leading to the capital, Damascus, and attacking Sadad we were told Sunday November 1, 2015. The capture of Mahin, in the central Homs province, and the push toward majority-Christian town of Sadad, marks a new advance of the Islamic State group beyond its strongholds in northern and eastern Syria. The new IS expansion comes despite Russian airstrikes in Syria, which Moscow says target IS and other terrorist groups. For the most part, the Russian airstrikes, in their fifth week, have targeted Western-backed rebel groups and other Islamist groups. IS militants have also made recent gains in Aleppo, seizing villages from other rebel groups and controlling a section of a strategic highway that serves as a supply route into government-controlled areas of Aleppo.

Rebels are putting caging captured Syrian soldiers and others loyal to the regime in cages and using them as human shields to fend off government attacks.

Iran and Saudi Arabia clashed repeatedly last week inside the diplomatic talks on Syria, with Iran accusing Saudis of terrorism. Their tension threatened to end the new negotiations just as they began in Vienna on Friday October 30, 2015. Inside the nine-hour meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir got into a heated argument, during which Zarif blamed Saudi Arabian nationals for the 9/11 attacks. The comments startled the participants, who included Secretary of State John Kerry, and the room went quiet after Zarif’s remark. Fifteen of the 19 attackers were Saudi citizens.

Jihadists seized a key town Thursday November 5, 2015, along a vital road in Syria's central Hama province, where regime forces are struggling to gain ground despite a month of Russian air strikes. The setback for Damascus came as France announced it would deploy an aircraft carrier to boost its fight against the Islamic State group, which has seized control of large parts of Iraq and Syria. They "seized full control of the town of Morek after a fierce offensive.

The Russian Air Force has carried out 81 sorties hitting 263 Islamic State (IS) targets in two days in Syria. Russian jets hit targets that mostly belong to Islamic State and other militants in such provinces as Aleppo, Damascus, Deir ez-Zor, Idlib, Latakia, Raqqa, Hama and Homs we were told Thursday November 5, 2015. ---

Airstrikes by Russian warplanes on the Islamic State-held Syrian city of Raqqa killed 42 people earlier this week, including 27 civilians we were told on Friday November 6, 2015. Fifteen Islamic State fighters made up the remainder of the death toll after a series of strikes on Tuesday that hit the group's Syrian stronghold.

At least 23 Syrian civilians were killed Saturday November 7, 2015, in suspected Russian air strikes on Douma, a rebel-held town outside Damascus. Rebels in Douma, which lies in the opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta, regularly fire rockets into the capital and the area is frequently the target of government air strikes and shelling. At least six children and seven women were among the dead and the toll could rise further because of the number of people seriously wounded. Elsewhere, the Islamic State group freed 37 Syrian Christians who were among more than 200 people kidnapped in February.

At least 22 people were killed and 62 wounded in mortar fire Tuesday November 10, 2015, on Syria's coastal city of Latakia.

The Pentagon is "reasonably certain" that a US drone strike in Syria has killed the Islamic State militant known as "Jihadi John". They believe that Thursday November 12, 2015's attack in Raqqa had hit the intended target. Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British militant, appeared in videos of the beheadings of Western hostages.

The Russian military has destroyed numerous oil facilities and tankers controlled by ISIS, sharply cutting its income we were told Friday November 20, 2015. Russian warplanes destroyed 15 oil refining and storage facilities in Syria and 525 trucks carrying oil during this week's bombing blitz. This deprived ISIS of $1.5 million in daily income from oil sales. Russia sharply raised the intensity starting Tuesday following confirmation that the Russian Metrojet plane in Egypt was downed by a bomb, which ISIS said it had planted. All 224 people aboard the plane, mostly Russian tourists, were killed.

At least 36 people have been killed and dozens more injured in more than 70 strikes by Russian and Syrian jets on Islamic State-controlled Deir Ezzor province. Russia pounded the jihadist group in Syria on Friday November 20, 2015, firing cruise missiles from warships in the Caspian Sea after President Vladimir Putin vowed retaliation for a bombing that brought down a Russian aircraft in Egypt last month.  ---

 Russian warplanes have killed at least 18 people in Ariha in northern Syria, a town held by insurgents. A busy market was hit, causing heavy casualties. The airstrike destroyed three buildings in the town centre. The airstrikes were carried out by Russian planes and claimed that 40 people were killed and more than 70 wounded.

British war planes began bombing Islamic State targets in Syria Thursday morning December 3, 2015, hours after Parliament endorsed a push by Prime Minister David Cameron to join a campaign that has been dominated by U.S. firepower. Four Tornado jets left a British air base in Cyprus in the early hours of Thursday, and struck an Islamic State-controlled oil field in eastern Syria.

 On Wednesday December 3, 2015, we were told that Russia is planning on expanding an Assad regime air base in central Syria into a second base of operations for Moscow's air assets in the country. The new base will be located southeast of Homs at the current Syrian military base of Shaayrat. Russia is expanding the regime base into a location from which it can launch air strikes and house military helicopters.

On Friday December 4, 2015, RAF jets have carried out their second set of air strikes in Syria since MPs backed military action against so-called Islamic State in the country. The Omar oil fields were targeted for the second time, using two Tornados and, for the first time, two Typhoons.

Syria's government on Monday December 7, 2015, accused the U.S.-led coalition of launching airstrikes on an army camp that killed three soldiers and wounded 13, which if confirmed would mark the first time U.S.-led forces have struck troops loyal to President Bashar Assad. The U.S. denied the claim, saying the alliance carried out four airstrikes against oil wells in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, all of them miles away from where the incident was said to have taken place. The city of Der el-Zour, where the strikes are said to have been carried out on Sunday, is mainly held by the Islamic State group, but the Syrian government maintains a presence in some parts of it.

At least 32 ISIS fighters were killed and 40 more wounded in Syria's Raqqa province on Sunday December 6, 2015, in a series of air strikes believed to be carried out by a U.S.-led coalition targeting the jihadists. More than 15 explosions hit ISIS positions in the countryside of Raqqa province and near its capital, Raqqa city. Raqqa is ISIS' Syrian stronghold. The coalition said it hit Raqqa and other areas of northern and eastern Syria on Sunday.

Russia has unleashed another barrage of airstrikes against targets in Syria, including the first combat launch of a new cruise missile from a Russian submarine in the Mediterranean Sea we were told Tuesday December 8, 2015. The Kalibr cruise missiles launched by the Rostov-on-Don submarine successfully hit the designated targets in Raqqa. Tu-22 bombers flying from their base in Russia also took part in the latest raids, performing 60 combat sorties in the last three days. The targets destroyed in the latest wave of Russian airstrikes included a munitions depot, a factory manufacturing mortar rounds and oil facilities belonging to “terrorists." At least 10 cruise missiles were launched from Russian surface ships in the Caspian Sea and at least one missile was fired by a Russian submarine in the eastern Mediterranean.

A meeting of Syrian opposition politicians and rebels in Riyadh has produced a statement of principles to guide peace talks with the government. The statement calls for a new "pluralistic regime that represents all sectors" in Syria. It also stresses that President Bashar al-Assad and his aides could play no part in any transitional period. There are conflicting reports as to whether the powerful rebel group Ahrar al-Sham signed the statement. It had earlier complained that figures it regarded as too close to the government were being given too prominent a role, and pulled out. ---

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Friday December 10, 2015, for triple suicide bombings in northern Syria that killed at least 26 people and wounded 90. The attacks in the predominantly Kurdish province of Hassakeh targeted offices of the main Kurdish militia known as the YPG. The attacks in the town of Tal Tamr occurred late Thursday. The blasts targeted a medical centre and a busy market. Also Friday, warplanes struck small, primitive oil refineries used by villagers in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. The warplanes were believed to be Russian.

A car bomb exploded Saturday December 12, 2015, in a government-held neighbourhood in Homs, killing at least 16 people and wounding dozens. The blast wounded more than 100 people. An army colonel, a policeman and woman were among the 16 killed. Most of the 16 dead were women and children.

At least 45 civilians were killed on Sunday December 13, 2015 in heavy bombardment of a besieged Syrian rebel stronghold east of Damascus that also struck a school. Rockets fired by regime forces rained down on the towns of Douma, Harasta, Saqba and Arbin in the opposition-held Eastern Ghouta region. At least 10 children and four women were among the dead and dozens of people were wounded. One of the air strikes on Douma hit near a school, killing the school's principal.

Airstrikes on a fuel market in a rebel-held village in northern Syria killed and wounded dozens on Tuesday December 15, 20125, and destroyed several tanker trucks. Warplanes also struck a popular market in the northern village of Maskaneh that is under the control of the Islamic State group, killing at least 18 people and wounding many others. It is not clear whose warplanes carried out the strikes, but the Russians seem to be responsible.

The United Nations Security Council on Friday December 18, 2015, approved a resolution that supports international efforts to seek a political solution in Syria. The process is designed to end the nation's civil war and provide a new government in Syria. Russia and the United States both approved the resolution, even though it doesn't address the major issue separating those two nations: What will happen to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad? Russia supports Assad but the United States wants him removed. The accord was hailed as a major step toward bringing peace to Syria, where a civil war has killed millions and sent thousands of refugees fleeing into other nations.

Russia will use more advanced military force against terror groups in Syria "if necessary," President Vladimir Putin said Saturday December 19, 2015. His comments came a day after the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution that supports an international effort to find a political solution to the 5-year-old civil war in Syria. Russia has supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but the United States wants him removed. The two countries, however, have found common ground in launching airstrikes against the terror group ISIS based in Syria.

An Israeli air strike killed Samir Qantar, a Hezbollah militant leader, in Damascus on Saturday evening December 19, 2015. Israel welcomed Qantar's death, saying he had been preparing attacks on it from Syrian soil, but stopped short of confirming responsibility for the strike that killed him. Jailed in Israel for his part in a 1979 raid in Israel that killed four people, Qantar, a Druze, was repatriated to Lebanon in 2008 in a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, which he is then believed to have joined.

Airstrikes believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes killed scores of people in the centre of the rebel-held city of Idlib in north-west Syria on Sunday December 20, 2015. At least six strikes hit a busy marketplace in the heart of the city, along with several government buildings and residential areas. Rescue workers said they had confirmed 43 dead but at least 30 more bodies had been retrieved that had still to be identified. Over 150 people were wounded with some of the serious cases sent to hospitals in Turkey. ---

The Islamic State jihadist group has expanded its control inside an eastern Syrian city after clashes and suicide attacks killed at least 26 regime fighters. IS militants seized the industrial neighbourhood in the city of Deir Ezzor after a fierce offensive that began on Wednesday December 23, 2015. The attack began when three IS suicide bombers drove explosive-laden cars into the neighbourhood, killing at least 11 members of pro-government forces. The ensuing "violent clashes, air strikes, and an exchange of shelling" brought the toll up to 26 government loyalists and 12 IS militants. IS already holds most of the oil-rich Deir Ezzor province and much of its provincial capital. If Deir Ezzor city falls to IS, it would be the second provincial capital under the extremist group's control after Raqa in the north. More than 250,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict, which began in March 2011 as an anti-government protest movement but which has spiralled into a multi-sided war.

A U.S.-backed coalition of rebels in Syria —including Syrian Kurdish, Arab and Christian groups— captured several areas in the country's north from the Islamic State extremists as government air raids on a rebel-held Damascus suburb killed at least 20 people on Thursday December 24, 2015. Government warplanes and helicopter gunships struck the suburb of Hamouriyeh. There were women and children among the casualties. 23 were killed and dozens were wounded.

Syria Saturday December 26, 2015:

• Fierce clashes in northern Syria between regime loyalists and rebels including Al-Qaeda fighters have left more than 70 dead.
• Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front launched the assault on Friday with a suicide attack against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo province.
• Fighting raged around the village of Bashkoy, which lies at a crossroads north of Aleppo city. At least 33 pro-regime fighters and 38 opposition fighters were killed.
• There was also fierce fighting in nearby Khan Tuman, a former rebel stronghold which government forces captured on December 20.
• Al-Nusra and allied rebels seized several neighbourhoods in Bashkoy and clashes subsided overnight.
• Eastern parts of Aleppo province are held by the Islamic State jihadist group, and the west is held by opposition groups ranging from US-backed rebels to Al-Nusra. Regime troops have been fighting to retake southern parts of the province. Aleppo city, too, is divided. Rebel groups control the eastern parts of the city while the west is held by regime troops.

 

The assassination of a top Syrian rebel commander who led one of the most powerful groups battling President Bashar Assad's forces has dealt a significant setback to the opposition that could reshuffle the line-up of key players on the ground ahead of the planned peace talks in Geneva next month. On Saturday, the Army of Islam and allied militant groups in Syria mourned the killing of Zahran Alloush, while government supporters and ISIS cheered his death. Allouch was killed in airstrikes that targeted the group's headquarters during a meeting on Friday December 25, 2015. He was instantly killed along with a number of senior commanders of his Army of Islam group and those of the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham and the Faylaq al-Rahman groups. The Syrian army claimed responsibility for the airstrike that killed Allouch, although many among the opposition blamed Russia, which has been bombing ISIS targets and other insurgent groups since late September.

Twin bomb blasts killed at least 32 people and wounded 90 in Homs on Monday December 28, 2015. A car bomb caused the first blast while a suicide bomber detonated the other blast in the central Zahra district of the city. The explosions occurred in the district’s main square. ---

Two suspects in the deadly Paris attacks claimed by ISIL were killed this month by coalition air strikes we were on Tuesday December 29, 2015. French national Charaffe al-Mouadan, 27, a native of the St Denis suburb of Paris, was among 10 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leaders killed in air raids targeting its leadership. Mouadan is believed to have fled to Syria in November 2015. It was unclear if he travelled there before or after the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others.

Up to 32 people were killed in two bomb attacks Monday December 28, 2015, in the Syrian city of Homs, near the border with Lebanon. The second attack killed people who gathered to see the damage of an earlier car bomb. A suicide bomber entered the crowd and exploded a bomb hidden in clothing. The attacks took place in the al-Zahraa district, in the central part of the city. Many others were hurt.

The Islamic State group on Thursday December 31, 2015, claimed the bombing of two restaurants in a predominantly Kurdish city in northeastern Syria the previous night. The attack that killed at least 16 people and wounded more than 30. The explosions happened in a Christian neighbourhood in the city of Qamishli. 13 of the victims were Christians. The bombs went off in the city centre, near a security point run by government troops. The death toll rose to 18 after two more people died of their wounds.

Arab and Kurdish forces have killed at least 16 fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group during fierce clashes north of the militants’ stronghold of Raqqa we were told Sunday January 3, 2016. The militants launched an offensive last Wednesday against areas held by the Syrian Democratic Forces coalition near to Ain Issa, a town held by the SDF killing 21 Kurdish fighters. Late on Saturday, “16 jihadists were killed and 19 wounded” in clashes with the SDF near Ain Issa. The SDF also recaptured an area seized by ISIS a few days earlier. The alliance, made up of units from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Arab fighters, has carried out several major operations against ISIS.

Two "terrorist explosions" have gone off in the predominantly Kurdish northeastern city of Qamishli, killing 16 people and wounding 35. The explosions happened late Wednesday December 30, 2015, in the Shiyahi area of the city, a Christian neighbourhood in the predominantly Kurdish city. The bombs went off in two restaurants in the city centre, near a security point run by government troops.

The Daesh Takfiri group has released a new video purportedly showing execution of five “British spies” in Syria, with the terrorists calling Prime Minister David Cameron an “imbecile.” The 10-minute video, posted online, showed the five men in orange jumpsuits introducing themselves in Arabic and “confessing” to spying for the United Kingdom by filming and photographing sites in exchange for money within Syria's northern city of al-Raqqah. After that, the video showed the alleged spies, aged between 25 to 40 years old, kneeling on the ground in a desert location, with five masked executioners standing behind them, each with a hand gun. The middle executioner, then, began delivering a propaganda rant in a British English accent, addressing the UK premier. He called Cameron a “slave of the White House” and mocked him as he dared “to wage war against” Daesh with “a handful of planes” and threatened him over the UK's campaign in Syria. Then, executioners shot their guns in the victims’ heads, apparently killing all five. The video ended with a small boy, dressed in an army uniform, shouting “We will kill infidels over there,” pointing into distance.

The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has executed Ruqia Hassan, a female citizen journalist who wrote about daily life in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of the group’s so-called caliphate. The 30-year-old journalist was killed in September, but news of her death was confirmed this week by activists in Raqqa, following ISIS members’ claims on social media that she was still alive.

An Islamic State militant executed his mother in public in the Syrian city of Raqqa because she had encouraged him to leave the group we were told on Friday January 8, 2016. The woman in her 40s had warned her son that a U.S.-backed alliance would wipe out Islamic State and had encouraged him to leave the city with her. She was detained after he informed the group of her comments. The 20-year-old man executed his mother on Wednesday near the post office building where she worked in front of hundreds of people in Raqqa. ---

Only a third of Russia’s airstrikes in Syria are targeting Islamic State and its imprecise attacks are forcing the population to flee, fuelling Europe’s refugee crisis we were told Saturday January 9, 2016. About 70% of the 5,000 air strikes carried out by Russia since it began its air offensive in Syria on 30 September hit rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, rather than supporting the efforts of the US-led coalition against Isis. Rescue workers and rights groups said Russia’s bombing in Syria has killed scores of civilians at busy market places and in residential areas. Russia denies this. The Kremlin launched its airstrikes saying it wanted to help Assad, its main Middle East ally, defeat Islamic State and other militant groups.

On Saturday January 9, 2016, an airstrike carried out by an unidentified power killed at least 39 people in a rebel-held town in the north-west of the country. The strike hit a court house and an adjacent prison. The airstrike on the town of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province also wounded a large number of people, many of whom were in critical condition. Also on Saturday, a United Nations envoy visited Damascus to advance preparations for peace talks planned this month. Sources also confirmed that agreement was reached for aid to be delivered on Monday to Madaya, an opposition-held town where the UN says there have been credible reports of people dying of starvation. Aid will be sent simultaneously to two villages blockaded by rebels.

On Monday January 11, 2016, at least 12 children have been killed along with their teacher in a Russian airstrike that hit a school in Syria’s Aleppo province. The strike in the town of Anjara, about nine miles west of the city of Aleppo, also injured at least 20 people, all of them children and teachers. Three children were killed by rebel rocket fire on a government-held district in Aleppo city.

The U.N. humanitarian chief has called for Monday January 11, 2016's delivery of aid to three besieged towns in Syria to be the first of many and welcomed a Syrian statement that such deliveries should be repeated and sustained. The convoys to help civilians in the three towns cut off for months by the war in Syria must not be "either one-off or exceptional." The U.N. says 4.5 million Syrians are living in besieged or hard-to-reach areas and desperately need humanitarian aid, with civilians prevented from leaving and aid workers blocked from bringing in food, medicine, fuel and other supplies. Reports of starvation and images of emaciated children have raised global concerns and underscored the urgency for new peace talks that the U.N. is hoping to host in Geneva on January 25. Aid convoys with food and other supplies reached three besieged villages on Monday. In Madaya, near Damascus about 400 people need to be evacuated immediately to receive life-saving treatment for medical conditions, malnourishment and starvation. The situation is the same in the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya in northern Syria. The UN will try to get ambulances to Madaya on Tuesday to evacuate the 400 people, of all ages, if safe passage can be assured. It will take several days to distribute the aid in Madaya, near Damascus, and the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya in northern Syria, and the supplies are probably enough to last for a month. ---

Islamic State militants launched a fresh offensive Monday January 18, 2016, taking advantage of a sandstorm that sharply reduced visibility in eastern Syria and capturing new areas from government forces near the city of Deir el-Zour. The militants captured areas just north of the city, including an army base known as the "Saiqa Camp" and parts of arms depots in the village of Ayash. IS fighters have in fact captured the entire Ayash village, which is just north of another town that IS captured over the weekend. Over the weekend, IS captured several areas in Deir el-Zour province, killing scores of troops and civilians and capturing hundreds in this province bordering Iraq.

The Islamic State is intensifying a brutal siege against President Bashar al-Assad’s last stronghold in eastern Syria. The extremist organization has unleashed waves of suicide bombers and other attacks in the escalated push to seize government-held areas in the city of Deir al-Zour. An estimated 200,000 people in those areas are quickly running out of food and medicine after a year of blockade by the group, with the United Nations expressing concern about possible deaths due to starvation. The city’s fall would mark an effective end to the Assad government’s control of the vast expanses of eastern Syria, an area that is now mostly divided between Kurdish forces and the Islamic State. It would also deal a symbolic but important blow to Russia’s military campaign in Syria, which has helped Assad’s forces regain momentum against rebels in the western part of the country but has yet to decisively turn the tide of the war.

Syrian government troops and allied militias regained control of the last major rebel-held stronghold in the western province of Latakia on Sunday January 24, 2016. Over the last two days, Syria's military and loyalist militias, backed by Russian airpower, surrounded the rebel-held town of Rabia and took control of the surrounding villages.

The United Nations announced on Monday January 25, 2016, that it would aim to start Syria peace talks on Friday. Syrian military forces, aided by Russian air power, made new gains on the battlefield, suggesting that even these still precarious diplomatic negotiations would bring little respite in the fighting for the next several months. The United Nations envoy, Staffan de Mistura, in his announcement of the postponed start date, declined to say who would be invited to represent the opposition or mention what would happen to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the lightning rod of the conflict. Speaking on Monday -the day the talks were intended to start- he told reporters that he would only send invitations on Tuesday, and shuttle among various groups of Syrian representatives until they can agree to meet face to face. That could go on, in a staggered fashion, for six months.

Russia on Tuesday January 26, 2016, argued strongly against Turkey's demand to keep a leading Kurdish group out of Syrian peace talks, and said it expects the U.N. envoy to resist "blackmail" by Turkey and others, reflecting sharp differences that remain ahead of the talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also denied allegations that Moscow had urged Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down and could offer him political asylum.

On Tuesday January 26, 2016, government forces have retaken control of a strategically important town in southern Syria. Sheikh Miskeen, which lies on one of the main routes from Damascus to the city of Deraa and the Jordanian border, fell after a month-long battle. Russian warplanes were reported to have played a key role in the offensive. Russia's foreign minister meanwhile declared its intervention had changed the course of the conflict in Syria, ahead of the start of peace talks. Sergei Lavrov also warned it would be impossible to negotiate a political settlement without allowing Kurdish groups to attend.

Multiple bombings struck a government-run checkpoint in the central Syrian city of Homs on Tuesday January 26, 2016, killing at least 20 people and wounding over a hundred. The checkpoint was hit first by a car bomb, which was then followed by a suicide bombing.

On Tuesday January 26, 2016, the office of the U.N. envoy for Syria said it sent out invitations for the talks, but with just three days to go, the opposition is still undecided about whether it will attend. One opposition official suggested the Saudi-backed opposition delegation may boycott the talks. The envoy would not make public the numbers and identities of the invitees until his office gets feedback from the invited parties. The talks are meant to start a political process to end the conflict that began in 2011 as a largely peaceful uprising against Assad's rule but escalated into an all-out war after a harsh state crackdown. The plan calls for cease-fires in parallel to the talks, a new constitution and elections in a year and a half. ---

Western-backed Syrian rebels on Tuesday January 26, 2016, suffered what was viewed as one of the most significant defeats yet since Russia’s military intervention in Syria turned the tide of the war in favour of President Bashar Assad. Multiple bombings struck a government-run checkpoint in the central Syrian city of Homs also killed at least 20 people and wounding over a hundred. After a month-long offensive backed by Russian warplanes, government forces and allied militias reclaimed control of the town of Sheik Miskeen, strategically located at a crossroads commanding a supply route in southern Syria between the Jordanian border and the capital, Damascus.

Suspected Russian air strikes killed at least 54 civilians in rebel and jihadist held areas of Syria in the past 24 hours we were told Thursday January 28, 2016. Strikes on Wednesday killed 29 civilians, including nine women and three children, in villages controlled by the Islamic State group in the eastern Deir Ezzor province and its provincial capital of the same name. The strikes killed another 15 civilians, including five young brothers, in and around the city of Al-Bab, an IS bastion in the northern province of Aleppo. Ten more civilians, including seven children, were killed in Russian strikes in Ghanto, a town held by Islamist rebels in the central province of Homs.

The first Syria peace talks for two years were a "complete failure" before they started on Friday January 29, 2016, after the United Nations announced it would press ahead with them despite an opposition boycott. Opponents of President Bashar al-Assad said they were far more concerned with fending off a Russian-backed military onslaught, with civilians reported to be fleeing as the Syrian army and allied militia tried to capture a suburb of Damascus and finish off rebels defending it. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura has invited the Syrian government and an opposition umbrella group to Geneva for "proximity talks", in which they would meet in separate rooms.

At least 50 people were killed Sunday January 31, 2016, in a triple suicide bombing near the Syrian capital of Damascus as the United Nations special envoy launched indirect peace talks to end the country's civil war. The attackers detonated a car bomb at a bus stop, and two suicide bombers set off more explosives as rescuers rushed to the area. The blasts went off in the Damascus suburb of Sayyda Zeinab, about 600 yards from one of the holiest shrines for Shiite Muslims. More than 100 people were wounded in addition to the 50 killed. TV footage showed widespread damage that included several burning cars and a torched bus, plus blown-out windows and large holes in the facade of a nearby apartment tower.

The United Nations on Wednesday February 3, 2016, called off the fractious Syrian peace talks in Geneva until the end of February. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, who was alternating between discussions with representatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups trying to overthrow him, called the delay until February 25 a "temporary pause" and not the demise of what had been the first Syrian peace effort in two years. This is not the end, de Mistura said, and it is not the failure of the talks.

The Syrian army claimed that it has ended the rebel siege of two Shi'ite villages in Aleppo, handing Assad's government a major victory. The army and Shi'ite militias known as the Popular Defence Committees had broken the rebels' three-year blockade around Nubul and Zahraa, part of the government's advance in Aleppo province in recent days. The rebel defeat allows Syrian forces to take control of a supply route from Aleppo to the Turkish border.

At least 15,000 Syrian refugees fleeing fighting in northern Aleppo province have gathered at a border crossing with Turkey. The frontier is shut but Turkey has said it is prepared to feed and shelter the refugees. In the past few days, the Syrian army backed by Russian air power has made a series of gains in Aleppo province. The advance threatens to surround the city of Aleppo, Syria's largest, landing a major blow to the rebels. Nato has accused Russia of "undermining" Syrian peace efforts through its strikes, which it says are mainly aimed at opposition groups. Russia insists it only targets what it calls terrorists. ---

Russian and Syrian government forces on Saturday February 6, 2016, intensified an assault on rebel-held areas around the Syrian city of Aleppo that has prompted tens of thousands to flee to the Turkish border to seek refuge. The assault around Aleppo, which could soon fall to government forces, helped to torpedo Syrian peace talks in Geneva this week. Russia's intervention has tipped the balance of the war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad, reversing gains the rebels made last year. Any hopes of a ceasefire were dampened by Assad's foreign minister, who said it would be all but impossible to stop the fighting while rebels were able to pass freely across the borders with Turkey and Jordan.

A car bomb struck near a vegetable market and a police club in the north of the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday February 9, 2016, causing casualties. At least 10 people were killed and many more injured –at least 20- in Masaken Barzeh district. The attack also caused material damage to the nearby building of the General Establishment for Mills. A car had tried to ram into the police officers' club in the area, but was stopped by guards. A suicide bomber then detonated his explosives, causing deaths and injuries.

Kurdish fighters backed by Russian airstrikes launched an attack in northern Syria on Wednesday February 10, 2016, in an attempt to capture a military air base held by Syrian insurgents. With Syrian troops backed by Russian warplanes waging a major offensive between the northern city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, the Kurds appeared to be exploiting the chaos to expand their nearby enclave, known as Afrin. Fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units, known as the YPG, are clashing with rebels near Mannagh air base trying to take Arab villages near Afrin.

Russia has proposed a March 1 ceasefire in Syria but Washington believes Moscow is giving itself and the Syrian government three weeks to try to crush moderate rebel groups. The United States has countered with demands for the fighting to stop immediately we were told Wednesday February 10, 2016. Peace talks are supposed to resume by February 25.

Major Powers agreed on Friday February 12, 2016, to implement a cessation of hostilities in Syria and to expand delivery of humanitarian aid to people caught up in the conflict. Humanitarian access will commence this week to besieged areas, and an ISSG task force will within one week elaborate modalities for a nationwide cessation of hostilities. The ISSG members unanimously committed to immediately facilitate the full implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2254, adopted unanimously December 18, 2015.

Airstrikes hit two hospitals and a school in northern Syria, killing and wounding dozens of people on Monday, according to opposition activists, who said the strikes were carried out by Russian warplanes supporting a major advance by government troops.

An airstrike in the province of Idlib destroyed a makeshift clinic supported by the international aid group Doctors Without Borders, while in the neighbouring Aleppo province, a missile struck a children's hospital in the town of Azaz, killing at least five people and wounding dozens. A third air raid hit a school in a nearby village, killing seven and wounding others.

Doctors Without Borders said that the hospital in the town of Maaret al-Numan was hit four times in at least two attacks that were minutes apart. At least seven people were killed and at least eight others were missing, presumed dead. This appears to be a deliberate attack on a health structure. The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of around 40,000 people without access to medical services in an active zone of conflict.

The hospital had 30 beds, 54 staff members, two operating theatres, an outpatients department and an emergency room. Russian warplanes targeted the makeshift hospital, destroying it and killing nine people. Dozens were wounded in the attack. On Monday February 15, 2016, pro-government gunmen have entered western parts of the northern town of Tel Rifaat, where they were fighting "fierce battles' against insurgents. Tel Rifaat is a major stronghold of militants fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

Kurdish rebels captured a strategic town during overnight fighting with Arab rebel forces in northwestern Syria's Aleppo province. On Monday February15, 2016,the Syrian Democratic Forces -a U.S.-backed coalition of Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian rebel groups- gained control over Tell Rifaat, which overlooks the junction of two main roads leading to Aleppo City. One of the SDF's main fighting units is the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, which has recently captured territory along much of Turkey's southern border and has been under attack by the Turkish military since Saturday. The YPG and its SDF allies also captured the nearby village of Kafr Naseh on Monday. The Kurdish advances coincide with a Russian-backed Syrian military offensive in Aleppo province that has caused tens of thousands of refugees to flee for the Turkish border. Turkey considers the YPG and its political arm, the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, to be terrorist organizations. Ankara sees the groups as offshoots of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. However, the SDF, and particularly the YPG, have been key ground allies of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, which has conducted airstrikes in support of Kurds fighting against IS forces in the al-Hasakah and Raqqa provinces and more recently at the Tishreen Dam in the Aleppo province. ---

Syria's opposition on Saturday February 20, 2016, said it had agreed to the "possibility" of a temporary truce, provided there were guarantees Damascus's allies including Russia would cease fire, sieges were lifted and aid deliveries were allowed country-wide. There was no immediate sign that Moscow would drop its vow to continue its attacks against those it views as "terrorists" among the range of armed groups pitted against President Bashar al-Assad. Russian air strikes have turned the tide in Syria's five-year-old civil war in Assad's favour, to the frustration of the United States and its allies who support rebels trying to topple the president.

Dozens of people were killed in separate car bomb and suicide attacks in Homs and southern Damascus on Sunday February 21, 2016. Thirty-nine people were killed when two car bomb explosions struck a pro-regime neighbourhood in central Homs. The London-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave the death toll as 46, with more than 100 people wounded. Then on the southern outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, three bombers struck in the Sayyidah Zaynab district Sunday; many casualties were feared.

Syrian democratic forces liberated al-Shaddadi city, located 60km south of al-Hasakah after a fierce battle with ISIS ended in their escape and loss of their lives and equipment. They took control over al-Shaddadi, where ISIS resided in south al-Hasakah suburbs after an attack that lasted for a few days on the city. The Kurdish forces cut two of the supply roads used by ISIS, where one connects al-Shaddadi to Mosul in Iraq and to al-Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold in Syria.

Syria Sunday February 21, 2016:

• Nearly 140 people were killed in a series of bombings.
• The attacks hit neighbourhoods in cities of Damascus and Homs as Secretary of State John Kerry announced a preliminary ceasefire.
• Explosions from two car bombs ripped through a residential neighbourhood in Homs. This is a pro-Assad area, the attack was clearly anti-government and ISIS has claimed responsibility.
• A few hours later in suburban Damascus several more bombs went off. ISIS said it planted them too.

 

The US and Russia have announced that a planned cessation of hostilities in Syria will come into effect at midnight on Saturday 27 February, 2016. The truce does not include so-called Islamic State (IS) and the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Syria Thursday February 25, 2016:

• Syrian government troops backed by Russian airstrikes recaptured a town in Aleppo province from Islamic State militants just two days ahead of a U.S. and Russia-engineered cease-fire.
• In the rebel-held suburb of Daraya, the army escalated its attacks, dropping dozens of barrel bombs from helicopters on the devastated town located a few kilometres southwest of the Syrian capital.
• Russia and the United States have set a deadline of midnight on Friday for the temporary cease-fire to take effect between the Syrian government and opposition forces. But fighting is expected to continue in many places, because the deal excludes groups deemed terrorist by the U.N. Security Council including Islamic State and the al-Qaida branch in Syria, the Nusra Front.
• The town of Khanaser captured by the army Thursday was seized earlier this week by the Islamic State group, cutting state forces’ access to Aleppo.
• The army, backed by Russian airstrikes) took Khanaser, around 50 kilometres southeast of Aleppo city, after three days of heavy battles and that intense fighting was still underway to reopen the road. On Tuesday, IS seized Khanaser and surrounding hills, severing the government’s main land route to the city.

 

Warplanes unleashed airstrikes on the suburbs of the Syrian capital and near the rebel-held city of Aleppo on Friday February 26, 2016, hours before a cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia was to go into effect. The warplanes in Friday's strikes were believed to be Russian. The bombings came as the main Syrian opposition and rebel umbrella group said some 97 factions had agreed to abide by the cease-fire. The High Negotiations Committee, or HNC, said a military committee has been formed to follow up on the cease-fire, which is scheduled to kick-in at midnight on Friday. ---

A car bomb in southern Syria has killed at least 18 rebels including the commander of a U.S.-backed armed opposition group. The car bomb exploded Wednesday March 2, 2016, afternoon in the southern village of Asheh, in Quneitra province, killing at least 18 fighters including the commander of the Syria Revolutionaries Front, Capt. Abu Hamza al-Naimi. The blast went off when several commanders were meeting at the group's office in Asheh. The Syria Revolutionaries Front is a moderate rebel group that was largely crushed in northern Syria in late 2014 by al-Qaida's Syrian branch, known as the Nusra Front.

The Islamic State has executed eight Dutch members of the jihadist group, whom it accused of trying to desert we were told Monday February 29, 2016. Daesh (IS) executed the eight Dutch fighters on Friday in Maadan, Raqa province, after accusing them of attempting desertion and mutiny. Three other Dutch jihadists were arrested by Iraqi IS members who accused them of wanting to flee and one of the detainees was beaten to death during the interrogation. IS leaders in Raqa sent a delegate to solve the dispute with the Dutch cell's enraged members, but they murdered the intermediary in vengeance, the citizen journalist group added. The IS leadership in Iraq then ordered the arrest of all the members of the Dutch group, and imprisoned them in Tabaqa and Maadan in Syria. Eight have since been executed. Three European jihadists of North African origin were executed in what IS calls the Wilayet al-Furat -an area stretching across the Syrian-Iraqi frontier. 200 people from the Netherlands including 50 women have joined IS in Syria and Iraq.

The Syrian government reported a nationwide power outage Thursday March 3, 2016. Electrical workers determined the cause and began restoring power to some places by late Thursday afternoon. It wasn't clear how many people the outage affected as many cities outside of the regime's control don't get service from the government-run power grid. Shortly before the reports of the outage militants had hit part of a power-generating station with rockets in the western city of Hama.

A U.S.-Russia-brokered cease-fire in Syria, now in its sixth day, is largely holding despite sporadic clashes in some areas we were told Thursday March 3, 2016, raising expectations ahead of next week’s planned resumption of Geneva peace talks. The cease-fire has “greatly reduced” violence in Syria and laid out hopes of resuming peace talks between Syrian sides in the conflict. The talks were called off last month after a spike in fighting.

Syrian rebels have seized control of the Syrian side of a major border crossing with Iraq from the Islamic State group we were told Saturday March 5, 2016. U.S.-backed fighters from the Free Syrian Army's Southern Front killed one IS fighter and wounded several others in the process of taking the Tanaf border crossing late Friday. The FSA fighters crossed into Syria from Jordan to launch the attack. IS fighters meanwhile attacked the government's supply route to the contested northern city of Aleppo, killing 15 soldiers. Government forces repelled the attack and secured the road. Government forces killed dozens of IS fighters in the clashes.

A rocket and mortar barrage struck a government-controlled neighbourhood in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Sunday March 6, 2016, killing 13 civilians and wounding 40. The attack by “terrorists” occurred in the predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood of Sheikh Maqsoud, which has been subjected to insurgent shelling for days despite a shaky U.S. and Russian-brokered ceasefire that took effect February 27. More than 70 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Sheikh Maqsoud; nine civilians were killed, including four children, and 30 wounded.

Warplanes have bombed a fuel depot in an opposition-held town in northern Syria, killing at least 12 people. The bodies found in the wreckage in the depot in Idlib province, which was struck Monday March 7, 2016, are burned beyond recognition.

On Thursday March 10, 2016, we were told that the Islamic State's military commander was badly wounded but still alive and had been moved to Islamic State's base of operations in Raqqa for treatment. The U.S. officials said on Tuesday that Abu Omar al-Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen and described by the Pentagon as the group's "minister of war", was targeted near the town of al-Shadadi in Syria. Born in 1986 in Georgia the red-bearded Shishani had a reputation as a close military adviser to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was said by followers to have relied heavily on Shishani. The strike itself involved multiple waves of manned and unmanned aircraft, targeting Shishani near al-Shadadi in Syria. The Pentagon believes Shishani was sent there to bolster Islamic State troops after they suffered a series of setbacks at the hands of U.S.-allied Arab and Kurdish forces on the ground. ---

The Syrian government will send a delegation to fresh peace talks due to start in Geneva on Monday March 14, 2016, but has put limits on the agenda  ruling out any debate of presidential elections. An opposition spokesman said the government's pre-conditions could halt the talks before they had even started. US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to meet his German, French, and British counterparts on Sunday. Violence had fallen dramatically since a cessation of hostilities began two weeks ago.

Another commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) paramilitary was killed in Syria. General Hassan Ali Shamsabadi was reportedly killed late on Wednesday March 9, 2016, while undertaking an "advisory mission" in the war-torn country. He was defending Shiite shrines in Syria when killed. However the Syrian opposition say he was killed in fighting near Aleppo. His death comes one month after another IRGC commander, Brigadier General Mohsen Qaryajan, was killed in a similar mission in Syria.

The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front seized bases and weapons from a Western-backed rebel group we were told on Sunday March 13, 2016. The Nusra Front had also detained dozens of members of the 13th Division rebel group, one of the factions that has received foreign military aid, capturing U.S.-made anti-tank missiles. The 13th Division, which is led by the prominent rebel commander Ahmed al-Seoud and fights under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, said that Nusra Front fighters attacked its bases and seized weapons, but gave no further details. Nusra Front accused the rebel fighters of launching surprise attacks on its own bases in the town of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province in northwest Syria. Some Nusra fighters had been captured.

In a surprise move, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to start withdrawing the "main part" of its forces in Syria from Tuesday March 15, 2016. He said the Russian intervention had largely achieved its objectives. Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his office said in a statement he had agreed to the move.

Russia began withdrawing its forces from Syria on Tuesday March 15, 2016, in a move that will leave the Syrian government to fend for itself but with a greatly strengthened hand in negotiations over the country's future. The first group of Russian planes left Hmeymim air base in Syria on Tuesday morning.

Syria’s Kurds on Thursday March 17, 2016, declared a de-facto federal region in Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria, drawing sharp condemnation from both the Damascus government and its opponents who decried the unilateral move as unconstitutional and setting a dangerous precedent. In Syria’s civil war, Kurdish fighters have emerged as the most effective fighting force against the Islamic State group and are backed militarily by the United States. More recently, Russia has backed them politically. But despite Russia’s insistence that they should be part of the talks that started this week in Geneva, they have not been invited because Turkey considers the group to be a terrorist organization.

A wave of Russian air strikes killed at least 39 civilians on Saturday March 19, 2016, in Raqa. At least five children and seven women were among the dead in IS's de facto capital in the north of the war-ravaged country. Five members of IS's police force were also killed and 60 people were wounded, some critically. The air raids came a day after 16 civilians were killed in strikes on the same city. ---

Russia’s Special Forces have helped direct air raids in Syria and Russian military advisers have played a key role in the Syrian army’s offensive. We were told Wednesday March 23, 2016, that Special Forces soldiers have conducted intelligence to pinpoint targets for Russian airstrikes in Syria. They also have helped direct aircraft during their missions and carried out other unspecified tasks. Russia didn’t say how many Special Forces soldiers have been deployed to Syria.

A Russian officer has been killed in fighting near the Syrian city of Palmyra we were told Thursday March 24, 2016. It occurred as the officer was directing air strikes near the settlement of Tadmor on positions of the Islamic State group.

The US said that it has killed a number of leading Islamic State (IS) militants in the past week, including the second-in-command. The deaths of Abdul Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli and other members of the group's "cabinet" would hamper its operations. He was killed during a raid by US Special Forces in Syria on Thursday March 24, 2016. The troops landed in helicopters and lay in wait as Qaduli drove past them in a car. There was an attempt to capture Qaduli alive, but the situation escalated and the militant and three other people in the vehicle were killed. There was a reward of $7m (£5m) for Qaduli.

President Bashar al-Assad has hailed the recapture of Palmyra from so-called Islamic State (IS) as an important achievement in the war on terrorism. The Syrian army now has full control. It had been gaining ground for several days, supported by Russian air strikes.

The recapture of Palmyra by Syrian government forces on Sunday March 28, 2016, was an important victory over IS fighters who had waged a 10-month reign of terror there. It also marked the first major defeat for the extremist group since an international agreement to battle terrorism in the fractured nation took effect last year.

Syrian antiquities experts expressed shock Monday March 29, 2016, at the destruction the Islamic State group wrought inside Palmyra's museum, where scores of artefacts were smashed before troops drove the extremists out of the historic town. During their rule of Palmyra, the extremists demolished some of its best-known artefacts and monuments, including two large temples dating back more than 1,800 years and a Roman triumphal archway. IS also killed scores of people, including the archaeological site's 81-year-old director, Khaled al-Asaad, who was beheaded in August after he reportedly refused to divulge where authorities had hidden some of the treasures before IS captured the town. The militants also demolished Palmyra's infamous Tadmur prison, where thousands of government opponents were tortured. ---

On Thursday March 31, 2016, Britain's foreign minister has scoffed at Syrian President Bashar Assad's offer for a national unity government that includes members of the opposition, calling it insufficient. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says that what is needed in Syria is a transitional government. The top British diplomat called for the creation of a government that represents all communities in Syria and "it has to be a government that is not, or at least in the future, will not be led by Bashar Assad."

A week after taking back the historic town of Palmyra, Syrian troops and their allies - under the cover of Russian airstrikes- on Sunday April 3, 2016, captured Qaryatain, another town controlled by the Islamic State group in central Syria. The government forces are in control of most of the town after IS fighters withdrew to its eastern outskirts.

Qaryatain used to be home to a sizable Christian population and lies midway between Palmyra and the capital, Damascus. Qaryatain had a mixed population of around 40,000 Sunni Muslims and Christians, as well as thousands of internally displaced people who had fled from the nearby city of Homs. Many of the Christians fled the town after it came under IS attack. Dozens of Qaryatain’s Christians and other residents have been abducted by the extremists. While the town was under IS control, some were released, others were made to sign pledges to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims.

Syria's partial cease-fire appeared to be unravelling Saturday April 2, 2016, as fierce fighting between government forces and opposition fighters, including members of the al-Qaida affiliated Nusra Front, erupted outside Aleppo and other parts in the country's north. At least 25 pro-government and 16 opposition fighters died in the clashes south of Aleppo, where the Nusra Front and rebel militias captured a village overlooking a major highway.

The liberating forces who recaptured Palmyra found a mass grave with at least 40 bodies -many women and children — in the northeastern part of Palmyra. The dead are believed to have been among hundreds killed by ISIS after it stormed into the central Syrian city in May. Some of the remains show signs of beheading and torture. ISIS demolished some of the ruins, including the 1,800-year-old Arch of Triumph and the nearly 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshamin. ISIS also beheaded the antiquities expert who looked after the ruins. Palmyra was a caravan oasis when Romans overtook it in the mid-first century. In the centuries that followed, the area “stood at the crossroads of several civilizations” with its art and architecture mixing Greek, Roman and Persian influences.

A prominent leader in Syrian al-Qaida offshoot al-Nusra Front, Abu Firas, known as “the Syrian”, was killed on Sunday April 3, 2016, in an air raid in the rebel held north-west province of Idlib alongside at least 20 other militants including foreign jihadists. Abu Firas was a founding member of the militant group who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and was a senior member of its policy making Shura Council. He also worked with Osama bin Laden.

An airstrike on an al-Qaida affiliated headquarters in northern Syria has killed at least 22 militants, including a senior Qaida-linked spokesman. Jets thought to belong to the Syrian or Russian Air Forces targeted the headquarters of Jund al-Aqsa, an extremist group that fights alongside the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria, Sunday night April 3, 2016. The strike killed the Nusra Front's official spokesman, Radwan Namous, also known as Abu Firas al-Souri, and his son.

The Islamic State has killed 15 of its members we were told Sunday April 3, 2016. The killings followed the arrest of 35 members on Saturday in Raqqa. The members were killed in connection with the assassination of senior Islamic State figure Abu Hija al-Tunisi, who died on Wednesday in an air strike.

Syrian insurgents shot down a government warplane in the north of the country Tuesday April 5, 2016, and shelled a predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood in the city of Aleppo, killing at least 14 people. The warplane was shot down with a surface-to-air missile while on a reconnaissance mission over the northern province of Aleppo; the pilot ejected. The warplane was shot down near the village of al-Ais that was captured Saturday by insurgents spearheaded by members of the Nusra Front —al-Qaida's branch in Syria. It is believed the pilot was captured by Nusra Front members, who took him to one of their offices in the area. The warplane was a Sukhoi 22.

At least 200 people are reported missing after a suspected attack by the so-called Islamic State (IS) on a cement factory near Damascus. Workers were taken from a dormitory where they were staying on the outskirts of the town of Dumeir. The workers were employed at the Badiyah factory. ---

Clashes around Aleppo have killed at least 16 pro-regime fighters and 19 members of Al-Qaeda's affiliate and allied rebel groups within a 24-hour period we were told Sunday April 10, 2016. Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah fighters were fighting alongside regime troops and other loyalist militia against jihadists and rebels. A truce brokered by the United States and Russia, which back opposing sides in Syria's war, does not apply to the fight against jihadists.

The Islamic State group has released most of the 300 cement workers it abducted near Damascus after questioning them to find out who were Muslims and killing four who were members of the minority Druze sect we were told Saturday April 9, 2016. The cement workers and contractors were abducted from al-Badia Cement Company in Dumeir, just northeast of the capital, after a surprise attack on government forces. All those abducted have been released except for 30 people who were guards at the cement factory. It said the fate of the 30 is unknown.

Several Syrian Christians have been killed in the town of al-Qaryatayn in central Syria by militants from the Islamic State group we were told Sunday April 10, 2016. Earlier this week, the town was retaken by Russian-backed Syrian forces and their allies. The head of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II, said that 21 Christians were killed by the militant organization, also known as ISIS, after it captured the city last August. About 300 Christians were living in the city when the killings took place. The patriarch added that those who were killed included three women while some died while trying to escape. Others were killed for breaking the rules of the “dhimmi contracts,” which needed them to submit themselves to Islam. Five more people are believed to be missing or dead. The remainder of the group was reunited with their families after negotiations and ransom payments. The patriarch also said that the terrorist group had planned to sell the Christian girls to slavery. When ISIS took over al-Qaryatayn, the extremist group abducted hundreds of people including several Christians.

Russia portrayed last month’s drawdown from Syria as a victory and a homecoming, after a six-month deployment in which its air force turned the tide of the long-running conflict. So it was a surprise to be told on Sunday April 10, 2016, that powerful new Russian helicopters were seeing Syrian combat for the first time. Even after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sudden March 14 announcement that cut short Russia’s Syrian deployment, it was clear they would maintain a muscular presence on twin air and naval bases in coastal Syria. But the current level of activity would suggest that the pull-out has been minor at best. The extent of the Russian activities on the ground is a sign that the Kremlin has little intention of withdrawing support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russia also does not appear ready to cede space in Syria to other nations operating in the skies and on the ground, including the United States.

A Russian Mi-28 helicopter crashed in Syria Tuesday April 12, 2016. Its two crew members were killed; the aircraft has crashed because of technical reasons. The helicopter, known in Rus

Syrians voted in a parliamentary election in government-held areas of the country on Wednesday April 13, 2016 in what they called a show of support for President Bashar al-Assad. His opponents and Western powers denounced the poll as illegitimate. The election went ahead independently of a U.N.-led peace process aimed at ending the five-year-long war. A second round of talks began in Geneva on Wednesday but an upsurge in fighting has darkened the already bleak outlook for diplomacy. The government said the vote was held to comply with the constitution, a view echoed by its Russian allies. The opposition, which wants the new peace talks to focus on a political transition, said the election was meaningless, while Britain and France called it a "flimsy facade" and a "sham".

At least 22 civilians were killed in Aleppo in one of the highest single tolls since a fragile truce came into force. Six civilians were killed and eight wounded in government air strikes on rebel-held eastern parts of Aleppo city on Saturday April 16, 2016. Opposition groups fired rockets into the government-controlled western districts, leaving five people dead and 20 wounded. ---

Syria Tuesday April 19, 2016:

• Air strikes on two markets killed up to 50 people in northwest Syria as the government forces backed by Russian air power also launched strikes against rebels in the province of Latakia.
• Targets included towns and villages where a partial truce agreement had brought about a lull in fighting between the government and rebels since February 27. That agreement has unravelled in recent weeks.
• In Idlib province, which neighbours Latakia, air strikes on a vegetable market in the town of Maarat al-Numan killed around 40 people and injured dozens.
• In the nearby town of Kafr Nubl between seven and 10 people were killed.

 

Eight Syrians were killed by Turkish border guards while fleeing violence. Most of the victims were women and children. The group was trying to cross into Turkey through a mountain smuggling route at the western end of the border on Sunday night April 17, 2016, but were forced back by government forces firing live rounds.

At least 10 people were killed Friday April 22, 2016, when airstrikes hit several rebel-held neighbourhoods in Syria's city of Aleppo and neighbouring Idlib province.

The Islamic State group says its fighters have captured a Syrian pilot after his MIG-23 plane was shot down by anti-aircraft weapons near Mount Dakwah southeast of Damascus we were told Friday April 22, 2016. The pilot, identified as Azzam Eid, was captured after he landed with his parachute near the crash site.

A suicide bombing Saturday April 23, 2016, killed Majed Hussein Al Sadeq, chief of staff of Ahrar al-Sham, one of most powerful organizations fighting the Islamic State group. Sadeq, along with three others members of the rebel group, were killed in an attack at their headquarters in Binnish, a town northeast of Idlib city.

A suicide bombing near a Shiite Muslim shrine Sayyida Zeinab, south of Damascus, left at least 15 people dead and dozens more t6han 80 were wounded Monday April 25, 2016. ---

President Barack Obama confirmed on Monday April 25, 2016, that he had approved the deployment of as many as 250 additional U.S. personnel to Syria, including Special Forces, to train and assist local forces fighting Islamic State (IS) militants. Obama, speaking in Hanover, Germany, said he had backed the deployment to build on momentum from Special Forces already on the ground in Syria in driving IS out of key areas. Obama also said that the United States and the entire world needed a strong, united Europe and that Europeans had to take on their share of the burden to ensure collective security.

Violence in Syria continued for the fourth straight day to chip away at what remains from a cease-fire that has effectively collapsed, leaving at least 28 people dead –including 8 children- Monday April 25, 2016, in reciprocal shellings between government forces and opposition in Aleppo while a bomb blast disrupted a relative quiet in a Damascus suburb that is home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines here. At least 20 people were killed in the shelling on Aleppo, while eight died when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-packed vehicle at a military checkpoint in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab. In the past week, nearly 150 people have been killed in northern Syria and near Damascus.

In west of Aleppo, five Civil Defence workers -first responders in opposition-held territory where medical infrastructure has all but broken down- were killed by air strikes and a rocket attack on their centre. The attack appeared to have deliberately targeted the rescue workers in the town of Atareb, west of Aleppo.

A series of airstrikes hit a hospital and nearby buildings in Aleppo overnight, killing at least 27 people -including at least two doctors and three children- as the U.N. envoy for Syria appealed early Thursday April 28, 2016, to the U.S. and Russia to help revive the Syrian peace talks and a cease-fire he said "hangs by a thread."

A car bomb exploded in the main square of a central Syrian village of Mukharam al-Fawkani in the central province of Homs on Thursday May 5, 2016, and once people gathered to help the victims, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle detonated his explosives belt nearby, killing at least 10 people and wounding scores. The 10 killed in Homs included four children and three women and as many as 49 were wounded.

At least 28 people are reported to have been killed in an air strike at the Kamouna refugee camp near Sarmada in Idlib province, close to the Turkish border. Some say that the attack was by Syrian or Russian warplanes but this has not been confirmed. It comes a day after the extension of a truce was confirmed.

On Saturday May 7, 2016, after almost 10 months of captivity, three Spanish freelance journalists have been freed. Antonio Pampliega, José Manuel López, and Ángel Sastre crossed into Syria from its northern border with Turkey last July to report on the fighting in and around Aleppo, where they subsequently went missing.

U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Syria killed 48 Islamic State militant group (ISIS) fighters and injured others on Saturday May 7, 2016. This happened in Harjalah, Delha, Baragitah and Hawar Kilis. Four more members of the hard-line Sunni group were killed in separate airstrikes in the Karakopru region. Gun installations and barracks were also destroyed in that attack. So far, about 20 people have been killed and almost 70 wounded in the rocket fire on Kilis, Turkey.

13 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were killed and 21 wounded this week during an attack by militants in northern Syria. They were killed when a coalition of insurgents, including al-Qaida's branch in Syria known as the Nusra Front, seized the northern village of Khan Touman from pro-government forces. Khan Touman was captured Friday after two days of intense clashes that also left dozens of Syrian militants dead. The town was captured by a coalition known as Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, an ultraconservative group led by the Nusra Front, and the jihadi militias Jund al-Aqsa and Ahrar al-Sham.

Two airstrikes struck a northwestern Syrian town Tuesday May 10, 2016, killing at least 10 people, wounding many others and knocking out the dome of a mosque. The air raids on the town of Binnish in the northwestern province of Idlib came hours after a fragile and limited cease-fire in the nearby city of Aleppo and its surrounding countryside was extended for the third time, for another 48 hours starting at 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. ---

Two airstrikes struck a northwestern Syrian town Tuesday May 10, 2016, killing at least 10 people, wounding many others and knocking out the dome of a mosque. The air raids on the town of Binnish in the northwestern province of Idlib came hours after a fragile and limited cease-fire in the nearby city of Aleppo and its surrounding countryside was extended for the third time, for another 48 hours starting at 1 a.m. Tuesday morning.

Al-Qaida fighters and other ultraconservative Sunni insurgents seized a predominantly Alawite village in central Syria on Thursday May 12, 2016, sparking fears of sectarian violence as families from the village were reported missing by activists. Clashes continued into the afternoon as government or allied Russian aircraft pounded rebel positions. Seven militants were killed and the insurgents killed over 30 pro-government fighters in the clashes. Ahrar al-Sham, an ultraconservative Sunni militant group, led the assault on Zaara, along with the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's Syrian franchise, which often fights alongside opposition factions. Families disappeared from Zaara after the militants took over.

Mustafa Badreddine, a top military commander for Hezbollah, died in an explosion in the Syrian capital of Damascus we were told Friday May 13, 2016. Hezbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad against various militant groups seeking to remove him from power. Badreddine, 55, was directing Hezbollah's operations in Syria. A strong explosion targeted one of Hezbollah’s centres near the Damascus International Airport leading to the death of Commander Mustafa Badreddine and the wounding of several others. It is not clear whether the explosion was the result of an air raid, missile attack or artillery shelling.

At least 16 senior members of the al-Nusra Front armed group have been killed in an air strike in Syria. The strike hit a meeting the group was holding at the Abu al-Duhur airbase in the northwest of the country on Thursday May 12, 2016. Idlib province, where the attack took place, borders Turkey and is almost completely controlled by rebel groups, including the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham.

Syrian government airstrikes in the northern city of Idlib killed at least five people Friday May 13, 2016. Scores of civilians were killed when the Sunni insurgents took over the central village of Zaara.

On Saturday May 14, 2016, militants from the Islamic State (IS) group have briefly overrun a hospital complex in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour. About 35 pro-government fighters were killed and some medical staff taken hostage. More than 20 IS fighters were also killed. The attack was centred on al-Assad hospital, to the west of the city. Government forces retook the hospital after several hours, reports say, but the fate of the hostages is unclear.

Turkish and U.S.-led coalition forces struck Islamic State targets north of the Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday May 15, 2016, killing 27 fighters. Turkish artillery and rocket launchers fired into Syria while warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition carried out three separate air campaigns. Five fortified defines posts and two gun posts were destroyed. ---

Syrian government forces and allies including Lebanese Hezbollah fighters seized an extensive area southeast of Damascus from rebels on Thursday May 19, 2016, and fought other insurgents near a highway leading southwest. It was one of the most significant government advances this year, after its forces took territory in northwestern and central Syria. Insurgents have also advanced in some areas recently, including in Aleppo province. The fighting began early on Thursday when government forces and Hezbollah fighters captured the town of Deir al-Asafir, and then seized a number of other areas nearby, closing off a pocket of rebel control in Eastern Ghouta.

A series of airstrikes in a rebel-held central Syrian town Wednesday May 18, 2016, killed at least 12 people, including 10 children and two women who were taking cover in an underground shelter. At least eight air raids struck the town of Rastan, one of them hitting a house, destroying it while its residents were taking cover in the shelter. The raid killed a whole family, including a man, his wife, two sons and four daughters, in addition to his two sisters and their four children.

A series of coordinated explosions including suicide bombings rocked two normally quiet coastal strongholds of Syrian President Bashar Assad Monday May 23, 2016, killing more than 80 people and wounding 200 others. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) said they targeted members of the minority Alawite sect of Shiite Islam, to which Assad himself belongs. Four explosions struck Jableh, near Latakia. The attacks included a suicide bombing at the emergency entrance of the Jableh national hospital. Shortly afterward suicide bombers followed by a car-laden with explosives tore through a packed bus station and petrol station in Tartus, minutes apart. More than 33 were killed and many injured in the bombings. The explosions caused panic and took people by surprise.

The Syrian government has accused Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia of being behind a wave of bombings in the coastal cities of Tartous and Jableh. The State said that at least 78 people were killed, while a monitoring group put the death toll at more than 145. The cities, on Syria's Mediterranean coast, are part of the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad and have, until now, escaped the worst of the civil war.

There were extensive damage to a strategically significant airbase in central Syria used by Russian forces after a reported attack by so-called Islamic State (IS). Four helicopters and 20 lorries were destroyed in a series of fires inside the T4 base last week. The Russian military has denied reports that it had lost helicopters at the base as a result of an IS attack.

On Tuesday May 24, 2016, we were told that the Russian military suffered a setback in Syria when fires destroyed four Mi-24 attack helicopters last week, but the US intelligence community believes it was an "accident," not an Islamic State terror attack. The fires also destroyed more than a dozen trucks at an air base in Tiyas. On May 14, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on the Russian base, known locally as 'T4.' Fighter jets belonging to the Syrian regime were also destroyed. ---

Thousands of U.S.-backed fighters are launching an offensive to capture from Islamic State a crucial swathe of northern Syria known as the Manbij pocket. The operation started on Tuesday May 31, 2016, and could take weeks to complete, aims to choke off Islamic State's access to Syrian territory along the Turkish border that militants have long used as a logistics base for moving foreign fighters back and forth to Europe. A small number of U.S. special operations forces will support the offensive on the ground, acting as advisors and staying some distance back from the front lines. They'll be as close as they need to be for the Syrian fighters to complete the operation but they will not engage in direct combat. The operation will also count on support from U.S.-led coalition air strikes as well as from ground-based firing positions across the border in Turkey.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a mosque in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia on Thursday June 2, 2016, killing and wounding several people. The explosion took place near the city centre as people were leaving prayers, state TV reported, describing it as a terrorist attack. The blast killed at least three people. Last week a series of bombings killed nearly 150 people in Jableh, just south of Latakia, and Tartous, the first such attacks of their kind in those cities.

Syrian troops have crossed into Raqqa province, nearing the capital of so-called Islamic State. Heavy Russian air strikes had helped the offensive. A US-backed alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters started a campaign in May to expel IS militants from land north of Raqqa. IS seized the city in 2013 from rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad. The jihadist group established its headquarters there and began imposing its vision of a state, implementing a strict interpretation of Islamic law. It proclaimed a "caliphate" in 2014.

Syria Friday June 3, 2016:

• Syrian government air strikes have killed dozens of civilians in and around the northern city of Aleppo. At least 28 people were killed in raids on several neighbourhoods in the rebel-held east of Aleppo. Dozens of barrel bombs -crude, unguided explosive devices– were dropped in the strikes.
• Ten more people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was hit on Castello road, a key rebel supply route out of Aleppo. Castello road was now "effectively cut".
• Separately the US had air dropped weapons to rebel fighters in Aleppo province, who have been battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

 

Nearly 50 strikes hit rebel-held areas in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday June 5, 2016, in some of the heaviest recent raids by Russian and Syrian government aircraft. For their part, rebels hit government-held areas of Aleppo in what Syrian media said was an escalation in mortar attacks on the western districts. Aleppo, the country's largest city before the war, has been divided for years between rebel and government-held zones. It has seen many deadly bombardments that have all but destroyed a February ceasefire agreement. ---

At least 26 people have been killed in regime air strikes in the Deir Az Zor province. Women and children are among those killed in the air raids that targeted a busy market in the suburbs of Deir Az Zor city we were told Monday June 6, 2016. Meanwhile, government forces have clashed with the fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) near Deir Az Zor airport.

Bombs from airstrikes hit three hospitals on Wednesday June 8, 2016, in the rebel-held side of Aleppo, including a paediatrics centre supported by the United Nations. The attacks hit al-Bayan and al-Hakeem hospitals and the Abdulhadi Fares clinic. A source said that at least 10 civilians were killed in the bombings, including children, and that many others were wounded. Activist groups blamed Syrian military forces. Insurgents have no aircraft, which are used to conduct such bombings.

Syria approved humanitarian convoys to reach all of the country's besieged areas by the end of this month. Nearly 600,000 people are besieged in 19 areas in Syria, with two-thirds trapped by government forces and the rest besieged by armed opposition groups and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) group.

Crude barrel bombs have been dropped on a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, which received its first food-aid delivery in four years. The violence on Friday June 10, 2016, came in the rebel-held area just hours after the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and the UN delivered food aid to its residents for the first time since it came under siege in 2012. At least 28 barrel bombs -crude, unguided explosive devices- were dropped. Late on Thursday, the food-aid delivery came after the UN said the Syrian government had permitted access to 15 of the 19 besieged areas within the country.

Two suicide bombers struck close to the Syrian capital Saturday June 11, 2016, killing at least 12 people and wounding 55 others in the latest attack to hit the predominantly Shiite area in recent months. There were three attacks carried out by suicide bombers, two were wearing explosive belts while the third was in a car. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the two explosions. The blasts came as U.S.-backed fighters in northern Syria tightened their siege on the IS stronghold of Manbij, where tens of the thousands of civilians are trapped by the fighting. The Syria Democratic Forces, a predominantly Kurdish group, encircled the town after capturing dozens of villages and farms near the Turkish border.

The U.S. military bombed a Syrian rebel unit it had trained and equipped in a friendly-fire incident in late May, prompting an internal investigation. It is the most serious setback to date for the Pentagon’s recent efforts to work with Sunni Arab forces in northern Syria. The Pentagon said it conducted a series of airstrikes in and around the Syrian town of Ma’ra on May 27 and May 28, 2016. The Pentagon-backed Mutasim Brigade said one of the airstrikes hit the brigade. A statement issued by the U.S. military at the time said three strikes were carried out near Ma’ra that “struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL tactical vehicles and an ISIL vehicle. However a U.S. airstrike hit brigade members while they were fighting Islamic State militants. 10 of the brigade’s fighters were killed in the U.S. strike.

Three suicide bombers struck close to the Syrian capital Saturday June 11, 2016, killing at least 12 people and wounding 55. Two attackers were wearing explosive belts while the third was in a car.

Air strikes have killed at least 27 people in rebel-held areas in Syria's northwestern Idlib province. At least 21 people, five of them children, were killed in raids, including on a marketplace, in Idlib city we were told Sunday June 12, 2016. Separately, aerial bombardments in the town of Maarat al-Numan, about 30km south of Idlib city, killed another six people.

Turkey’s border police on Sunday June 12, 2016, opened fire on a number of Syrian civilians who were trying to cross the border illegally to escape the ongoing war in Syria. At least two young men were killed and two more wounded when the Turkish border guards opened fire on them on the border with Syria’s Kurdish region. Ahmed Ali, 23, and Adil Abdullah, 25, were reported dead by Turkish gun fire near the border town of Derbassiya in northeastern Syria. Turkey has closed all its border gates with Syria’s Kurdish region of Rojava, which forced civilians to seek alternative routes in order to cross the border looking for a safe haven. Dozens have been killed by the Turkish border guards over the past two years, mostly Syrian Kurds.  ---

At least seven people died in rebel shelling of a neighbourhood of the Syrian city of Aleppo held by the Kurdish YPG militia at dawn on Saturday June 18, 2016, as rebels took territory to the south. More than 40 people were also wounded in the attack on the Sheikh Maqsoud area, a district next to the only way in and out of rebel-held parts of the northern city, the Castello road.

Airstrikes in Syria targeting the Islamic State’s de facto capita of Raqqa killed at least 18 civilians, including two children we were told Wednesday June 22, 2016. The strikes on Raqqa, which took place on Tuesday evening, came after government forces suffered setbacks fighting IS in the north. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the toll at 25 civilians, including six children.

Syrian President Bashar Assad designated a new prime minister to form the government following April parliamentary elections. The vote, held only in government-controlled areas, was dismissed by the opposition and much of the international community as a rubber-stamp election for the president.

Isil has executed five media activists in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor, warning that anyone who tries to document the group’s atrocities will never be safe from retribution. The jihadists murdered one of the activists by hand-cuffing him to his explosives-rigged laptop and detonating it. Another was killed while tied to his camera. One of the activists had been providing the press information about events in the areas of Deir Ezzor ruled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

Airstrikes carried out by Syrian or Russian warplanes killed dozens of people in eastern Syria on Saturday June 25, 2016. The strikes hit the village of al-Quria in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zor province, killing 47 people including 31 civilians. The militant group Islamic State controls most of Deir al-Zor province and has laid siege since March last year to the remaining government-held areas in the city of the same name, which is close to Syria's eastern border with Iraq.

Health workers pulled little lifeless bodies out from under mounds of rubble after airstrikes reportedly hit and killed 25 children in the eastern part of the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor. Three air attacks targeted heavily crowded areas, including a mosque during prayer time on Saturday June 25, 2016, in the town of al-Quriyah.

A five-year-old girl has been killed by Takfiri militant shelling in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. Rital Hajj Hussein died on Saturday June 25, 2016, when terrorists shelled the town of al-Foaa, located in Idlib’s northern countryside. Four other people were injured in the attack which was lunched despite a ceasefire being in place in the country.

Syria Wednesday June 29, 2016:

• At least 10 people have been killed and scores wounded in a bombing attack that targeted a local government office in the Kurdish-controlled Syrian town of Tal Abyad near the Turkish border.
• Tal Abyad lies north of Raqqah and had been a key supply line for the city, which Daesh has proclaimed its headquarters in Syria.
• An assailant drove an explosive-laden car into the building run by Kurdish local authorities in the town.
• Earlier, on Tuesday, at least four civilians were killed and nearly a dozen others were injured in a rocket attack by Takfiri Daesh terrorists against a residential neighbourhood in Syria’s eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr. ---

Syrian rebels shot down a Syrian air force jet and blamed an al-Qaeda-linked group for killing the pilot. Two leading groups, Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, which formed a pact last year, both say the plane was shot down. Syrian state media said the crash was caused by a technical fault. Jaysh al-Islam, the larger of the two groups, posted footage online which it claimed showed the pilot being held after ejecting from the jet.

At least 43 civilians have been killed in intense Syrian government air strikes on a town near Damascus, a day after the reported execution of a Syrian air force pilot. Saturday July 2, 2016's overnight shelling on Jayrud killed at least five women and children, as well as two medical staff. Scores of people were also wounded in the strikes, as well as shelling from army posts in the area.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Sunday July 3, 2016, pushed back an advance by U.S.-backed forces in northern Syria taking back territory it had lost to coalition forces. ISIS fighters infiltrated villages and mountains that were seized last month by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a group aided by U.S. Special Forces that includes Kurdish and Arab fighters, near the town of Manbij.

A suicide bomb blast claimed by Islamic State killed at least 16 people in the mostly Kurdish-controlled city of Hasaka in northeastern Syria on Tuesday July 5, 2016. The attacker detonated his explosives at a bakery. Several other people were wounded and the death toll was likely to rise because of the number of serious injuries. Three children and two women were among those killed. Islamic State carried out the attack that targeted the Kurdish YPG militia.

Syria Thursday July 7, 2016:

• In a multi-pronged offensive, Syrian government forces and their allies pushed into an area north of the city of Aleppo threatening a key supply line for the city’s opposition-held quarters and setting off intense clashes with rebels.
• The advance came despite of and in violation of the government’s own cease-fire, which the authorities announced the day before to coincide with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr that marks the end of Ramadan.
• Also Thursday, the international relief organization Mercy Corps warned its food stocks in the opposition-held half of the contested city of Aleppo could run out in a month. It provides food aid to 75,000 people there, among an estimated population of 300,000-400,000 in the rebel-held sections.
• Fierce fighting also broke out in the eastern and southern suburbs of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

 

At least 22 civilians including a child and seven women were killed in air strikes on an Al-Qaeda-held town (Darkush, near the Turkish border) in northwest Syria on Friday July 8, 2016. Dozens of people were also wounded.

Syria's military said Saturday July 9, 2016, it would extend its own cease-fire for three days, even as pro-government forces advanced against rebels in the north. The military had declared a nationwide cease-fire for the Eid al-Fitr holiday July 6, expiring July 8 at midnight, but it had little impact on the ground, as pro-government forces choked off the last supply route to opposition areas in the contested city of Aleppo on Thursday. Rebels responded with a rocket barrage on residential areas in the government side of the city Friday night, killing 44 among them 14 children and 13 women. Another nine people, including eight women and children, were killed in presumed Russian or Syrian government airstrikes and rocket attacks on the opposition-held side of the city. ---

Syrian regime forces have repelled a fierce assault by opposition fighters seeking to reopen their only supply route into Aleppo city, killing at least 29 rebels from the Faylaq al-Sham rebel group and al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, we were told Sunday July 10, 2016. The offensive sought to push government forces back from Castello Road, which leads into the opposition-held eastern half of Aleppo city, now effectively besieged by government troops. There were also deaths among government troops. The attack has ended and the road remains completely closed.

Syria Monday July 11, 2016:

• Fierce clashes and air raids across northern Syria, mainly in the contested city of Aleppo, killed at least 26 people and left scores wounded.
• Insurgents bombarded government-held neighbourhoods in Aleppo, killing eight people there and wounding dozens.
• Later a government airstrike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Bab al-Maqam killed 10 people.
• Meanwhile, air raids on a fuel market in the northern Idlib province killed at least eight people, including a media activist.
• In Aleppo, rebels fired hundreds of shells and rockets, with the clashes being the most intense near the old quarter and the city's famed citadel.
• Government forces repelled an attack near the citadel.
• A government air raid on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Bab al-Maqam killed 10.
• In Idlib province, government air raids hit a diesel fuel market in the northwestern village of Termanin, killing at least eight people, including Al-Jazeera's media activist, Ibrahim Omar, and setting several tanker trucks on fire.
• Omar had gone on his motorcycle to Termanin to cover the aftermath of an airstrike when a second one hit, killing him instantly. The dead also included two civil defines workers.
• In the capital, Damascus, members of Prime Minister Imad Khamis' newly elected government took their oath of office with Assad attending the swearing-in ceremony.

 

At least eight people were killed when jets believed to be Russian bombed a Syrian refugee camp on the border with Jordan on Tuesday July 12, 2016. Dozens more were injured when tents at Hammad, a remote desert area, were struck. Most of the casualties were families of members of a rebel group known as the Eastern Lions, which is fighting the Islamic State (IS).

Syria Wednesday July 13, 2016:

• Airstrikes on markets in northern and central Syria killed and wounded dozens of people. Airstrikes on a market in the northwestern town of Ariha killed 12 people, including three children, and that airstrikes in the central town of Rastan killed 16 people and wounded dozens.
• Rastan was one of the first Syrian towns to fall into rebel hands.
• We also were told of "huge material damage" to Aleppo's main museum caused by rebel shelling.
• The main museum in Aleppo has been damaged following days of rebel shelling of government-held neighbourhoods.
• Dozens of mortar shells have hit the museum in recent days and "the museum suffered huge material damage" including the partial destruction of its concrete roof, as well as gates, offices and parts of the outer wall.
• The contested city has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks, which has closed off the Castello road, effectively sealing off rebel-held districts where tens of thousands of people live.

 

A series of airstrikes on rebel-held areas of Syria's divided Aleppo city, in the Salheen and Tariq al-Bab districts, killed at least 12 people - including seven women and children- Thursday July 14, 2016. ---

Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday July 15, 2016, that the U.S. and Russia had agreed to cooperate in Syria against the al Nusra Front, al Qaeda's Syrian branch, in an effort to "restore the cessation of hostilities, significantly reduce the violence and help create the space for a genuine and credible political transition" in Syria. The concrete steps that have agreed on are not going to be laid out in public because both parts want them to work.

Syria Saturday July 16, 2016:

• Air raids on rebel-held districts of Aleppo killed 18 civilians.
• Eleven civilians, including four children, were killed by air raids in the Bab al-Nasr area of Old Aleppo, and seven others, including a baby, were killed in Fardous neighbourhood.
• It was earlier reported that air raids on Friday air raids killed at least 11 civilians in a region of eastern Syria controlled by ISIS militants.
• Government aircraft destroyed two sites containing weapons and military equipment of the Da’esh (ISIS) terrorists southeast of Deir Ezzor.
• On Thursday, the militants said it had shot down a regime MiG warplane south of the provincial capital, killing its pilot. It said the jet had attacked several villages before being targeted and crashing. The plane downed on Thursday was the fourth shot down by ISIS since April.
• Elsewhere on Friday, air raids in the northwestern province of Idlib killed another six civilians including two children. The raids targeted the Abu Zuhur area controlled by the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra Front.

 

At least 18 members of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group have been killed in Russian airstrikes in central Syria, including near the ancient Semitic city of Palmyra. We were told on Friday July 15, 2016, that the aerial attacks were carried out around the town of al-Sukhnah, east of the city of Homs, as well as close to Palmyra, northeast of the capital, Damascus. A number of European nationals were among the slain militants.

Syrian government forces have taken control of a major town in the coastal province of Latakia, as fierce fighting continues in areas across the country. Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regained control of Kinsabba and the hills surrounding it, southwest of the city of Jisr al-Shughur, on Saturday July 16, 2016, as Russian air strikes backed them. In Aleppo, air strikes killed at least 20 civilians, including five children, in the eastern, opposition-held neighbourhoods.

Airstrikes on Islamic State-held villages in northern Syria killed at least 56 civilians, including 11 children, on Tuesday July 19, 2016 as intense fighting was underway between the militants and U.S-backed fighters. The strikes targeted two villages, Tokhar and Hoshariyeh, which are controlled by the Islamic State.

US airstrikes on a Syrian village have killed at least 73 civilians (including 35 children and 20 women), the deadliest coalition attack on non-combatants since the start of the bombing campaign against the Islamic State. The bombing was part of a two-month push to seize the town of Manbij, a strategic centre, key to any future advance on Islamic State’s de facto capital, Raqqa. On Tuesday morning July 19, 2016, coalition aircraft hit a cluster of houses in the village of Tokkhar, where nearly 200 people had gathered to seek shelter as the frontline shifted towards their homes. Most of those inside were killed or injured. ---

Government air raids struck at least five medical facilities in the northern province of Aleppo, where violence has intensified in recent weeks amid a siege by government forces we were told Sunday July 24, 2016. The air raids began late Saturday night and continued until after midnight, killing at least five people across the city, including an infant. Four clinics were now out of service in the city of Aleppo, as was the fifth in the town Atareb to the west. The clinics closed because they feared being targeted again

Several people –at least 6- have been killed when a mortar bomb hit a restaurant in the government-controlled ancient quarter of the Syrian capital Damascus (in the Bab Touma district) on Sunday July 24, 2016; dozens were wounded in the attack.

A suicide bomber riding an empty livestock truck laden with explosives blew himself up Wednesday July 27, 2016, in a crowded district in the predominantly Kurdish town of Qamishli in northern Syria, causing massive destruction and killing 44 people. Kurds have declared Qamishli as the capital of their self-declared autonomous enclave in northern Syria. Most of the victims were civilians, who were lingering in the district that also houses a station for the Kurdish security forces. It was not immediately clear if any Kurdish fighters were among those killed.

A suicide bomber riding an empty livestock truck laden with explosives blew himself up Wednesday July 27, 2016, in a crowded district in the predominantly Kurdish town of Qamishli in northern Syria, causing massive destruction and killing 44 people in a new attack claimed by the Islamic State group. Most of the victims were civilians, who were lingering in the district that also houses a station for the Kurdish security forces. It was not immediately clear if any Kurdish fighters were among those killed.
 
The leader of Syria's Nusra Front, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, said Thursday July 28, 2016, that his group is changing its name, claiming it will have no more ties with al Qaeda in an attempt to undermine a potential U.S. and Russian air campaign against its fighters. The move took place with the endorsement of al Qaeda's central leadership, and its ideology remains the same, raising questions whether the change really goes beyond the new name, the Levant Conquest Front. The United States, which considers Nusra a terrorist organization, immediately expressed its scepticism. The U.S. continues to believe that Nusra leaders intend to attack the West and the U.S.-led military campaign will keep focused on a number of extremist groups, including Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Without the al Qaeda name, the group will now seek to expand its alliances with other Syrian rebels, including relative moderates backed by Washington and its allies. Those factions may then oppose international airstrikes against Nusra fighters, arguing that they are now simply fellow rebels against President Bashar Assad, not an al Qaeda affiliate.

Dozens of families have left besieged eastern areas of the city of Aleppo along a humanitarian corridor. The civilians boarded buses and were taken to temporary shelters. Some rebels had also surrendered to government forces. Russia, an ally of the Syrian government, announced on Thursday July 28, 2016, that four exit corridors would be opened in Aleppo for civilians and rebels. The move was welcomed cautiously by the UN, the US and some aid agencies. The US has suggested the plan may be an attempt to force the evacuation of civilians and the surrender of rebel groups in the city. On Friday, the United Nations envoy to Syria said the corridors should be administered by the UN and that there should be a 48-hour ceasefire for people to leave safely.

U.S.-led airstrikes killed at least 28 civilians, including seven children, in Syria on Thursday July 28, 2016. The attack happened in al-Ghandour near Manbij, just one day after the U.S. announced a formal inquiry into airstrikes in the same area that may have led to the single largest loss of civilian life due to coalition airstrikes in Syria. The U.S. Central Command said that it initiated an assessment after reports that Thursday's airstrikes near Manbij may have resulted in civilian casualties.
 
Two people were killed and several others were injured during an airstrike on a maternity hospital in Syria with more than 1,000 women. International charity organization Save the Children said the hospital, which serves over 1,300 women and performs over 300 deliveries each month, in the Syrian province of Idlib was bombed on Thursday July 28, 2016. ---

A Russian transport helicopter was shot down in opposition rebel territory in northern Syria on Monday August 1, 2016, and all five crew and officers on board were killed. The Mi-8 helicopter was shot down in Idlib province, where Russian warplanes frequently targeted rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces. The chopper was returning to the Russian air base on Syria's coast after delivering humanitarian goods to the city of Aleppo. But video uploaded by opposition activists showed a rocket pod next to the wreckage. The helicopter had three crew members and two officers deployed with the Russian centre at the Hemeimeem air base on the Syrian coast.

Syria Tuesday August 2, 2016:

• Two chemical gas attacks have been reported in northern Syria.
• In the first one in the region where a Russian helicopter was downed a day earlier, killing all five people on board cylinders suspected of containing chlorine gas were dropped in residential areas in the city of Saraqeb in Idlib province.
• Russia, Syria's key military backer, has vehemently denied that a chemical attack took place.
• In the second incident, the Syrian government claimed that "terrorist groups" carried out a gas attack that killed five people and wounded eight others in the old town of the besieged city of Aleppo.
• Two others were killed and 17 others injured in separate terrorist attacks in the city.

 

A British man has reportedly died fighting with Kurdish forces against so-called Islamic State in Syria. Dean Carl Evans, 22, from Reading, died on 21 July during fighting in the city of Manbij.

A major Syrian opposition body has announced that rebels have broken a government siege of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. The Ahrar al-Sham rebel group also said that rebels had seized control of Ramosa on the southwestern edges of the city and thereby "opened the route to Aleppo". Syrian government forces encircled Aleppo on July 17 after closing off the last opposition-controlled route into the city. However Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian government forces, said "the rumours that the siege on the eastern neighbourhoods has been broken is entirely false" and a journalist in Aleppo, told Al Jazeera that the siege has "practically been broken". Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest), announced on Friday August 5, 2016, it had taken control of a strategic military base in the Ramosa quarter in southwestern Aleppo.

We were told on Saturday August 6, 2016, that at least 10 people, including three children and four women, have been killed in air strikes on a hospital in Meles in northwestern Syria's rebel-held Idlib province. This hospital has been targeted with four consecutive air strikes; rescue teams continued the search for survivors. It was not yet clear whether Russian or Syrian government jets had targeted the hospital. The hospital is completely out of service; it used to serve 70,000 people in this area.

An alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces has managed to retake the strategic northern Syrian city of Manbij from Takfiri Daesh terrorists we were told Saturday August 6, 2016. However there are still pockets of Daesh militants present in the centre of Manbij. Manbij lies along the only supply line of Daesh between the Syrian-Turkish border to the north and the group’s main stronghold in Syria, Raqqah, which lies to the southeast.

Air strikes on Saturday August 6, 2016, near a hospital in northwestern Syria killed at least 10 civilians. The raids targeted the town of Milis in Idlib province, which borders Turkey and is controlled by a rebel alliance led by Al Qaeda's former Syrian branch. Three children and two women were among the dead; the raids were carried out by either Russian or regime warplanes. A hospital was hit in the raid by unidentified aircraft and that at least six people had been killed.

The Islamic State has looted or destroyed a considerable portion of the Tal Ajaja archaeological site in northeastern Syria. Khaled Ahmo, director of antiquities in Hasakah province, where the ancient mound is located, said that “more than 40 percent of Tal Ajaja was destroyed or ravaged” by the extremist group’s fighters. The militants had overrun the area in 2014, but in recent months they were chased out of whole stretches of Hasakah by a campaign led by Kurdish militias. In the wake of the Islamic State’s departure, the extent of the damage the militants have wrought is being steadily discovered.

The Pentagon says 83 oil tankers used by the Daesh terrorist group have been destroyed in a US-led coalition airstrike in eastern Syria over the weekend of Sunday August 7, 2016. The air raid was conducted near Albu Kamal, in Deir Ezzor province along Syria's border with Iraq. Prior to those strikes, the United States dropped pamphlets, warning drivers of the imminent strike as they were not Daesh members.

On Wednesday August 10, 2016, Russian airstrikes have killed 30 people including 24 civilians in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. Russia said that they had conducted air raids in the area to destroy a chemical weapons factory and at training camp for ISIS fighters.

At least three people were killed and at least 25 injuries after a barrel containing a gas suspected of being chlorine fell on the Zubdiya neighbourhood of rebel-held Aleppo on Wednesday August 10, 2016. One woman suffocated to death due to gas inhalation, along with her 10-year-old daughter and four-year-old son. The hospital had recorded four deaths from gas poisoning and 55 injuries. ---

Airstrikes in opposition areas of Syria’s northern Aleppo province struck a market, a hospital and a village on Friday August 12, 2016, killing at least 18 people, including children and two hospital staffers. The air raids hit the only hospital for women and children in the town of Kafr Hamra before dawn, killing two staffers, including a nurse. 10 people were pulled alive from under the rubble.

U.S.-backed fighters have seized a key Islamic State stronghold in northern Syria after two months of heavy fighting and freed hundreds of civilians the extremists had used as human shields we were told Saturday August 13, 2016. The town of Manbij is now under full control.

Russians warplanes have conducted missions over Syria from an airbase in Iran. Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 tactical bombers took off from Hamedan airbase in western Iran Tuesday August 16, 2016, and hit targets belonging to ISIS and the Jabhat al-Nusra militant group in the Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Idlib. The raids "eliminated" five major arms depots, used to supply ISIS militants near the city of Aleppo, as well as three militant command points and training camps in the cities of Serakab, Al-Bab, Aleppo and Deir Ezzor.

Moscow brushed off American suggestions that its deployment of military aircraft to Iran violates a UN Syria arms embargo on Wednesday August 17, 2016, as Russian jets flew missions out of an Iranian base for a second consecutive day. Several SU 34 fighter bombers flew out of Iran’s Shahid Nojeh Air Base, 130 miles west of Tehran, to strike Islamic State (Isil) positions near Dier Ezzor in eastern Syria. There has been no supply, sale or transfer of fighter jets to Iran," Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said. The Russian Air Force uses these fighter jets with Iran's approval in order to take part in the counter-terrorism operation" in Syria. Russian aircraft began flying missions out of Iran on Tuesday, in a surprise move that cements the two countries' de-facto military alliance in Syria.

The shadow governor of the loyalists of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group has been arrested in the northern Jawzjan province. Baz Mohammad was arrested as he was attempting to expand the activities of the terror group in northern provinces.

Pictures of a 5 year old boy, Omran, wounded in the daily bombing of Aleppo has drawn the world's attention to the worsening crisis in the Syrian city. A video showed him trying to wipe the blood off his hands on the chair, quiet, not sure what to make of what was happening around him. The images of Omran who was pulled out of the rubble after an airstrike in Aleppo were taken by a Syrian journalist on Wednesday August 17, 2016. And now the footage of Omran should pull the world attention to the fact that almost 300,000 people live under constant fear of airstrikes and bombardment.

Russia said Thursday August 18, 2016, it would stop attacks on Aleppo for 48 hours next week to allow delivery of humanitarian aid, indicating it would also prevent the Syrian government from bombing there, provided the United States could guarantee a similar pause by the “so-called moderate opposition.” Russia’s other “condition” for implementing the temporary cease-fire was that separate routes would be established for U.N. convoys to bring aid to rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo and to the western side, held by the government.

The possible pause in the fighting was in part due to a video of a small boy, covered with blood and dust, pulled by rescue workers from the rubble of a building in Aleppo bombed by Russian or Syrian aircraft. Medical workers identified the boy as Omran Daqneesh, 5; he was only one of a number of children rescued Wednesday August 17, 2016. His parents were later said to have survived the attack. Dazed and expressionless, barefoot and dressed in dirty shorts and a cartoon-character T-shirt, Omran is seen reaching up his hand to his blood-covered face. Seemingly in slow motion, he looks at his hand and then wipes it on the orange leather of his seat in an ambulance as he stares into the distance. The video spread quickly on social media, much like last year’s image of a dead Syrian toddler, the son of a family fleeing by boat to Europe, whose body washed up on a Turkish beach. ---

The rescue of 5-year old Omran Daqneesh, pulled from the rubble of his bombed-out Aleppo home Wednesday, was broadcast around the world, dominating front pages and drawing tears from television anchors. Less widely shared was the story's devastating postscript. On Saturday August 20, 2016, Omran's 10-year-old brother, Ali, died from wounds sustained in the same airstrike, launched by forces allied to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Syrian rebels backed by Turkish troops and tanks recaptured the Islamic State’s last major stronghold on the Syrian-Turkish border on Wednesday August 24, 2016. Rebel fighters have reached the centre of Jarabulus after encountering almost no resistance from Islamic State fighters, who appeared to have fled ahead of the advancing forces. The offensive was spearheaded by Turkey, which sent tanks, troops and warplanes into Syria for the first time in the country’s five-year-old war to help a force of hundreds of Syrian rebels. The operation also includes U.S. advisers, who help from inside Turkey, while American surveillance aircraft are providing overflight intelligence and are poised to contribute U.S. airstrikes if necessary.

Turkish forces will remain in Syria for as long as it takes to cleanse the border of Islamic State and other militants, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Friday August 26, 2016, after a truck bombing by Kurdish insurgents killed at least 11 police officers. The suicide attack at a police headquarters in a province bordering Syria and Iraq came two days after Turkey launched its first major military incursion into Syria, an operation meant to drive Islamic State out of the border area and stop Kurdish militias from seizing ground in their wake.

Dozens of people were killed in Turkish bombardments in Syria on Sunday August 28, 2016. Ankara said it had killed 25 Kurdish "terrorists" and insisted the army was doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. But the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 40 civilians were killed in Turkish shelling and air strikes on two areas held by pro-Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

The Islamic State group’s spokesman and chief strategist, who laid out the blueprint for the extremist group’s attacks against the West, has been killed while overseeing operations in northern Syria we were told Tuesday August 30, 2016. Abu Muhammed al-Adnani was killed while surveying the operations to repel the military campaigns in Aleppo.

Syria Thursday September 1, 2016:

• The government secured a deal to restore its authority over rebellious Damascus western suburb of Moadamiyeh. Moadamiyeh’s residents agreed to let President Bashar Assad’s government restore its security presence and political institutions in the suburb. 200 gunmen who did not wish to give up their arms would be allowed safe passage to rebel-held areas in Syria’s northwestern Idlib and Aleppo provinces. The implementation to the agreement is expected to begin Friday. The residents had no desire to negotiate with Assad’s government but that their “circumstances grew too difficult.”
• Suspected government airstrikes killed 25 civilians, including six children, in the Hama province as rebels made new gains there. At least 10 people were killed when warplanes struck a crowd of people displaced from Suran, a town north of the city of Hama, which was seized by opposition fighters. Another 15 people were killed further to the west.

 

Friday September 2, 2016, a year after the image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach pushed the Syrian refugee crisis to the top of the international agenda, his grandfather makes an emotional plea for world leaders to end the war in Syria. Sexo Seno Kurdi, speaking by phone from the northern Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane —from which Alan, his mother Rehan, father Abdullah and brother Galip fled two years ago- discusses his year of heartache since his daughter and grandchildren died at sea.

Syrian government troops on Sunday September 4, 2016, seized a military academy south of Aleppo city, once again encircling the rebel-held districts in the east and placing them under siege. Government forces backed by Syrian and Russian air strikes had now severed the alternate route into the rebel east that opposition forces opened up in August. ---

The umbrella group representing Syria's political and armed opposition factions has set out a plan for a political transition to end five years of war. The High Negotiations Committee (HNC) proposed holding six months of negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad, accompanied by a full ceasefire. Mr Assad would then hand over power to a unity government that would run Syria for 18 months and organise elections. Syria's deputy foreign minister on Wednesday September 7, 2016, insisted Mr Assad would not step aside. Faisal Mekdad told the BBC that demands that the country's elected leader be removed were "crazy".

Syria Tuesday September 6, 2016:

• Activists and rescue workers in the rebel-held part of the contested city of Aleppo said that government warplanes dropped suspected chlorine bombs Tuesday September 6, 2016, on a crowded neighbourhood, injuring dozens.
• Two Turkish soldiers were killed and five were wounded in a missile attack by the Islamic State group in northern Syria, the first Turkish casualties caused by the militants in Turkey’s two-week-old incursion into Syria. The Turkish fatalities came after Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels on Sunday expelled IS from the last strip of territory the militant group controlled along the Syrian-Turkish border, effectively sealing the extremists’ self-styled caliphate off from the outside world.

Syria Wednesday September 7, 2016:

• Syrian government forces carried out a chlorine attack that killed two civilians, including a 13-year-old girl, and caused respiratory injuries in scores of others in a rebel-held area near the besieged city of Aleppo. The other fatality was a man who died of heart failure and acute respiratory distress caused by inhaling toxic gas.
• Another 80 people were treated with respiratory issues following the barrel-bomb attack Tuesday in the Sukkari area south of Aleppo.
• An airstrike in the same neighbourhood killed an additional 10 people.

Syria Thursday September 8, 2016:

• A senior commander of the Syrian militant group formerly known as al-Nusra Front has been killed near Aleppo. Abu Omar Sarakeb died in an air strike in Aleppo province. Al-Nusra Front changed its name at the end of July after cutting ties with al-Qaeda at the same time. Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which has its stronghold in Idlib province, is one of the most powerful jihadist rebel groups and has been fighting the Syrian government since early 2012. It is considered a terrorist group by the US, as well as by Syria and Russia, and was excluded along with the so-called Islamic State (IS) from a US-Russia-brokered partial ceasefire earlier this year.

Syria Friday September 9, 2016:

• The Syrian army secured a road into the government-held side of Aleppo (in the Ramousah area of southern Aleppo) that was captured by rebels last month and was expected to open it soon for civilians.
• Insurgent forces including jihadist groups had captured the Ramousah area in August, breaking the siege on eastern Aleppo imposed by government forces in July. The government's loss of the Ramousah road left the people in western Aleppo dependent on a much more dangerous route.
• Rebel shelling of the government-held side of Aleppo's frontline Salah al-Din neighbourhood killed at least eight people, including four children, and injured about 30 others.
• Aerial bombardment of the rebel-held part of the same district killed seven people, including children, and wounded some others. ---

Russia and the United States agreed early Saturday September 10, 2016, on a new plan to reduce violence in the Syrian conflict that, if successful, could lead for the first time to joint military targeting by the two powers against Islamic jihadists in Syria. The agreement was reached after 10 months of failed attempts to halt the fighting and of suspended efforts to reach a political settlement to an increasingly complex conflict that began more than five years ago. The conflict has left nearly half a million people dead, created the largest refugee crisis since World War II and turned Syria into a prime incubator of recruiting for the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda.

Sunday September 11, 2016:

• At least 90 people were killed in airstrikes that rained down on northwestern Syria on Saturday and Sunday. The surge in violence came just hours after the US and Russia announced a new ceasefire plan. The airstrikes landed Idlib in the northwest and Aleppo in the north of the country.
• The worst strikes were in Idlib, where at least 61 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in an attack that targeted a market.

The US-led coalition has admitted its planes carried out an attack in eastern Syria that the Russian army says killed at least 62 Syrian troops fighting IS. The US said its planes had halted the attack in Deir al-Zour when informed of the Syrian presence. A spokesman for the US administration expressed "regret" for the "unintentional loss of life". The attack caused a bitter row between the US and Russia at the United Nations Security Council.

Two 20-truck aid convoys destined for eastern Aleppo with enough supplies to feed 185,000 people for a month are still stuck in Turkey, we were told Monday September 19, 2016, hours after a ceasefire in Syria expired. The U.N. said it does not have sufficient security guarantees from all sides in the conflict, now in its sixth year, to be able to deliver to eastern Aleppo, which is held by rebels battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad. The aid has been sitting at the border for around a week.

The United Nations and other relief agencies suspended all humanitarian convoys across combat lines in Syria on Tuesday September 20, 2016, after a bomb attack on an aid shipment killed more than 20 people near Aleppo as a cease-fire crumbled. The convoy’s deadly fate Monday capped a rapid unravelling of week-old truce efforts, brokered by the United States and Russia. The plan intended to open routes to aid thousands of besieged Syrians and possibly spur greater military cooperation between Moscow and Washington to battle militants such as the Islamic State. What was left Tuesday was a return of shelling and airstrikes in places that had hoped to receive critical food and medicine —including embattled Aleppo— and angry denials from Russia that it was responsible for targeting the aid convoy.

On Tuesday September 20, 2016, the United States has reached the preliminary conclusion that Russian warplanes bombed an aid convoy and warehouse belonging to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. The White House position is that Russia is responsible, whether it was Russian planes or the Syrian regime's that carried out Monday night's attack. The aid convoy was hit in the area of Urum al-Kubra, west of Aleppo, prompting the United Nations to halt its aid operations in Syria. The attack killed about 20 people as well as the director of the Red Crescent's Urum al-Kubra branch, Omar Barakat.

Syria Wednesday September 21, 2016:

• Russia has announced it is sending its only aircraft carrier carrying dozens of military aircraft to waters off Syria's coast to join other Russian ships, as diplomats met at the United Nations in an effort to revive Syria's failing ceasefire.
• The announcement -a potential contingency plan for the failure of the ceasefire- came in the wake of surging violence, including the deadly bombing of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoy on Monday night.
• President Bashar al-Assad rejected U.S. accusations that Syrian or Russian planes struck an aid convoy in Aleppo or that his troops were preventing food from entering the city's rebel-held neighbourhoods, blaming the U.S. for the collapse of a cease-fire many had hoped would bring relief to the war-ravaged country. Assad also said deadly U.S. airstrikes on Syrian troops last week were intentional, dismissing American officials' statements that they were an accident.
• The United Nations said it would resume humanitarian aid deliveries in Syria as early as Thursday, as Secretary of State John Kerry urged the grounding of all aircraft over parts of the war-torn country to allow supplies to reach civilians.

Syria Thursday September 22, 2016:

• The United Nations resumed aid convoys to besieged communities for the first time since a deadly attack on trucks loaded with supplies on Monday. A 25-truck aid convoy left Damascus with supplies for 40,000 people in Moadamiya, a suburb of the capital. The Syrian government prohibited United Nations staff members from accompanying the convoy earlier in the week.
• But talks in New York between the United States and Russia failed to produce agreement on how to restore a cease-fire in Syria.
• The Syrian military began a new offensive in eastern Aleppo and warned residents to stay away from rebel positions. That announcement was made after two days of intensive bombing of eastern Aleppo by the Russian-backed Syrian forces. 14 strikes hit the neighbourhoods of Bustan al-Qasr and Al-Kalasseh leading to massive fires which killed seven people, including three women and three children.
• The United States and Russia failed to agree on how to revive a short-lived ceasefire in Syria. The International Syria Support Group, including the U.S., Russia and other major powers, met on the side-lines of the annual United Nations gathering of world leaders in New York as the Syrian army announced the start of a new military offensive in the rebel-held east of the city of Aleppo. The truce effectively collapsed after a week when an aid convoy was bombed on Monday, killing some 20 people. ---

Syrian and Russian warplanes launched a ferocious assault against rebel-held Aleppo on Friday September 23, 2016, burying any hopes that a U.S.-backed cease-fire could be salvaged and calling into question whether the deal would ever have worked. Waves upon waves of planes relentlessly struck neighbourhoods in the rebel-held east of the city on the first day of a new offensive. By nightfall, more than 100 bombs had landed, and more than 80 people were dead. Rebels vowed to fight to keep President Bashar Assad's forces out of their districts and shelled government neighbourhoods, wounding several people.

Syria Sunday September 25, 2016:

• At least 26 civilians were killed in government airstrikes on the contested city of Aleppo.
• The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on the spiralling violence in Syria but failed to take any action because of deep divisions between Russia and the Western powers. The United States, Britain and France heaped blame on Moscow for supporting the Syrian offensive which U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura called one of the worst of the 5 1/2-year war. When Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari was called to speak in the council, the ambassadors of the three Western powers walked out in protest. They had demanded a halt to the Aleppo offensive and immediate council action, and their walkout demonstrated anger and frustration not only at Damascus but at Russia for backing close ally Bashar Assad’s military campaign while talking about reviving a cessation of hostilities.
• Aid has been delivered to four besieged towns in Syria for the first time in almost six months. Seventy-one lorries reached rebel-held Madaya and Zabadani, near Damascus, and government-controlled Foah and Kefraya, in Idlib province. They brought food, medical supplies and hygiene kits for 60,000 people.

 

On Tuesday September 27, 2016, Syrian troops have launched a large-scale ground attack on rebel-held areas of Aleppo in a bid to make concrete military gains after nearly a week of punitive bombardment that has mostly hit civilians. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad opened multiple fronts in an apparent attempt to increase pressure on rebel forces experienced in close urban warfare.

On Friday September 30, 2016, we were told that round 3,800 civilians, almost a quarter of them children, have been killed in Russian airstrikes in Syria in the year since Russia began its air campaign there.

Syria Monday October 3, 2016:

• The US is "suspending its participation in bilateral channels with Russia" that had come about as part of the short-lived cessation of hostilities in Syria.
• A suicide bomber has struck a wedding hall just outside the northeastern Syrian city of Hassakeh. The attack killed 14 people, with the toll expected to rise. Syrian Kurdish forces control most of the Hassakeh province, but the Syrian government maintains some strongholds there.

 

The death toll from the deadly ISIS suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding party in northeast Syria has risen to 36 we were told Tuesday October 4, 2016. Eleven women and children were among the dead in Monday's attack; at least 80 people were injured, 16 of them seriously.

Syria Thursday October 6, 2016:

• A bomb blast at a Syria-Turkey border crossing has killed at least 29 rebel fighters and wounded at least 20 more. The blast took place on the Syrian side of the Atmeh crossing, west of Aleppo. Most of the rebels were from a Turkey-backed group called Failaq al-Sham.
• The Syrian military and its allies have gained control of part of a key neighbourhood on Aleppo's front line, pushing into the city's rebel-held east. An army unit in cooperation with the supporting forces carried out a 'swift' operation against the fortified sites of the terrorist organizations in Bustan al-Basha neighbourhood in Aleppo city. Bustan al-Basha is located on the front line between besieged rebel-held eastern Aleppo and government-held areas in the centre and west of the city.
• Rebel-held eastern parts of the Syrian city of Aleppo may face "total destruction" in two months, with thousands killed. Staffan de Mistura said that he was prepared to personally accompany al-Qaeda-linked jihadists out of the city if it would stop the fighting. He also appealed to Russia and Syria's government not to destroy the city for the sake of eliminating militants. Troops have been besieging the east, where 275,000 people live, for a month.

 

Syria Sunday October 9, 2016:

• Thirty-eight Islamic State militants were killed in northern Syria over the last 24 hours, the Turkish military said. Supported by Turkish tanks and air strikes, rebels have been pushing towards the Islamic State (IS) stronghold of Dabiq.
• Fourteen of the IS fighters were killed as they attempted to enter the rebel-controlled villages of Akhtarin and Turkmen Bareh, three kilometres east of Dabiq. IS fighters had captured those villages in a counter attack near the Turkish border, but the Turkish military statement contradicted this account.
• Another 17 Islamic State fighters were killed in air strikes by U.S.-led coalition warplanes in the same areas.
• Turkish warplanes later launched their own air strikes against IS targets in northern Syria, killing seven militants and destroying five buildings which they were using.
• Two Syrian rebels had been killed and 19 wounded in the latest fighting against IS. The operation has also targeted a Kurdish militia whose presence along its border Turkey sees as a threat.

 

On Wednesday October 12, 2016, we were told that at least 56 people have been killed over the past 24 hours in the province of Aleppo as Russian air raids resumed. The deaths from raids in Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr and Fardous neighbourhoods, as well as Ar-Rasheeqa city, were the results of the heaviest Russian bombardment in days on the city's rebel-held sector. Dozens were also wounded. ---

Syria Wednesday October 12, 2016:

• An airstrike hit the biggest market on the rebel-held side of Syria's Aleppo killing at least 15 people and levelling buildings as rescuers were still sifting through the rubble from air raids that killed dozens the day before.
• The strike destroyed several shops in the besieged eastern part of the city, which has been the target of a Russian-backed Syrian offensive since the collapse of a cease-fire last month.
• On Tuesday, Russian or Syrian aircraft bombed several neighbourhoods, killing at least 41 people, including five children.

 

Syria Thursday October 13, 2016:

• At least 20 people, most of them rebels, were killed in a car bomb attack that targeted an opposition checkpoint in northern Syria. The blast which hit a checkpoint run by a Free Syrian Army (FSA) affiliate near the city of Azaz, near the border with Turkey also wounded dozens. At least 14 of the dead were believed to be rebel fighters. The death toll was likely to rise because of the number of seriously injured.

 

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad insists his forces must continue "to clean" Aleppo, even as diplomats prepare for a weekend of meetings aimed at halting the bloodshed in rebel-held areas of the city. A renewed Syrian army offensive against eastern Aleppo, supported by Russian air power, has claimed hundreds of civilian lives in recent days and prompted Western powers to accuse Assad and his backers of war crimes. But Assad, in a Thursday October 13, 2016, interview with Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said the Syrian government has no option but to press on with its offensive.

A suicide bomber believed to be from the Islamic State militant group killed three people and injured at least 20 others in an attack on Sunday October 16, 2016, at a refugee camp in Syria near the border with Jordan. The attack targeted an outpost manned by the Jaish al-Ashair rebel group at the Rakban refugee camp.

United States-led coalition warplanes killed 20 Islamic State militants in Syria over the last 24 hours we were told Tuesday October 18, 2016. The coalition air strikes in Syria targeted the areas of Kar Kalbayn, Ghuz, Hassajik and Tiltanah and destroyed two IS defensive positions and three vehicles.

Russian and Syrian warplanes halted their bombardment of rebel-held districts in Aleppo on Tuesday October 18, 2016, in what Russia called a gesture of good will ahead of an eight-hour unilateral “humanitarian pause” it has promised for Thursday. The halt in aerial attacks came as residents reeled from days of shattering airstrikes that had intensified over the past week, killing scores of people, including 14 members of one family. It was unclear how long the break would last. Rebel leaders are likely to reject that demand, and United Nations officials said that they had received no prior notification from Russia about the pause in the bombardment, that they had no knowledge of the corridors the Russian military said would be opened to let civilians and militants out of the city, and that humanitarian agencies would not be able to send aid in or bring wounded out without more time and additional guarantees.

The Syrian military said on Thursday October 20, 2016, that a unilateral ceasefire backed by Russia had come into force to allow people to leave besieged eastern Aleppo, a move rejected by rebels who say they are preparing a counter-offensive to break the blockade. The army has opened exit corridors in two designated areas in the Bustan al Qasr quarter and near the Castello road in northern Aleppo city. Waiting buses were available. Intensified Russian and Syrian bombing of besieged rebel-held parts of Aleppo in the past weeks has hit hospitals, bakeries and water pumping stations, and killed hundreds of civilians. ---

Syria Sunday October 23, 2016:

• Fighting has restarted in Syria's divided city of Aleppo, a day after a "humanitarian" pause announced by Russia ended.
• Unidentified jets bombarded rebel-held areas in the south-western part of Aleppo.
• Tanks and fighters were seen advancing under heavy fire along a ridge in the Aleppo countryside. Rebels have also confirmed the bombardments on the opposition-held areas of the city.
• Government artillery shelled the strategically important village of Khan Touman, which overlooks the highway connecting Aleppo and government-held cities in the centre of the country.
• Opposition fighters had repulsed the attack and inflicted "big losses" on the regime forces.
• Opposition rebels have also launched counter-attacks, shelling the regime-held southern district of al-Hamadaniyah. No casualties have been reported so far.

Syria Monday October 24, 2016:

• Syrian government forces and their allies captured strategic high ground in Aleppo.
• Russia said it was not planning more "humanitarian pauses" in the fighting in the city's eastern, rebel-held districts.
• Airstrikes hit towns in the northwestern province of Idlib, killing at least 13 people. The people killed were in the towns of Kfar Takharim and Khan Sheikhoun, where a market was hit.

Syria Tuesday October 25, 2016:

• U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that Democrat Hillary Clinton's plan for Syria would "lead to World War Three," because of the potential for conflict with military forces from nuclear-armed Russia.
• Trump said defeating Islamic State is a higher priority than persuading Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, playing down a long-held goal of U.S. policy.

Syria Wednesday October 26, 2016:

• Airstrikes killed up to 22 people, mostly children when warplanes struck a residential area housing a school complex in the northern rebel-held province of Idlib. At least 50 people were also wounded in the raids on the village of Hass.

Syria Wednesday October 26, 2016:

• Rebels have announced a big offensive aimed at breaking the government siege of east Aleppo. They fired "hundreds" of missiles on western Aleppo, killing at least 15 civilians.
• In response, Russia's defence ministry asked permission from President Vladimir Putin to resume air strikes against the rebels after a 10-day pause, but he denied the request.
• About 275,000 people have been besieged in the east of the city for months. Russian and Syrian government planes began bombarding the city in September. More than 2,700 people are said to have been killed and injured since then.

Syria Thursday October 27, 2016:

• The Russian military says three children have been killed in rebel shelling of a school in the western part of the city of Aleppo, controlled by the Syrian government; another 10 children were wounded.
• Syrian rebels also fired on a humanitarian corridor leading out of eastern part of the city, killing 12 and wounding 20 people.
• Russian and Syrian warplanes didn’t fly closer than 10 kilometres to Aleppo, observing a moratorium on military flights in the area that Moscow declared 10 days ago. The rebels took advantage of the halt on flights and intensified the shelling of the government-held part of Aleppo

Syria Saturday October 29, 2016:

• Government forces launched a counteroffensive under the cover of airstrikes in an attempt to regain control of areas they had lost to insurgents the day before in Aleppo.
• Meanwhile, insurgents launched a fresh offensive on the city, a day after embarking on a broad ground attack aimed at breaking a weeks-long government siege on the eastern rebel-held neighbourhoods of Syria's largest city.
• The insurgents were able to capture much of the western neighbourhood of Assad where much of Saturday's fighting was concentrated. ---

Syria Sunday October 30, 2016:

• At least 35 people have reportedly been affected after foreign-sponsored Takfiri terrorists launched a barrage of shells loaded with poisonous gas against two residential neighbourhoods, Dahiyet al-Assad and Hamdaniyeh neighbourhoods, in Aleppo.

Syria Wednesday November 2, 2016:

• Syrian opposition fighters have rejected Russian demands that they withdraw from the northern city of Aleppo by Friday evening. Earlier, Russia had told rebels in Aleppo to leave by Friday evening, signalling it would extend a moratorium on air strikes against targets inside the city. Opposition fighters would be allowed to exit Aleppo unharmed and with their weapons. President Vladimir Putin had ordered the pause in fighting to avoid senseless victims.

Syria Thursday November 3, 2016:

• Syrian rebel factions fought each other in besieged eastern Aleppo potentially undermining their efforts to fend off a major Russian-backed offensive. Rebel groups have been plagued by disunity and infighting throughout the 5 1/2-year-old conflict, for ideological reasons, over tactical differences or in disputes over territory.
• Fighters of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Nour al-Din al-Zinki and Abu Amara attempted to seize positions and weapons from Fastaqim. Fateh al-Sham is a jihadist group. Zinki and Fastaqim fight under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner.
• A Russian helicopter made an emergency landing near Palmyra city and was shot at after it touched down, but the crew returned safely to the Hmeimim air base.
• Other reports included one from Amaq, a news agency affiliated with Islamic State, saying a Russian military helicopter had been destroyed by rocket fire in Huwaysis, a rural area east of Homs province in central Syria. Huwaysis is more than 200 km from Hmeimim, a Russian air base southeast of the city of Latakia, on the northeastern coast of Syria.

Kurdish-led Syrian forces backed by the U.S. said they have begun a military campaign to liberate the Islamic State group's de facto capital of Raqqa, urging civilians to avoid "enemy gatherings" in the Syrian city and warning Turkey not to interfere in the operation.

The announcement by a coalition of Kurds and Arabs known as the Syria Democratic Forces was made in Ein Issa, north of Raqqa on Saturday November 5, 2016. It was attended by senior commanders and representatives of the group. The city is home to nearly 200,000 mostly Sunni Arabs and an estimated 5,000 militants.

On Sunday November 6, 2016, at least six children have been killed in Syrian government shelling on a nursery in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. More than 25 children were also wounded.

Syria Wednesday November 9, 2016:

• Israel says it has struck a Syrian army artillery position after a rocket from Syria hit the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights. The rocket attack, which caused no casualties, was errant fire that spilled over the frontier.
• A US-led coalition air strike killed at least 20 civilians in a village north of Raqqa. Six women and a child were among those who died in the raids on al-Heisha overnight. The IS-held village has been the target of a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters seeking to capture Raqqa. A coalition spokesman confirmed that it had conducted strikes in the area. ---

On Sunday November 13, 2016, Syrian government forces have retaken areas of the city of Aleppo that were lost to rebels in recent fighting. The loss of the territory on the city's western edges was confirmed by the rebels.

Syria Monday November 14, 2016:

• Syrian insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border as inter-rebel tensions spilled over.
• The confrontation in Azaz pitted a prominent Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group, the Levant Front, against factions that also fight under the FSA banner and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham.
• A Russian fighter jet crashed off the Syrian coast while trying to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The Russian Defence Ministry blamed a technical failure for the crash of the jet, a MIG-29. The pilot ejected safely and was picked up by a rescue team.

Syria Tuesday November 15, 2016:

• Russia launched a major military offensive hours after President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the need to join forces to combat international terrorism.
• Massive strikes hit the positions of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra in the provinces of Idlib and Homs. They also hit targets inside Aleppo, ending a month-long pause in strikes in the rebel-held city.
• A hospital, blood bank and ambulances are reported to have been hit as Syrian government aircraft and artillery bombarded rebel-held eastern Aleppo. The staff of a children's hospital in the Shaar district were forced to take shelter in the basement.
• At least 32 people, including children, have been killed in Aleppo over the past two days. The air strikes resumed on Tuesday after a three-week moratorium declared by the government's ally Russia ended.
• The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved bipartisan bills to crack down on supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and renew a decades-old Iran sanctions law.
• There was broad support on Capitol Hill for punishing financial backers of the Syrian government and maintaining economic pressure on Tehran. The Senate must now act on the legislation before the bills can be sent to the president.

Syria Friday November 18, 2016:

• Doctors and nurses at a paediatric hospital in eastern Aleppo scrambled to evacuate babies in incubators to safety from underground shelters after the facility was bombed for the second time this week.
• Medics and aid workers also reported a suspected attack involving toxic gas in a district on the western edge of the rebel-held area. At least 12 people, including children, were treated for breathing difficulties.
• Claims of toxic gas attacks are common in Syria, and reports by international inspectors have held the government responsible for using chemicals in attacks on civilians, which Damascus denies.
• Airstrikes also hit a village in rural areas Aleppo province, killing seven members of a family, including four children.

Syria Saturday November 19, 2016:

• Government bombardment of Aleppo killed at least 20 people, a day after the health directorate said all hospital in opposition areas have been knocked out of service.
• Saturday was the fifth day of renewed assaults by Syrian warplanes on eastern Aleppo districts, a rebel-held enclave of 275,000 people. The onslaught began when Syria's ally Russia announced its own offensive on the northern rebel-controlled Idlib province and Homs province in central Syria. ---

On Sunday November 13, 2016, Syrian government forces have retaken areas of the city of Aleppo that were lost to rebels in recent fighting. The loss of the territory on the city's western edges was confirmed by the rebels.

Syria Monday November 14, 2016:

• Syrian insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border as inter-rebel tensions spilled over.
• The confrontation in Azaz pitted a prominent Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group, the Levant Front, against factions that also fight under the FSA banner and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham.
• A Russian fighter jet crashed off the Syrian coast while trying to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The Russian Defence Ministry blamed a technical failure for the crash of the jet, a MIG-29. The pilot ejected safely and was picked up by a rescue team.

Syria Tuesday November 15, 2016:

• Russia launched a major military offensive hours after President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the need to join forces to combat international terrorism.
• Massive strikes hit the positions of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra in the provinces of Idlib and Homs. They also hit targets inside Aleppo, ending a month-long pause in strikes in the rebel-held city.
• A hospital, blood bank and ambulances are reported to have been hit as Syrian government aircraft and artillery bombarded rebel-held eastern Aleppo. The staff of a children's hospital in the Shaar district were forced to take shelter in the basement.
• At least 32 people, including children, have been killed in Aleppo over the past two days. The air strikes resumed on Tuesday after a three-week moratorium declared by the government's ally Russia ended.
• The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved bipartisan bills to crack down on supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and renew a decades-old Iran sanctions law.
• There was broad support on Capitol Hill for punishing financial backers of the Syrian government and maintaining economic pressure on Tehran. The Senate must now act on the legislation before the bills can be sent to the president.

Syria Friday November 18, 2016:

• Doctors and nurses at a pediatric hospital in eastern Aleppo scrambled to evacuate babies in incubators to safety from underground shelters after the facility was bombed for the second time this week.
• Medics and aid workers also reported a suspected attack involving toxic gas in a district on the western edge of the rebel-held area. At least 12 people, including children, were treated for breathing difficulties.
• Claims of toxic gas attacks are common in Syria, and reports by international inspectors have held the government responsible for using chemicals in attacks on civilians, which Damascus denies.
• Airstrikes also hit a village in rural areas Aleppo province, killing seven members of a family, including four children. ---

Syria Tuesday November 22, 2016:

• A "senior al-Qaeda leader" in Syria was killed last week by a US air strike. The killing of Egyptian Abu Afghan al-Masri took place near Sarmada, in Idlib province, on November 18.
• Masri had originally joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and later moved to its Syrian affiliate. He had ties to terrorist groups operating throughout southwest Asia including groups responsible for attacking US and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The United States suffered its first casualty during its anti-Islamic State (ISIS) fight in the country Thursday November 24, 2016 (Thanks Giving Day), when a U.S. service member died of wounds from an improvised explosive device. The service member was killed near the town of Ayn Issa, 55 kilometres from the ISIS Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

Syria Monday November 28, 2016:

• Thousands of people were fleeing for their lives as rebel fighters lost a large stretch of territory to government forces in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
• People were being killed by shells as they searched for shelter after their homes came under the heaviest bombardment yet of the nearly five-year civil war. Years of airstrikes and shelling have destroyed entire neighbourhoods of the rebel-held half of the divided city, once Syria’s largest and an industrial hub.
• At least 4,000 people have fled from the rebel-held eastern districts to the city’s government-controlled western side and have registered with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in Jibreen.

Syria Tuesday November 29, 2016:

• The U.S. military blamed human error for what it called a mistaken coalition air assault September 17 that killed dozens of Syrian soldiers.
• Targeters believed they were directing attacks on Islamic State fighters, and because this was an honest mistake the strikes did not violate the international law of armed conflict.
• Multiple opportunities to avoid the mistake were missed in a sequence of events that began with the erroneous identification of a vehicle as belonging to IS and ended when a Russian military officer called a U.S.-Russia telephone hotline to alert the Americans that the coalition strikes near Deir el-Zour were hitting Syrian government forces.
• The call prompted the Americans to halt the attacks, but the chief U.S. investigator told reporters at the Pentagon that if word from the Russians had not been delayed 27 minutes, nearly half of the 30-plus strikes might not have been conducted. The Russian caller waited that long for a familiar U.S. counterpart to come on the line before passing his message.

Syria Sunday December 4, 2016:

• At least 46 people have been killed in suspected Russian air strikes on several areas of Idlib province in northwest Syria. At least three locations were bombed in the northwestern province and most of the casualties were civilians.
• At least 26 civilians, including three children, were killed in the town of Kafr Nabal, and another 18 people were killed in the town of Maaret al-Numan.
• Six strikes hit houses and a crowded local market in the village of Kafr Nabal. In Maaret al-Numan, local residents and White Helmets rescue workers tried to reach survivors in the rubble of the vegetable market hit in the strike.
• There were also two additional deaths: one in an earlier strike on Maaret al-Numan and another in Al-Naqir, also in Idlib.
• Six civilians, four of them children, had been killed in a government barrel bomb attack on the town of Al-Tamanah in the south of Idlib.

Syria Monday December 5, 2016:

• Rebel shelling of the Syrian government-held part of Aleppo killed a Russian nurse in a makeshift Russian hospital in the city. The shelling that killed the female nurse also wounded two Russian doctors working in the field hospital. An unspecified number of local residents who were at the hospital were also wounded.
• A Russian warplane crashed off the coast of Syria, the second plane in less than a month to plunge into the Mediterranean Sea while attempting to land on Russia’s Soviet-era Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier.
• The Russian Su-33 Flanker crashed after flying a combat mission; the cause of the accident was a mechanical malfunction aboard the aircraft carrier. ---

The Syrian army has stopped all military actions in Aleppo and is focusing efforts on evacuating residents, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday December 8, 2016. This is the largest ever evacuation of eastern Aleppo residents, with close to 5,000 residents being moved.

Syria Saturday December 10, 2016:

• Islamic State group fighters have re-entered Palmyra, nine months after losing the ancient Syrian desert city. IS held Palmyra and its nearby ruins for 10 months before it was recaptured by Syrian government forces in March. The jihadist group launched an offensive earlier this week.
• Meanwhile, Russian-backed Syrian government forces are closing in on the remaining rebel-held area of the city of Aleppo. Civilians are said to be streaming out of the city in large numbers.

Syria Monday December 12, 2016:

• Aleppo has almost entirely fallen to Syrian government forces after a sustained attack on rebel-held areas packed with civilians. Pro-government forces now control of 98 percent of eastern Aleppo, including the neighbourhood of Fardous which has been held by the rebels since 2012. The battle for the city was entering its final stages.
• The fall of Palmyra to ISIS over the weekend, months after the ancient city was retaken by Syrian forces and their allies, has blown the lid off the misconception that the jihadist group is being defeated.
• The desert oasis was first captured by ISIS in May 2015. Militants blew up the historic 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel and publicly executed anyone who deviated from their restrictive worldview.
• Almost exactly a year later, forces led by the Syrian regime, including Russia and Hezbollah, retook the UNESCO World Heritage site.
• However on Sunday, Palmyra returned to the hands of ISIS after a weeklong offensive.

Syria Tuesday December 13, 2016:

• Military action has ended in eastern Aleppo, Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said. Syrian government troops had re-established control over the last areas of the city held by rebels.
• An arrangement had been made for rebel fighters and their families to leave. The rebels confirmed the deal, but said civilians would also be allowed to leave.
• The latest developments could bring to an end more than four years of vicious fighting in which thousands have died.

Syria Thursday December 15, 2016:

• Nearly 1,000 civilians and 26 wounded people have been evacuated in buses and ambulances from a besieged rebel-held enclave in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it expects this number to double by the end of the day.
• Government forces, backed by Russian allies, took nearly all remaining rebel-held parts of Aleppo this week after a four-year battle. It represents a major victory for President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria Friday December 16, 2016:

• A nationwide ceasefire is the next step to restore peace in Syria after the recapture of Aleppo Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters at press conference in Japan. The Syrian regime is on the brink of retaking the whole city of Aleppo, which has been partly held by rebels for more than four years.
• Eastern parts of the city are still under rebel control but the regime has made extensive gains in the past two weeks. Up to 9,000 people have already been taken out of the besieged city in nine convoys since Thursday, including 108 wounded. On Friday, Syrian state television reported that evacuation convoys had been suspended.
• Speaking during a trip to Japan, Putin said he had proposed national Syrian peace talks during a phone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday.
• Coalition airstrikes destroyed an air defence system that Islamic State militants had captured last weekend when they retook the Syrian city of Palmyra from Russian and Syrian regime forces. The strikes in 10 locations destroyed the artillery system, 14 tanks, buildings and vehicles.
• Islamic State militants retook Palmyra on Sunday, scoring a major advance by taking advantage of the Syrian and Russian focus on Aleppo. Palmyra was taken over by IS last year and the militants spent 10 months in control. ---

Syria Sunday December 18, 2016:

• Evacuation efforts in Syria were on the verge of fresh collapse after gunmen burned a rescue convoy bound for government areas in a neighbouring province. The evacuations were postponed for an “unknown” period. After more than three hours of closed consultations, France and Russia said that they had agreed on a U.N. Security Council resolution to deploy international monitors to eastern Aleppo to ensure safe evacuations and immediate delivery of humanitarian aid.

Syria Tuesday December 20, 2016:

• Russia, Iran and Turkey have agreed to try to broker peace talks between Syrian rebels and the Assad regime and to expand the fragile ceasefire in Aleppo to other parts of the country. 
• The three regional powers most deeply involved in Syria’s war met for an unprecedented summit in Moscow and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said they had reached significant agreements. The USA was not invited.
• President Bashar al-Assad's army is closing in on the last rebel enclave in Aleppo. The Syrian army used loudspeakers to broadcast warnings to insurgents that it was poised to enter their rapidly diminishing area during the day and told them to speed up their evacuation of the city. Complete control of Aleppo would be a major victory for Assad against rebels who have defied him in Syria's most populous city for four years.

Syria Thursday December 22, 2016:

• The last "remnants" of rebels and their supporters have been evacuated from eastern Aleppo and the government has regained full control of the embattled city.
• Western Aleppo erupted in heavy celebratory gunfire, with Syrian TV showing uniformed soldiers and civilians shouting “Aleppo, Aleppo!” and “God, Syria and Bashar only.
• Aleppo is now under full government control for the first time since rebels took command of eastern parts of the city in 2012. Turkey and the West backed a hodgepodge of rebel groups, while Russia and Iran backed the Syrian government of Bashar Assad.

Syria Friday December 23, 2016:

• Syrian rebels shelled Aleppo and air strikes resumed around the city as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies said the insurgents' withdrawal from the city could pave the way toward a political solution for the country.
• A day after the last rebels left their remaining pocket of territory in the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said about 10 shells fell in its southwestern al-Hamdaniya district. Six people, including two children, were killed. State television said at least three people died.

Syria Sunday December 25, 2016:

• At least 30 civilians were killed and many others were wounded after Islamic State launched an attack in the Syrian town of al-Bab to prevent people from fleeing. ---

Syria Thursday December 29, 2016:

• The Syrian government and rebel groups have agreed a nationwide ceasefire from midnight (22:00 GMT) on Thursday.
• The deal was announced by Russia's President Vladimir Putin and confirmed by Turkey. The two nations, which back opposing sides, will act as guarantors. The High Negotiations Committee (HNC), regarded by the UN as Syria's main opposition body, confirmed the deal, which excludes jihadist groups.
• If the truce holds, peace talks will be held in Kazakhstan within a month.
• At least 300,000 people are believed to have been killed in fighting that followed the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011. A further four million have fled the country to seek refuge in neighbouring states or Europe.
• One of Islamic State's top commanders in Syria has been killed in a U.S.-led coalition air strike. Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti, a member of Islamic State's war committee, was killed on Monday by the Tabqa Dam, a strategic objective in northern Syria near Raqqa city, the jihadists' main stronghold in the country.

Syria Friday December 30, 2016:

• A cease-fire between the Syrian government and rebel groups tentatively took hold across the country on Friday, signalling a fragile peace that could lead to talks aimed at ending more than five years of fighting.
• The truce, brokered primarily by Russia and Turkey, which pledged to guarantee the compliance of the government and the opposition, was announced on Thursday and went into effect at midnight. There are still some pockets of fighting around the country, but few deaths.
• Seven opposition groups had signed the agreement, which called for a cease-fire and for peace talks in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, next month. On Friday, Russia urged the United Nations Security Council to pass a draft resolution endorsing the agreement, the third cessation of hostilities declared in Syria this year.

Syria Saturday December 31, 2016:

• The U.N. Security Council will vote on a resolution that would endorse the cease-fire agreement in Syria brokered by Russia and Turkey, and reiterate support for a roadmap to peace that starts with a transitional government.
• The resolution also calls for "rapid, safe and unhindered" access to deliver humanitarian aid throughout the country. And it looks forward to a meeting in late January between the Syrian government and opposition in Kazakhstan's capital Astana "as an important part of the Syrian-led political process facilitated by the United Nations."
• Russia and Turkey are on opposing sides of the Syrian conflict: Moscow along with Iran provides crucial military support to Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Turkey has long served as a rear base and source of supplies for the rebels.
• Divisions in the Security Council between Russia and the veto-wielding Western powers —the U.S. Britain and France who support the moderate opposition and demand that Assad steps down— have blocked action to end the war, now in its sixth year.
• The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution supporting efforts by Russia and Turkey to end the nearly six-year conflict in Syria and jump-start peace negotiations.

Syria Sunday January 1, 2017:

• Two suicide bombers detonated their explosives, killing at least two security officers in the Syrian coastal city of Tartous. The officers were part of a security patrol that stopped the bombers, who then blew themselves up. Others were injured in the blasts, including civilians. ---

A large explosion rocked a Syrian government-held coastal town on Thursday January 5, 2017, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens despite a nearly week-old cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey. The explosion shook a main street in Jableh, in the coastal Latakia province, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad and the heartland of Syria's Alawites, a Shiite offshoot to which Assad's family also belongs. It was the first such large-scale bombing since the cease-fire was agreed on last week, to prepare the way for peace talks between Assad's government and opposition in Kazakhstan later this month.

Syria Friday January 6, 2017:

• At least 43 people, mostly civilians, were killed when a tanker blew up in front of a courthouse in the northern town of Azaz On Friday January 6, 2017. Dozens more were injured. A car bomb planted by Islamic State was responsible.
• Syrian Democratic Fighters (SDF) have liberated the historic 850-year-old Jabar castle in Syria’s Raqqa governorate from Islamic State (ISIS) militants.
• The centuries old castle was built in 1168 AD by Nur ad-Din Zangi, a member of the Turkish Zengid dynasty.  Heavily damaged during the Mongol invasions of Syria in the second half of the 13th century and first half of the 14th century, the castle was restored shortly afterwards.
• 22 ISIS fighters were killed during the operation to liberate the castle, while guns and ammunition stored within the ancient walls were also seized.

Syria Saturday January 7, 2017:

• A car bomb ripped through a busy commercial district in a rebel-held Syrian town along the Turkish border Saturday, killing nearly 50 in a huge explosion that damaged buildings and left rescuers scrambling to find survivors amid the wreckage.
• There were nearly 100 wounded and burned. Over 50 wounded were transported to the Turkish border town of Kilis for treatment, as local hospitals couldn't cope. A rigged tanker caused the explosion.

Syria Sunday January 8, 2017:

• Turkish-led air and ground operations killed 48 Islamic State militants while Turkish warplanes destroyed 23 buildings and shelters used by the jihadists.

Syria Friday January 13, 2017:

Syrian army command said that Israel fired rockets at a major military airport west of Damascus and warned Tel Aviv of repercussions of what it called a "flagrant" attack. Several rockets were fired from an area near Lake Tiberias in northern Israel just after midnight which landed in the compound of the airport, a major facility for elite Republican Guards.

Syria Saturday January 14, 2017:

• Fighting between Islamic State and the Syrian army has killed dozens in Deir al-Zor, where the militant group has launched an assault to capture a government enclave in the city.
• At least 82 people have been killed in the fighting, which is the heaviest in the city for a year. The dead comprised 28 from the army and allied militia, at least 40 Islamic State fighters, and 14 civilians.
• The army had killed dozens of Islamic State fighters in attacks on the group’s positions around Deir al-Zor.

Syria Sunday January 15, 2017:

• Troops allied to the Syrian government have shelled a village in a rebel-controlled area near its capital Damascus, killing at least seven civilians.
• The shells hit al-Reem banquet hall in the village of Deir Qanun. The incident occurred in the Wadi Barada valley, which is the main source of water for Damascus.
• The banquet hall has been housing hundreds of civilians who have escaped the intensified fighting for Wadi Barada that started on December 22. At least 20 other people were wounded in the attack, some of them critically.

Syria Tuesday January 17, 2017:

• Syria talks are set to kickoff next week and Russia wants officials from the incoming Trump administration to attend the meeting in Kazakhstan.

Syria Thursday January 19, 2017:

• The Russian militaries have teamed up with Turkey to conduct joint airstrikes, coordinated with Damascus, against an Islamic State group’s stronghold in northern Syria. It is the first acknowledgement of Russian cooperation in support of Turkey’s offensive in the area.
• It is also the first incident of indirect coordination between the Turkish and the Syrian governments. Ankara has been calling for the ouster of President Bashar Assad and has supported the armed rebellion against him. Syrian officials have called Turkey’s operations on Syrian territories an ‘‘occupation.’’
• The US-led coalition has also carried out attacks against IS in the same area -al-Bab, in the province of Aleppo— at a time when Turkish troops have struggled there since November.
• Islamic State militants have beheaded four people and shot eight dead in the Syrian city of Palmyra. Some of the killings took place in a museum yard near the city's Unesco-listed ancient ruins.
• Four teachers and state employees, four government soldiers and four captured rebels were killed. IS retook the site and nearby city last month, after being pushed out in March.
• At least 40 fighters from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham -one of the largest rebel groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad- have been killed in air strikes in Aleppo province.

Syria Friday January 20, 2017:

• Islamic State militants have destroyed the facade of a second-century Roman amphitheatre and another ancient monument in the historic city of Palmyra.
• ISIS or ISIL had destroyed part of the amphitheatre and severely damaged a tetrapylon, a square structure of four plinths, each with four columns. The tetrapylon had two columns still standing and appeared to have been “intentionally destroyed using explosives.”
• The smashing of the ancient structures was a further attempt by the group to impose its will by destroying historic monuments or artefacts that it says do not conform to its strict interpretation of Islam.
• The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) killed five Turkish soldiers and injured at least nine in a bombing in al-Bab, where Turkish-backed rebels have suffered casualties in a weeks-long bid to retake the town.
• Turkey announced that it is no longer "realistic" to exclude Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from a solution to the country's five-year civil war. ---

Syria Monday January 23, 2017:

• Syria's government envoy and a rebel leader traded barbs as talks between the Mideast country's warring sides got underway in Kazakhstan in the first face-to-face meeting between the Damascus government and rebel factions fighting to overthrow it.
• The gathering in Astana, the Kazakh capital, is also the start of a new effort to end six years of carnage that has killed hundreds of thousands, displaced half of Syria's population and sent millions of refugees to neighbouring countries and Europe.
• Rebel fighters meeting the Syrian government for the first time in the country’s bloody six-year civil war appear to have rejected a plan for Iran to play a role in monitoring the ceasefire.
• The negotiations sponsored by Russia, Iran and Turkey in the Kazakh capital, Astana, are the latest attempt to end the war and seen as a test of Moscow’s influence in the Middle East.
• The proposal for a trilateral ceasefire commission, overseen jointly by the talks’ sponsors, is the most specific new measure set out in a draft communique the Russians hope to release on Tuesday, the second and closing day of the talks. It was not clear if the monitoring body could go ahead without Iranian involvement.
• The Syrian fighting groups believe militia linked to Iran, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, are –along with Bashar al-Assad’s government– systematically breaching the ceasefire agreed on 29 December. The Syrian fighters believe Iran, as perpetrators of innumerable ceasefire breaches, cannot credibly monitor or enforce a ceasefire.

Syria Tuesday January 24, 2017:

• Russia, Turkey and Iran, the sponsors of the peace talks between the Syrian government and rebels, have agreed to act as joint monitors for the war-torn country’s fragile ceasefire in a promising step towards ending the violence. 
• The sides will "establish a trilateral mechanism to observe and ensure full compliance with the ceasefire and prevent any provocations. The accord was signed by Moscow and Ankara -the two major powers brokering the negotiations- and Tehran, on behalf of the Syrian government and armed rebel groups, which have not officially endorsed it.

Syria Wednesday January 25, 2017:

• U.S. President Donald Trump said he "will absolutely do safe zones in Syria" for refugees fleeing violence in the war-torn country.
• He said that Europe had made a tremendous mistake by admitting millions of refugees from Syria and other Middle Eastern trouble spots. He does not want that to happen in the US.
• Trump is expected to order the Pentagon and the State Department in coming days to craft a plan for setting up the "safe zones," a move that could risk escalation of U.S. military involvement in Syria's civil war.

Syria Thursday January 26, 2017:

• Donald Trump’s proposal to set up safe havens in northern Syria has been met with caution by his allies and scepticism by others who fear the plan is aimed more at keeping refugees out of the US than providing for humanitarian needs.
• Turkey and Russia, on whom such a plan would heavily depend said they had not been consulted, hours after the US president pledged to “absolutely do safe zones in Syria for the people”. Moscow said it was important not to “exacerbate the situation”, while Ankara said a safe zone had already been set up under its auspices.
• Trump’s comments followed the release of a draft executive order, which ordered a study of how safe zones in highly volatile northern Syria could protect Syrian nationals awaiting resettlement. Safe zones have been a core demand of the Syrian opposition and were central to Turkey’s Syria policy for much of the past five years.
• Barack Obama refused to commit resources, arguing that the US would get bogged down in an intractable conflict and could be drawn into clashes with regional powers, including Russia


Syria Friday January 27, 2017:

• The UN-hosted negotiations on the Syrian conflict planned for February 8 in Geneva have been postponed until the end of that month.

Syria Saturday January 28, 2017:

• Syrian government forces have recaptured all towns and villages in the Wadi Barada valley near Damascus.
• The Syrian army and its allies took over a Wadi Barada village containing a major spring and pumping station that supplies most of Damascus' water. ---

Syria Wednesday February 1, 2017:

• Air strikes hit Syrian Red Crescent offices in the northwestern city of Idlib injuring several staff and causing extensive damage. It was not clear which air force the jets belonged to or whether they had taken off from inside Syria or crossed its borders.
• Russian and Syrian warplanes have been carrying out raids against Syrian insurgents in Idlib province, a rebel stronghold, but since the New Year U.S. air strikes have also targeted militants in Idlib formerly affiliated to al Qaeda.
• International lawyers have filed a criminal complaint against nine Syrian security and intelligence officials in a Spanish court, accusing them of torture and other human rights violations. It is the first case specifically citing members of Syria’s government to be heard in a Western court.
• The names of the officials have not been made public, because prosecutors hope this will improve their chances of apprehending the officials outside Syria if arrest warrants are issued. The lawyers who filed the complaint said the defendants included senior officers who ran a torture centre in Damascus, Syria’s capital, in 2013 and leaders of the Syrian intelligence and security services, who are part of President Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle.
• The court, Spain’s National Court, has previously taken up international human rights cases in Latin America, most notably when it ordered the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, while he was visiting London. Mr. Pinochet was kept under house arrest in Britain for 18 months until he was released because of poor health.

Syria Friday February 3, 2017:

• Jordan has carried out airstrikes against Islamic State targets in southern Syria, hitting an arms depot, a warehouse for making car bombs and barracks used by the extremist group.
• Drones and precision-guided munitions killed and wounded an unspecified number of IS militants. The strikes also targeted an IS-held former Syrian army post.

Syria Saturday February 4, 2017:

• Four “emirs” of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were killed in the airstrikes carried out by Turkish warplanes as a part of the ongoing Euphrates Shield operation.
• Some 51 ISIL militants were killed in the airstrikes carried out in al-Bab and Bzagah in the 165th day of the “Euphrates Shield” operation. Some of the militants were killed in the clashes.
• The warplanes also targeted a total of 65 ISIL positions, resulting in the destruction of 56 buildings and three headquarters used by the jihadist organization.
• 55 mines and 3,656 improvised explosives had been defused since the start of the operation on Aug. 24

Syria Monday February 6, 2017:

• Syrian pro-government forces advanced toward al-Bab, completing the encirclement of the Islamic State-held town which had been partially besieged by Turkey-backed opposition forces.
• Turkish troops and allied Syrian opposition fighters, known as Euphrates Shield, have been trying to seize the town for weeks in fighting that has killed dozens of Turkish troops. The Syrian government and the Turkish-backed forces are not coordinating their operations.
• The Syrian government condemned the incursion when Turkish troops crossed the border in August. But since then Turkey has joined with Russia and Iran to guarantee a cease-fire between the government and Syrian rebels. Both forces appear to be in a race to enter al-Bab, which lies at a strategic crossroads in northern Syria.

Syria Tuesday February 7, 2017:

• Airstrikes on the rebel-held city of Idlib killed at least 15 people, wounded dozens more and demolished several buildings, in one of the deadliest attacks since a cease-fire went into effect last year.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 26 people were killed, including 10 civilians —mostly women. The opposition-run Civil Defence in Idlib says 15 bodies were pulled from the rubble and that 30 people were taken for medical treatment.

Syria Wednesday February 8, 2017:

• A series of airstrikes on an opposition-held district in Homs, presumably carried out by Russia or Syria, killed at least nine civilians.
• Pro-government forces shelled the city’s al-Waer neighbourhood with tank and artillery fire in conjunction with the airstrikes.
• Government forces have kept the opposition-held neighbourhood under siege since 2013. An estimated 75,000 people are trapped inside.
• The US military targeted and killed a long time al Qaeda leader in an airstrike near Idlib. Abu Hani al-Masri was killed in an unmanned drone strike on Saturday.
• He was "a legacy al Qaeda terrorist with ties to the group's senior leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden. Like Zawahiri, al Qaeda's current leader, Masri was an Egyptian national reported to have fought with al Qaeda during the group's earliest days.

Syria Thursday February 9, 2017:

• A Russian airstrike in northern Syria killed three Turkish soldiers and wounded 11 more in a friendly fire incident that could test the shaky coordination between the two countries in the fight against the Islamic State.
• The attack occurred near the northern Syrian town of al-Bab. Turkish forces are launching an offensive to retake the town from the Islamic State. ---

Syria Tuesday February 14, 2017:

• Clashes between two extremist factions in northwestern Syria left dozens of fighters dead on both sides and raised fears of more deadly violence between groups battling President Bashar Assad's troops ahead of U.N.-brokered peace talks.
• The fighting between the al-Qaida-led coalition known as the Levant Liberation Committee and the extremist Jund al-Aqsa group left nearly 70 fighters dead in some of the deadliest clashes between insurgents in years.

Syria Monday February 20, 2017:

• Four Russian servicemen were killed and two were wounded last week when their car was blown up by a remote-controlled bomb.
• The servicemen were accompanying a Syrian Army convoy near the Tiyas air base in central Syria to the city of Homs on Thursday when they were hit by the roadside bomb. It was the largest loss of life for Russia since it intervened in the Syrian civil war.

Syria Thursday February 23, 2017:

• Negotiations aimed at finding a political solution to the war in Syria are set to begin at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva as a nationwide ceasefire steadily falls apart and UN officials soften their expectations on achieving any major breakthroughs.
• The intra-Syrian talks -which will bring together representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition, along with their respective international backers- will resume after UN envoy Staffan de Mistura broke them off nine months ago as several rounds of meetings ultimately led to an escalation of violence across the country.

Syria Friday February 24, 2017:

• A car bomb in northern Syria killed as many as 60 people and wounded dozens more. The attack was in Sousian village, a few miles north of the town.
• The nearby town of al-Bab had been retaken from ISIS. Al-Bab was ISIS' last significant holdout between the northern countryside of Aleppo and Raqqa, the group's de facto capital. Held by ISIS since 2013, al-Bab was recaptured after more than two months of fighting.

Syria Saturday February 25, 2017:

• Twin attacks on two security offices in the central city of Homs killed at least 32 people, including a senior security official, Maj. Gen Hassan Daeboul, who headed the feared Military Intelligence services. Another high-ranking officer was seriously wounded
• Five attackers stormed the two security offices. Bombs were also detonated at checkpoints outside the buildings just as rescuers were arriving, leading to more casualties.
• There were three blasts in total. The attackers were wearing suicide belts, which they detonated in the security offices. The two agencies are 1.2 miles apart. ---

Syria Sunday February 26, 2017:

• One of al-Qaida’s most senior global leaders has been killed by a US drone strike in north-west Syria. Abu al-Khayr al-Masri –who has been part of the global jihadi organisation for three decades and was a son-in-law of its founder, Osama bin Laden– was killed when a missile fired from a drone hit the small car in which he was travelling. Masri had also been a close aide to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, a fellow Egyptian.
• Masri’s death was a serious blow to al-Qaida. His death is no less significant than that of Bin Laden [who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan in May 2011. He was the ideological leader of the group in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and the number two in the organisation overall.

Syria Wednesday March 1, 2017:

• The Syrian Air Force first dropped barrel bombs from helicopters on a United Nations humanitarian aid convoy, then fired rockets from jets, then strafed survivors with machine guns.
• Government forces had not only committed the attack in September but had done so deliberately, a war crime. The attack, which killed 14 aid workers and stoked international outrage, was “meticulously planned” and “ruthlessly carried out.

Syria Thursday March 2, 2017:

• Syria's military has fully recaptured the historic town of Palmyra from the Islamic State group as the militants' defences crumbled and ISIS fighters fled in the face of artillery fire and intense Russia-backed airstrikes.
• It is the third time that the town—famed for its priceless Roman ruins and archaeological treasures ISIS had sought to destroy—has changed hands in one year.
• It was also the second blow for the Islamic State group in Syria in a week, after Turkish backed opposition fighters seized the Syrian town of al-Bab from the militants on February 23.
• Abdullah Muhammad Rajab Abd Al-Rahman, better known by his alias Abu Khayr al-Masri, a 59-year-old Egyptian and a long time top member of al-Qaida, was killed in an American drone strike.
• A Hellfire missile fired by a CIA drone struck the car carrying Abu Khayr al-Masri in Idlib, Syria, on Sunday.

Syria Saturday March 4, 2017:

• An aircraft (a MIG) believed to belong to the Syrian military crashed near the town of Samandag in Hatay province near the Turkey-Syria border Saturday; the Syrian opposition claimed they were responsible for shooting the plane down.
• Rescue teams arrived at the wreckage and reported that the cockpit was empty, confirming that the pilots ejected. There had been no airspace violation and no intervention by Turkish forces.
• Air strikes have killed at least 11 civilians and wounded dozens more in an ISIL-held central Syrian village in Hama province. The raids targeted a livestock market in the village of Oqayrabat that is held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Syria Monday March 6, 2017:

• A Syrian pilot whose plane crashed in Turkey has said his plane was shot down, despite the regime's military saying it had crashed due to technical difficulties.
• The Syrian air force pilot said to Turkish authorities his aircraft was shot down on its way to strike rural areas near Idlib, northern Syria.
• He had bailed out as his warplane crashed on Turkish territory was found by a Turkish rescue team and is being treated at a hospital in the Hatay region. The pilot had "a few" broken bones but was not in critical condition.
• Asked whether he would be returned to Syria, Mr Canikli said the decision "will be made in the coming days" after the full scope of the pilot's duties and activities had been "clarified". The 56-year-old pilot said his MIG 23 had taken off from Latakia in Syria.

Syria Tuesday March 7, 2017:

• U.S.-backed Syrian militias will tighten the chokehold on Islamic State's base in Raqqa, after cutting the last main road out of the city.
• The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) severed the highway between Raqqa and the jihadists' stronghold of Deir al-Zor province on Monday, dealing a major blow to Islamic State which is under intense military pressure in both Syria and Iraq.
• The SDF advance means all main roads out of Raqqa are now cut. The U.S.-backed militias now plan to capture surrounding rural areas and advance towards the city to isolate it completely.
• The militias were still up to 20 kilometres from the city limits.
• Syrian government forces have retaken a key water pumping station in Aleppo. Residents have been without mains water for nearly two months since the so-called Islamic State group cut it off.

Syria Wednesday March 8, 2017:

• Marines from an amphibious task force have left their ships in the Middle East and deployed to Syria, establishing an outpost from which they can fire artillery guns in support of the fight to oust the Islamic State from the northern Syrian city of Raqqa.

Syria Thursday March 9, 2017:

• The Pentagon is sending about 400 Marines to Syria to help local fighters wrest control of Raqqa which ISIS considers its capital. The new troops will fire artillery rounds at ISIS fighters in support of the local forces, as well as provide security for the Marine artillerymen.
• These 400 troops will bring the number of U.S. forces on the ground in Syria to about 900.
• Air strikes killed 23 civilians, including eight children in countryside around the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. The warplanes were from the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State militants.
• The jets struck the village of al-Matab southeast of Raqqa, near the Euphrates River; several air raids had also pounded areas east of the city.
• Air strikes pounded a town in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zor killing seven civilians and injuring more than 70 others.
• Two warplanes, believed to be Russian, dropped nearly two dozen bombs on al-Mayadin in the Islamic State stronghold of Deir al-Zor. The strikes hit a school sheltering displaced people, a bakery and residential areas in the town, which lies along the Euphrates River.

Syria Saturday March 11, 2017:

• At least 40 people are dead after twin blasts in a Damascus neighbourhood that is home to tombs of religious figures frequented by Shiite pilgrims.
• The twin explosions hit near Bab al-Saghir cemetery, one of the capital's most ancient, and where several prominent religious figures are buried. Several people were killed and the cemetery was damaged.
• Most of the more than 40 people killed in the twin blasts were Iraqis visiting the Shiite shrines in the area. Moreover at least 120 people were wounded.

Syria Monday March 13, 2017:

• Syrian opposition fighters will be allowed to leave the last rebel-held neighbourhood in the city of Homs under a Russia-backed deal.
• The deal is to be carried out within six to eight weeks. The rebel fighters who decide to stay in Homs can benefit from a government amnesty that was issued earlier.

Syria Thursday March 16, 2017:

• An airstrike on a mosque in the Jeenah area, near the rebel-held province of Idlib has killed at least 20 people.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 42 people were killed, mainly civilians.

Syria Friday March 17, 2017:

• Anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria into Israeli-controlled territory following a series of Israeli airstrikes inside Syria.
• The Israeli military said its warplanes struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.
• Israeli aerial defines systems intercepted one of the missiles. The safety of Israeli civilians and the safety of the Israeli aircraft “were not compromised.”
• The U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles and dropped a 500-pound bomb in the town of Jinah outside Aleppo in an attack that the Pentagon said killed scores of al-Qaida militants. Local residents described as it an assault on a mosque crowded with civilians during a religious gathering. 46 people died, and more were trapped under rubble.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring network, described the scene in Jinah as a "massacre," saying the dead were mostly civilians.

Syria Sunday March 19, 2017:

• An Israeli aircraft launched a strike into Syria that left one person dead, in what appeared to be the second cross-border attack in three days as tensions between the neighbours escalated over the weekend.
• The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the strike targeted a car traveling on a road between Damascus and Quneitra, a town in the Golan Heights near the border with Israel.

Syria Monday March 20, 2017:

• Syrian government forces regained control of parts of Damascus that were attacked and captured by rebels and militants the previous day, with the two-day fighting leaving dozens dead on both sides.
• The sudden rebel seizure of territory in the Syrian capital —with rebels sneaking into the city through underground tunnels and using car bombs— reflected the insurgents’ most serious infiltration into Damascus in years.
• The Levant Liberation Committee, a coalition of several militant groups led by al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, and the independent Failaq al-Rahman faction spearheaded the blitz that caught the Syrian military off guard. ---

Syria Tuesday March 21, 2017:

• An airstrike believed to be carried out by a U.S.-led coalition has killed at least 33 people at a school near the key city of Raqqa.
• The airstrike happened outside the village of al-Mansoura; the school was serving as a shelter for people displaced by the fighting in Syria.

Syria Saturday March 25, 2017:

• Warplanes struck rebel-held parts of Syria hitting a women’s prison and a clinic, killing and wounding scores of people, amid clashes on multiple fronts between government forces and insurgent groups.
• One of the airstrikes hit a main street in the Damascus suburb of Hamouriyeh killing at least 16 people, including eight women and children, and wounded more than 50. The airstrikes caused wide destruction in the area.
• The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) targeted the jihadist groups occupying territory along the Salamiyah-Homs Highway. The Syrian Arab Army attacked the jihadist positions around the village of Tal ‘Amri, resulting in a fierce battle with Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham.
• Following a six hour battle, the Syrian Arab Army managed to restore all of the points they lost three days ago, killing and wounding several militants in the process of reopening the Salamiyah-Homs Highway.

Syria Sunday March 26, 2017:

• A US-backed force of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters has taken control of an Islamic State-held airbase west of the jihadist group's stronghold of Raqqa.
• US helicopters airlifted hundreds of fighters behind IS lines at the start of the assault last Wednesday. The airbase's capture is seen as a significant step in the campaign to drive IS militants out of Raqqa.
• The SDF is also aiming to seize the nearby town of Tabqa and the Tabqa dam, which the US-led multinational coalition has denied damaging in air strikes.

Syria Wednesday March 29, 2017:

• An unidentified American service member died in northern Syria as a result of natural causes. This is the second known loss of an American service member in Syria.
• There are about 900 U.S. troops in Syria providing various forms of support to allies leading the ground war against ISIS. Most are special operations forces, though some conventional Marine artillery personnel have arrived in recent weeks.

Syria Saturday April 1, 2017:

• Iraqi fighter jets have carried out airstrikes against the Islamic State group outside Mosul killing more than 100 militants.
• The strikes hit three ISIS targets in Baaj, a remote northwestern town near the Syrian border, and killed between 150-200 militants. The militants had crossed over from Syria, suggesting that ISIS still enjoys free movement across the borders. ---

Syria Sunday April 2, 2017:

• Suspected Russian fighter jets have bombed a hospital in the northern province of Idlib. At least ten people were injured when three strikes targeted the main hospital in Maaret al-Numan destroying the building.
• Most of the emergency and surgery rooms have been destroyed. Rescuers evacuated the hospital and transferred the patients to other medical facilities.

Syria Tuesday April 4, 2017:

• A suspected chemical attack in a town in northern Idlib province killed dozens of people; the attack was among the worst in the country’s six-year civil war.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 58, saying there were 11 children among the dead.
• It was the third claim of a chemical attack in just over a week in Syria. The previous two were reported in Hama province, in an area not far from Khan Sheikhoun, the site of today alleged attack.

Syria Wednesday April 5, 2017:

• Russia's defence ministry said that a poisonous gas contamination in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun was the result of gas leaking from a rebel chemical weapons depot after it was hit by Syrian government air strikes.
• Syrian aviation made a strike on a large terrorist ammunition depot and a concentration of military hardware in the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun town, the Russians said. In the depot there were workshops which produced chemical warfare munitions.
• On the other hand the United States has blamed the administration of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the attack, in which scores of people are reported to have been killed.
• ISIS killed 33 people execution-style in eastern Syria.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the terror organization carried out the mass killing in the al-Mayadin desert near the strategic city of Deir Ezzor.
• The people were between ages 18 and 25 and were "killed by sharp tools." It added that it is unknown whether the victims were Syrian government forces, allied militia or rebel factions.

Syria Thursday April 6, 2017:

• More than 80 people, including at least 30 children and 20 women, were killed in the chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun early Tuesday, and the toll could still rise. The Alyousef family, one of the town's main clans, was hardest hit (22 people killed).

Syria Friday April 7, 2017:

• Russia froze a critical agreement on military cooperation with the United States in Syria after an American military strike, warning that the operation would further corrode already dismal relations between Moscow and Washington.
• Syria, Russia’s ally, condemned the American strikes as “a disgraceful act.”
• Russia also said it would bolster Syria’s air defines systems, and was planning to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus.
• The point of the agreement had been to decrease danger in the air and that cancelling it would not significantly increase that peril with missiles already flying around.

Syria Saturday April 8, 2017:

• Warplanes struck the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun battering residents still reeling from the Bashar al-Assad regime’s deadly gas attack there. The fresh airstrike killed one woman and wounded her son and at least two others.

Syria Sunday April 9, 2017:

• Islamic State militants launched two suicide attacks on U.S.-backed Syrian rebels near the border with Iraq, leaving at least 12 dead - eight Islamic State fighters and four of their own men- in the fighting and many wounded.
• An attack on a heavily defended base near the al Tanf border crossing involved at least one explosive-laden vehicle that rammed an entrance to the base. At least two U.S.-backed rebels were killed and scores wounded.

The militants also staged a suicide attack on a convoy of rebel fighters from the Western-backed Osoud al Sharqiya rebel group, who had sent reinforcements from their outpost near the Rukban refugee camp further south-west. Two of the fighters in the convoy were killed in the ambush. ---

Syria Sunday April 2, 2017:

• Suspected Russian fighter jets have bombed a hospital in the northern province of Idlib. At least ten people were injured when three strikes targeted the main hospital in Maaret al-Numan destroying the building.
• Most of the emergency and surgery rooms have been destroyed. Rescuers evacuated the hospital and transferred the patients to other medical facilities.

Syria Tuesday April 4, 2017:

• A suspected chemical attack in a town in northern Idlib province killed dozens of people; the attack was among the worst in the country’s six-year civil war.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 58, saying there were 11 children among the dead.
• It was the third claim of a chemical attack in just over a week in Syria. The previous two were reported in Hama province, in an area not far from Khan Sheikhoun, the site of today alleged attack.

Syria Wednesday April 5, 2017:

• Russia's defence ministry said that a poisonous gas contamination in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun was the result of gas leaking from a rebel chemical weapons depot after it was hit by Syrian government air strikes.
• Syrian aviation made a strike on a large terrorist ammunition depot and a concentration of military hardware in the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun town, the Russians said. In the depot there were workshops which produced chemical warfare munitions.
• On the other hand the United States has blamed the administration of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the attack, in which scores of people are reported to have been killed.
• ISIS killed 33 people execution-style in eastern Syria.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the terror organization carried out the mass killing in the al-Mayadin desert near the strategic city of Deir Ezzor.
• The people were between ages 18 and 25 and were "killed by sharp tools." It added that it is unknown whether the victims were Syrian government forces, allied militia or rebel factions.

Syria Thursday April 6, 2017:

• More than 80 people, including at least 30 children and 20 women, were killed in the chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun early Tuesday, and the toll could still rise. The Alyousef family, one of the town's main clans, was hardest hit (22 people killed).

Syria Friday April 7, 2017:

• Russia froze a critical agreement on military cooperation with the United States in Syria after an American military strike, warning that the operation would further corrode already dismal relations between Moscow and Washington.
• Syria, Russia’s ally, condemned the American strikes as “a disgraceful act.”
• Russia also said it would bolster Syria’s air defines systems, and was planning to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus.
• The point of the agreement had been to decrease danger in the air and that cancelling it would not significantly increase that peril with missiles already flying around.

Syria Saturday April 8, 2017:

• Warplanes struck the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun battering residents still reeling from the Bashar al-Assad regime’s deadly gas attack there. The fresh airstrike killed one woman and wounded her son and at least two others.

Syria Sunday April 9, 2017:

• Islamic State militants launched two suicide attacks on U.S.-backed Syrian rebels near the border with Iraq, leaving at least 12 dead -eight Islamic State fighters and four of their own men- and many wounded.
• The attack at midnight on a heavily defended base near the al Tanf border crossing involved at least one explosive-laden vehicle that rammed an entrance to the base. At least two U.S.-backed rebels were killed and scores wounded, a rebel source said.
• The militants also staged a suicide attack on a convoy of rebel fighters from the Western-backed Osoud al Sharqiya rebel group, who had sent reinforcements from their outpost near the Rukban refugee camp further south-west. Two of the fighters in the convoy were killed in the ambush.

Syria Wednesday April 12, 2017:

• US President Donald Trump gave the order to strike Syria with dozens of cruise missiles "during dessert" with visiting Chinese leader Xi Jinping, he said in an interview. "We had finished dinner. We're now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen and President Xi was enjoying it". This shows what he is like.

Syria Thursday April 13, 2017:

• Russia has vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council that would have condemned last week's alleged chemical attack in Syria and demanded that Damascus cooperate with investigators.
• The resolution was presented by the US, UK and France, who reacted angrily to Russia's decision. It was the eighth time Russia has protected its ally at the council.
• A misdirected airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition earlier this week killed 18 allied fighters battling the Islamic State group in northern Syria.
• The coalition aircraft were given the wrong coordinates by their partner forces, the predominantly-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, for the strike on Tuesday that was intended to target IS militants south of their Tabqa stronghold, near Raqqa. The strike hit an SDF position instead.
• After being accused of using a chemical bomb, Syria’s president suggested that child actors had staged death scenes to malign him and that American warplanes had bombed a terrorist warehouse full of poison gases, killing hundreds of people.

Syria Saturday April 15, 2017:

• A blast ripped through a bus depot in the al-Rashideen area where thousands of government loyalists evacuated the day before waited restlessly for hours, as opposition fighters guarded the area while negotiators bickered over the completion of the transfer deal.
• Only meters away, hundreds of evacuees from pro-rebels areas also loitered in a walled-off parking lot, guarded by government troops.
• A population transfer resumed after the deadly explosion killed at least 112, including children, government supporters and opposition fighters, at an evacuation point.

Syria Sunday April 16, 2017:

• The evacuation of more than 3,000 Syrians from four areas as part of a population transfer has been postponed a day after a deadly blast that killed more than 120 people, many of them government supporters.
• It came as shells fired by the Islamic State group on government-held parts of the eastern city of Deir el-Zour wounded two members of a Russian media delegation visiting the area. One was wounded in the arm while the other suffered leg and stomach wounds.

Syria Tuesday April 18, 2017:

• An airstrike carried out by the U.S.-led coalition on Boukamal on the Iraqi border, an eastern Syrian town held by the Islamic State group, has killed at least 10 people (more probably 23 including children) and wounded dozens.
• Dozens of civilians have been killed in separate air raids over the past 24 hours blamed on Russian, US-led coalition and Syrian government fighter jets.
• At least 10 people, including an elderly woman and nine children, were killed in Russian air raids on Maaret Harmeh village in Idlib province; 10 others were wounded in the attack. ---

Syria Friday April 21, 2017:

• US troop killed a leading member of the Islamic State (IS) group in a commando raid in Syria. The attack took place near the town of Mayadin in eastern Syria.
• Abdurakhmon Uzbeki, who was believed to be from Uzbekistan, was a close associate of the IS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He played a key role in an attack on a night club in Istanbul on New Year's Eve which killed 39 people. Turkish police arrested Abdulkadir Masharipov, the main suspect in the attack, on 17 January after a huge manhunt.

Syria Saturday April 22, 2017:

• Airstrikes have seriously damaged an underground medical centre in Idlib province. The airstrikes targeted a cave that housed the rebel-controlled Abdin medical facility, killing at least one person and wounding more than a dozen others.  
• Three medical staffers were presumed killed. It is unclear whether Syrian warplanes or those from ally Russia had targeted the facility.

Syria Sunday April 23, 2017:

• Boosted by Russian air strikes and Iranian-backed militias, the Syrian army has pushed into rebel areas north of Hama, expanding its control this week along the western highway that links Damascus and Aleppo.
• An Israeli attack against a military base for the Syrian pro-government National Defence Forces in southern Syria killed three NDF members.
• The Syrian army and allied forces have advanced against rebels near Hama city, building on recent strategic gains in the area.
• Government forces captured the town of Halfaya, nearby villages and several hills in the area, taking back territory that rebels seized last year from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria Monday April 24, 2017:

• An US-led coalition airstrike killed eight family members, five of them children between six months and 15 years old, as they fled fighting between U.S.-allied Syrian forces and Islamic State militants.
• The family was fleeing fighting in the northern Syrian town of Tabqa when their vehicle was struck.

Syria Thursday April 27, 2017:

• A large explosion rocked the Syrian capital followed by a fire near the Damascus airport. The explosion happened near the Damascus airport road.
• The explosion near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area; it was near the city’s Seventh Bridge, which leads to the airport road.

Syria Saturday April 29, 2017:

• Airstrikes struck a centre of Syria's rescuers known as the White Helmets in Kfar Zeita in a rebel-held area in the country's centre, killing eight volunteers.
• The airstrike was one of the deadliest against the rescuers who operate in opposition-held areas and who have garnered world attention for operating in extreme conditions, pulling survivors out of recently struck areas. The volunteers have often been targeted by government airstrikes, in what are known as 'double tap' attacks, as they work to rescue others. ---

Syria Tuesday May 2, 2017:

• Islamic State militants staged a surprise attack at a crossing frequently used by Iraqi and Syrian civilians seeking safety in northeastern Syria, killing at least 37 people, mostly civilians.
• The militants struck before dawn after sneaking into the village of Rajm Sleibi, located along a front line that separates the Kurdish-controlled Hassakeh province from IS-held areas further south. Some militants reportedly blew themselves up at a Kurdish checkpoint while others attacked sleeping civilians in a nearby temporary camp sheltering hundreds of displaced people who fled IS-controlled territory.

Syria Wednesday May 3, 2017:

• Damascus is “fully backing” a Russian initiative to establish four areas of cease-fire. A Syrian rebel delegation at the talks underway in Kazakhstan said its members were given a copy of the proposal by Russian representatives.
• The proposal would freeze front lines in four zones in Syria contested by opposition fighters and the government. Rebels said they have requested written clarification from Russia and pushed for nation-wide cease-fire instead.
• At a summit in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they hoped the Syrian government and rebels would accept these “de-escalation” zones. Putin said Russian and Syrian government jets would halt flights over the specified zones if all sides respect the cease-fire.

Syria Thursday May 4, 2017:

• Turkey, Russia and Iran, the main sponsors of the Syria peace talks, have signed a deal to create “four safe zones” which will be monitored by international troops. 
• However parts of the rebel delegation, which is not a signatory, stormed out the room as the document was being signed in the Kazakh capital Astana, objecting to the memorandum which they said “violated the country’s territorial sovereignty.”
• An explosion went off in the market area of makeshift camp on the border with Syria, killing four people and wounding several others.
• The blast went off Thursday evening in the Rukban camp that houses about 80,000 displaced Syrians. The site says clashes erupted between armed groups and that shots were heard. The explosion was set off by a car bomb.

Syria Tuesday May 9, 2017:

• Islamic State has issued a video showing the beheading of a man it described as a Russian intelligence officer captured in Syria. But the Russian defines ministry denied any Russian serviceman had been captured and killed by Islamic State in Syria.
• Syrian government warplanes struck rebel outposts near the Jordanian border. The air strikes were the first near that part of the border. They came hours after Syria’s foreign minister warned Jordan against sending troops into his country.
• Air strikes killed at least 11 people, including four children, in a village north of the Syrian city of Raqqa.
• The warplanes, thought to belong to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, hit al-Salihiya village; they also injured several civilians.

Syria Wednesday May 10, 2017:

• US-backed rebels, Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of mainly Kurdish and Arab fighters, “liberated" the strategic Syrian city of Tabqa and a nearby dam from ISIS.

Syria Saturday May 13, 2017:

• The Syrian media report says the military recaptured Qaboun as the evacuation of adjacent besieged rebel-held neighbourhoods was underway.
• However the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says rebels remain in control of parts of the Qaboun neighbourhood, which along with Barzeh and Jobar, formed an arc from the northern to the eastern edge of Damascus. ---

Syria Friday May 12, 2017:

• Six people were killed in bombings by the coalition and SDF on the town of Yaareb, west of al-Raqqa.
• Meanwhile, five others were killed and several were wounded in bombings from planes, believed to belong to the coalition over the village of al-Quriya in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor.

Syria Saturday May 13, 2017:

• The Syrian army has taken full control of a small airbase in the eastern Aleppo countryside that had been held by Islamic State. They were helped by heavy aerial bombing by Russian and Syrian air forces.
• The al-Jarrah airport is located in the hard-line militants' remaining enclave in eastern Aleppo countryside.
• A convoy of army vehicles had been hit by the militants. The convoy had been ferrying reinforcements to the area on a strategic supply route south of Khanaser.

Syria Monday May 15, 2017:

• Air raids on an Islamic State-held village and town have killed at least 32 civilians over the past two days.
• The U.N. envoy for Syria meanwhile insisted that the latest round of peace talks between the government and the opposition in Geneva are serious, after President Bashar Assad said last week that they were just for show.
• A massive blast hit a base for rebels near the northern city of Azaz, leaving scores dead and injured.
• The explosion was caused by an unidentified surface-to-surface missile, and targeted an ammunition depot for the rebel group known as Liwa al-Fateh.

Syria Tuesday May 16, 2017:

• An RAF drone strike has stopped a public execution by Isis. The Reaper drone initially spotted a group of fighters from the terror group, also known as Daesh, mustering a large crowd in the town of Abu Kamal in eastern Syria.
• When a van then unloaded two shackled prisoners in front of the crowd, it became clear that Daesh were organising a public execution. Given the large number of civilians present, the Reaper's crew could not target directly the Daesh fighters about to carry out the murders.
• However, two armed extremists were stationed as sentries on the roof of a building overlooking the scene. A Hellfire missile was fired immediately, and scored a direct hit which not only killed one of the sentries but also brought the execution to an immediate halt, as the Daesh fighters fled the scene, and the crowd of civilians dispersed.

Syria Wednesday May 17, 2017:

• Jihadi groups in the southern province of Daraa failed to advance in the al-Manshiyah district after their assault was repelled by the Syrian Army.
• The offensive, which was spearheaded by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, has backfired as the attackers lost at least 15 militants, including three field commanders: Bilal Abu Zaid and Abu Hashem al-Tabuki (a Saudi national) of HTS, as well as Moetaz al-Nabwani of the FSA-affiliated Saif al-Haq Regiment.

Syria Thursday May 18, 2017:

• The Islamic State group attacked several government-held villages in central Syria capturing at least one of them in violence that left 52 people dead including more than two dozen women and children, some of whom were beheaded, as well as Syrian troops.
• The attack in the central Hama province targeted villages where most residents belong to the Ismaili branch of Shiite Islam, raising fears the extremists might massacre them, as they have in other minority communities in Syria and Iraq.
• The villages are located near the town of Salamiyeh and the highway that links the capital, Damascus, to the northern city of Aleppo.

Syria Friday May 19, 2017:

• US jets have attacked a convoy of Iranian-backed militiamen in south-eastern Syria in the first clash between the American military and forces loyal to Tehran since the US military returned to the region almost three years ago.
• The airstrikes occurred near the Syrian town of al-Tanf, where Syrian opposition forces backed by the US have been under recent attack by Syrian and Russian jets near the main road linking Damascus to Baghdad. The militias, made up mainly of Iraqi Shia fighters, had been advancing towards the base throughout the week.
• The US military said the strikes were aimed at stopping the militia advance and protect fighters it has sponsored throughout the civil war and in the fight against the Islamic State terror group.
• An aerial bombing by the U.S.-led coalition on a government military position near the border with Jordan killed several soldiers and caused material damage.
• The coalition admitted that a U.S. airstrike hit pro-Syrian government forces it said posed a threat to American troops and allied rebels operating near the border with Jordan.

Syria Sunday May 21, 2017:

• The country's third-largest city, Homs —once deemed the capital of the revolt against President Bashar Assad— had been cleared of armed opposition for the first time in more than five years following the completion of the evacuation of the last rebel-held neighbourhood.
• At least 14 fighters from the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group in Syria were killed by bomb attacks. Two blasts hit a rebel base in a village east of Saraqeb in Idlib province.
• A lone attacker had driven a motorbike up to the building, detonating explosives attached to himself and a bomb on the bike at the same time, killing and wounding dozens of rebels. ---

Syria Tuesday May 23, 2017:

• A car bomb blast in Homs city has killed at least four people and wounded 16. The blast took place in al-Zahra neighbourhood, a government-held area.
• The Syrian government now controls all of Homs city following a final evacuation deal with the rebels in Waer neighbourhood.

Syria Wednesday May 24, 2017:

• The Syrian army said it had killed Islamic State's military commander in Syria during operations in the north of the country, where the Russian-backed government forces are seizing more territory back from the jihadist group.
• If confirmed, this would represent a major blow against Islamic State (IS) ahead of an attack to liberate Raqqa city.
• Abu Musab al-Masri, had been the group's "minister of war" for Syria. He was named among 13 senior Islamic State figures killed in Syrian army operations east of Aleppo.
• Syrian government forces carried out a series of airstrikes on a city in southern Syria.
• Government forces carried out at least 12 airstrikes and dropped at least nine barrel bombs on rebel-held parts of Daraa as intense clashes continued in the city's Manshiyeh neighbourhood.

Syria Thursday May 25, 2017:

• US-led coalition air raids killed at least 35 civilians, including many women and children, in an eastern Syrian town held by ISIL. Among the dead are at least 26 relatives of IS fighters, many of them women and children, including Syrians and Moroccans.
• The strikes hit a series of residential buildings in Mayadeen, a town in Deir Az Zor province.  

Syria Friday May 26, 2017:

• A U.S. service member died of injuries sustained during a vehicle rollover in northern Syria. Two other American service members have died in Syria since U.S. troops arrived there in early 2016.
• The United States has slightly more than 900 military personnel in Syria to advise and assist Kurdish and Arab rebel forces fighting ISIS.
• The Syrian army is in full control of the direct highway from Damascus to ancient Palmyra for the first time since 2014.

Syria Saturday May 27, 2017:

• Syrian troops and allied militia have pushed back Islamic State militants and U.S-backed opposition fighters, gaining control of a large swath of territory in the country's strategic southern desert.
• The U.S.-led coalition acknowledged it has conducted airstrikes near the IS-controlled town of Mayadeen earlier in the week, targeting the group's "propaganda facilities." It is looking into reports the airstrikes killed over two dozen civilians, but added the claims were "unsubstantiated" and lacked "specificity or evidence."

Syria Sunday May 28, 2017:

• 18 people were killed in airstrikes that hit buses carrying civilians on the road between the villages of Ratla and Kasrat.

Syria Monday May 29, 2017:

• An Iraqi Shi'ite force backed by Iran pushed Islamic State out of several villages on the border with Syria, potentially reopening a supply route to send Iranian weapons to President Bashar al-Assad. The territory taken by the Popular Mobilisation force is located north of the Islamic State-held town of Baaj.

Syria Thursday June 1, 2017:

• The founder of the Islamic State group news agency Aamaq, Baraa Kadek, was reported killed with his daughter in an airstrike last week in eastern Syria. Kadek was close to the IS leadership, gaining their trust and reportedly meeting with the enigmatic leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
• He died when a suspected airstrike by the U.S.-led international coalition fighting IS hit his home in the town of Mayadeen in Deir el-Zour province.

Syria Saturday June 3, 2017:

• At least 43 people have lost their lives in fresh US airstrikes in the northern province of Raqqah. The air raids hit Raqqah’s Jomeili neighbourhood; children were among the victims. US air raids left a total of 225 civilians dead in Syria between April 23 and May 23 alone. ---

Syria Sunday June 4, 2017:

• Syrian government forces pounded parts of the southern city of Daraa with air strikes and artillery fire one day after rebels attacked government positions in the southern city.
• At least 31 fighters have been killed in the clashes since late Friday, with fatalities distributed nearly evenly between the two sides.
• Syria's army seized Maskana, a key town in the east of Aleppo province.

Syria Tuesday June 6, 2017:

• A US-led coalition air strike killed 21 civilians as they tried to escape the Islamic State group’s Syrian bastion of Raqa. The civilians were boarding small boats on the northern bank of the Euphrates River to flee southern neighbourhoods of Raqa.
• Women and children were among the dead. Thousands of civilians have fled the northern city as a seven-month offensive by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an Arab-Kurdish alliance, closes in.
• The SDF is now several kilometres from Raqa’s east, west, and north, and has sealed off routes into the city from those three fronts. Their assault has been backed by air strikes from the Washington-led coalition. Russian aircraft have also carried out bombing raids against IS convoys fleeing the city.
• Forces backed by the United States have begun a long-anticipated offensive against Islamic State militants in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s self-proclaimed capital.
• The forces, collectively called the Syrian Democratic Forces and made up of Syrian Kurdish fighters and Arab militias, have over the past month surrounded Raqqa from the east, north and west. They began an assault on the city limits, aided by airstrikes from the United States-led coalition and by artillery.

Syria Thursday June 8, 2017:

• An armed drone was fired on U.S.-backed coalition forces on patrol outside a small military garrison in southern Syria where American special operations forces train Syrian rebels.
• The drone, believed to be an Iranian-made Shahed-129, missed the ground forces, and the bomb itself failed to explode. A U.S. F-15 fighter jet, scrambled from a nearby airfield, shot down the drone, the first time an American fighter destroyed an enemy aircraft in air-to-air combat since February 2009.
• Earlier in the day, coalition warplanes destroyed two trucks mounted with machine guns that were advancing toward the Tanf garrison.

Syria Sunday June 11, 2017:

• Jordanian border guards have killed five suspected infiltrators approaching the kingdom's border from Syria in a pickup truck and two motorcycles. The incident took place near the spot where Jordan, Syria and Iraq meet.
• Nine vehicles approached Jordan from Syria in the past three days, and border guards opened fire to hold them back. The army says that in the latest incident, troops fired on a pickup truck and two motorcycles, killing five.

Syria Friday June 16, 2017:

• Russia’s defence ministry claimed Russia to have killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria. Their fighter jets struck an Isis command post near the city of Raqqa as leaders of the jihadi group were meeting on May 28, killing more than 300 militants.
• High-ranking commanders of the terrorist group, who were part of the so-called military council of Isis, as well as about 30 mid-level field commanders and up to 300 fighters in charge of their personal protection, were killed.”
• However, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said later that he did not have confirmation that the jihadi leader had been killed.
• Mr Baghdadi, an Iraqi who broke away from al-Qaeda four years ago to form Isis, has been pronounced dead several times before, only to resurface again. ---

Syria Saturday June 17, 2017:

• Russian forces claimed today that they have killed two more Isis field commanders named as Abu Omar al-Beljiki and Abu Yassin al-Masri, in air strikes near the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. This came a day after Russia said it may have killed the terrorist group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike last month.
• Russia also claimed it killed around 180 militants and the two commanders al-Beljiki and al-Masri in bombing close to the Isis stronghold of Deir ez-Zor on 6 and 8 June.

Syria Monday June 19, 2017:

• Russia angrily condemned the downing of a Syrian aircraft by a U.S. fighter as a “flagrant violation of international law,” and said its forces will treat U.S.-led coalition aircraft and drones as targets if they are operating in Syrian airspace west of the Euphrates while Russian aviation is on combat missions.
• The Russian Defence Ministry is suspending an agreement to minimize the risk of in-flight incidents between Russian and U.S.-led coalition aircraft operating over Syria.
• Russia, which has provided military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2015, was reacting to U.S. military confirmation that a U.S. F-18 Super Hornet shot down a Syrian Su-22 fighter-bomber Sunday. The Syrian jet had just dropped bombs near members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, a militia aligned with the U.S. military in the campaign against the Islamic State.

Syria Tuesday June 20, 2017:

• A US warplane shot down an Iran-made drone operated by pro-regime forces in southern Syria, the second such incident in less than two weeks.
• The F-15E Strike Eagle jet destroyed the Shaheed-129 drone northeast of the Al-Tanaf garrison, which is close to the Jordanian border. It displayed hostile intent and advanced on coalition forces.
• Coalition troops were working in the area alongside local forces who are being trained to fight the so-called Islamic State group. The drone was "on a run toward our folks to drop a munition on them," so the coalition shot the unmanned aircraft down in self-defines.

Syria Friday June 23, 2017:

• Russian warships have fired six missiles on ISIS targets in Syria. The Admiral Essen and Admiral Grigorovich frigates, along with the Krasnodar submarine, fired the cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea.
• ISIS command points and a weapons and ammunition depot were destroyed in Hama province of Syria. Turkey and Israel were informed about the missile launches, but the US was not.

Syria Saturday June 24, 2017:

• A car bomb killed 10 people in rebel-held Idlib province. The attack occurred in a market in the town of al-Dana, located in the north of the province near the border with Turkey.
• Three people under 18 were among the dead and the blast also injured at least 30 other people. Another bombing in the town after midnight on Friday killed two people.

Syria Sunday June 25, 2017:

• The Israeli military attacked a series of targets belonging to the Syrian military, after several projectiles from neighbouring Syria landed in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights for a second day. They targeted two Syrian artillery positions and an ammunitions truck. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
• It was the second straight day that Israel responded to what it has described as errant fire from Syria. Israel also is believed to have carried out airstrikes on suspected weapons shipments to its archenemy Hezbollah, whose fighters are in Syria backing government forces. ---

Syria Monday June 26, 2017:

• Almost 60 people have been killed in a US-led coalition air strike on a prison run by so-called Islamic State in eastern Syria. 42 prisoners and 15 militants died when the facility near Mayadin, in Deir al-Zour province, was hit.
• Dozens of civilians and Syrian rebel fighters were detained there.

Syria Friday June 30, 2017:

• An investigation by the international chemical weapons watchdog confirmed that sarin nerve gas was used in a deadly April 4 attack on a Syrian town, but stopped short of saying who was responsible.
• The attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Syria's Idlib province killed more than 90 people, including women and children.
• The U.S. blamed the Syrian military for the attack and launched a punitive strike days later. Syrian President Bashar Assad has denied using chemical weapons.
• Ali Shirazi, a representative of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard, said he was confident al-Baghdadi was dead. His comments come after Russian claimed it had taken out the Daesh leader in an airstrike on the death cult’s de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria.

Syria Saturday July 1, 2017:

• Syrian government forces, backed by foreign militias, managed to recapture the area of Tal Huwaimel, in eastern Qalamun, east of Damascus, after battles with the rebels, leaving dozens of casualties among them.

Syria Sunday July 1, 2017:

• A series of car bomb explosions rocked Syria’s capital killing at least eight people and wounding 12. Officials claimed to have foiled a plot to target crowded areas during the first morning commute after a Muslim holiday.
• The security forces tracked three cars loaded with explosives as they headed toward central Damascus. Two of the cars were intercepted at checkpoints on the airport road and detonated, apparently in controlled explosions, while the third made it into the city centre, where the driver blew himself up near Tahreer Square.

Syria Thursday July 6, 2017:

• A suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a bus station in Hama killing at least two women and wounding 11. The midday explosion occurred at the usually busy station where buses depart to Mesiaf, in the Hama countryside. ---

Syria Thursday July 6, 2017:

• A suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a bus station in the central city of Hama while being inspected by security forces killing at least three people (two women and a man) and wounding 11. The midday explosion occurred at the usually busy station where buses depart to Mesiaf, in the Hama countryside.

Syria Friday July 7, 2017:

• The United States and Russia have reached agreement on a cease-fire in southwest Syria. The deal marks a new level of involvement for the Trump administration in trying to resolve Syria's civil war. Although details about the agreement and how it will be implemented weren't immediately available, the cease-fire is set to take effect Sunday at noon Damascus time. Jordan and Israel also are part of the agreement.

Syria Sunday July 9, 2017:

• A U.S.-Russian brokered ceasefire for southwest Syria held through the day. The United States, Russia and Jordan reached the "de-escalation agreement," which appeared to give Trump a diplomatic achievement at his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Germany this week.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "calm prevailed" in the southwest since the truce began at noon (0900 GMT) on Sunday despite minor violations. Combatants briefly exchanged fire in Deraa province and in Quneitra around midnight, but this did not threaten the ceasefire.

Syria Wednesday July 12, 2017:

• An American fighting as a volunteer alongside a Kurdish militia has been killed. Robert Grodt, 28, had travelled to Syria to volunteer alongside a Kurdish militia called the People's Protection Units, or YPG, which is backed by American bombs and weapons.

Syria Sunday July 16, 2017:

• Shells hit Damascus wounding seven; two of the projectiles hit the Russian embassy and a nearby area causing material damage.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed some 475,000 people including 99,617 civilians in addition to tens of thousands of troops, opposition fighters and extremists, as well as pro-government gunmen.

Syria Wednesday July 19, 2017:

• An air strikes hit the Islamic State militants headquarters and gatherings, located south of al-Zamla Village and in the city of Madan, in the southern countryside of Raqqa, destroying several headquarters and vehicles, as well as killing a number of terrorists.
• Furthermore, air strike carried out by the Syrian Army Aviation killed several members of the Islamic State, and destroyed their vehicles in the eastern countryside of Homs.
• A farmer was seriously injured as an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded in Tawakkul village northeast of Diyala governorate.
• Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and five others were wounded in an attack by the Islamic State on their position west of Rutba district, Anbar Province.
• Earlier several Islamic State fighters were killed and injured as an army force repulsed an attack by the militants on its position west of Rutba district.

Syria Saturday July 22, 2017:

• A new deal designating a de-escalation zone in the Syrian province of Eastern Ghouta has been signed with Syrian rebels. The de-escalation agreement was signed with Egyptian mediation after representatives of Syrian opposition groups and the Russian military held talks in Cairo.
• The agreement provides for a ceasefire in the zone, allowing food and humanitarian aid to be brought in and the ill and wounded to be evacuated for treatment elsewhere.
• Eastern Ghouta near Damascus is one of the last strongholds of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad's forces and was the scene of a chemical weapon attack that killed hundreds in August 2013.

Syria Monday July 24, 2017:

• Russia has deployed forces to monitor the so-called de-escalation zones in southern Syria. Military police had been sent to Eastern Ghouta on the edge of the capital Damascus, and to an area in the south-west.
• A contingent had set up two checkpoints and 10 observation posts on front lines between Syrian forces and rebels in the two areas.
• Air strikes have killed at least eight people in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta. The deaths were the first civilian casualties in the area -the last major rebel stronghold near Damascus- since a cessation of hostilities was declared there on Saturday.
• The strikes, targeting the town of Arbin, wounded an additional 30 people. The dead included five children and two women. The Syrian military declared a cessation of hostilities there on Saturday. ---

Syria Wednesday July 26, 2017:

• Opponents of the Islamic State group have captured nearly half of the extremists' de facto capital of Raqqa. The push into the northern Syrian city has slowed down because of massive amounts of explosives laid by IS fighters.
• Fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition that includes the YPJ, now controls 45% of Raqqa. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says SDF fighters control half the city.

Syria Friday July 28, 2017:

• Syrian government troops have entered the last ISIL stronghold in Homs province after fighters began withdrawing.
• Al-Sukhna, about 70km northeast of Palmyra, is the last town on the road to the eastern city of Deir Az Zor, where a government garrison has held out under siege by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant since early 2015.

Syria Tuesday August 8, 2017:

• Airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State killed at least 29 civilians including 14 children in 24 hours in the jihadists' Syrian capital of Raqqa. The dead included a family of 14 who had fled to Raqqa from the desert city of Palmyra.

Syria Thursday August 10, 2017:

• At least four people have been killed in Syrian government bombardment on two areas included in "de-escalation zones. A man was killed early in the day in air attacks on Tal Dahab village near Houla town in central Syria. A resident of the town of Houla said that six attacks hit his hometown.

Syria Friday August 11, 2017:

• An explosion hit a rebel gathering near the Syria-Jordan border killed at least 23 fighters and wounding dozens more.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that a violent explosion hit an army camp of the Syrian rebel group Jaish al-Islam near the border crossing town of Nassib. The Britain-based war monitor said the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber and the death toll was expected to rise.

Syria Saturday August 12, 2017:

• Seven members of the White Helmets rescue group were shot dead by unidentified gunmen who stormed the volunteers' office in northwestern Syria.
• The attackers also stole two vans, helmets and walkie-talkies, according to a statement from the group, which is formally known as the Syrian Civil Defence. ---

Syria Friday August 18, 2017:

• International coalition planes killed 30 civilians in a new massacre committed after the homes of civilians near Muawiya Ibn Abu Sufyan School in the Al Mala’ab Al-Aswad area in Raqqa city were bombed.
• Nine Daesh gunmen were killed in an airstrike that targeted a car transporting them between Maadan and Al-Tabani in Raqqa’s eastern suburb.
• Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham executed a leader from the Free Syrian Army a year after he was detained, along with a group of his companions in Idlib. Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham executed Osama Al-Khader, commander of the 21st Combined Force’s Hazm Storm Brigade, after he was detained by Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham.

Syria Saturday August 19, 2017:

• At least two people were killed in a Syrian regime offensive in the city of Homs. Regime forces’ mortar and air operations injured 13 other people, including children.
• A “de-escalation zone” recently declared by Russia in Homs has yet to formally go into effect.

Syria Monday August 21, 2017:

• Russia's defence ministry said at least 200 jihadists had died after its air force targeted a convoy of about 20 4x4s, armoured vehicles and tanks near the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour.
• The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 70.
• At least 42 civilians were killed in US-led air strikes on Islamic State group territory in the Syrian city of Raqa. Nineteen children and 12 women were among those killed in the raids, which hit several neighbourhoods in the northern city.
• The latest figures for Monday’s raids take to 167 the number of civilians killed in coalition strikes since August 14.
• The tolls are high because the air strikes are hitting neighbourhoods in the city centre that are densely packed with civilians. There are buildings full of civilians that are trying to get away from the front lines. Coalition air strikes are targeting any building where any kind of Daesh movements are being detected.
• The Syrian Arab Air Force launched nonstop airstrikes over the Islamic State’s (ISIL) positions in eastern Syria these past 24 hours.
• The Syrian Air Force targeted several Islamic State installations in the eastern part of the province this morning. The Syrian Air Force destroyed several Islamic State targets in the Jubb Al-Jarrah District of Homs, killing and wounding scores of terrorists in the process.

Syria Saturday September 2, 2017:

• Most of an ISIL evacuation convoy stuck in east Syria has crossed out of government territory headed to ISIL-held Deir Az Zor province and is no longer the responsibility of the Syrian government or its ally Hezbollah.
• Out of 17 buses full of hundreds of lightly armed ISIL fighters and their families only six remained in government-held territory under the protection of the Syrian state and Hezbollah.
• The buses, which left ISIL's enclave near Syria's border with Lebanon on Monday, were in danger from US-led coalition air raids before reaching their destination of Deir Az Zor's Al-Bukamal city, near the Iraqi border.
• The Syrian state and Hezbollah have fulfilled their obligations to transfer buses out of the area of Syrian government control without exposing them," Hezbollah's statement said.

Syria Sunday September 3, 2017:

• Syrian army units, aided by pro-government fighters and Russian air force, have killed 120 members of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the western-central province of Hama, pushing the terrorists out of the town of Uqayribat, their last major bastion in the restive province.
• The Daesh terrorists “were killed in clashes in and around the town of Uqayribat in the eastern Hama countryside.

Syria Thursday September 7, 2017:

• Syria accused Israel of conducting an overnight strike on a military base said by analysts to house chemical weapons and advanced missiles.
• The attack has left two people dead near the town of Masyaf in western Syria and had caused unspecified material damage.
• Israeli officials did not comment on the strike, but a Syrian monitoring group and a former Israeli official said it had targeted a research site that produced chemical weapons. ---

Syria Sunday September 10, 2017:

• At least 17 civilians have been killed in a series of airstrikes on a Euphrates River crossing in eastern Syria.
• Russian jets struck ferries waiting to transport passengers across the river in the Islamic State group-held town of al-Baloul.

Syria Tuesday September 12, 2017:

• Russia said that Syrian troops have liberated about 85 percent of the war-torn country’s territory from militants. Russia has been providing air cover for President Bashar Assad’s troops since 2015, changing the tide of the war and giving Syrian and allied troops an advantage over opposition fighters and Islamic State group militants.
• The Syrian government still must clear the militants who hold approximately 27,000 square kilometres (10,425 square miles), the remaining 15 percent.

Syria Wednesday September 13, 2017:

• An Islamic State convoy stuck in the middle of the Syrian Desert for more than two weeks because of American airstrikes finally reached eastern Syria. The convoy reached territory held by the Islamic State, despite vows by the American-led coalition fighting the group that it would not be allowed to do so.
• The remnants of the convoy, which originally carried 600 Islamic State fighters and their family members, had reached Mayadin in eastern Deir al-Zour Province, near the border with Iraq. The convoy, originally consisting of 17 vehicles —buses and ambulances— and escorts from the Lebanese Hezbollah militia group, had been stuck near Sukhna, on the main highway from Damascus to the city of Deir al-Zour, where the Syrian Army claimed it ended a blockade by the Islamic State last week. The convoy was whittled down to 11 vehicles when six returned to Syrian government territory in western Syria, coalition officials said.
• The coalition announced last Friday that it was removing surveillance aircraft from the vicinity of the convoy at the request of the Russian authorities, because Russian warplanes were involved in supporting a Syrian Army advance into Deir al-Zour Province. That advance took the Syrian forces directly past the area where the convoy was stranded, near the town of Sukhna.
• In a deal brokered by Hezbollah, the Islamic State militants and their families had been allowed to leave an area on the Lebanese-Syrian border in exchange for turning over the bodies of Lebanese soldiers and Hezbollah militants, as well as an Iranian officer of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. They were promised free passage to the town of Abu Kamal, in the southern part of Deir al-Zour Province.

Syria Thursday September 14, 2017:

• At least 20 civilians have been killed in air and missile strikes across east Syria, where U.S. and Russian-backed forces are racing to take territory from the Islamic State group’s shrinking Euphrates river valley domain.
• Strikes hit three IS-held towns and villages on the Euphrates River valley, including an attack on the national hospital in the IS stronghold of al-Mayadeen. Six civilians were killed but 20 were killed across the province by the Russian air force, which is supporting government forces advancing in the region.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 39 people have been killed and over 100 wounded on strikes along the river, including some targeting hospitals and ferry crossings.

Syria Saturday September 16, 2017:

• Russian forces struck a target east of the Euphrates River near Dair Alzour, causing injuries to 6 U.S.-led coalition partner forces.
• The air raid occurred on the eastern side of the Euphrates River in the industrial area that was recently liberated from the militant group Islamic State.

Syria Sunday September 17, 2017:

• The Russian military denied claims that it struck a US-backed force in eastern Syria, wounding six fighters.
• The Kurdish-led and US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Saturday that its fighters had been hit in the airstrike near the eastern city of Deir el-Zour in an industrial area that had recently been liberated from the Islamic State group.
• Western forces embedded with the SDF were not injured. The SDF is supported by a US-led international coalition of forces to defeat Isis militants in Syria and Iraq. An estimated 900 US troops are embedded with partner forces in Syria. They provide artillery support and can command air support.

Syria Tuesday September 19, 2017:

• The Syrian Arab Army, backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Arab Air Force, has liberated another five towns from besieged ISIS militants in central Syria, bring the total count of settlements reclaimed from terrorists throughout the region today to nine.
• Following the securing of al-Shalishat, Um Ten, al-Nabtiyah and  al-Moadamiyah, the Syrian Army has pushed on to liberate the towns of Rasm al-Taweel, Biyout al-Nizal, al-Qantrah, Dahrt al-Sathiyah and Dahrt al-Nizal as well as a number of hills surrounding the settlements.
• All five of the most recently secured towns are located in the north-central Homs region of central Syria.
• At least four hospitals have been targeted by air raids in the northwestern province of Idlib, killing three people and wounding several. Syrian government and Russian warplanes conducted the air attack in the countryside of Hama and Idlib.
• The attacks came after opposition factions led by a former al-Qaeda affiliate launched an assault on a number of government-held villages along the border between Idlib and Hama.
• The raids hit a maternity hospital in the village of al-Tah and a medical outpost in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, as well as near two other hospitals in Idlib province. ---

Syria Sunday September 24, 2017:

• A Russian general lieutenant, Valeryi Asapov, was killed by mortar shelling in Syria. The mortar shelling was carried by the Islamic State near Syria’s Deir al-Zor.

Syria Thursday September 28, 2017:

• The radical Islamist group (ISIS) announced that it captured the Russian troops in the village of Ash Sholah, located in the countryside of the eastern Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor.
• Russia denied the claim.
• The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria said that three of the terror group's drone experts were killed in Syria this month.
• Abu Muadh al-Tunisi was killed on September 12 and Sajid Farooq Babar was killed on September 13 by coalition airstrikes near Mayadin, Syria, in the Middle Euphrates River Valley.
• The two Islamic State fighters "were responsible for manufacturing and modifying commercially produced drones."

Syria Friday September 29, 2017:

• Renewed bombing of hospitals by forces loyal to the government of Bashar al-Assad has sparked strong condemnations by human rights groups and despair among local doctors, who have accused the international community of ignoring attacks on medical facilities.
• Doctors said four hospitals had been hit over the past week in Idlib, a rebel-controlled province bordering Turkey, and Hama, the scene of recent fighting despite a months-long ceasefire brokered by Ankara and Moscow.
• A fifth hospital in Idlib was damaged on Friday afternoon after a nearby residential building was bombed, killing 14 people. Hospitals are not safe from bombings in Idlib at the moment. Two hospitals were evacuated on Wednesday over fears of a possible bombing.
• The attacks that are a systematic attempt by the Syrian government to target healthcare facilities, have placed dire strain on doctors, working under fire with few resources, amid an escalation of violence in recent days in the area, the last bastion of rebel forces battling to overthrow Assad.
• Dozens of civilians have been killed over the last week and a half, amid an ongoing rebel offensive in Hama and retaliatory airstrikes on civilians in Idlib. Six of the hospitals MSF supports in the two provinces received 241 wounded and identified 61 dead between 20 and 27 September.
• A Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey helicopter crashed on a coalition base injuring two American troops in a combat zone where the United States maintains Special Operations forces and artillery support.
• The aircraft is a “total loss,” having experienced what the military refers to as a hard landing before catching fire on the ground.

Syria Saturday September 30, 2017:

• Airstrikes on villages and towns held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria have killed and wounded dozens a day after an attack by the extremists killed more than 120 pro-government fighters and briefly cut off the highway linking the capital Damascus with eastern Syria.
• It was not immediately clear if the airstrikes on areas including Mayadeen, Boukamal, Bouleil, Bouomar and Mushassan were carried out by the Russians or the U.S.-led coalition.
• Syrian troops have been advancing in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour against IS under the cover of Russian airstrikes while the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are marching against the extremists under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.
• The airstrikes came after two days of clashes between Syrian government forces and their allies against IS fighters in central and eastern Syria that left nearly 200 dead on both sides. Syrian troops and their allies have regained most of the areas they had lost earlier.
• At least 28 civilians, including four children, have been killed in airstrikes in a rebel-held village in northwestern Syria.
• The strikes were carried out on the town of Amanaz in Idlib province near the Turkish border. It was not immediately clear if the strikes were carried out by Syria or Russia.

Syria Sunday October 1, 2017:

• September has been the deadliest month in Syria's civil war so far this year. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said more than 3,300 people had died in September, including 995 civilians.
• Of those civilian deaths, it said about 70% were caused by Russian, Syrian government, or coalition air strikes. It counted 207 children among the civilian dead, along with some 790 pro-government fighters, more than 700 from so-called Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda affiliates, and some 550 rebels.
• Many of the deaths have occurred during the fighting between the country's multiple factions and IS. But air strikes in Syria have continued as the jihadist group has lost most of its territory in the country.

Syria Monday October 2, 2017:

• Two “terrorists” attacked the police station in the al-Midan neighbourhood of Damascus with a number of bombs and one of them blew himself up. The other bomber made it inside the compound, where police killed him, causing his bomb to explode. The blasts damaged the lower floors of the building, and shattered the windows along one side. Blood stained the floors.
• A drone strike in eastern Syria killed 10 Hezbollah fighters who were helping Syrian troops battle the Islamic State group.

Syria Tuesday October 3, 2017:

• The Islamic State group claimed a pair of suicide bombings in Damascus that killed 17 civilians and policemen, and released a video purporting to show two Russian soldiers the extremists claim to have captured in fighting in eastern Syria.
• The U.S.-led coalition and allied Syrian forces say they are in the final stages of driving IS from Raqqa, once the de facto capital of the group’s self-styled caliphate.
• Syrian activists said airstrikes hit the last water wells operating in the city, killing over a dozen civilians.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 18 civilians were killed, while Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, another activist-run group, put the death toll at 21. There was no immediate comment from the coalition.
• Russia's military says its airstrikes in eastern Syria this week killed more than 300 Islamic State militants.
• Isis has recaptured a town deep inside Syrian-regime controlled territory in a successful counteroffensive as it fights to defend its last strongholds in the country.
• At least 153 Syrian army soldiers and allied militias such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah have lost their lives in heavy fighting since 28 September which culminated in Isis seizing the town of al-Qaryatayn in Homs province on Monday.

Syria Wednesday October 4, 2017:

• Russia carried out airstrikes in Syria this week that critically wounded the leader of an al-Qaida-linked group, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, leader of the al-Qaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee, and killed 12 other militant commanders.
• A Russian airstrike has killed 38 civilians as they tried to cross the Euphrates River to escape fighting in eastern Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province.
• Nine children were among those killed as they tried to cross the river aboard rafts, escaping from areas where Russian-backed regime forces are battling the Islamic State group. The dead included an Iraqi family.
• Hezbollah group says one of its top commanders has been killed while fighting Islamic State militants in Syria.
• The 44-year-old Ali Al-Hadi Al-Ashiq is the latest fatality for the Shiite group that has fought alongside Syrian government forces in the civil war next door since 2012. He was killed fighting IS in the central desert of Palmyra on Monday. ---

Syria Tuesday October 10, 2017:

• A Russian combat jet crashed while taking off from a base in Syria, killing both crewmembers.
• One Su-24 bombers skidded of the runway during take-off at the Hemeimeem air base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia. This had likely been caused by a technical malfunction.

Syria Wednesday October 11, 2017:

• At least two people have been killed and six others wounded after attackers blew themselves up near the police command centre in Damascus.
• Suicide bombers tried to storm the main police headquarters building and clashed with guards before detonating their explosive devices outside.
• Other reports said two bombers detonated their suicide belts outside the police station on Khaled bin al-Walid Street, while a third bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a clothes market on the same street.

Syria Saturday October 14, 2017:

• The Syrian Army has taken control of a number of important points surrounding Mayadin from ISIS militants, 44 kilometres southeast of Deir ez-Zor along the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.
• Army units killed a large number of ISIS militants and destroyed a vehicle rigged with explosives as well as other vehicles equipped with heavy artillery.

Syria Monday October 16, 2017:

• Israeli jets have attacked a Syrian government anti-aircraft missile launcher after it fired on one of its aircraft patrolling in Lebanese air space on a photographic reconnaissance mission.
• It is the first time Israeli aircraft had been targeted by Syrian forces while flying over Lebanon since the Syrian war began.
• The missile –an SA5 surface-to-air rocket– failed to hit its target, and the anti-aircraft battery located 30 miles from Damascus was then hit by separate Israeli jets, “incapacitating” the launcher with four strikes.

Syria Tuesday October 17, 2017:

• U.S.-backed forces claimed they had full control of the Islamic State’s onetime capital of Raqqa; it is the end to the militants’ presence in their most symbolically important stronghold.
• Military operations have halted and members of the joint Kurdish-Arab force were clearing the city of explosive devices and hunting for sleeping cells.

Syria Wednesday October 18, 2017:

• One of the Syrian army's most prominent leaders was killed when his vehicle struck a landmine planted by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), which is attempting to defend its final stronghold in Syria.
• Major General Issam Zahreddine was the gray-bearded commander of the 104th Airborne Brigade of the elite Syrian Republican Guard. After Syrian troops lost ground to rebels and jihadis attempting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the brigade became trapped in a three-year ISIS siege on Deir Ezzor's military airport in 2014. The siege was ultimately broken early last month amid an ongoing Russia-backed offensive led by Zahreddine and other Syrian military commanders. ---

Syria Saturday October 21, 2017:

• The Syrian army and its allies have restored security and stability to Qaryatayn after clearing the Christian town of out IS fighters.
• Earlier this week, IS lost control of the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of its self-declared caliphate, after a four-month offensive by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Last week, IS lost its stronghold of Mayadeen in eastern Syria.
• IS still holds parts of Syria's eastern Deir el-Zour province and Iraq's Anbar province, as well as small, scattered pockets elsewhere.

Syria Sunday October 22, 2017:

• U.S.-backed fighters captured Syria’s largest oil field from the Islamic State group.
• With IS in retreat, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian government have been in a race to secure parts of the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province along the border with Iraq.
• The Al-Omar oil field was a major source of income for the militant group and is considered one Syria’s most productive. The SDF, with air support from the U.S.-led coalition captured the field. Some militants have taken cover in oil company houses nearby, where clashes are underway.
• After coming under heavy fire from IS, pro-government forces retreated from the area around Al-Omar field. The government forces were 3 kilometres away from the fields.
• Syrian troops, backed by Russian warplanes and Iranian-sponsored militias, have retaken nearly all of the provincial capital of Deir el-Zour, as well as the town of Mayadeen, another IS stronghold, which is across the Euphrates River from the Al-Omar field.
• At least 11 civilians were killed and a school day violently interrupted amid intensive Syrian government shelling of a rebel-held enclave north of the capital Damascus sending panicked kindergarten children scurrying for shelter.
• Those killed in the Saqba and Hamouriyah districts include two women, one child and a media activist.

Syria Tuesday October 31, 2017:

• At least seven Syrian children were killed in government shelling of a rebel-held area outside Damascus most as they left school.
• At least five children were killed when a shell landed at the gate of a school in Jisreen, a town in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, as children were leaving for the day. Another child was killed in the village from another shell. One of the children had his legs blown off.

Syria, Thursday November 2, 2017:

• Six Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers struck Islamic State targets near the town of Abu Kemal. Weapon depots were among the targets hit in the air strike.

Syria Friday November 3, 2017:

• The Syrian army and allied forces have taken full control of the city of Deir Ezzor, the last major Syrian city in ISIS' hands. They killed a large number of the terrorists, among them foreigners.

Syria Saturday November 4, 2017:

• At least one Islamic State car bomb killed dozens of people at a refugee gathering on the east side of the Euphrates River.
• The blast also caused many injuries and took place between the Conoco and Jafra energy fields, an area controlled by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
• A bomb from Islamic State exploded in al-Qubba village, northwest of Mosul, killing three policemen and three children. The bomb exploded while the children were playing in a garden.
• The local police found bodies of two police conscripts, one of whom was lieutenant general, near the Federal Police headquarters in Badush town. They were shot in the head and chest. In the same town, a bomb exploded targeting Federal Police, which left three personnel killed and fourth wounded.

Iraq Sunday November 5, 2017:

• Two suicide bombers struck the northern city of Kirkuk. The bombers targeted a Shiite mosque on Atlas Street. At least six person was killed and 16 others were wounded.
• More than a hundred people have been killed in a truck bomb blast in eastern Syria.
• The victims were refugees from the war the Islamic State group in the region. The attack occurred near the Conoco gas plant near Deir el-Zour city. The blast happened at a checkpoint where locals were awaiting passage into SDF territory. He said dozens were killed.
• The SDF control several oil and gas fields in eastern Syria, which they seized from IS militants this year.

Syria Tuesday November 7, 2017:

• Syria announced during United Nations climate talks that it would sign the Paris agreement on climate change. The move, which comes on the heels of Nicaragua signing the accord last month, will leave the United States as the only country that has rejected the global pact.

Syria Monday November 13, 2017:

• Dozens of people were killed (possibly 53 including five children and three women) and 90 wounded in airstrikes on a market in northern Syria. The attacks left rescuers and survivors digging late into the evening to search for residents still buried under the rubble.
• There were at least three airstrikes on the market in Atareb, a town on the outskirts of Aleppo swollen by the arrival of refugees from nearby battles. A police station by the market was also struck, killing an officer.
• One does not know whether the Syrian government or its Russia, was behind the attack.

Syria Thursday November 16, 2017:

• Syrian government shelling and airstrikes have killed nearly two dozen civilians in three days of fighting in the suburbs of the capital where rebels are trying to take over a military installation.
• The fighting in the opposition-held Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus is the latest in now regular breaches of a local truce brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran, that came into force in August.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 22 civilians have been killed, and more than 100 wounded. Syrian state media, meanwhile, said rebel shelling from the area killed six people and wounded 45 in the government-held capital.
• Fighters from the rebel Ahrar al-Sham faction on Wednesday penetrated a military compound outside Harasta, a town in Eastern Ghouta. Fighting over the facility was still underway Thursday. Pro-government forces lost 37 fighters, including nine officers, in the clashes; scores of rebels were also killed or wounded.

Syria Friday November 17, 2017:

• At least five children and two rescue workers were killed in a Damascus suburb during a government bombing campaign.
• Rebels shelled government-controlled neighbourhoods of Damascus, killing at least three civilians.
• Friday marks the fourth day of violence in Damascus and its suburbs, despite a truce brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran that went into effect in August. So far, over 40 people have been killed, mostly in rebel-held suburbs but also in the government-controlled capital.
• An Islamic State car bomb killed 20 people and injured 30 others at a site where displaced families are located in eastern Syria near the city of Deir al-Zor.

Syria Saturday November 18, 2017:

• At least 14 civilians, including one young girl, were killed by Syrian regime bombardment of the rebel-held eastern Ghouta region near Damascus.
• Ten of the victims were killed by air strikes and another four died in rocket fire. A further 40 people were wounded and the death toll was likely to rise.

Syria Sunday November 19, 2017:

• Pro-government forces defeated the Islamic State group in its last major stronghold in Syria leaving the militants to defend just strips of desert territory in the country and a besieged pocket outside the capital, Damascus.
• Holding Boukamal will be an important strategic objective for the government and its sponsor Iran.
• Also more than two dozen civilians were killed as government forces and rebels traded fire across fronts in Damascus and Homs.
• Eight civilians were killed in rebel shelling on Homs, which also put the city’s al-Walid flour mill out of service; another two were killed by shelling or rocket fire on Damascus.
• At least 17 civilians were killed in government shelling and airstrikes on the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, which remain under opposition control. The Civil Defense search-and-rescue group, more popularly known as the White Helmets, said one of its volunteers was killed in the line of duty by a rocket.
• Residents in the Ghouta region have suffered under an immense government bombardment since rebels tried to storm a military position nearby. At least 77 civilians have been killed.

Syria Tuesday November 21, 2017:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a major new push to end the war in Syria after an unannounced visit by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Russia that seemed to affirm his future role in any eventual settlement.
• The Russian initiative builds on an agreement reached with President Trump this month in which the United States effectively acknowledged Russia’s lead role in Syrian diplomacy in return for Russian acceptance of a continued U.S. role in Syria now that the Islamic State is nearing defeat.
• After Putin’s meeting with Assad spoke on the phone with regional and world leaders, seeking their support for proposals that would parlay Russia’s successful military intervention on Assad’s behalf in 2015 into a diplomatic victory that would seal Russia’s role as an important world player.

Syria Wednesday November 22, 2017:

• The World Health Organization says that 84 people have been killed and another 659 injured over a four-day stretch of intensified fighting in a region near Damascus. Seventeen children and six women were among those killed.
• The casualties occurred between November 14 to November 17 in clashes between rebel fighters and forces that support President Bashar Assad in the eastern Ghouta region. The area on the outskirts of Damascus has been under a government siege for more than four years. ---
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia, Iran and Turkey have agreed to hold a "congress" in Russia that would bring together the warring factions in Syria for peace talks.
• Putin's comments came after he met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Russian Black Sea resort town of Sochi.
• The congress whose members would include figures from the Syrian regime and the opposition would lay the groundwork for a new constitution and elections. The aim is to bring representatives of all the different ethnic and denomination groups in Syria.

Syria Saturday November 25, 2017:

• Government airstrikes and shelling outside the Syrian capital killed at least 23 civilians, activists as fighting in the area showed no signs of letting up ahead of the resumption of U.N. peace talks in Geneva.
• The government's jets and artillery launched a wave of attacks on residential areas in the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus.

Syria Friday December 1, 2017:

• A Syrian opposition activist group says insurgents have shot down a government helicopter gunship killing three officers in the country's southwest.
• The shooting of the helicopter with a missile killed a brigadier general, a colonel and a major.

Syria Saturday December 2, 2017:

• Syrian air defences intercepted at least two Israeli missiles fired at a government “military position” in Damascus province but the attack still caused damage.
• The Israeli missiles targeted “positions of the Syrian regime and its allies” southwest of Damascus.

Syria Monday December 4, 2017:

-    Israel again fired missiles at a Syrian military facility near Damascus, the second reported Israeli strike in Syria in the past week.
-    Syrian forces responded by firing anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli jets; the Israeli attack targeted a scientific research centre near Jamraya on the outskirts of the Syrian capital. Syrian air defence systems intercepted three of the missiles.

 Syria Tuesday December 5, 2017:

- A bomb blast killed eight people and injured 16 others on a bus in Homs. However the Islamic State claimed the attack, saying the blast killed 11 members of the Syrian army. ---

Syria Monday December 11, 2017:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory against “terrorists” in Syria during a surprise visit to a Russian military base in the county, where he also announced a partial pull-out of Russian troops.
• It was Putin’s first trip to Syria, where Russia launched an air campaign in 2015 that allowed President Bashar Assad’s forces to gain the upper hand against the Islamic State group as well as Syrian rebels. It was also the first visit by a foreign head of state to war-ravaged Syria since the civil war began in 2011.

Syria Tuesday December 12, 2017:

• Russian and Syrian fighter jets have launched attacks in southern Aleppo province and the Damascus countryside, causing civilian casualties in both locations. Rebel groups, for their part, made gains south of Damascus and in the eastern Idlib province.
• Hundreds of families were displaced from villages and towns in the southern Aleppo countryside because of heavy bombing by Syrian and Russian fighter jets. The attacks resulted in civilian casualties and extensive damage to homes and property.

Syria Wednesday December 13, 2017:

• US fighter planes fired warning flares after Russian jets entered an agreed non-conflict area over Syria. The two Russian Su-25s flew east of the Euphrates River and into US-designated air space. One of the US F-22 jets was nearly involved in a mid-air collision with a Russian plane.
• However, the Russian defence ministry has denied the US account. It said the two Su-25s had been escorting a humanitarian convoy near a town beside the Euphrates when they were approached by the two F-22 jets. A Russian official said he was bewildered the US had staked a claim over part of Syria's air space and accused the US-led coalition of "operating in Syria illegally".
• This is the most serious such incident involving Russian and US planes over Syria.

Syria Thursday December 14, 2017:

• An American-supported Syrian opposition force killed more than 20 Islamic State fighters and about 15 were captured in an area near the Jordanian and Iraqi borders. The clash was described as a response to the Syrian army's failure to prevent IS from moving freely through its lines.

Syria Wednesday December 20, 2017:

• Air strikes killed 19 people in a village in the rebel stronghold of Idlib. The strikes pounded Maar Shureen in the northwestern Idlib province and injured 25 other people.

Syria Wednesday December 27, 207:

• The Red Cross has begun an evacuation of critically ill civilians from a besieged suburb of the Syrian capital as part of a rare deal struck between the government and a rebel group.
• Ambulances conveyed three sick children and a woman out of Eastern Ghouta late Tuesday for medical treatment in Damascus hospitals. Some 400,000 other people remain trapped in the district, a pocket of opposition-held territory where a long-running   government blockade has caused scores of civilians to die of starvation or a lack of medical care. ---

Syria Thursday December 28, 2017:

• At least 12 critically ill patients have been evacuated from a suburb of the capital Damascus, while more residents in need of urgent medical care are expected to be removed from the besieged area.
• The evacuees, a majority of whom were children, were taken to Damascus to receive medical treatment.

Syria Saturday December 29, 2017:

• Dozens of Syrian militants and their families departed aboard buses from an area besieged by government forces near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, part of a deal to clear yet another district of insurgents.
• 153 people, including 106 fighters, left the village of Beit Jin toward the southern province of Daraa. Six buses carrying fighters and their families arrived in rebel-held parts of Daraa province.
• 300 al-Qaida-linked militants and their families would be sent to Daraa and the northwestern province of Idlib.
• Two mass graves containing dozens of bodies of civilians and Syrian troops killed by the Islamic State group’s militants have been found in the west of Raqqa province. They had been executed.

Syria Sunday December 31, 2017:

• An US-coalition air strikes on one of the last villages still held by the Daesh terrorist group in eastern Syria, Susa in Deir el-Zour province, killed 12 civilians from a same family, including four children.

Syria Wednesday January 3, 2018:

• A Russian helicopters has crashed during an emergency landing in Syria's west, killing both pilots on-board. The Mi-24 helicopter was en route to the city of Hama when crashed on Sunday.
• Both pilots were killed when the helicopter had to perform an emergency landing 15 kilometres away from the airport. A technician onboard was injured. The cause of the crash was a technical fault; it did not come under fire.
• At least seven Russian planes were destroyed by rebel shelling at the Khmeimim airbase on 31 December according to Russian sources.
• If confirmed, the attack would mark the single biggest loss of military hardware for Russia since it launched airstrikes in Syria in autumn 2015. More than 10 servicemen were wounded in the shelling by “radical Islamists.
• At least four Su-24 bombers, two Su-35S fighters and an An-72 transport plane, as well as an ammunition depot, were destroyed by the shelling.
• At least 23 civilians have been killed in aerial bombardment carried out by Syrian government forces in rebel-held parts of the Eastern Ghouta district.
• At least 18 people died in an air raid in the besieged town of Misraba, while three others were killed in the Bett Sawa area, including women and children.
• Moreover, at least two people were killed in attacks carried out by Russian warplanes.

Syria Thursday January 4, 2018:

• Within the last 24 hours, at least 30 civilians including children have been killed in airstrikes and shelling attacks in Eastern Ghouta. The majority of the strikes were carried out by Russian jets.
• Two Russian servicemen were killed in a mortar attack by Islamist militants on New Year's Eve, but Russia denied that seven military planes were destroyed. ---

Syria Saturday January 6, 2018:

• At least 10 hospitals in rebel-held areas have suffered direct air or artillery attacks over the past 10 days. Health facilities had been hit "yet again".
• Syrian and Russian air strikes on a rebel-held enclave near Damascus killed at least 17 civilians. Eastern Ghouta, one of the last remaining opposition strongholds in the country, is the target of near-daily air raids.
• The deadliest strikes had hit the Hammuriyeh district, killing 12 civilians including four children.

Syria Sunday January 7, 2018:

• The military have recaptured a strategically important town in the northwestern province of Idlib –Sinjar- in its latest advance into rebel-held territory.
• The gain "opens the road" for the government troops to march on the rebel-held Abu Zuhour air base about 19 kilometres to the north.
• The death toll from a massive car bombing in Idlib has risen to at least 25. Also, nearly 100 people were wounded.
• The blast ignited fires, damaged buildings and overturned several cars along a wide avenue in the city. Ambulances and fire brigades were seen rushing to the scene.

Syria Tuesday January 9, 2018:

• Syria’s military accused Israel of launching missiles targeting its outposts near Damascus in a wave of three pre-dawn attacks and claimed that the Syrian air force hit one of the Israeli jets and shot down several of the missiles.
• The Syrian air defence confronted the early morning attacks on military outposts in the area of Qutayfeh in the Damascus countryside.
• Several missiles were first launched from Lebanese airspace, followed by two ground to ground missiles that were launched from the occupied Golan Heights and four missiles launched from the Tiberias area, or the Sea of Galilee, in northern Israel. The attacks caused material damage.

Syria Wednesday January 10, 2018:

• Russia has identified the launch location from where a swarm of armed drones began their attack on two of its military bases in western Syria on Saturday.
• Ten drones rigged with explosive devices descended over Russia’s Hmeimim air base while a further three targeted the Russian Naval CSS point in the nearby city of Tartus.
• Russia shot down seven drones using anti-aircraft missiles while the other six were taken under control and landed by its military. Three of the drones survived the landing.

Syria Friday January 12, 2018:

• Fourteen people have been killed in Russian airstrikes in Idlib province.  Another source said that at least nine people were killed and 10 wounded in a strike in Idlib's Khan Assubul district by Russia.
• Strikes on residential areas of the province continued on Saturday with at least five people, including two women and one child, loosing their lives in the air attacks conducted by Russian warplanes in Idlib’s Kafer Battih and Sarjah.

Syria Saturday January 13, 2018:

• A missile has crashed near civilians in Idlib province at a makeshift camp for displaced people from the nearby Hama province. Dramatic footage showed men, women and children desperately trying to find the nearest cover after the attack.
• A chlorine gas attack has been carried out on a besieged rebel-held enclave on the outskirts of Damascus. People in the Eastern Ghouta region, which is under daily bombardment, reported a smell of gas after a missile strike. Health workers said six people were treated for minor breathing problems.
• There have been a number of reports of chlorine gas attacks since Syria's civil war broke out, but the government has always denied using chemical agents.
• Some 400,000 locals have been under siege there from Russian-backed government forces since 2013.

Syria Monday January 15, 2018:

• Russia, Turkey and the Syrian government denounced the U.S.-led coalition plans to form a Kurdish-led border force to secure the areas along Syria's international border to the north with Turkey and to the east, with Iraq.
• The coalition said that 230 new cadets have already been recruited to the force, which is anticipated to reach 30,000 troops in the next several years.
• The core of the force is to be made up of fighters from the existing Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the coalition's main ally in the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants. The SDF currently controls nearly 25 percent of Syrian territory in the north and east.
• In the past 24 hours, regime forces have taken at least 79 villages in the southern parts of Aleppo province, an area near the Abu Duhur military airport.
• Russia-backed regime troops are aiming to reach the Abu Duhur base as part of a weeks-long assault against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is dominated by Al-Qaeda's former Syria affiliate.
• A wave of attacks on Russian bases in Syria, including the use of drones, has exposed fresh weaknesses in President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to cement a permanent military presence for Moscow there.
• Homemade drones were responsible for three attacks since New Year’s Eve on the country’s main military base and a naval station in Syria. ---

Syria Friday January 19, 2018:

• Fifteen Syrian refugees -some of them children- have been found frozen to death while trying to cross the mountainous border into Lebanon; two more were discovered later on after the area was hit by a fierce snowstorm.
• The group had been abandoned by smugglers. Two smugglers have been arrested. Several refugees were rescued, including a young boy who was found wandering by himself.
• Lebanon, with a population of four million, has taken in nearly one million Syrians since the war began in 2011.

Syria Tuesday January 23, 2018:

• The US envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, accused Syria’s government of having carried out a chlorine gas attack on civilians in a rebel enclave and rebuked Russia for what she called its failure to stop such assaults, which under international law are considered war crimes.
• The attack happened Monday when Syrian government forces launched rockets loaded with chlorine gas at targets in the rebel enclave, Eastern Ghouta. At least 13 people were injured.

Syria Friday January 26, 2018:

• Kurdish authorities in northern Afrin enclave have called on Syrian troops to defend the region's border, as a Turkish offensive continues there. They said the "aim of this (Turkish) aggression is to cut more Syrian land by occupying Afrin".
• Turkish-led forces began their assault in north-western Syria on Saturday. Ankara regards Kurdish YPG fighters in Afrin as terrorists, and says they are linked to Kurdish PKK guerrillas who operate in Turkey itself. Forty-eight Turkish-backed rebels and 42 YPG fighters have been killed in the fighting.

Syria Monday January 29, 2018:

• Two airstrikes hit a hospital supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Idlib governorate causing deaths and injuries and seriously damaging the facility.
• The 18-bed Owdai Hospital (also known as Al Ihsan Hospital) is the only public hospital in Saraqab District in the eastern Idlib countryside, serving a population of 50,000. Prior to the attack, the hospital had an emergency room and outpatient department and provided general and trauma surgery, performing an average of 3,800 medical consultations per month.
• MSF provides medicines and supplies to the hospital's emergency department but does not have staff in the facility.
• The airstrikes occurred while the hospital was receiving people injured in an airstrike that hit Saraqab's main market about an hour earlier, which also killed 11 people.
• The attack on the hospital itself resulted in at least five deaths, including a child, and injuries to at least six people, including three medical staff. Other medical staff said a first strike hit the hospital waiting room and a second hit an area in front of the hospital, destroying a parked ambulance.

Syria Tuesday January 30, 2018:

• A Russia-engineered peace conference aimed at bringing together warring factions in Syria has been fruitless, with the main opposition figures snubbing the talks and those who did attend walking out.
• Organizers of the summit had hoped the talks would lead to a new draft constitution for Syria and bring an end to sanctions imposed on the state.
• Turkish airstrikes on the Kurdish-held Afrin region have damaged an ancient 3,000-year-old stone carvings temple.
• The temple of Ain Dara just south of Afrin suffered "heavy damage" after it was hit, sometime between January 20 and January 22.
• The temple was built by the Aramaeans in the early first millennium B.C., after the collapse of the Hittite Empire, at a time when civilizations in the region were emerging from the Bronze Age and entering the Iron Age.

Syria Thursday February 1, 2018:

• The United States has accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons against its people. Reports of chlorine gas being used against civilians in Eastern Ghouta were "very concerning".
• Russia is making the wrong choice by not exercising its unique influence. To allow the Syria regime to use chemical weapons against its own people is unconscionable. Russia is Syria's closest ally, and has previously blocked attempts to investigate the suspected use of chemical weapons.
• Today there was a suspected chlorine gas attack in the rebel-held territory of Eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus.
• At least seven people have been killed and 10 injured in a barrage of rockets that fell on government-controlled areas in and near the capital Damascus.
• The 13 missiles fell on Ash alwarwar neighbourhood, north of Damascus, killing at least six civilians and wounding nine. Other missiles fell on Mezzeh neighbourhood, killing one woman and injuring a child.
• A hospital built under 20m of rock in a rebel-held part of central Syria has been wrecked by a powerful air strike. The hospital in Hama province -regarded as one of the best protected in the country- was put out of service by the strike.
• No casualties are reported but aid workers say it is the worst in a wave of attacks against hospitals in Syria.
• The UN says aid is no longer getting through to besieged areas.
• It is not clear who carried out the latest strike, but Syrian government warplanes or those of its ally Russia have been stepping up attacks in rebel-held areas. Both Syria and Russia have consistently denied targeting civilians.

Syria Friday February 2, 2018:

• Kurds have reacted furiously to videos showing Turkish-backed rebels abusing the body of a female Kurdish fighter killed in battle. They accused the fighters of "playing with her corpse" and mutilating it.
• Barin Kobani was part of all-female unit challenging a Turkish-led offensive in north-west Syria.
• Last month, Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels launched a campaign to capture the Kurdish-held Afrin region.

Syria Saturday February 3, 2018:

• A Russian fighter jet was shot down in a rebel-controlled area of Idlib Province in northern Syria; the pilot survived by parachuting from the plane but was killed by members of a militia on the ground.
• The Russian Su-25 warplane was patrolling the Idlib area when it was struck by a missile, launched from an area controlled by rebels. ---

Syria Sunday February 4, 2018

• The Russian pilot killed in Syria detonated his grenade to avoid being captured by jihadists who had shot his plane out of the sky. He told his superiors he had been hit by a missile, before ejecting himself from the plane.
• His Sukhoi-25 ground-attack aircraft was shot down over rebel-held Idlib province. He survived the attack and ejected, but died in a ground fight. The pilot was posthumously presented with the Hero of Russia medal, also known as the Gold Star.
• In retaliation, Russian air attacks in the area controlled by the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group, which brought down the Russian Su-25 jet by using a portable anti-aircraft missile system in the Syrian province Idlib. More than 30 Jabhat Al Nusra militants were killed.
• Dozens of civilians have been hit by a chlorine gas attack. Warplanes are said to have dropped dozens of bombs leaving civilians injured.

Syria Tuesday February 6, 2018:

• At least three people have been killed in shelling from rebel areas on parts of the old city of Damascus.
• The shelling also left eight civilians injured. The attack targeting Bab Touma in the old city was blamed on armed groups in a region adjacent to the capital.
• The airstrike and shelling campaign against the rebel-held region, eastern Ghouta, has escalated in recent days, and nearly 40 people were killed in the region.

Syria Wednesday February 7, 2018:

• Syria has responded to "a new Israeli aggression" after aircraft targeted a military outpost near Damascus, claiming its air defines system destroyed most of the missiles.
• Syria air defines systems responded to missiles fired by the Israeli air force from over Lebanese territory on a military outpost in Damascus countryside and destroyed most of them.
• The airstrike targeted positions of the Syrian army and its allies in the area of Jamraya, northwest of Damascus, which is home to a government research centre and was also hit in December.
• Airstrikes on a besieged rebel-held area near Damascus have killed at least 55 people. Syrian government and allied Russian forces have been pounding the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital for two days. Eastern Ghouta, home to about 400,000 people, is also reeling under a government siege that has prevented aid from getting in.
• Russia has waged a punishing aerial campaign against Syria's armed opposition since intervening in the civil war on the side of its ally, President Bashar Assad, in 2015.
• The US-led coalition fighting ISIS conducted air and artillery strikes against pro-regime forces killing an estimated 100 pro-regime fighters. The coalition described its action as carried out in "self-defines."
• Syria described the action as an "aggression" by the coalition against "popular forces" who were fighting ISIS and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. The attack had left "scores of persons dead and others injured" and caused "huge damage" to the area.
• The strikes were carried out after forces allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "initiated an unprovoked attack" against a well-established Syrian Democratic Forces headquarters where coalition advisers were working with US-backed Syrian fighters.
• Some 500 pro-regime troops carried out the attack using artillery, mortar fire and Russian-made tanks "in what appears to be a coordinated attack on Syrian Democratic Forces.

Syria Thursday February 8, 2018:

• A rare U.S. strike on government-backed troops in eastern Syria killed and wounded dozens of tribal fighters; Syria called it a new effort "to support terrorism."
• The U.S.-led coalition said its action was in "self-defence," citing a major attack on its allied forces and U.S. advisers in Deir el-Zour province by at least 500 fighters, battle tanks, howitzers and mortars.
• Two ISIS fighters notorious for imprisoning and murdering Western hostages were captured on the battlefield in Syria in January.
• The men were part of a group of four jihadis dubbed the Beatles by observers because of their British accents, and were caught by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish and Arab militia fighting both ISIS and the Assad regime.
• The two are Alexandar Amon Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, and they were the last of the four Beatles on the battlefield. The best-known member of the group, Mohammed Emwazi, aka Jihadi John, who was seen and heard on videos beheading prisoners, was killed in an airstrike in Raqqa in November 2015. The fourth member, Aine Davis, is in Turkish custody. All four men were from West London.
• The four men tortured their hostages and are linked to more than two dozen beheadings. Emwazi was suspected of killing Americans James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

Syria Saturday February 10, 2018:

• Israel launched heavy air strikes in Syria hitting air defences and Iranian targets. The Syrian army claimed to have brought down an Israeli F-16 that crashed in northern Israel. The Israeli military said the jet had been shot down by Syrian fire.
• The F-16 crashed during a mission to strike Iranian drone installations in Syria. It sent its jets into Syria after shooting down an Iranian drone over Israeli territory.
• Assad denied any of its drones had entered Israeli air space. Israel had targeted an air base in the Homs desert that is being used to fly drones in missions against Islamic State.

Syria Tuesday February 13, 2018:

• Four Russian nationals, and perhaps dozens more, were killed in fighting between pro-government forces in eastern Syria and members of the United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic State.
• About 100 Syrian soldiers had been killed in the fighting on February 7 and 8, but news about Russian casualties has dribbled out only slowly.
• For reasons that remain unclear, Syrian government troops and some Russian nationals appear to have attacked a coalition position, near Al Tabiyeh, Syria.
• The attack occurred in the vicinity of Deir al-Zour. Most of the fatalities were attributed to an American airstrike on enemy columns that was called in by American-backed Kurdish soldiers who believed they were under attack. ---

Wednesday February 14, 2018:

• The rebel-held Syrian region of the Eastern Ghouta has received its first aid delivery in almost three months. It comes after weeks of appeals from the United Nations to allow aid deliveries and the evacuation of hundreds of critically ill people.
• About 400,000 people live in the besieged enclave, east of Damascus, under frequent artillery bombardment. Hundreds have been killed in recent weeks after government forces stepped up attempts to seize the area.
• This delivery had enough food and supplies for 7,200 people. The nine trucks would cover about 1,440 families.
• Fifteen Russians employed in Syria by a private security company have been killed after an explosion rocked an arms depot at their base, a weapons storage facility at Tabiya Jazira in the northeastern province of Deir Ezzor.
• This company was in charge of “protecting the oil and gas fields controlled by the Syrian regime.

Syria Thursday February 15, 2018:

• Moscow acknowledged for the first time that five Russian nationals may have been killed in the U.S.-led airstrike in Syria last week.
• Reports have suggested more than 100 fighters supporting the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Assad were killed in the February 7 clash in eastern Deir al-Zor province. The U.S. has said the airstrike was an act of "self-defence" following hostile action against a base it held with Kurdish-led forces fighting ISIS.
• Russia insisted those killed in the clash were not members of the Russian armed forces. Even so, this marked the first time Russian fighters have been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Syria.
• The Russian fighters killed were said to be mercenaries for the secretive Russian private military group Wagner, which has provided thousands of contract soldiers to help the Assad government.

Syria Sunday February 18, 2018:

• Syrian pro-government forces will help Syrian Kurds fighting against a Turkish offensive in north-west Syria. The government in Damascus had agreed to send troops.
• Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Damascus would face "consequences" if it struck a deal with the Kurds. Which it did.
• Elsewhere, pro-government forces are preparing a ground assault on the rebel-controlled area of Eastern Ghouta, on the edge of Damascus. Dozens of civilians had been killed over the past 24 hours in government attacks.
• A car bomb exploded in the Kurdish-dominated city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria killing five people and injuring seven. The explosion targeted al-Hay al-Gharbi in the city.

Syria Monday February 19, 2018:

• At least 50 civilians have reportedly been killed in government attacks on the besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus. Some said air and artillery strikes on the town of Marj left 24 dead there while a monitoring group said 127 civilians were killed.
• The UN warned that the situation there is "spiralling out of control"; It said that the indiscriminate bombardment of the Eastern Ghouta must stop immediately and called for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered and hundreds of critically sick and wounded patients to be evacuated.

Syria Saturday February 24, 2018:

• The UN Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution demanding a 30-day ceasefire in Syria to allow aid deliveries and medical evacuations. However, some of the biggest jihadist rebel groups, and their associates, are not covered by the truce, raising questions about its real impact. Russia, an ally of Syria's government, wanted changes, while Western diplomats accused Moscow of stalling for time.
• The Eastern Ghouta rebel enclave near Damascus has been bombarded by government forces for the past week. And air strikes began soon after the vote in New York. Some 500 people are said to have been killed by government forces in the enclave since last Sunday while rebels’ fire on Damascus has reportedly killed at least 16 civilians. ---

Syria Sunday February 25, 2018:

• Air strikes by the Syrian government on a rebel-held enclave have continued despite a ceasefire resolution passed by the UN Security Council on Saturday. The latest attacks include a ground offensive that began hours after the UN urged a 30-day truce "without delay".
• France and Germany called on Russia to put pressure on the Syrian government to honour the ceasefire.
• Hundreds of people have died in a week of bombardment of the Eastern Ghouta enclave near the capital, Damascus.

Syria Monday February 26, 2018:

• Iran said pro-Damascus forces would press ahead with attacks on an insurgent enclave near the Syrian capital, as ground fighting raged on there in defiance of a U.N. resolution demanding a 30-day truce across the country.
• Turkey, too, said its military operations in another theatre of war in the north of Syria would not be affected by the unanimous Security Council vote demanding the truce to allow for aid access and medical evacuations.
• Anti-government rebels said they clashed with pro-government forces near Damascus on Sunday, as rescuers and residents said warplanes struck some towns in the eastern Ghouta pocket.
• Air strikes and artillery killed nine people and injured 31 in the eastern suburbs. Sunday’s bombing was less intense than attacks over the past week.

Syria Tuesday February 27, 2018:

• Shelling and artillery fire continued in the besieged rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, interrupting a five-hour "humanitarian pause" ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia ordered a daily pause in hostilities (from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. local time) to begin today.
• The order called for a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to leave the enclave on the edge of the capital Damascus, but made no mention of whether food and medical supplies would be able to enter the area.
• Putin's proposed pause appeared to have had little impact. Within minutes of when the ceasefire was meant to start, activists on the ground reported shelling and artillery fire from pro-regime positions, killing at least one person. Russia and the Syrian regime accused the rebels of shelling humanitarian corridors, preventing civilians from leaving.
• Women have been sexually exploited by men delivering aid on behalf of the UN and international charities. Aid workers said the men would trade food and lifts for sexual favours.
• UN agencies and charities said they had zero tolerance of exploitation and were not aware of any cases of abuse by partner organisations in the region.
• Aid workers told the BBC that the exploitation is so widespread that some Syrian women are refusing to go to distribution centres because people would assume they had offered their bodies for the aid they brought home.

Syria Wednesday February 28, 2018:

• Iran has constructed a new military base in Syria which is being used to store missile capable of striking all of Israel. The base is located eight miles north west of Damascus, with newly constructed hangars.
• The base is being run by the Quds Force, the special operations arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Syria Monday March 5, 2018:

• An aid convoy of 46 trucks finally entered eastern Ghouta after two weeks of intense siege, but aid authorities have said they are concerned about ongoing shelling. Syrian authorities reportedly stripped the trucks of important medical supplies.
• The 400,000 civilian residents of the region have spent the past two weeks seeking shelter as Russia-backed government forces engage in one of the most intense sieges in the civil war's seven-year history.
• The convoy pulled out of Douma in darkness after shelling on the town, without fully unloading supplies during a nine-hour stay. All staff were safe and heading back to the capital Damascus.
• The Russian-backed Syrian army has captured more than a third of the eastern Ghouta in recent days, threatening to slice the last major rebel-held area near Damascus in two, despite Western accusations it has violated a ceasefire.

Syria Tuesday March 6, 2018:

• A Russian military transport plane has crashed in Syria killing more than 30 people. The An-26 plane crashed during landing at Hmeimim airbase, near the coastal city of Latakia.
• All 39 military personnel on board died. A technical malfunction could have caused the crash.
• Medics in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area of Syria say they have been treating people with breathing problems after a suspected chlorine attack.

Syria Wednesday March 7, 2018:

• Syrian government forces seized vast swaths of territory including farmland in the opposition-held suburbs of Damascus, dividing the besieged enclave in two and squeezing rebels and tens of thousands of civilians trapped inside.
• Intense shelling and cases of suffocation and difficulty breathing have been reported as well as suggestion that the government used chlorine gas. Staff at hospitals was overwhelmed with chlorine door and had treated 29 children with difficulties breathing. ---

Syria Saturday March 10, 2018:

• The Syrian army has made a significant advance in its effort to take rebel-held Eastern Ghouta. Troops have cut off the region's biggest town, Douma, and isolated another. The advance would effectively split the region into three parts.

Syria Thursday Match 15, 2018:

• A senior Kurdish official who played a key role with the United States in implementing its post-Islamic State group policy in northern Syria has been found dead in his apartment#
• Omar Alloush’s death is a blow to the post-ISIS efforts in the region, as he played a key role in mediating between Arabs and Kurds and in shaping the U.S. policy in the area.
• Alloush was found dead in his apartment in Tal Abyad, a majority Arab town in northern Syria where he helped set up a joint Arab-Kurd administrative council after it was liberated from ISIS in 2015.
• Seven US service members were killed in a helicopter crash in western Iraq. There were no survivors in the crash; the crew of a second helicopter flying alongside did not report seeing signs of hostile fire when the helicopter went down.
• The aircraft was a HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter, a Black Hawk variant. The helicopter was not on a combat mission at the time.

Syria Friday March 16, 2018:

• Airstrikes killed more than 100 people as civilians fled besieged areas for the second straight day. Syrian government forces stepped up their offensive in the rebel-held eastern suburbs of the capital, Damascus, capturing a major town and closing in on another under the cover of Russia’s air power.
• The majority of the deaths occurred in eastern suburbs of Damascus, known as eastern Ghouta, where government forces have been on a crushing offensive for three weeks capturing 70 percent of the once besieged rebel-held area. The weeks long violence left more than 1,300 civilians dead, 5,000 wounded and forced thousands to flee to government-controlled areas.
• Syria passed the seven-year mark in its relentless civil war that has killed some 450,000 people and displaced half the country’s population.
• Government and Russian forces have been bombing rebel-towns areas outside Damascus, killing 64 people in Kafr Batna and another 12 in Saqba. Government forces captured the town of Jisreen, closing in on Saqba.
• Turkish shelling and airstrikes have killed another 27 people in the Kurdish-held town of Afrin in north Syria where Turkish troops and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters have been on the offensive. Turkey is getting closer to capturing the main town in the region, also called Afrin.

Syria Saturday March 17, 2018:

• Airstrikes rained down in the enclave of Eastern Ghouta as swarms of civilians continued to pour out of the battered rebel-held area not far from the nation's capital.
• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says more 12,000 people have fled in the past few days. Syria's ambassador to the United Nations says it is more than 40,000.

Syria Monday March 19, 2018:

• At least 16 children and four women have been killed after a school in Syria's Eastern Ghouta was hit by an air raid as the bombardment of the enclave resumed following a brief lull.
• The school acted as a shelter for children in the town of Irbin. Overnight shelling of remaining rebel-held towns of Eastern Ghouta has killed a total of 32 people.
• Kamel abu al-Walid, a photographer for the Turkish-backed pro-opposition Jarabulus Media Office, died from injuries sustained in a landmine explosion in Afrin.
• Al-Walid was covering the takeover of Afrin by Turkish forces and Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions when a landmine planted in an office building exploded next to him.

Syria Tuesday March 20, 2018:

• Rockets fired on a market in a government-controlled neighbourhood of Damascus killed 35 people and wounded more than 20 others making it one of the highest death tolls in a single attack targeting the capital.
• The government blamed rebels in the eastern suburbs of Damascus for the attack on the Kashkol neighbourhood. With government forces tied up in the month-long offensive on eastern Ghouta, Islamic State militants seized a neighbourhood on its southern edge, forcing the government to rush in reinforcements.
• IS militants captured the neighbourhood of Qadam late Monday, a week after rebels had surrendered it to the government. At least 36 soldiers and pro-government militiamen were killed in the clashes. Dozens more were captured or wounded. ---

Syria, Saturday March 24, 2018:

• Hundreds of members of a rebel group and their relatives boarded 17 buses in preparation to leave eastern Ghouta to opposition-held areas north of the country as part of an agreement to evacuate the second of three pockets held by opposition fighters east of the capital Damascus.
• Hundreds more will evacuate the following day. A total of 7,000 people will leave four towns in eastern Ghouta.
• The departure comes a day after an agreement was reached between Faylaq al-Rahman, the second most powerful rebel group in eastern Ghouta, and the Russians to surrender the second of three pockets in eastern Ghouta, where rebels have been holding up over the past years.

Syria Friday March 30, 2018:

• One U.S. soldier was killed and another American was wounded in an overnight roadside bomb explosion in Manbij.
• They were in a convoy. One other coalition fighter from the U.K. was also killed in action. Five others were wounded. They were not local fighters, but part of the coalition.


Syria Saturday March 31, 2018:

• The Syrian army declared victory in eastern Ghouta after opposition fighters evacuated from most of the area near the capital except for the town of Douma where negotiations are still underway for rebels there to leave or face an all-out government offensive.
• The government has given rebels in Douma —the area's largest town and stronghold of the powerful Army of Islam rebel group— an ultimatum to agree on leaving by late Saturday. The army is massing troops around Douma.
• Another group of opposition fighters and their relatives left southern and western parts of eastern Ghouta, bringing President Bashar Assad's forces a step closer to eliminating threats from insurgents groups nearby.

Wednesday April 4, 2018:

• President Trump has instructed military leaders to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as soon as possible; he wants Arab allies to take over and pay for stabilizing and reconstructing areas liberated from the Islamic State.
• However in a meeting with top national security aides Tuesday, Trump backtracked on his public insistence that the troop exit was imminent. Trump agreed that the military, as fighting continued against remaining militant pockets, could train local security forces.
• But he stressed that U.S. strategic goals in Syria do not include longer-term stability or reconstruction efforts.

Syria Friday April 6, 2018:

• Pro-government forces have launched a ground offensive under the cover of air raids on Douma, the last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta.
• The push collapsed a 10-day ceasefire over a deal to evacuate opposition fighters from the besieged enclave on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.
• The air raids killed at least 30 civilians, including women and children.

Syria Saturday April 7, 2018:

• The Syrian state denied government forces had launched any chemical attack and Russia, President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful ally, called the reports bogus.
• Some medical officers said 49 people had died in the attack in Douma. Others put the toll even higher.
• U.S. President Donald Trump said there would be a “big price to pay” for a chemical attack against a besieged rebel-held town in Syria where medical aid groups reported dozens of people were killed by poison gas. ---

Syria Friday April 13, 2018:

• The Russian Defence Ministry accused Britain of staging a fake chemical attack in a Syrian town outside Damascus, a bold charge vehemently denied by Britain as a “blatant lie.” Russia said that the images of victims of the purported attack were staged with “Britain’s direct involvement.
• A day before a team from the international chemical weapons watchdog was to arrive in Douma, just east of Damascus.
• Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, Karen Pierce, dismissed Konashenkov’s claim as “a blatant lie.” Pierce said that Britain has no involvement and would never have any involvement in the use of a chemical weapon.”

Syria Saturday April 14, 2018:

• The United States, France and Britain launched airstrikes in the night against Syrian research, storage and military targets as President Trump sought to punish President Bashar al-Assad for a suspected chemical attack near Damascus last weekend that killed more than 40 people.
• Britain and France joined the United States in the strikes in a coordinated operation that was intended to show Western resolve in the face of what the leaders of the three nations called persistent violations of international law. Mr. Trump characterized it as the beginning of a sustained effort to force Mr. Assad to stop using banned weapons, but only ordered a limited, one-night operation that hit three targets.
• Shortly after the attack, the Syrian presidency posted on Twitter, “Honorable souls cannot be humiliated.”
• The strikes risked pulling the United States deeper into the complex, multisided war in Syria and raised the possibility of confrontation with Russia and Iran, both of which were supporting Mr. Assad with military forces. Within 90 minutes, the Russian ambassador to the United States warned of “consequences” for the allied attacks.
• Russia has condemned US, UK and French strikes against targets in Syria over the alleged use of chemical weapons as the Western allies argued they were essential to deter the future use of illegal munitions.
• The overnight strikes hit three sites -one in Damascus and two in Homs- which US President Donald Trump said were "associated with the chemical weapon capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad."
• The action followed a week of threats of retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma, outside Damascus.
• Trump hailed the strike as "perfectly executed" adding "Mission Accomplished!"

Syria Friday April 20, 2018:

• In the two weeks since the Syrian city of Douma was struck by a suspected chemical weapons attack, the area has had many visitors.
• First, it was Russian military police, fanning out across the area after five years of rebel control. Next came the Syrian army, and then journalists traipsed through, examining the alleged blast sites and interviewing survivors.
• But one thing was missing: the weapons inspectors who arrived in Syria last week to establish what really happened in Douma.
• Six days later, they are still demanding full and secure access to the site, a delay that has sharpened suspicions among local residents and Western governments that Syrian and Russian authorities are using each day that passes for a cover-up.
• Syrian and Russian military officials have blocked off and repeatedly entered the sites and medical facilities that the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is expected to comb for evidence.
• On Thursday, the United States said it had credible information to suggest that Syria and Russia were working to delay the OPCW mission to Douma as their forces removed evidence that a chemical attack had taken place.

Syria Saturday April 21, 2018:

• Chemical weapons inspectors collected samples from Syria’s Douma, two weeks after a suspected gas attack there followed by retaliatory strikes by Western powers on the Syrian government’s chemical facilities.
• The site visit would allow the agency to proceed with an independent investigation to determine what chemicals, if any, were used in the April 7 attack that medical workers said killed more than 40 people.
• Douma was the final target of the government’s sweeping campaign to seize back control of the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus from rebels after seven years of revolt. Militants gave up the town days after the alleged attack.

Syria Wednesday April 25, 2018:

• Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog made a second visit to a Syrian town hit by an alleged chemical attack, collecting samples from a new location that will be sent to designated labs for analysis.

Syria Monday April 30, 2018:

• An overnight missile attack in northern region has killed 26 pro-government fighters, mostly Iranians. The attack also wounded 60 fighters and several others were still missing.
• The attack appeared to have been carried out by Israel and targeted an arms depot for surface-to-surface missiles at a base known as Brigade 47. Four Syrians were among the casualties.

Syria Tuesday May 1, 2018:

• Rebels have agreed to allow government forces into the countryside north of Homs and re-establish state institutions. Rebels will have the option of pledging their allegiance to the government or relocating to rebel-held territory in northern Syria.
• Airstrikes killed at least 23 civilians in one of the last pockets of Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria as U.S.-backed forces in the area announced they have resumed their campaign against the extremists.
• It is not clear if the airstrikes in the Hassakeh province were carried out by the U.S.-led coalition or the Iraqi air force. The strikes killed 10 children, six women and seven elderly people. In total 25 civilians were killed in the airstrikes south of the town of Shadadi.

Syria Thursday May 3, 2018:

• An advanced Russian fighter plane has crashed killing both members of its crew. The two-seater Sukhoi-30SM jet crashed shortly after takeoff from its Khmeimim airbase in Latakia province. The two crew members tried in vain to save the plane until the last moment. ---

Syria Thursday May 3, 2018:

• A Russian fighter jet crashed off the coast of Syria, killing both pilots; the plane did not come under fire and that the crash may have been caused by a bird getting sucked into one of the engines. The Su-30 crashed shortly after take-off from the Russian air base at Hemeimeem.

Syria Monday May 7, 2018:

• Syrian rebels have begun withdrawing from the last big, besieged enclave that they held in the war-torn country.
• Hundreds of fighters have been boarding buses along with their families in a pocket of territory lying in central Syria, between Homs and Hama.
• Under a deal with the government's Russian allies, the militants have been given safe passage to opposition-controlled territory in northern Syria.
• It is the latest rebel enclave to give in after a long siege. The only significant areas of Syria still in rebel hands lie along its borders in the far north and the far south.
• A Russian helicopters has crashed, killing both pilots.
• The Ka-52 attack helicopter crashed on a flight in eastern Syria; the crash was due to technical problems.

Syria Thursday May 10, 2018:

• Iranian forces in Syria fired about 20 rockets into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights targeting forward positions of the Israeli military.
• Several of the rockets had been intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defines system. There was no casualties and damage to Israeli facilities was low.
• The country’s air defences responded with at least two waves of Israeli missile after the strike against the Israeli positions.
• The Israeli military said it attacked nearly all of Iran’s military installations in neighbouring Syria in response to an Iranian rocket barrage on Israeli positions in the occupied Golan Heights.
• The targets of the strikes, its largest in Syria since the 1973 war, included weapons storage, logistics sites and intelligence centres used by elite Iranian forces in Syria. It destroyed several Syrian air-defines systems after coming under heavy fire and that none of its warplanes were hit.
• Five senior Isis leaders have been captured, dealing a “significant blow” to the jihadi group, according to the US-led anti-Isis coalition.
• The captured jihadis have not been named but they are believed to be close to Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Syria Saturday May 12, 2018:

• A wave of Israeli strikes on suspected military positions in Syria this week killed 42 people, including at least 19 Iranians. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll from attacks early Thursday has risen from 23 to 27, including at least 11 Iranians and six Syrian soldiers, including three officers.
• Israel said its strikes on Thursday were in response to a barrage of Iranian rockets on its positions in the occupied Golan Heights. Targets near the capital, in southern and central Syria, targeting weapons storage, logistics sites and intelligence centres used by elite Iranian forces in Syria were hit. Israeli destroyed several Syrian air-defines systems after coming under heavy fire and that none of its warplanes were hit.

Syria Monday May 14, 2018:

• Iraqi warplanes carried out an airstrike on an Islamic State (IS) command centre inside Syria. The Iraqi F-16 warplanes destroyed a building used by the IS group as a command and logistics support centre in southern al-Deshisha area.

Syria Tuesday May 15, 2018:

• Syrian government forces are in full control of the last rebel enclave near Homs province following the evacuation of thousands of armed men and civilians.
• The rebels have agreed to surrender the northern countryside of Homs province to the government. According to the deal, thousands of rebels and civilians who refuse to live under government control were to be evacuated to other rebel-held areas in the country's north.
• More than 27,000 civilians and gunmen have left the northern countryside of Homs in the past days, the latest in a string of capitulation deals by the rebels around the country. In a major victory for the Syrian government, the rebels agreed, following Russian-sponsored mediation, to evacuate their areas in early May.
• The northern rural Homs deal came days after rebels cleared their last remaining strongholds around the capital Damascus.

Syria Wednesday May 16, 2018:

• Syria's military restored government control over a large area in central Syria, securing a power station, a refinery and a cement factory after uprooting the armed opposition.
• Syrian government forces now secure roads between the country's three main cities —Damascus, Aleppo and Homs— for the first time since the civil war began in 2011.
• Since March, around 200,000 people were forced to relocate to other parts of the country as part of surrender deals after crippling sieges and bombardment by government forces.
• Chlorine was possibly used as a weapon in the rebel-held northern Syrian town of Saraqeb.
• A fact-finding mission by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) determined that "chlorine was released from cylinders by mechanical impact in the Al Talil neighbourhood of Saraqeb" on February 4.
• The team's conclusions were based on finding two cylinders which were determined as previously containing chlorine. In addition, the OPCW said environmental samples had demonstrated the unusual presence of chlorine in the local environment.
• Its team also interviewed witnesses and found that a "number of patients at medical facilities shortly after the incident showed signs and symptoms consistent with exposure to chlorine". About 11 people were treated after the attack on February 4 for mild and moderate symptoms of toxic chemical exposure, including breathing difficulties, vomiting and unconsciousness.

Syria Thursday May 17, 2018:

• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s summer residence on the Black Sea for talks about the Syrian conflict.

Syria Friday May 17, 2018:

• Explosions were heard near Hama airport. Surface-to-air missiles belonging to Iranian militias were hit.
• The series of explosions were near Hama's military airport and had been heard in Hama city. The blasts killed at least 11 government soldiers and allied fighters.

Syria Saturday May 19, 2018:

• Militants from the Islamic State (IS) group have been evacuated from an enclave in the southern suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus as a temporary ceasefire had come into effect following heavy bombardment by the Syrian military.
• The area includes the once-thriving Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. Buses entered the enclave, centred around the al-Hajar al-Aswad district, and left towards Badia, a thinly populated area east of Damascus where IS still holds some territory. ---

Syria Sunday May 20, 2018:

• At least 28 pro-government fighters have been killed in a string of blasts at a regime airbase in central Syria earlier this weekend.
• The deadly explosions tore through weapons and fuel depots on Friday at a military airport in Hama province.

Syria Monday May 21, 2018:

• Syria's military says it has retaken the last neighbourhoods in southern Damascus held by the Islamic State group and is declaring the capital and its surroundings "completely safe" and free of any militant presence.
• The army captured the former IS strongholds in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp and Hajar al-Aswad after a month-long campaign.

Syria Tuesday May 22, 2018:

• At least 30 Syrian army troops and Iranian-backed militiamen were killed when Islamic State fighters attacked a military outpost near Palmyra in eastern Syria. The militants used suicide bombers and armoured vehicles in the dawn attack near a dam southeast of the ancient Roman city.

Syria Thursday May 24, 2018:

• Syrian state media and a military media unit run by Lebanon's Hezbollah group said early that the U.S.-led coalition targeted Syrian army positions in Syria's desert, but U.S. military officials denied any knowledge of the strikes.
• At least 12 pro-government fighters were killed in the airstrike. None of the fatalities were Syrian nationals but foreign fighters. The bombardment struck bases manned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards allied with the Syrian government. Syria Friday May 25, 2018:
• In fact it was probably Israeli strikes that hit a military base overnight in central Syria housing fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah and others from factions allied with the Damascus government.
• It is not known if there were any casualties at the Dabaa air base and surrounding areas in central Homs province. The base, north of al-Qusair near the border with Lebanon was captured by Hezbollah in 2013 from rebels.

Syria Saturday May 26, 2018:

• Five members of the White Helmets civil defines agency were killed and two injured in an attack in northern Syria.
• Four gunmen attacked a White Helmets centre in opposition-held Tal Hadya town in south-western Aleppo. The attackers stole a vehicle and motorbikes before fleeing the scene unscathed.
• Popularly known as White Helmets, the agency is active in opposition-held areas in Syria.

Syria Sunday May 27, 2018:

• Four Russian military personnel and dozens of rebel fighters have been killed during a battle in eastern Syria's Deir Az Zor province. Fighting erupted after several armed groups attacked an artillery battery belonging to Syrian government forces.
• Two Russian military advisers who directed fire from the Syrian battery were killed on the spot. Five other personnel were wounded and taken to a Russian-run military hospital, where two later died from their wounds. Forty-three rebels were also killed during the battle.
• 92 Russian soldiers have been killed in Syria since Russia entered the country's ongoing war in September 2015. ---

Syria Thursday May 31, 2018:

• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned US-backed Kurdish forces he wouldn't hesitate to use force to retake one-third of the country they currently control. Assad also said that the United States should learn the lesson of Iraq and remove its troops from Syria.
• The only problem left in Syria is the SDF," Assad said, referring to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which spearheaded battles against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). We're going to deal with it by two options:

  . The first one we started now opening doors for negotiations, because the majority of them [SDF] are Syrians.
  . If not, we're going to resort ... to liberating those areas by force. It's our land, it's our right, and it's our duty to liberate it, and the Americans should leave.

Syria Thursday June 7, 2018:

• The Islamic State group jihadists killed 22 pro-regime fighters including 11 soldiers among them two officers, in a surprise attacks in southern Syria.
• Twelve jihadists also lost their lives in the assaults in the desert of the southern province of Sweida.

Syria Friday June 8, 2018:

• Air attacks on a village in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province killed at least 44 people including 11 women and six children overnight. Warplanes, probably Russian, targeted the village of Zardana in northern rural Idlib. Russia's defence ministry denied that it carried out the deadly air strikes. 
• More than 60 people were also injured in the attacks. The attack occurred after Muslims broke their Ramadan fast after sunset. The White Helmets rescue group said the air raids had targeted a market near a mosque.
• The Islamic State group seized parts of Albu Kamal on the Syrian-Iraqi border in a massive operation that further confirmed the jihadists remain a force on the ground.
• IS used at least 10 suicide bombers in its offensive on Albu Kamal, which lies in the Euphrates Valley in eastern Syria and swiftly took several neighbourhoods.

Syria Saturday June 9, 2018:

• The commanding officer of the terrorist group Hezbollah's Rocket Division was killed during an operation against ISIS in the Eastern-Syrian town of Abu Kamal, close to the Syrian-Iraqi border.
• Haj Nasser Jamil Hadraj, also known as Abu Hussian, in what it referred to as "fulfilling his Jihadist duty."

Syria Sunday June 10, 2018:

• At least 17 civilians were killed in raids launched by Syrian fighter jets on a hospital and on populated areas in the Idlib province. The regime warplanes targeted civilians in the cities of Banash, Taftanaz and Ariha, and the villages of Ram Hamdan and Bani Ezz.
• The regime targeted Al-Nour Children's Hospital in Taftnaz, killing five people, including three children. The bombing over Taftanaz killed another eight civilians, while two others were killed in a raid on Ariha and two in Banash and Ram Hamdan. ---

Syria Sunday June 17, 2018:

• Israel is behind an attack in al-Harra, southeast of the town of al-Bukamal, in Syria that killed dozens. According to Syrian state television, the strike targeted pro-regime forces and caused multiple casualties. The airstrike took place on the Iraq-Syria border and killed 22 members of a Shiite militia. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said the number of pro-regime casualties had risen to 52. 

Syria Saturday June 23, 2018:

• Syrian helicopters have dropped barrel bombs on opposition areas of the country’s south-west for the first time in a year in defiance of American demands that president Bashar al-Assad halt the assault.
• Assad has sworn to recapture the area bordering Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the army this week began ramping up an assault there, threatening a “de-escalation” zone agreed upon by the US and Russia last year.
• The US on Thursday reiterated its demand that the zone be respected, warning Assad and his Russian allies of “serious repercussions” of violations. It accused Damascus of initiating air strikes, artillery and rocket attacks.

Syria Monday June 25, 2018:

• Two Israeli missiles struck a target near Damascus International Airport; no casualties or damage were reported.
• The target was an arms depot belonging to the Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah. Syrian air defines systems had intercepted two missiles in addition to the ones fired at the airport.

Syria Tuesday July 3, 2018:

• The Russia-backed Syrian government offensive in Deraa began about two weeks ago, with President Bashar al-Assad's forces now in control of more than 60 percent of the province.
• Rebels remain in control of parts of the provincial capital Deraa City, where the Syrian uprising began in 2011. They also still hold most of the border areas with the Israeli occupied Golan Heights and Jordan.
• But government troops are rapidly closing in on what used to be the gateway for a lucrative trade route before Jordan shut the border in 2015.
• The Syrian Network for Human Rights documented the killing of more than 4759 civilians in the first half of 2018, including 1104 children and 798 women.
• The report accused the Syrian-Russian alliance of killing 3454 civilians in these period, followed by the Islamic groups that killed 205 civilians, Syrian opposition that killed 30 civilians.
• A son of Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a battle. Hudhayfah al-Badri died in a "commando operation" against Syrian government and Russian forces at a power plant in Homs province.
• The whereabouts of his father - whose real name is Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri - are unknown, but the message implied that he was still alive.
• Baghdadi, who has a $25m US bounty on his head, has been reported killed or wounded on a number of occasions. He has not been heard from since September 2017, when he urged supporters to wage attacks against the West and keep fighting in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

Syria Tuesday July 10, 2018:

• A suspected jihadist suicide car bomb attack in southern Syria killed at least eight fighters, including government and rebel forces. The explosion hit Zaizun, a village in the western countryside of Daraa province which rebels agreed in recent days to hand over to regime control.

Syria Wednesday July 11, 2018:

• The Khalid ibn al-Walid Army terror group killed 35 Syrian soldiers and injured 15 others. The attack comes after a recent ceasefire agreement in southern Syria failed to include the Khalid ibn al-Walid Army.
• This was a suicide terror attack and occurred in the town of Zaizun, less than 14 kilometres from the Israeli border.
• The terrorists succeeded in planting an explosive vehicle among Syrian and Russian military vehicles advancing along the Jordanian border towards Israel. ISIS took responsibility for Khalid ibn al-Walid Army's attack and referred to southern Syria as a "province" of ISIS. Russia said none of its soldiers had lost their lives.
• Israel's air force attacked three military positions in Syria. The attack was carried out in response to a Syrian drone that infiltrated Israeli airspace earlier. Israel shot down the drone.  
• Hezbollah positions were hit in the Quneitra province in the Golan Heights. The attack took place in the village of Khan Arnabeh and in another city in Quneitra.

Syria Thursday July 12, 2018:

• The Syrian government forces have retaken Dara’a, a town that was the epicentre of the civil war that engulfed the country.

Syria Friday July 13, 2018:

• The fall to the Syrian army of rebel-held quarters of Deraa city is a famous victory for Damascus. While not equivalent to the army’s capture of insurgent-controlled eastern Aleppo in December 2016 the capture of the 7th-century Omari mosque in Deraa’s city centre was deeply symbolic. It was there that the uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.
• The raising of the Syrian national flag over the mosque marks the end of the conflict in the province and of the armed opposition in southern Syria, and is a message to insurgents and jihadis elsewhere that their time will come.
• Before the Syrian army, bolstered by Russian air power, began its offensive on June 19th, 80 per cent of Deraa province was held by opposition factions; today the situation has been reversed, with the army controlling 80 per cent. Troops are mopping up remaining rebel pockets, including those held by the Islamic State terror group.
• This means the army militarily dominates southern Syria and is on course to assert control over the country’s borders with Jordan and the ceasefire line along the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Syria Saturday July 14, 2018:

• Five persons were killed in an artillery shelling by Assad forces on the village of Lahaia, in the northern countryside of Hama Province.
• Several artillery missiles fell on the village of Lahaia, killing five farmers and wounding others, including women.

Syria Sunday July 15, 2018:

• Troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad widened their offensive in the country's southwest days after reaching an evacuation agreement with rebels in southern Deraa province.
• Pro-government troops, backed by Russian air support, bombed a rebel-held village in Quneitra -an area adjoining the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights- as they want to recapture a strip of land straddling Deraa and Quneitra provinces still in rebel hands.
• Russian fighter jets overflew the village of Mashara, located 11km away from the Golan frontier. Pro-government troops were advancing on the elevated Tel Mashara area.
• Rebel fighters and family members began evacuating southern Deraa city on buses that will take them to opposition-held areas in northern Syria.
• Israeli rockets struck a Syrian military position near Nairab airport on the outskirts of the city of Aleppo.
• According to the Syrian government the strike caused only material damage, while the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that nine "pro-regime fighters" were killed.
• The military base was being used by the Syrian government's chief ally, Iran. In the past, Israel had targeted dozens of sites inside Syria suspected of being Iranian positions.

Syria Tuesday July 17, 2018:

• Dozens of Syrians marched toward the frontier with the Israel-occupied Golan Heights fleeing the Syrian government offensive in southwestern Syria. The displaced waved white flags at the Israeli soldiers before they turned back after Israeli soldiers shouted through loudspeakers asking the crowd to turn back.
• The brief protest on the frontier comes as Syrian and Russian airstrikes intensified in the Quneitra countryside and western Daraa province.
• Earlier at least 10 civilians were killed when a suspected Russian airstrike hit a school that serves as a shelter in the village of Ain el-Tineh in Quneitra countryside, about 7 kilometres from the Israeli

Syria Thursday July 19, 2018:

• The rebels have reached an agreement with government forces to leave the strategic area of Quneitra along the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
• The agreement "stipulates the departure to Idlib of terrorists who reject the settlement", and allow those who wish to remain to "settle" their status with the authorities, meaning accepting a return of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's rule.
• In recent days, government forces regained control of strategic parts of Quneitra, leaving only a few pockets of the province under rebel control. 
• The deal provides for a ceasefire, the handover of heavy and medium weapons and the return of government institutions in the area.

Syria Friday 20, 2018:

• Twenty-six civilians were killed in air strikes on areas controlled by the Islamic State jihadist group in southern Daraa province.
• 11 children were among those killed in day-long strikes by regime and allied Russian aircraft on the last IS-held pocket in Daraa.

Syria Saturday July 21, 2018:

• Evacuations have begun from Syria's Quneitra province, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, under a deal between rebels and the government.
• Under the deal, agreed on Thursday, fighters and any civilians who choose to leave will travel to opposition-held Idlib in the north. Pro-government forces will then take control of the south-western province for the first time since 2011.
• On Friday, 28 buses had arrived in the province to begin the evacuations, although it is unclear how many people will leave Quneitra. The Russian-brokered deal is the latest in a series of agreements between rebels and the government.
• It came a day after the evacuation of the last two besieged pro-government towns in northern Syria was completed. Buses and ambulances on Wednesday took 7,000 residents and fighters from Foah and Kefraya to government-held territory in Aleppo.
• Meanwhile, pro-government forces are continuing operations to retake remaining areas of neighbouring Deraa province, including the Yarmouk basin, which is under the control of the Islamic State group. ---

Syria Wednesday July 25, 2018:

• A series of suicide bombings and attacks in southwest Syria have killed at least 215 people by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).
• A suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a busy vegetable market in the city of Sweida, some 120km south from the capital Damascus as ISIL fighters mounted attacks on several villages to the northeast. The bomber drove through the market on a motorcycle and blew himself up.
• Fighters from ISIL reportedly attacked three villages northeast of Sweida city, killing and wounding a number of people.

Syria Sunday July 29, 2018:

• Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters seized 36 women and children during simultaneous attacks on the southeastern province of Sweida. 20 women and 16 children - most of them from the minority Druze sect prevalent in Sweida- were seized from al-Shobki village in Sweida during Wednesday attacks.
• The ISIS kidnappers have made demands for the women and children's release, but the families have not said what they're demanding.
• Syrian warplanes carried out a number of airstrikes targeting ISIS positions in the northern and eastern countryside of Sweida. The strikes targeted the Kara'a area, which is considered a major ISIS stronghold in the desert of Sweida province.

Syria Saturday August 4, 2018:

• A research director at a military agency linked to Syria's chemical weapons program (or was it missiles) was assassinated. Aziz Esber, of the Scientific Studies and Research Center, died in a blast targeting his car in Syria's Hama province. Esber's driver was also killed in the blast.
• Esber specialized in developing rocket systems at the centre’s Masyaf facility in Hama.
• Israel was suspected of carrying out the attack. There was no comment from Israeli or Syrian government officials.

Syria Friday August 10, 2018:

• At least 53 civilians including 28 children, have been killed in fierce bombardment that targeted rebel-held areas of northern Syria.
• The air strikes and barrel bombs targeted the key opposition-held province of Idlib and a rebel town in the adjacent province of Aleppo.

Syria Sunday August 12, 2018:

• The blast occurred in the village of Sarmada near the Turkish border, killing 36 people and wounding many others. The explosion collapsed two five-story buildings, burying many of the victims.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 39, including 21 women and children.
• An arms depot, run by an arms dealer close to the Levant Liberation Committee, in the basement of a building had detonated.

Syria Monday August 13. 2018:

• Between 20,000 and 30,000 members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, remain in Iraq and Syria despite its defeat and a halt in the flow of foreigners joining its rank. They are roughly equally distributed between the two countries.
• The report by UN sanctions monitors estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 ISIL fighters were based in Libya, while some of the key operatives in the armed group were being relocated to Afghanistan.
• Among these is still a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters. ---

Syria Friday August 17, 2018:

• The Iraqi army has killed 28 members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, after carrying out two air strikes on eastern Syria.
• F-16 fighter jets targeted a meeting of potential suicide bombers who intended to target various locations in Iraq during next week's Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

 

Syria Saturday August 25, 2018:

• ISIL has taken a group of at least 27 people hostage in the sparsely populated Sweida desert in southern Syria. Among those kidnapped, who are mostly of members of the minority Druze community, are at least 16 children aged between seven and 15.
• ISIL (also known as ISIS) is planning to use the hostages as leverage in negotiations with the Syrian government and Russia

Syria Saturday September 1, 2018:

• A car bomb attack in a rebel-held town near Syria's border with Turkey has killed at least one person and wounded several others.
• The explosion occurred in Azaz, a town located 32km north of the city of Aleppo.
• Blasts heard at the Mezzeh airbase near Damascus were caused by missile strikes targeting the base and by Syrian air defines systems responding.
• The explosions resulted from Israeli air strikes; they caused deaths and injuries.

Syria Sunday September 2, 2018:

• A series of loud explosions from an airbase outside the Syrian capital, Damascus, was caused by an electrical fault.
• The explosions, which occurred at the al-Mezzeh airbase on Damascus' western outskirts, were heard across the city and were initially thought to be the result of an Israeli attack.
• The explosions heard in Damascus were due to the explosion of an ammunition depot near the airport, which was caused by a short-circuit.
• There were no casualties at the scene.

Syria Tuesday September 4, 2018:

• Donald Trump has warned Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian president’s allies Iran and Russia not to “recklessly attack” in the rebel-held Idlib province, warning that hundreds of thousands of people could be killed.
• Up to three million people in the region are bracing for imminent attack by Russian forces who sense victory in one of the last parts of Syria still out of regime control.
• Air raids have pounded areas in Syria's last rebel-held province of Idlib, killing several civilians and raising further concerns that an all-out government offensive is only a matter of time.
• A full-scale military offensive would be devastating for the nearly three million people living in the province, including many rebels and civilians who were bussed out of other areas as they came back under government control.
• At least 24 raids -the first in three weeks- hit the area. The bombing mainly targeted the city of Jisr al-Shughour on Idlib's western edge, along with its surrounding towns and villages.

Syria Wednesday September 5, 2018:

• The Syrian military shelled the last stronghold of active rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad and insurgents blew up another bridge in anticipation of a government offensive.
• Syria, backed by allies Russia and Iran, has been preparing an assault to recover Idlib and adjacent areas of the northwest. They have resumed air strikes.

Syria Saturday September 8, 2018:

• Syrian government and Russian warplanes targeted the southern edge of Idlib province with an intense wave of airstrikes and shelling.
• The intense air raids came a day after Iran and Russia backed a military campaign in the rebel-held area despite Turkey's pleas for a cease-fire.
• The government was retaliating against overnight shelling from rebel-held areas on a government-held town in Hama province, south of Idlib. The shelling late Friday in Mhradah killed nine civilians.
• There were more than 30 air raids on a number of towns and villages in southwestern Idlib and Hama province. The intense raids forced schools to close in Khan Sheikhoun.

Syria Friday September 14, 2018:

• At least 20 fighters from a US-backed force fighting the Islamic State group were killed in an IS ambush in eastern Syria. The fighters were advancing during a sandstorm, they were surrounded, IS members used explosives and opened fire.
• The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces is waging an offensive around the town of Hajin in the province of Deir Ezzor, the jihadist group's last stronghold in the country's east.
• The US-backed SDF had been closing in on the IS pocket for months before formally launching its offensive on Monday. Since then, 53 jihadists and 37 SDF fighters have been killed in fierce clashes. ---

Syria Saturday September 15, 2018:

• U.S.-backed Syrian forces entered an eastern village held by the Islamic State group where intense clashes are ongoing a day after the extremists reportedly killed 20 fighters.
• The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces fighters stormed Bagouz and are close to the centre of the village. They plan to open another front in the Sousseh area along the Euphrates River to increase pressure on the extremists.

Syria Monday September 17, 2018:

• Syria's coastal city of Latakia, which hosts a large Russian naval base and military presence, has come under attack from an unclaimed missile strike that Syria attributes to Israel.
• An air battle took place as missiles streaked in and an ammunition depot and technical industry may have been hit.
• Syrian Air defences have confronted enemy missiles coming from the sea in the direction of the Latakia city, and intercepted number of them.  Syria blamed Israel for the strike.
• Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Moscow will supply an S-300 anti-missile system to Syria within two weeks.
• The announcement comes a week after the ministry accused Israel of indirectly causing the downing of a Russian military plane in Syria that killed 15 servicemen.

Syria Tuesday September 18, 2018:

• Syria antiaircraft fire downed a Russian military plane after an Israeli attack on Syrian positions, killing 15 people on board. Syrian missiles shot the maritime patrol aircraft down amid an attack by Israeli jets in the Latakia region of northwest Syria.
• Moscow blamed Israel for putting its aircraft in the line of fire and said it had only a minute's notice of the strike. As a result of the irresponsible actions of the Israeli military, 15 Russian servicemen were killed.
• In a rare acknowledgment of its military activity in the region, Israel expressed "sorrow" for the loss of Russian life, but blamed the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. The Israeli Defence Forces said it had followed well-established protocols in communicating with Moscow, which are intended to prevent such incidents.
• Israel holds the Assad regime, whose military shot down the Russian plane, fully responsible for this incident adding that Iran and Hezbollah were also accountable.
• Syrian antiaircraft batteries "fired indiscriminately and from what we understand did not bother to ensure no Russian planes were in the air."

Syria Monday October 1, 2018:

• Russia has delivered new anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, two weeks after a Russian reconnaissance aircraft was shot down in the country. Four S-300s launchers had arrived in Syria on Monday.
• Fifteen Russian servicemen died when their Il-20 plane was accidentally downed by Syrian forces during an Israeli air strike in Latakia province. Russia blamed Israel for the incident, a charge denied by Israel.

Syria Friday October 5, 2018:

• Fighting erupted between Turkey-backed rebels and jihadist hardliners in northwest Syria while a car bomb killed four people near the Turkish border.
• Fighting first began between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by former Al-Qaeda fighters, and Nour al-Din Al-Zinki in the town of Kafr Halab.
• HTS had been trying to arrest a local commander present in the town on the western edge of Aleppo province, near the administrative border with Idlib province.
• Reinforcements were sent to the area, and the clashes expanded to several areas and the National Liberation Front joined in.

Syria Saturday October 6, 2018:

• Two Syrian rebel groups began withdrawing their heavy weapons from a northwestern area of the country where Russia and Turkey have agreed to set up a demilitarized zone.
• The Free Idlib Army and Failaq al-Sham started removing artillery and mortar pieces from areas close to the town of Maaret al-Numan. However there was no immediate confirmation from the two groups that are part of the Turkey-backed National Liberation Front, a coalition of 12 rebel factions. ---

Syria Tuesday October 9, 2018:

• Syrian rebel fighters have withdrawn their heavy weapons from the frontlines around Idlib province. Rockets, mortars and missiles had been removed in line with a deal to create a demilitarised buffer zone separating rebel and government forces.
• The agreement is being overseen by Turkey, which backs the rebels, and Russia, a key ally of the government. They want to avert a government assault on Idlib, the last major rebel bastion. The UN has warned that a full-scale battle could trigger a "humanitarian nightmare unlike any seen in the blood-soaked Syrian conflict".

Syria Wednesday October 10, 2018:

• A planned buffer zone in the northwestern province of Idlib has been cleared of heavy weapons as part of a deal reached between Moscow and Ankara.
• The National Liberation Front (NLF), an umbrella organisation of Turkey-backed rebels that includes the Free Syrian Army, confirmed that it had completed the process of withdrawing its heavy weapons from Idlib, the last rebel-held bastion in Syria.
• The heavy weapons - including tanks and cannons - have been moved to the back lines of the de-militarised zone so that they are no longer a target for the Russian warplanes. The rebels will remain in their defence lines with small arms and light weapons.
• The agreement, signed on September 17 in Russian resort city of Sochi, aims to stave off a large-scale government assault on Idlib by creating a 15-20km buffer zone.
• Two children have died in a desert camp for displaced people along the Syria-Jordan border. The children died in the past 48 hours due to lack of medical care. A 5-day-old boy and a 4-month-old girl died in the squalid Rukban camp, which houses over 40,000 people.
• The Syrian government forces have cut off roads used for aid deliveries to Rukban, exacerbating the camp's poor conditions.
• UNICEF has a clinic in Jordan near the border but that more sophisticated health care services are needed.

Syria Thursday October 11, 2018:

• U.S.-backed fighters braved a sandstorm to battle the Islamic State group in eastern Syria. The heavy clashes killed several fighters on both sides.
• The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led group was fighting to retake the village of Sousah, where the extremists took advantage of the poor visibility to launch a counteroffensive.
• The fighting began Wednesday and killed at least 10 U.S.-allied fighters, with the fate of 35 others unknown. 18 IS militants were killed.
• Sousah is in one of the last pockets of territory held by IS, which has put up stiff resistance. The advancing SDF has had to contend with mines, sniper fire and suicide attacks.

Syria Friday October 12, 2018:

• The Islamic State group stormed a settlement for displaced people in eastern Syria and abducted scores of civilians in the latest attack by the extremists on civilians.
• The area in the eastern Deir el-Zour province has been witnessing days of intense clashes between IS and the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces amid bad weather and low visibility.
• The fighting in the Hajin camp for the displaced left 20 IS gunmen and "several" SDF fighters dead. IS gunmen seized civilians by force and took them to areas in the last pocket of territory they control in the region.
• As many as 130 families were abducted by the extremists that IS might kill them. The families are mostly made up of foreign women, including widows of IS members who had been killed earlier in the Syrian war.

Syria Saturday October 13, 2018:

• Rebel fighters fired mortar shells from a planned buffer zone in northwestern Syria, despite an apparent heavy arms pull-out days earlier.
• The rebels in the demilitarised zone around the northwestern region of Idlib fired several "mortar shells at an army position in nearby Hama province, killing two soldiers.
• Also rebels shelled Aleppo province from other parts of the demilitarised area, with no casualties recorded.

Syria Friday October 19, 2018:

• Airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition on a town held by the Islamic State group have killed and wounded dozens. The airstrikes on Sousa Thursday and Friday left several people dead or wounded.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a much higher death toll saying 46 people were killed since Thursday, including civilians and IS fighters.
• Sousa is in the last IS-held pocket where U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been on the offensive for weeks trying to clear the area of the extremists.
• Last week IS fighters stormed a settlement for displaced people and kidnapped 130 families from the area.

Syria Saturday October 20, 2018:

• An offensive by US-backed forces against the Daesh group’s last redoubt in eastern Syria killed 35 terrorists. Twenty-eight Daesh members were killed in air strikes by the US-led coalition around the town of Hajin.
• Another seven terrorists were killed in ground fighting with the Syrian Democratic Forces, who launched a coalition-backed offensive against the Daesh-held pocket in the Euphrates Valley last month.
• Fighting has killed 414 terrorists and 227 SDF fighters in total since the assault began on September 10.
• Coalition air strikes on Daesh targets in another part of the pocket on Thursday and Friday killed at least 41 civilians, 10 of them children.

Syria Wednesday October 24, 2018:

• An airstrike on a pocket held by the Islamic State group in the country's east has killed several people. The airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition killed several people.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 16 people were killed including nine IS fighters. The airstrike in the village of Sousa struck near a mosque.
• The incident came days after the coalition said an airstrike on a mosque in the area targeted an insurgent command-and-control centre killing a dozen fighters. While the law of war protects mosques, the use of the building as a headquarters by IS caused it to lose that protected status.

 

Syri Saturday October 27, 2018:

• Islamic State militants killed at least 40 Syrian fighters backed by the United States, captured several alive and regained areas they lost earlier this month in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border.
• Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, have been on the offensive since early September under the cover of airstrikes by the American-led coalition to capture the last pocket held by the Islamic State in Syria.
• The fighting began when Islamic State militants, taking advantage of a sandstorm, launched a counteroffensive against the Syrian Democratic Forces in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq.

Syria Saturday November 3, 2018:

• At least 15 civilians, mostly women and children, have lost their lives after the US-led warplanes lunched airstrikes against a town in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

Syria Sunday November 4, 2018:

• Twelve fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were killed and 20 wounded in a suicide car bombing and subsequent clashes in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. However an SDF spokesman, however, denied any members of his Kurdish-led alliance had been killed.
• The attack "started with a car bomb driven by a suicide attacker against an SDF position between Hajin and Al-Bahra. The attack allowed IS to advance towards Al-Bahra from its holdout around Hajin, and push back the first lines of defence of the SDF, which is backed by the US-led coalition.
• The monitor said 14 civilians and nine IS jihadists were killed Saturday in coalition air strikes in Hajin and the nearby towns of Sousa and Al-Shaafa. Those strikes targeted IS positions.
• The strikes killed ISIS terrorists and destroyed three operational facilities critical to ISIS's operations.

Syria Monday November 5, 2018

• Six Russian mercenaries were killed in an explosion at a military base in Syria.
• Russian citizens working for the private Wagner Group military contractor have carried out clandestine missions on the Kremlin’s behalf in eastern Ukraine and Syria, people with ties to the group have alleged. Dozens of Wagner fighters were reportedly killed by U.S. airstrikes and artillery attacks in Syria earlier this year. Mercenaries are banned under Russian law and the Kremlin has regularly denied their presence in war-torn Syria.

Syria Thursday November 8, 2018:

• Syrian troops have liberated 19 women and children hostages held by the Islamic State group since July in a military operation in the country's centre, ending a months-long crisis that has stunned Syria's Druze religious minority. An opposition war monitor said the release was part of an exchange.
• The operation occurred in the Hamima area east of the historic town of Palmyra. IS fighters in the area where the hostages were held have been killed.

Syria Friday November 9, 2018:

• Twenty-six IS family members including 14 children and 9 women were killed in coalition air strikes on the town of Hajin.
• On Thursday, coalition raids killed another seven civilians in the nearby village of Al-Shaafa.
• Both Hajin and Al-Shaafa are in a last pocket under IS control in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor near the border with Iraq.
• Extremists have killed at least eight Syrian government troops near a planned buffer zone around the country’s last major rebel bastion. The attack took place in the north of Hama province.
• The attack was led by fighters of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, an alliance led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda branch which is the dominant force in Idlib.

Syria Saturday November 10, 2018:

• The Syrian government renewed its bombing campaign on several targets around the opposition-held Idlib province over the weekend, with the northern region witnessing some of the heaviest fighting since the Sochi ceasefire deal.
• Clashes in the countryside of Hama have been the most intense, with regime shelling targeting the village of Halfaya and Al-Lataminah on Friday, resulting in the deaths of some 22 fighters belonging to the Jaysh Al-Izza faction.
• On Saturday, the province’s largest opposition group Hayaat Tahrir Al-Shaam responded and alleged that 20 Syrian soldiers were killed; the recently opened Morek border crossing was subsequently closed for two days as a result of the fighting.

Syria Tuesday November 13, 2018:

• A blast on a bus carrying passengers in the government-controlled city of Homs injured six people in the al-Zahra neighbourhood.

Syria Saturday November 17, 2018:

• U.S-led coalition airstrikes on the last pocket held by Islamic State militants near the Iraqi border killed at least 40 people, mostly women and children.
• The coalition confirmed strikes in the area but said no "civilian casualties are associated" with them, reiterating that it takes measures to avoid non-combatant casualties.
• Witnesses said that the airstrikes hit homes in Abu al-Hassan village, near the town of Hajin, which lies along the border with Iraq. At least 43 people, including 17 children and 12 women were killed. It was not immediately clear if the men killed in the strikes were militants.
• Syrian government forces have wrested control over the last holdout of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the country's south. They liberated the Tulul al-Safa hilly region, situated between Damascus and Suwayda provinces.

Syria Friday November 23, 2018:

• Armed men in rebel-held Idlib province assassinated an activist today who ran a radio station that provided independent news and satirised both President Bashar al-Assad and opposition insurgents.
• The unidentified gunmen shot Raed al-Fares, along with his friend Hamoud al-Juneid, in the town of Kafranbel, home to the Radio Fresh station.
• Mr Fares gained prominence early in the uprising against Mr Assad, which began with mass demonstrations in 2011 and slid into civil war, with protest banners that drew international attention on social media.
• The banners targeted Mr Assad, his ally Iran, western powers that Mr Fares portrayed as selling out ordinary Syrians through their response to the crisis, and the jihadist militants who had emerged in the chaos.
• Mr Fares also distributed photographs and video clips showing the toll that war was taking in Kafranbel, providing a picture of life in rebel-held parts of Syria where it was dangerous for foreign media to visit.

Syria Saturday November 24, 2018:

• Counter-attacks by ISIS killed at least 47 US-backed fighters over two days as the extremists struck from their besieged holdout in eastern Syria.
• The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led alliance supported by the US, is battling to expel ISIS from the eastern province of Deir Ezzor on the Iraqi border.
• The militants launched three separate assaults. The counter-attacks were against the villages of Al Bahra and Gharanij and an area close to the Al-Tanak oilfield, which is commercially active but is also an SDF military position.
• Saturday's fighting alone killed 29 SDF fighters, taking its total losses over the last two days to at least 47.
• Insurgent shells wounded dozens of people in Syria’s Aleppo, causing choking. Government shelling killed nine people in rebel-held Idlib.
• Two women and seven children were killed in Jarjanaz village in Idlib province, where Russia and Turkey have agreed a buffer zone.

Syria Saturday December 1, 2018:

• Gunmen opened fire at the convoy of a joint humanitarian assessment mission in eastern Syria wounding a local driver in one of the country's most remote areas where fighting against Islamic State militants has displaced thousands.
• The driver is recovering from gunshot wounds. Two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire at the clearly marked convoy. The convoy was dispatched to assess dire humanitarian conditions due to the escalation in fighting.

Syria Sunday December 2, 2018:

• A strike killed an ISIS leader in Syria who was tied to the death of a US citizen. The strikes were against "a senior ISIS member, Abu al Umarayn, and several other ISIS members."
• Al Umarayn had given indications of posing an imminent threat to coalition forces, and he was involved in the killing of American citizen and former US Army Ranger Peter Kassig. He has been linked to and directly involved with executing several other prisoners as a senior ISIS member.
• The US-led coalition has conducted hundreds of air and artillery strikes aimed at driving ISIS from its last remaining pocket of territory in Syria.

Syria Wednesday December 5, 2018:

• At least five civilians have been killed in eastern Syria during a new airstrike by the US-led coalition.
• The attack targeted Hajjin village in the province of Dayr al-Zawr. Dozens of people were also wounded as a result of the bombardment.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights recently reported that the air raids killed as many as 206 civilians in Dayr al-Zawr only in November.

Syria, Friday December 7, 2018:

• Air strikes by a US-led coalition battling the Daesh group in east Syria killed nine civilians including six children, and two IS jihadists.
• The Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by coalition airpower, has been fighting to oust Daesh from the pocket in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor since September.
• Air raids and artillery fire by the international coalition and the SDF are going on against neighbourhoods of the town of Hajjin.
• The SDF broke into the key Daesh holdout of Hajjin on Thursday after months of fighting that has seen the militants launch vicious counter-attacks.

Syria Sunday December 16, 2018:

• At least eight people were killed and more than 20 people injured as twin blasts struck a market place in northern Syria's Afrin town, a region that the Turkish Armed Forces and the Free Syria Army had liberated from the YPG terrorist group earlier this year.
• The explosion appeared to have been caused by a car bomb. An explosives-laden vehicle was detonated in a busy vegetable market in the town of Afrin. ---

Syria Monday December 24, 2018:

• Turkish-backed fighters said they are preparing to move into eastern Syria alongside Turkish troops once American forces withdraw and are already massing on the front line of a town held by Kurdish-led forces.
• The U.S. pull-out will leave the oil-rich eastern third of Syria up for grabs. It is currently controlled by Kurdish-led forces that the Americans have backed over the past four years, with multiple parties seeking to move in. They now face a triple threat from the Syrian government, IS and Turkey, which views them as terrorists because of their links to a Kurdish insurgent group inside Turkey.
• The Turkey-backed Syrian opposition groups have up to 15,000 trained fighters ready to deploy alongside Turkish forces, and they are already preparing to move into Manbij _ a Kurdish-administered town in northern Syria where U.S. troops are based. There is ``no alternative'' to Turkish forces and their allies replacing U.S troops.

Syria January 2, 2019:

• Two days of fighting in rebel-held parts of northern Syria killed dozens of people as al-Qaida-linked militants press their offensive against Turkey-backed rebels.
• With their offensive, the al-Qaida-linked fighters are trying to cut off Turkey-backed fighters in the northern enclave of Afrin from those in the northwestern province of Idlib, amid concerns that Turkey might make a deal with Russia at the expense of the extremists.
• The al-Qaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee and the Turkey-backed Nour el-Din el-Zinki group blamed each other for triggering the fighting, the worst in nearly three months.
• Two days of fighting in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib have killed 31 people, including five civilians. Also killed were 14 al-Qaida-linked fighters and 12 Turkey-backed gunmen.

Syria Saturday January 5, 2019:

• An airstrike on a village held by the Islamic State group in the country’s east killed at least 10 people including four children as the offensive on the last area held by the extremists in Syria intensifies.
• The airstrike on the village of Kishkiyeh was carried out by the U.S.-led coalition, reporting it killed 10 civilians, including four children.

Syria January 6, 2019:

• Two members of the British Special Forces have been wounded in an attack by ISIS fighters.
• The soldiers were hit by an ISIS missile attack on a Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) base in the east Syrian town of Shafa, Deir ez-Zor. A Kurdish fighter was killed in the attack.
• Due to a smart missile attack by ISIS, a fighter of the YPG was killed and another wounded, in addition to two British soldiers. The two British soldiers are in a stable condition, the official added.

Syria Tuesday January 8, 2010:

• There has been more fighting between the two largest rebel alliances in northern Syria, killing more than 80 people, including civilians.
• The Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) has deployed fighters along the front lines in the western Aleppo countryside to stop the rapid advance of the Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group.
• The HTS accused the FSA of killing some of its fighters and says it is advancing to stop the FSA, while Russia is bombing villages, claiming it wants to stop HTS's advance towards the agreed de-escalation zones.

Syria Friday January 11, 2019:

• Israeli warplanes fired a number of missiles toward the Damascus area triggering Syrian air defences that shot down most of them. The results of the aggression so far were limited to a strike on one of the warehouses at Damascus airport.
• Israel has mounted attacks in Syria as part of its effort to counter the influence carved out there by Iran, which has supported President Bashar al-Assad in the war that erupted in 2011.
• The last Israeli attack reported by Syrian state media was Dec. 25, when a missile attack wounded three Syrian soldiers. Israel had carried out more than 200 attacks against Iranian targets in Syria in the last two years.

 

Syria Sunday January 13, 2019:

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel carried out an air raid on Iranian weapons in Syria over the weekend, a rare public confirmation of such attacks.
• Israeli warplanes fired a number of missiles towards Damascus, with one striking a warehouse at the airport. The raids triggered Syrian air defence to shoot down most of them.

 Syria Wednesday January 16, 2019:

• ISIS has claimed responsibility for a deadly explosion that killed four Americans and at least 10 other people in Manbij. The American deaths included two US service members, a ‘defined’ contractor and a Department of Defence civilian. Three other US service members were injured in the attack.
• The American civilian was an intelligence expert who was with the troops hoping to collect information about security and adversaries in the area.
• Eight civilians and two fighters from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in the blast.
• Prior to Wednesday's attack, only two US service members had been killed in action in Syria since the start of the campaign in 2014.

 Syria Sunday January 20, 2019:

• An explosion occurred in a southern neighbourhood of the capital, Damascus. The blast, which happened during rush hour on the first working day of the week, appears to have been "a terrorist act".
• The explosion struck near a military intelligence office in Damascus. The explosion took place near a security branch in the south of the city. There are some people killed and injured but we could not verify the toll immediately," the monitor said in a statement.
• It was unclear if the blast was caused by a bomb that was planted or a suicide attack; shooting followed the explosion.

 

Syria Monday January 21, 2019:

• The Israeli military said that it had attacked Iranian military targets in Syria, capping an exchange of blows in a rare, direct confrontation between the two antagonists that risks escalating the fight over Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria.
• The latest strikes, most likely the broadest wave in months, were in retaliation for Iranian forces launching a surface-to-surface missile from the Damascus area on Sunday toward the northern part of the Israeli-held Golan Heights. The missile had endangered a ski resort and other areas where civilians were present, but that it had been successfully intercepted by Israel’s air defences.
• The Iranian missile, in turn, was fired shortly after a strike against a weapons store in Syria, for which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel strongly hinted that his country was responsible.
• Israel’s acknowledgment of its strikes reflect a shift in policy, with the country increasingly taking responsibility for specific attacks in Syrian territory after years of ambiguity.
• An Islamic State suicide bomber targeted a joint convoy of U.S. and allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria, marking the second attack against U.S. troops in less than a week and further highlighting the dangers surrounding U.S. plans to withdraw forces after a declaration that the extremist group had been defeated. There were no casualties among the U.S.-led coalition members.
• This bombing came days after a suicide attack killed 19 people, including two U.S. service members and two American civilians, in the northern Syrian town of Manbij. That bombing was the deadliest assault on U.S. troops in Syria since American forces moved into the country in 2015 and underscored the threat still posed by IS militants, even as President Donald Trump has claimed the group's defeat.
• The extremist group claimed both attacks. IS has been driven from virtually all the territory it once held in Syria and Iraq but continues to carry out attacks in both countries.
• The blast targeted a Syrian Kurdish checkpoint as a coalition convoy was passing near the town of Shaddadeh. Two Kurdish fighters were lightly wounded in the blast. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blast killed five people and wounded others.

 

Syria Tuesday January 22, 2019:

• A car bomb exploded at a busy intersection in the coastal city of Latakia, killing one civilian and wounding 14.
• The explosion took place in the city's al-Hammam Square. Specialised units dismantled a second bomb before it went off at the same location.

 

Syria Saturday February 2, 2019:

• A building damaged during years of war in Aleppo collapsed, killing 11 people, including four children. The five-story building collapsed killing most of those who were inside and only one person was rescued alive.
• The building is in the eastern Salahuddin neighbourhood, once held by rebels.
• A roadside bomb struck a bus carrying teachers in Manbij killing one person. The device exploded as the bus passed, killing the driver and wounding at least four others.
• Manbij is a former Islamic State (IS) group stronghold that is now held by a military council affiliated to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-Arab force that is supported by a US-led coalition.
• On January 16, four Americans were among 19 people killed in a suicide attack in the city claimed by IS.
• On Friday, an explosion wounded a senior leader of the military council as he was on patrol.

Syria Saturday February 2, 2019:

• A building damaged during years of war in the northern city of Aleppo collapsed killing 11 people, including four children. The five-story building collapsed killing most of those who were inside and only one person was rescued alive.
• The building is in the eastern Salahuddin neighbourhood, once held by rebels.

Syria Friday February 8, 2019:

• A mine has exploded in agricultural land in the central province of Hama killing seven civilians and wounding another. The mine blast occurred east of the central town of Salamiyeh; it was left behind by militants who once inhabited the area.
• The area east of Salamiyeh was once controlled by the Islamic State group before government forces drove them out in recent years.
• Mines and booby traps have killed and maimed thousands of Syrians since the conflict began nearly eight years ago.
• Syria's conflict began in March 2011 and has killed more than 450,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced 11 million from their homes, including 5 million who are now refugees.

Syria Sunday February 10, 2019:

• A suicide bombing has hit a U.S.-Kurdish convoy in northern Syria, making it the second suicide attack to target American troops in five days.
• On Thursday, two U.S. soldiers and two other Americans working for the coalition in Syria were killed in a suicide bombing in Manbij in an attack later claimed by ISIS.
• Two U.S. soldiers were injured in Monday's attack and five of their Syria Democratic Forces escorts were killed. The bombing was caused by a suicide bomber who detonated himself in a booby-trapped vehicle he was driving, he targeted a column of the U.S. Forces accompanied by members of the Syria Democratic Forces to protect them during their roam in the area.

Syria Tuesday February 12, 2019:

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israeli forces had carried out another strike in Iran-aligned Syria, a day after the Syrian army said an Israeli drone fired missiles near a demolished hospital and an army observation post.
• “We are operating every day, including yesterday, against Iran. All the time. Against Iran and against its attempt to entrench itself in the area,” Netanyahu told reporters before flying to Poland for a Mideast conference.

Syria Friday February 22, 2019:

• Trump agreed to keep about 200 US troops in Syria as part of planned multinational force that would maintain a safe zone in northeastern Syria. This force would be in addition to the 200 troops the US is planning to maintain after the withdrawal at its base in at-Tanf, Syria.
• Trump denied that the decision represented a reversal of his previous position.

Syria Sunday February 24, 2019:

• At least 20 people have been killed when a landmine planted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) exploded under a van carrying farm workers.
• The blast took place near the central town of Salamiyeh in Hama province and was caused by explosives left behind by ISIL. The mine hit a vehicle packed with agricultural workers heading out to pick desert truffles.
• The explosion was the second such incident since February 8 when a landmine planted by ISIL in rural Hama exploded killing seven civilians.

Syria Friday March 1, 2019:

• U.S.-backed Syrian forces resumed military operations to liberate the last piece of territory held by the Islamic state group in Syria after evacuating thousands of civilians and hostages who have been besieged inside.
• Fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have begun clashing with the militants and advancing after the last batch of civilians left the territory. Those left inside are fighters who do not wish to surrender.
• The military campaign to uproot the militants from the eastern banks of the Euphrates River began in September, pushing them down toward this last corner in the village of Baghouz, near the Iraqi border. The military operation was halted on February 12 as the SDF said a large of civilians and hostages were holed up in the territory, which sits atop caves and tunnels where they had been hiding.
• The remaining speck of IS-controlled land in Baghouz village is also along the Euphrates from one side and the desert near the Iraqi border from the other. Thousands of civilians were living in a tent encampment and houses along the riverside.

Syria Tuesday March 5, 2019:

• A prominent French militant who joined the Islamic State group, Jean-Michel Clain, was killed in a mortar strike over the weekend as he struggled with wounds suffered in an earlier airstrike that killed his jihadi brother.
• The wife, who identified herself as Dorothee Maquere, said another French woman who had joined IS, Hayat Boumeddiene, was killed in another strike last week that allegedly hit a safe house known as the "French House," where many French nationals were staying. Boumeddiene had been wanted by French police as a suspected accomplice in a 2015 attack in the Paris region.
• Maquere was one of hundreds of people who over the past two days streamed out of Baghouz, the last village held by the Islamic State group, under stepped-up assault the past four days by U.S.-backed forces. The latest wave of evacuations brings the final defeat of IS by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces one step closer - a milestone in the devastating four-year campaign to defeat the group's so-called "caliphate" that once covered a vast territory straddling both Syria and Iraq.
• Maquere, who is also French, said that the situation inside Baghouz was a "horror film," saying there is a "massacre" inside, with constant shooting. People had to lay flat to avoid the crossfire adding that there were "no more homes, we live underground in tunnels and tents.

Syria Thursday March 14, 2019:

• The death toll in northwestern Idlib province has risen to 15 following Syrian government forces launched air strikes in the rebel-held area.
• Along with artillery barrages, Russian warplanes attacked central Idlib and its rural outskirts with four air raids on Wednesday, resulting in the casualties that included eight children.
• The attacks, which wounded 49 civilians, targeted the al-Kaseeh neighbourhood, damaging residential buildings.

Syria Tuesday March 19, 2019:

• The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are now in control of an ISIS encampment in Baghouz, after weeks of operations and attacks on the village. But isolated gun battles are continuing in the area, seen as ISIS's last remaining redoubt.
• The last holdouts of ISIS have been largely confined to Baghuoz since last month. The Kurdish-led SDF launched a new offensive on March 10, after slowing its push to allow civilians to flee — and to let thousands of ISIS fighters and their families surrender.

Syria Thursday March 20, 2019:

• U.S.-backed Kurdish forces have captured five ISIS fighters believed to have been involved in the deadly suicide bomb blast in Manbij last January that killed four Americans.
• U.S. officials have interrogated the fighters since they were first detained weeks ago.
• The five were captured in the Manbij area by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) several weeks ago.
• On January 16, an ISIS suicide bomber exploded a bomb at a restaurant in Manbijg that was frequented by U.S. personnel stationed in the town.
• The attack was the deadliest incident for American forces in Syria since they arrived in late 2015.

Syria Saturday March 23. 2019:

• ISIS has lost its final stronghold in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces brought an end to the so-called caliphate declared by the terrorist group in 2014.
• The coalition of Kurdish and Arab soldiers backed by US, British and French Special Forces said it defeated ISIS and fully liberated Baghouz in eastern Syria.
• The SDF said it had lost 11,000 "forces, leaders and fighters" battling the militant group. But it vowed to continue the fight against any elements of ISIS sleeper cells, which "still pose a great danger on our region and the whole world."
• Ending weeks of combat, the US-backed Syrian forces raised a yellow flag atop a building in the town as they celebrated the victory over ISIS.
• Syrian state media cited a hospital in government-held Hama as saying 21 people suffered choking symptoms from poison gas after rebels shelled a village.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said 21 people were hospitalized with choking symptoms, but it was not known if this was from chemicals or smoke and dust raised by the shelling.
• The attack took place in the village of al-Rasif. The area is near the frontline between the Syrian government and the last major rebel enclave in the northwest where army bombardment has escalated in recent weeks despite a Russian-Turkish deal to stop fighting.
• On Friday and Saturday, airstrikes on rebel-held areas in the northwest killed 15 people including four children and injured 25 others.

Syria Sunday March 24, 2019:

• A local driver working with a team of journalists from NBC News was killed in an explosion in eastern Syria. A device had exploded near the group killing the driver but not harming the rest of the team.
• The explosion happened a number of hours after the United States-backed militia fighting the Islamic State in Syria announced the end of the jihadists’ control of any territory in Iraq and Syria.

Syria Tuesday March 26, 2019:

• The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack on a checkpoint of U.S.-backed forces in the northern Syrian town on Manbij that killed seven fighters on Tuesday.
• The attack indicates that IS can still launch deadly insurgent strikes and is far from being completely defeated, despite losing all the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria. Islamic State militants were blamed for several attacks in recent months in and around Manbij, which was declared liberated in 2016.
• The attack came shortly after midnight at one of the entrances to Manbij, targeting the fighters who "were carrying out their mission of protecting" the town.

Syria Friday March 29, 2019:

• At least 1,139 Hezbollah terrorists have been killed since 2011 while fighting alongside Bashar al-Assad’s army in the Syrian civil war.
• Over half of the fatalities, 662, came from southern Lebanon, a region which remains Hezbollah’s major and most significant support base. Hezbollah’s second largest power base is the Bekaa Valley, from which about 300 fatalities came. On the other hand, a conspicuously small number of fatalities came from the Beirut area, from the northern Bekaa Valley, and from northern Lebanon.
• Most of the Hezbollah casualties were killed in 2013-2015 during a period in which the Syrian regime was fighting for its survival. Since the end of 2015, following the Russian army’s intervention, the number of Hezbollah fatalities gradually decreased every year, until 2018, in which only 25 Hezbollah terrorists were killed in battle.
• About 10 percent of the fatalities, 114, were either commanders or senior Hezbollah officials such as Nasser Jamil Hudruj, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket battalion in Syria, Ali Hassan Tarhini, the commander in charge of Hezbollah’s sapper unit in southern Syria, Ali Ahmad Fayad, the commander of Hezbollah’s Special Forces, and Ali Fawzi Taha, a senior commander who operated in the Homs region, were all killed in battle.

Syria Tuesday April 2, 2019:

• An international aid group says 31 deaths were recorded in the final week of March among people making their way out of the last sliver of territory held by the Islamic State group and toward a camp for the displaced.
• The International Rescue Committee says the highest weekly death rate reflects the desperate conditions of the mostly women and children who left the village of Baghouz for al-Hol camp. The U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces announced the final defeat of IS on March 23.
• The IRC says a total of 217 people died while evacuating Baghouz in the final weeks of the battle. Most were toddlers suffering from malnutrition. The camp holds 70,000 people.

Syria Wednesday April 3, 2019:

• A blast in Syria’s Raqqa that wounded people was caused by an unexploded mine left by Islamic State going off, not by suicide attacks.
• A string of bombings have in recent months targeted the northeastern corner of Syria held by the SDF, even after its capture of the last Islamic State enclave in the area.

Syria Thursday April 4, 2019:

• Shelling by Syrian regime forces of opposition-held areas in the northwest of the country has killed 17 civilians in the past 24 hours.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said the shelling was in different locations and that more than half the dead were under the age of 18.
• The attacks were carried out in Idlib's Kafr Nabl, Maarat al-Numaan and Saraqib towns and Han al Sibl village, while Kafr Zita town in Hama was also targeted.

Syria Friday April 5, 2019:

• Sergio Zanotti, an Italian businessman who was kidnapped in Syria three years ago, has been released. Zanotti is "in good general condition and will be repatriated to Rome in a few hours."
• Zanotti, a businessman from the Italian northern city of Brescia, had been kidnapped in Syria in April 2016 by armed groups linked to al-Qaeda. The prime minister's statement said "at the end of a complex and delicate activity of intelligence, investigation and diplomacy ... today we succeeded in obtaining the release of Sergio Zanotti."
• Seven months after his kidnapping, Zanotti appeared in a video asking the Italian government to intervene to make sure he was not slain.

Syria Sunday April 7, 2019:

• Eleven civilians were killed and 40 others injured in rocket attacks by regime forces and Iran-backed militias in the northwestern Idlib province.
• The attacks targeted the towns of Maarat Al-Numan, Saraqib and Kafranbel as well as the villages of Maarat Horma, Tal Mannas and Al-Nayrab.
• Attacks were also reported in Hama province's towns of Kafr Zita, Al Hwaiz, Hawija, Al-Sharia and Qalaat Al-Madiq located in Al-Ghab plain.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 10 people, including a child and a woman, were killed in regime shelling on the villages of Nayrab and Saraqib in the opposition-held province of Idlib.
• The Britain-based watchdog added that five others, including a woman, were killed in opposition shelling on the town of Masyaf in the western rural part of Hama province. ---

Syria Tuesday April 9, 2019:

• A double bomb attack in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, a former Islamic State bastion, killed at least eight people and four others were injured, mostly civilians.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the car bomb and explosive ordnance attack on a crowded street near a military outpost of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
• Islamic militants, disguised as farmers and wearing suicide belts, attacked a military post belonging to government forces in the country's northwest, setting off clashes that killed three soldiers.
• In a separate attack in the country's northeast, activists said a suicide bomber was killed after attempting to use a vehicle rigged with explosives to target a patrol convoy for the U.S.-led international coalition fighting the Islamic State group. No coalition members were reported killed. The attack took place near the town of Shaddadeh in Hasakeh province.

Syria Saturday April 13, 2019:

• Israeli planes targeted a military position near the province of Hama but Syrian air defences intercepted and downed some of the rockets.
• Israeli aircraft had targeted “one of the Syrian military positions toward the city of Masyaf”.
• “The enemy missiles were dealt with and some of them were shot down before reaching their target, resulting in the damage of a few buildings and the injury of three fighters.
• Since the civil war started, Israel has carried out scores of military strikes in Syria during against suspected arms transfers and deployments by Iranian forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies which are backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria Monday April 15, 2019:

• The death toll from rockets fired in the government-held northern city of Aleppo has risen to at least 11 people.
• According to an unnamed police source quoted by Sana, "terrorist groups", the term used for armed groups in the nearby rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib, launched the attack on Sunday night.
• The attacks wounded another 11 people in the al-Khaldiya neighbourhood all of whom were "civilians" who were "rushed" to two separate hospitals for treatment.
• One of "several rockets" landed on a crowded market in Aleppo, the country's second-largest city and a major industrial hub that bore the brunt of years of fighting.
• The Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor reported that Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched the attacks, adding that 20 rockets were fired into several neighbourhoods in Aleppo.

Syria Saturday April 20, 2019:

• Islamic State attacks on the Syrian army and allied militias in central Syria have killed 35 soldiers over two days.
• Although Islamic State lost its last territorial enclave in Syria at Baghouz near the Iraqi border last month to U.S.-backed forces, it still has fighters holding out in the remote central desert.
• The attacks constituted Islamic State’s biggest military operation since losing Baghouz and involved assaults in several parts of central Syria.

Syria Monday April 21, 2019:

• Three children were killed in a new wave of shelling across Idlib, in northwest Syria, that hit schools, infrastructure and displacement camps over the past few days, driving thousands of people out of their homes. Two Save the Children-supported schools were heavily damaged.
• The three boys from the same family were killed in their tent in Khan Sheikhoun where they had sought shelter after their school was hit by shells. A second school located in the same area was also damaged. In both schools, no casualties were reported, but the two establishments remain closed. A third school in Saraqib had to suspend classes for the day when shells fell nearby. The three schools catered to more than 500 children, and received education support from three Save the Children partners.
• Several areas in Idlib, home to more than three million people, have been bombarded in the past few days, driving at least 25,000 people out of their homes, according to the United Nations.

Syria Wednesday April 24, 2019:

• At least 17 people were killed in an explosion in the centre of Jisr al Shughour, a rebel-held city in northwestern Syria, a day after heavy Russian air strikes in the vicinity. Several residential buildings collapsed as a result of the blast in Idlib province, near a road between the coastal city of Latakia and city of Aleppo.
• At least 27 people, mostly civilians, were injured.
• The province and areas around it in northern Syria, the last remaining rebel bastion, have seen an escalation in attacks by Russian warplanes and the Syrian army even though they are protected by a “de-escalation zone” agreement brokered last year between Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Syria Friday April 26, 2019:

• Airstrikes by regime ally Russia killed 10 civilians in the Idlib de-escalation zone in northwestern Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said those killed in the towns of Kafranbel and Tal Hawash included two children.
• The air raids came as two days of talks on ending the war in Syria — sponsored by Russia, fellow regime ally Iran, and moderate opposition-backer Turkey — concluded in Kazakhstan. The Idlib region is under the administrative control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syria's former al-Qaida affiliate.
• Idlib has since September been protected from a massive regime offensive by a cease-fire deal signed by Turkey and Russia. However, the Bashar Assad regime and its allies have repeatedly violated the deal, increasing attacks since January, when HTS took full control of the area.
• The Assad regime and its allies attacked Idlib's de-escalation zone 6,422 times in March, killing 135 civilians.
• Syria's war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since the conflict began with the repression of anti-government protests in 2011.

Syria Saturday April 27/4/1019:

• Al-Qaida-linked militants have launched attacks on positions of government forces in northern Syria killing and wounding dozens. The attacks occurred in the northern province of Aleppo.
• The area of the attack is part of a seven-month truce reached between Turkey and Russia but has recently been repeatedly violated.
• The attacks that occurred at dawn killed more than 20 soldiers.
• The opposition's Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said 17 soldiers were killed in the attack and 30 wounded. Eight insurgents were also killed.

Syria Sunday April 28, 2019:

• The Al Madiq Hospital in Northern Hama was hit by an air strike and heavily damaged. There were no injuries or casualties and the facility is now out of service.
• The hospital, which was supported by UOSSM until the end of March, was one of the few remaining operating hospitals in the region and served as a women and children’s specialty facility. The facility offered maternity services, child services and general surgeries serving approximately 8,000 beneficiaries a month.
• 5 civilians were also killed in the region during the same wave of airstrikes. UOSSM denounces attacks on medical facilities, aid workers and civilians. These attacks clearly constitute a war crime and perpetrators must be held accountable by the international community.

Syria Monday April 29, 2019:

• A US service member died in northern Syria in a non-combat incident. The individual's name has not yet be released pending notification to next of kin.
• The death of the service member comes as the Trump administration works to draw down the presence of US troops in the country. Last month, the administration proposed zeroing out all new US funding for stabilization efforts for Syria, whose civil war is now in its ninth year.

Syra Thursday May 2, 2019:

• Russian and Syrian forces intensified air strikes and shelling in rebel-held northwestern Syria overnight, the heaviest assault since the area was declared a demilitarised zone under a Russian-Turkish deal.
• The targeted villages and towns in northern Hama and southern Idlib fall within a buffer zone agreed last September between Russia and Turkey as part of a deal which averted a major offensive on the area.
• Schools, health facilities and residential areas have been hit. The barrel bombing is the worst for at least 15 months. 300,000 people live in the buffer zone where there are hostilities.
• Violence in the buffer zone “will result in the destabilisation of the region”. Attacks have forced thousands of civilians to flee to camps further north along the Turkish border and damaged four medical facilities.

Syria Saturday May 4, 2019:

• Syrian government bombardment of rebel-held areas in the country's northwest has killed and wounded dozens and forced thousands to flee their homes, further endangering an eight-month truce in the last major rebel stronghold.
• The recent escalation of violence is the most serious in Idlib province and nearby areas since Russia and Turkey negotiated a cease-fire in September. The shaky truce had averted a major government offensive on the last major rebel stronghold in Syria.
• The government forces were sending new reinforcements toward Idlib, including tanks, armoured personnel carriers and hundreds of troops.
• Over the past weeks, government forces have bombarded rebel-held areas while al-Qaida-linked militants attacked army positions around Idlib killing more than two dozen troops and pro-government gunmen over the past week.

Syria Sunday May 5, 2019:

• Three hospitals were targeted and put out of service in northern Syria. 　　
• The Nabad Al Hayat Hospital was attacked by airstrikes, the underground hospital was completely destroyed.
• The Kafr Zeta Surgical Unit (Cave Hospital) was attacked by airstrikes, partially damaged and put out of service.
• The Kafr Nabl Surgical Hospital was attacked by airstrikes, sustained major damage to the hospital foundation, and was put out of service.
• A total of 10 medical facilities have been attacked since April 28, 2019, three medical staff were killed and eight were wounded.

Syria Tuesday May 7, 2019:

• Government forces have intensified their bombardment of rebel-held towns and villages in northwestern Syria, striking a market where four people were killed.
• The new wave of violence that began on April 30 is the worst since September, when Russia and Turkey brokered a cease-fire that averted a government offensive on Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold.
• Warplanes bombed a market in the village of Ras el-Ain on Tuesday, killing four people and wounding 20. Airstrikes and shelling hit Idlib and northern rebel-held parts of Hama province.
• The latest wave of violence was triggered by attacks by al-Qaida-linked militants that killed dozens of troops.
• Clashes between Syrian regime forces and jihadists killed more than 26 fighters in the country's northwest, which has seen an escalation in shelling and air strikes.
• Eleven pro-government fighters were among those killed in fierce fighting in the northern countryside of Hama province.
• Fifteen jihadists, including members of Al-Qaeda's former Syrian branch, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and its ally the Turkistan Islamic Party, were also killed.
• The fighting came as regime forces advanced on two villages and a strategic hilltop in the region.
• Syrian troops launched "intensive operations," targeting supply lines and areas where armed groups operate in northern Hama and neighbouring Idlib.
• The region held by HTS has faced intensifying bombardment in the past month, prompting a new wave of displacement.
• At least 15 civilians, including children, have been killed in the northwest region as Russian-backed government forces continued air raids and shelling in the last rebel-held territory in the country.
• Three children were among five civilians killed when an air raid hit three homes and a vegetable market in the village of Ras al-Ain in Idlib's eastern region. At least 20 others were also wounded.

Syria Sunday May 12, 2019:

• Insurgents fired rockets into a government-held Christian town in northwestern Syria killing six people, including five children who were playing near a monastery and wounding several others.
• The shelling caused widespread material damage to the town of Suqailabiyah. The dead also included a 35-year-old woman.
• Syrian troops have retaliated by firing shells toward insurgents' positions on the southern edge of Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in the country. Al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, is the main insurgent group in the area.

Syria Tuesday May 14, 2019:

• Six people were killed when insurgents lobbed missiles into a government-controlled displaced people's camp in the country's northwest. The dead from the attack on the Nayrab camp southeast of Aleppo city included two children.
• The missiles landed around sunset, when Muslims observing the holy month of Ramadan break their fast.
• The camp houses displaced Syrians and Palestinian refugees who have been living in Syria.

Syria Wednesday May15, 2019:

• The grandfather of seven children of a Swedish-Norwegian couple that had joined the Islamic State group and were killed in Syria says they have returned to Sweden.
• The grandfather, Patricio Galvez, says the children, aged between 1 and 8, will be taken care of by social services and now needed “peace and quiet.”

Syria Thursday May 16, 2019:

• Ten Palestinian refugees have been killed in a rocket attack on Neirab refugee camp in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
• As families gathered to break their fasts for the Ramadan Iftar meal, several rockets hit the densely populated Neirab camp for Palestine refugees in Aleppo, killing at least ten civilians and wounding more than thirty.
• Among those killed were four children, the youngest just six years old, adding that “a number of the injured remain in critical condition”.
• The “ongoing hostilities around the Neirab camp” have pushed it to suspend the six schools it runs there, impacting more than 3,000 children.

Syria Sunday May 19, 2019:

• Air attacks by Syrian government ally Russia have killed 10 civilians, including five children, in an opposition-held province in northwest Syria.
• The Russian army said the air raids on the town of Kafranbel, in Idlib province, came after it pinpointed the area as the Launchpad for rocket fire on its key Syria airbase of Hmeimim.
• The Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) armed group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, controls a large part of Idlib province as well as parts of neighbouring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

Syria Tuesday May 21, 2019:

• Rebels in northwestern Syria launched a counterattack against pro-government positions and fighting killed more than three dozen combatants from both sides.
• The fighting in the town of Kafr Nabuda, in the north of Hama province, killed 26 pro-government fighters as well as 18 rebels. Syrian forces seized control of the town on May 8.
• Terrorist groups - a catch-all term for opposition armed groups - fired missiles on the west of government-held Aleppo city, wounding six civilians.
• About 200,000 people caught in the crossfire in northwestern Syria have now fled intensified fighting between rebels and Syrian and Russian forces.

Syria Sunday May 26, 2019:

• Regime air strikes killed 12 civilians including four at a market in a militant bastion in northwest Syria.
• Eight other civilians were killed elsewhere by regime fire in Idlib, a stronghold of Syria's former Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
• Regime forces took back control of the town of Kafr Nabuda in the north of Hama province. HTS and allied rebels overran part of the town in recent days after the regime first expelled them on May 8.
• 230 civilians have been killed in the spike in violence since the end of April. More than 200,000 civilians have already been displaced by this upsurge of violence. A total of 20 health facilities have been hit by the escalation – 19 of which remain out of service.

Syria Monday May 27, 2019:

• An Israeli attack against a military post in the country’s south killed a soldier and injured another. Israel, in a rare statement acknowledging firing into Syria, said it was responding to an anti-aircraft fire from Syria against one of its combat planes.
• The back-to-back statements come amid heightened regional tension over Iran’s role in Syria and other parts of the Middle East. They also follow a number of reported Israeli strikes on Syria in the past ten days.
• Israel does not usually comment on reports concerning its strikes in neighbouring Syria, though it has recently acknowledged striking Iranian targets there.
• The Israeli attack targeted a military outpost east of Khan Arnabeh, a town in Quneitra on the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. An earlier statement said one military vehicle was also damaged when a rocket landed in Tal al-Shaar in Quneitra.
• At least six people were killed and 10 remain under rubble following government air raids on a town in the rebel's last stronghold.
• The first responders known as White Helmets said that rescue workers were still searching for survivors under the rubble after the airstrikes hit a crowded residential street in the town of Ariha. They said five women and a child were killed.
• The airstrikes hit the town amid intense government bombardment in Idlib province and its environs.
• There were more than 100 air raids and as many as 93 barrel bombs dropped Monday on the southern section of the rebel stronghold. The violence has displaced more than 200,000 people since erupting in late April.
• Russian-backed Syrian government forces will be able to advance all the way to the Turkish border if they pierce rebel defences in the northwest.

Syria Saturday June 1, 2019:

• Two explosions killed 10 people in the northern city of Raqqa. The blasts occurred in two different locations in the city that was once the de facto capital of the Islamic State group.
• The first blast was a roadside bomb in the city centre while the second blast was carried out by a suicide attacker driving a vehicle at a checkpoint of U.S.-backed fighters in the central Naim Square, killing five fighters and five civilians.
• 10 people were killed in Naim square.
• Blasts have occurred since U.S.-baked fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces captured Raqqa in October 2017.

Syria Sunday June 2, 2019:

• Israel has attacked Syrian military positions in the country's south, killing three soldiers and wounding seven others. The Israeli military confirmed the attack saying it was in response to two rockets fired from Syria at Mount Hermon late on Saturday. One of the rockets landed in Israel but no damage or injuries were reported.
• The Israeli attacks struck military positions in the southern region of Quneitra, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They also caused material damage. The Israeli military said the targets included two artillery batteries, several observation and intelligence posts and an SA2 air defence unit.
• Israel and Syria exchange fire amid soaring regional tensions
• The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition's war monitor, said Israeli warplanes struck positions and an arms depot of Iranian troops and Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters.
• Hezbollah is a Lebanese armed and political group that, along with Iran, supports Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.
• A car bomb in the northern town of Azaz held by Turkey-backed fighters has killed at least 13, and wounded dozens of people.
• The blast occurred after the "iftar" meal that breaks a daylong fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
• The town, which was once controlled by rival Kurdish fighters opposed to Turkey, has been hit by similar attacks in the past.

Syria Wednesday June 5, 2019:

• A Kurdish official in northern Syria said that local authorities there had transferred eight American women and children captured with other Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) suspects back to the U.S.
• The group included two women and six children. They were returned at the request of the U.S. government and based on their own desire to return "without any pressure or coercion."

Syria Thursday June 6, 2019:

• Jihadis in northwestern Syria launched an attack on government forces killing at least 11 fighters following a series of regime advances in the area.
• The deadly assault in a northern strip of Hama province, comes amid an escalation in violence in parts of the country’s northwest held by Syria’s former al-Qaida affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
• Damascus and its ally Russia have since late April ramped up deadly airstrikes and rocket fire on the region, and fighters have clashed on its edges.
• The attack by HTS militants and allied jihadi groups in the village of Jibeen, follow a series of regime advances in the region in recent weeks. The insurgents are launching a counterattack. At least five jihadis were killed in ensuing clashes.
• Militants launched rocket attacks on a number of villages in northern Hama, destroying homes. Syrian troops thwarted the assault on the villages of Tal Maleh and Jibeen.
• Meanwhile, regime airstrikes pounded the neighbouring province of Idlib and nearby areas as battles raged. One civilian was killed in the bombardment.
• More than 300 people have been killed by regime airstrikes and shelling in the area since late April. The bombardment has also displaced nearly 270,000 people in May alone. A total of 24 health facilities and 35 schools have been hit in the latest escalation.
• Analysts predict that Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies will continue to chip away at the area, but not unleash a major assault that would create chaos on Turkey’s doorstep.
• The conflict in Syria has killed more than 370,000 people since it started in 2011.

Syria Friday June 7, 2019:

• Fierce clashes between government forces and jihadists have left 83 combatants dead in northwestern Syria in the past 24 hours. The clashes on the edge of the jihadist-controlled Idlib region have killed 44 government loyalists and 39 jihadists and Islamist fighters since Thursday.
• The region of some three million people -almost half of them displaced from other parts of the country - is dominated by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance led by Al-Qaeda's former Syrian affiliate. It administers a region that spans most of Idlib province as well as adjacent slivers of the neighbouring Latakia, Aleppo and Hama provinces.
• Late Thursday, the jihadists and allied rebels launched a counterattack against regime forces in the northwest of Hama province. They have since seized the villages of Tal Maleh and Jibeen there.
• Violent clashes are ongoing, accompanied by regime and Russian air strikes. The fighting is raging near Christian and Alawite areas under regime control.
• The jihadists who took part in the counterattack include some from the Al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen and Turkistan Islamic Party.

Syria Saturday June 8, 2019:

• A Syrian footballer who became a symbol of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has died of wounds sustained in clashes in the north-west. Abdel Basset al-Sarout, 27, died in the Hama province.
• A promising goalkeeper for Syria's youth team, he sprang to prominence in his home city of Homs in 2011 as one of many who staged street protests.
• He had survived a brutal government siege of Homs, although many of his family members were killed there.

Syria Monday June 11, 2019:

• Air strikes killed at least 25 people, mostly civilians, in north-western Syria in the sixth week of a Russian-led military offensive that has claimed the lives of hundreds.
• Planes said were Russian Sukhoi jets, dropped bombs from a high altitude on the village of Jabala in southern Idlib province. So far rescuers pulled 13 bodies, including women and children, from the debris.
• Russian jets were also behind raids that hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Kfar Batikh and other villages, which left at least another 12 civilians dead.
• The air campaign supported by Moscow since the end of April has killed more than 1,500 people, about half of them civilians.
• Residents and aid agencies say the sustained campaign that has bombed schools and medical centres was meant to smash the spirit of civilians in opposition areas. More than 300,000 people have fled the front lines to the safety of areas near the border with Turkey.

Syria Thursday June 13, 2019:

• Russia and Turkey, the two countries responsible for a rickety agreement to keep the peace along Syria’s last major frontline, gave sharply conflicting accounts of an attack on a Turkish military outpost.
• Turkey said one of its observation posts in Idlib province had come under deliberate attack from Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Three Turkish soldiers were wounded from 35 mortar shells fired on the post.
• But Moscow said the attack was carried out not by President Bashar al-Assad’s government but by his rebel enemies, and that Turkey had asked Russia to launch air strikes in response, supplying coordinates of rebel targets. The Russian defines ministry said it carried out four successful strikes.
• Idlib is the last remaining bastion for anti-government rebels after eight years of civil war.

Syria Saturday June 15, 2019:

• Government airstrikes and intense shelling on rebel-held areas in northwest Syria have claimed the lives of dozens of people. At least 10 civilians have been killed in airstrikes and shelling of rebel-held villages and towns in Idlib province.
• Militants shelled government-held areas causing material damage.
• Saturday's fighting alone left 26 troops and pro-government gunmen dead as well as eight militants.
• Six weeks of violence has driven nearly 300,000 people from their homes. Many are living under olive trees, in tents or unfinished buildings, crammed into overcrowded shared rooms. More than 300 civilians have been killed since fighting broke out on April 30.

Syria Sunday June 16, 2019:

• Fires engulfing vital wheat fields across Syria's northeast have killed at least 10 people; Kurdish authorities claim the blazes were set deliberately. The victims included civilians and members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces who died while trying to extinguish the blazes since Saturday.
• The fires in the Kurdish-majority province of Hasakeh also wounded another five people. The victims were trying to douse the blaze but they were trapped by the fire.
• Kurdish authorities and the Damascus regime are competing to buy up this year's harvest as fires -some claimed by the Islamic State group- continue to scorch crops in the country's breadbasket.
• Kurdish officials have called on the US-led coalition to help extinguish blazes in the cereal and oil-rich region under their control.
• The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Turkish Armed Forces traded attacks in northwestern Syria.
• The Syrian Arab Army heavily shelled the town of Morek this morning, where the Turkish military has one of its largest observation posts in northwestern Syria. The shells hit the Turkish military’s positions in Morek.
• The Turkish Armed Forces responded by launching several artillery shells towards the Syrian Army’s positions in the hilltop town of Tal Bizam in northern Hama.
• This retaliation by the Turkish military comes just days after the Syrian Arab Army also targeted their observation post in the town of Sheir Magher.

Syria Thursday June 20, 2019:

• Regime bombardment killed 14 civilians including two rescue workers in an ambulance and seven children in northwest Syria. The children were killed in various areas of the jihadist-run Idlib province.
• A regime air strike targeted an ambulance in the town of Maaret al-Noman, killing two rescue workers inside. It was a direct targeting of the ambulance. A woman also died in the ambulance while she was being transported for treatment.
• Russia and rebel backer Turkey brokered an agreement in September intended to stave off an all-out regime assault on Idlib, home to three million people, but that deal was never fully implemented as jihadists refused to withdraw from the planned buffer zone.
• More than 100 combatants have been killed over the past 48 hours in fighting between Syrian forces and rebels in the country's northwest.
• Ongoing clashes and aerial bombardment centred on the village of Tal Meleh in the north of Hama province. 89 opposition fighters were dead with 41 fatalities among government forces.
• On Wednesday an army operations had been launched against the former wing of al-Qaeda - Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) - in Tal Meleh and the surrounding countryside that it dominates.
• Tal Meleh sits near the southwestern edge of Hama's neighbouring Idlib province, which has come under increasing bombardment by Syrian government forces and warplanes from Russia, an ally of President Bashar al-Assad.
• Northwest Syria, home to some three million people, is the last remaining bastion of anti-government rebels after eight years of war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. ---

Syria Saturday June 22, 2019:

• Attacks on civilian hospitals in Syria have intensified in recent weeks, as efforts to deescalate the conflict between the Syrian government and rebel forces in Idlib province—the last remaining rebel stronghold—fall apart.
• Such attacks are illegal under international law. But observers say the strategy is sometimes used to intimidate local populations.
• The sometimes makeshift hospitals typically report their coordinates to the United Nations, which then shares those coordinates with all sides of the conflict. The expectation is that the warring parties will avoid bombing those areas.
• But in the Syrian conflict, which has dragged on for more than eight years now, fighters have regularly targeted civilian hospitals. Some hospitals have stopped reporting their coordinates and are now operating underground. Others have simply closed down.
• These attacks don’t just claim innocent lives. “They also deprive thousands of civilians of basic health services, even as fighting intensifies around them.”
• At least 26 hospitals across Idlib province have been attacked since late April as the Syrian government fights to re-establish control of the last-remaining rebel territory—and declare the war over.
• Syria and Russia, which materially supports the government of Bashar al-Assad, denied they were using the coordinates to attack hospitals, and said they don’t target civilian space.
• Several Syrian and Palestinian soldiers were killed in eastern Syria after the Islamic State carried out a powerful ambush in the Al-Mayadeen Desert.
• ISIS carried out the ambush along a road in the Al-Mayadeen countryside of Deir Ezzor; this resulted in the death of over ten Syrian soldiers from the National Défense Forces (NDF) and Palestinian-led Al-Quds Brigade.

Syria Sunday June 22, 2019:

• Regime air strikes on an anti-government stronghold in northwest Syria killed five civilians including three children.
• The Idlib region of some three million people is supposed to be protected by a September buffer zone deal, but the jihadist-run enclave has come under mounting bombardment by the government and its ally Russia since late April.
• All five civilians killed lost their lives in air raids on the Idlib province.
• Among them, two children were killed in a garage on the edge of the town of Maaret al-Numan, while another child died in the village of Maar Zita.
• The other two civilians were killed in strikes on the villages of Kansafra and Khan al-Subul.

Syria Wednesday June 26, 2019:

• An airstrike hit an ambulance in northwest Syria killing two members of the opposition's Syrian Civil Defence and wounding four others. The Civil Défense, also known as White Helmets, said the attack happened in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which has been repeatedly attacked over the past weeks.
• The latest deaths raise to 262 the number of Civil Defense members who have been killed since Syria's civil war began eight years ago.

The incident comes a week after two ambulance workers were killed in the nearby village of Maaret al-Numan.

• In addition to the two Civil Défense members, eight other civilians were killed in Idlib province.
• Insurgents shelled the government-held village of Karnaz, killing one child.
• Government forces bombarded "positions and movements" of al-Qaida-linked militants who control large parts of Idlib.
• Syrian government forces launched an offensive against the rebel-held territory in late April, leading to the collapse of a cease-fire negotiated by Turkey and Russia last year.
• The violence has forced an estimated 330,000 people to flee their homes since May 1, moving toward the Turkish border. Several health facilities were targeted in the violence.

Syria Friday June 28, 2019:

• Nearly 100 combatants were killed in clashes between fighters loyal to Syria's government, rebels and jihadists in northwestern Syria.
• Starting at dawn and after bombing by the regime, fighting in northern Hama province killed 51 government loyalists and allied militiamen, and 45 among the rebels and jihadists.
• Backed by its ally Moscow, Damascus has since late April intensified bombardment of much of Idlib province and the parts of neighbouring Hama, Aleppo and Latakia where Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) holds sway.
• Units of the army also carried out massive bombing at dawn on positions of the terrorist Al-Nusra Front in and around the villages of Jibine and Tal Maleh referring to positions held by HTS. The bombardment led to "the destruction of the terrorists' fortifications and their lines of defence".
• Idlib and parts of neighbouring Hama, Aleppo and Latakia provinces were supposed to be protected by a buffer zone under an September agreement between Russia and Turkey. But the region has come under increased bombardment by the regime and its Russian ally since HTS seized most of Idlib at the start of the year.
• A Turkish soldier was killed and three others were wounded the day before by fire from Syrian government forces against a Turkish observation post in Idlib province.
• Since late April, air strikes have killed 490 civilians while fighting has killed 682 pro-regime forces and 821 rebels and jihadists. The flare-up has also displaced 330,000 others.

Syria Sunday June 30, 2019:

• Four civilians were killed and 21 injured in Israeli missile strikes near the Syrian cities of Damascus and Homs. The Syrian military responded to missiles launched by Israeli warplanes.
• Israeli jets targeted military bases from Lebanese airspace. These include what it has identified as advanced weaponry destined for the Islamist Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iranian bases in Syria.
• The U.S. military has struck an al-Qaida leadership and training facility in northern Syria where attacks threatening Americans and others were being planned. The strike occurred near the northern province of Aleppo.
• The strike killed eight members of the al-Qaida-linked Horas al-Din, which is Arabic for "Guardians of Religion."

Syria Tuesday July 2, 2019:

• Syria has accused Israel of “heinous aggression” after alleged Israeli airstrikes killed several civilians.
• “Israeli authorities are increasingly practising state terrorism,” the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official Sana news agency on Tuesday. “The latest heinous Israeli aggression falls within the framework of ongoing Israeli attempts to prolong the crisis in Syria,” it added.
• Strikes south of Damascus and in Homs province near the border with Lebanon overnight killed at least 15 people including at least six civilians, among them three children.
• It was not immediately clear if the civilians died in the strikes or their aftermath.
• Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes inside Syria since 2015 targeting supply routes and infrastructure such as the weapons depots of President Bashar al-Assad’s Iranian and Hezbollah allies. Civilian deaths are relatively rare, however, leading to the furious response from Damascus.
• In keeping with a policy of ambiguity over its activities in Syria, Israeli officials declined to comment on Sunday’s alleged strikes.

Syria Wednesday July 3, 2019:

• Two hundred corpses, including those of people believed to have been executed by the Islamic State(IS) group, were found near Raqqa.
• The mass grave contained the bodies of five middle-aged men in orange jumpsuits of the kind typically worn by IS group hostages. They were shackled and shot in the head. They were believed to have been killed more than two years ago.
• The grave also included the bodies of three women who were believed to have been stoned to death. Their skulls were severely fractured and displayed signs of stoning.
• The digger said his team first discovered the mass grave early last month on the southern edges of Raqqa. As many as 800 people could be buried there in total, he said.
• Its discovery could help identify even more of the several thousand people whose fates remain unknown, including foreigners imprisoned by the IS group.
• An explosion in southern Syria has killed at least three people and wounded at least one.
• The explosion was due to a booby-trapped motorcycleand occurred in the province of Sweida.
• It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack in the government-controlled area. The province is populated mainly by Syria's minority Druze community.

Syria Friday July 5, 2019:

• At least one civilian was killed and three others injured in a mortar attack by the PKK terrorist group in the northern Aleppo province.
• The mortar attack targeted civilians in the town of Marea which is mostly populated by the civilians.
• Three civilians, who were injured during the attack, were taken to hospitals close to the region.

Syria Saturday July 6, 2019:

• At least 19 civilians were killed and 20 injured in attacks by Syrian regime forces and Russia on de-escalation zones in northern Syria.
• Airstrikes and artillery shelling targeted the towns of Kafr Nabl, Khan Shaykhun, Muhambal, Bidama, Hass, Bsida, Sarmin, Kafar Sijnah, Hesh, Arihah and Alamerea in the Idlib province.
• The attacks left 15 people dead in Muhambal, three in Khan Shaykhun and one in Arihah.
• Turkey and Russia agreed last September to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited. The Syrian regime, however, has consistently broken the terms of the ceasefire, launching frequent attacks inside the de-escalation zone.
• Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in early 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected severity.
• At least 544 civilians have been killed and over 2,000 people injured since a Russian-led assault on the last rebel bastion in northwestern Syria began two months ago.
• Russian jets joined the Syrian army on April 26 in the biggest offensive against parts of rebel-held Idlib province and adjoining northern Hama provinces in the biggest escalation in the war between Syrian President Bashar al Assad and his enemies since last summer.
• 544 civilians were killed in the hundreds of attacks carried out by Russian jets and the Syrian army including 130 children. Another 2,117 people have been injured.

Syria Wednesday July 10, 2019:

• More than 100 rebels have been killed in fierce clashes between regime troops and jihad-dominated forces in northwestern Syria.
• Violence has centered on Idlib as it is the jihadist group’s last remaining bastion in Syria.
• There has been a dramatic rise in the death toll in recent days, with 13 civilians including three children also killed.
• Despite a truce, Russian and regime aircraft have increased their aerial bombardments of the region which has been occupied by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham jihadist group (HTS), as well as other rebel and jihadist factions.
• Regime and Russian air strikes on northwestern Syria killed 11 civilians including four children and knocked a hospital out of service.
• Regime air strikes killed seven civilians including three children in the town of Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib province.
• Three civilians died after the hospital was hit, while four were killed elsewhere in the town. Missiles targeted the hospital and residential neighbourhoods in Jisr al-Shughur. The health facility had been knocked out of service after the generators were hit, and the wounded had been transferred to another hospital for treatment.
• Further south, Russian air raids hit a gathering of displaced people, killing four civilians including one child outside the town of Maaret Hurma in Hama province.
• More than 550 civilians have been killed in regime and Russian air strikes on northwest Syria since the end of April. The United Nations says 25 health facilities in the region have been hit, despite a September deal between Russia and rebel backer Turkey to avert a massive regime offensive there.
• The spike in violence has caused 330,000 people to flee their homes since May 1. Syria's war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.

Syria Thursday July 11, 2019:

• A car bomb exploded at the entrance to a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkish forces and allied Syrian fighters, killing at least nine people.
• The bomb in a fuel truck exploded in Afrin, igniting a fire and causing considerable damage to the surrounding area. Syrian first responders, known as the White Helmets, said at least nine people were killed in the explosion, which occurred in a residential area, and 35 were wounded.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 11 and said it was likely to rise because some of the injuries were serious. The Observatory said the blast occurred near a checkpoint at the entrance to the town where vehicles were lined up.

Syria Saturday July 13, 2019:

• Fifteen civilians, including six children and infants, were killed in air strikes in northwest Syria, targeted for months now by deadly regime and Russian bombardment. Most of the children were among civilians killed when Russian aircraft raided an informal camp of internally displaced Syrians. The camp near the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Idlib region, houses Syrians who had fled raids and clashes in neighbouring Hama province.
• Hours later a man and his heavily pregnant wife were killed in the eastern Idlib town of Kefraya in air strikes carried out by unidentified aircraft.
• In the north of Hama province, three civilians including a child were killed by artillery fire.
• Regime forces have also been locked in battle with jihadists and allied rebels on the edges of the bastion, which is held by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), including the north of Hama province.
• Idlib and its surrounding areas are supposed to be protected from a massive regime offensive by a September 2018 deal between Russia and rebel backer Turkey.
• A buffer zone planned under that accord was never fully implemented, and the region has seen an uptick in violence.

Syria Sunday July 14, 2019:

• Militants targeted a gas pipeline in government-controlled central Syria, putting it out of order.
• Separately insurgents in the country's northwest fired missiles at the government-controlled city of Aleppo, killing seven civilians and injuring 25 others. The missiles set fire to a number of residential buildings and vehicles parked in two neighbourhoods in the city. One taxi driver died in his car when a missile hit it. An earlier missile had hit an 18-story municipal building crowded with people. The missiles were lobbed from a rebel-controlled area northwest of the city.
• Technical teams were working to fix the gas pipeline in Homs province, which links the Shaer fields to the Ebla processing plant.

Syria Monday July 15, 2019:

• In an open field on the outskirts of Raqqa, workers in black uniforms, surgical masks and red hardhats toil under a scorching sun to dig up bodies from a large mass grave discovered last month.
• They have so far unearthed 313 bodies from the grave. All of the dead are men, women and children believed to have been killed or died during the Islamic State group's rule over the northern city, once the de facto capital of the extremist group's so-called Islamic caliphate and the site of atrocities committed by the group against residents who opposed its extremist ideology.

Syria Tuesday July 16, 2019:

• At least nine civilians have been killed in Syrian government airstrikes on a residential area in the northwestern province of Idlib; another 15 people were wounded in the strikes on a market in the village of Maarshourin.

Syria Wednesday July 17, 2019:

• A car bomb went off near a Kurdish checkpoint in Syria's northeastern province of Hasakah, leaving injuries. The car exploded near a checkpoint of the Kurdish Assayish security police in the Ghweiran neighborhood in Hasakah.
• The Britain-based watchdog group said that the wounded are civilians and members of the Kurdish militia group.
• On July 11, four explosions took place in Hasakah, leaving civilians and Kurdish fighters wounded.

Syria Thursday July 18, 2019:

• Five Syrian soldiers were killed and four others wounded in an ambush by the Islamic State (IS) militants in eastern Syria.
• The IS militants ambushed the Syrian soldiers in the desert region of the city of al-Mayadeen in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour Province.

Syria Sunday July 21, 2019:

• An Anadolu Agency freelance journalist was killed in a Russian airstrike in Idlib province in northwestern Syria.
• Anas Diab, a 22-year-old freelance journalist and rescuer with the White Helmets, was killed while reporting Russian airstrikes on his hometown of Khan Sheikhun. Diab was doing his journalistic duty in very dangerous areas. He was working to take the voice of Idlib and Syria to the whole world.
• Last year, Diab was injured in a Syrian regime airstrike and was dispatched to Turkey for medical treatment.
• A freight train carrying phosphate derailed and caught fire after getting hit by explosives planted on the tracks by militants in the country's center.
• The government-owned train was transporting phosphate from mines in Khunayfis in Homs province; technical teams are working to repair the railway and restore traffic.
• Last week, militants also targeted a gas pipeline in Homs province.

Syria Monday July 22, 2019:

• Air raids on a popular market and residential neighbourhoods in rebel-held Idlib province have killed at least 50 people and wounded scores more.
• At least 36 civilians and two unidentified people were killed when Russian air raids hit a vegetable market and surrounding areas in Maarat al-Numan, a densely populated city in the south of Idlib province.  
• Another 12 civilians were killed in Syrian government air raids in other parts of the province in northwestern Syria.

Syria Wednesday July 24, 2019:

• Israel carried out missile strikes against Syrian military positions. The strike began was directed at Tell al-Hara, a strategic hill south of Damascus. The hill overlooks a wide swath of southern Syria all the way to the Israeli Golan Heights.
• Syrian air-defence systems downed several of the missiles. The “Israeli aggression” had caused no damage or casualties.
• Six Iranians fighting for the Syrian regime were among those killed in reported Israeli missile strikes in southern Syria this week.
• Israeli missiles targeted “military positions and intelligence facilities belonging to Iran and [pro-Iranian] militias” in the southern provinces of Daraa and Quneitra.

Syria Saturday July 27, 2019:

• A suicide bomber killed six soldiers in the southern province of Daraa, in a rare deadly attack against the cradle of the uprising that sparked Syria's war. The bomber, who was riding a motorcycle, blew himself up at a military checkpoint killing the six soldiers and wounding several other people.
• Syria's state news agency SANA also reported a suicide bombing but said it happened during an "army raid" that targeted "terrorists", a term used by authorities to describe rebels and jihadists. Several soldiers were wounded when a terrorist detonated an explosive belt.
• It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast, but pro-regime forces in Daraa province face explosions and gunfire on a near daily basis, although they are usually not deadly.
• Earlier this month, six soldiers were killed in an explosion that targeted an army convoy near Yadud village, some seven kilometres outside the provincial capital of Daraa city.
• Two civilians were killed and another 22 wounded in four simultaneous bomb attacks in northwestern Syria. 
• The attacks were carried out by bomb-laden motorcycles at the center of the opposition-held cities of Azaz, Al-Bab, Jarabulus and Akhtarin near the Turkish border. 
• No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks, but security sources believe that the YPG/PKK terrorist group was responsible for the violence.
• The jihadist special forces from the Ansar Al-Deen terrorist group were wiped ou in a joint Russian-Syrian airstrike on a large hilltop in the northwestern countryside of the Hama Governorate.
• The jihadists were preparing to storm the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) positions near the large hilltop of Tal Malah when Russian and Syrian air force jets struck the militants.
• Shortly after the attack near Tal Malah, several jihadist pages mourned the death of eight militants killed.
• The jihadist pages claimed they were killed during clashes with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA); however, a military source said these militants were killed before they could launch their attack.

Syria Sunday July 28, 2019:

• Syrian government airstrikes on a town in the country’s northwest killed five people, two of whom were from the same family. The airstrikes on the town of Ariha came as the government continued its deadly air campaign against the last rebel-held region in Syria.
• Another 21 people were wounded in the airstrikes. The town has been particularly targeted over the past week, as the government looks to regain momentum in its stalled offensive against Idlib province, which began in late April.
• A day earlier an airstrike in Ariha killed 11 people when it hit a busy market there. It is one of the main towns in Idlib province, which along with the surrounding rural areas of Hama province, are home to 3 million people.
• The Pentagon stated that the joint UK-US force was "conducting a mission to kill or capture a known ISIS member when they were struck by an improvised explosive device.
• But while the UK MoD confirmed that while Tonroe "died from blast injuries caused by an explosion during a military operation," that explosion was actually the result of friendly action rather than an ISIS IED.
• It was initially believed that Sgt. Tonroe was killed by enemy action. However subsequent investigation concluded that Sgt. Tonroe was killed by the accidental detonation of explosives carried by coalition forces.
• At least one civilian was killed and another 16 wounded when a bomb-laden motorcycle exploded in Afrin, northwestern Syria.
• The attack was carried out by a bomb-laden motorcycle which was detonated in the city centre of Afrin.
• The fuel spreading around triggered a fire after the blast.

Syria Monday July 29, 2019:

• Seven people were killed in attacks by regime forces and Russian warplanes in de-escalation zone in northern Syria.
• Five people were killed in town of Kafr Zita and two others in Latmeen in the central Hama province.
• The sources expected the death toll to rise.
• Syrian troops made advances on the ground in northern Syria seizing a hilltop village and a nearby town from insurgents in the first breakthrough for President Bashar Assad's forces following weeks of intensive air and artillery bombardment.
• At least 450 civilians have been confirmed killed in the three-month offensive, including more than 100 in the last 10 days alone.
• Over the last three years, the government has regained control of most of the territories that were initially seized by the opposition in the early days of the civil conflict. Those military victories, supported by Russian airpower and Iranian-backed militias on the ground, followed intense military campaigns and tight sieges that forced rebels to surrender and move north.
• The Idlib region is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants and other jihadi groups, and is home to an estimated 3 million people, many of them displaced by other bouts of violence in other areas. The government, which launched its offensive in late April, says it is targeting terrorist locations.
• Troops captured the Tal Malah village and the nearby town of Jibeen after fierce confrontations with militants entrenched in the area. The area has changed hands several times over the past weeks in the offensive. More than 440,000 people have been displaced inside the crowded enclave to escape the airstrikes.
• A US-led coalition air strike killed five jihadists in eastern Syria, the first such raid since the collapse of the Islamic State group's "caliphate".
• Coalition forces conducted a strike against a Daesh cell near Busayrah, a town in Deir Ezzor province.
• The death toll from attacks by regime forces and Russian warplanes in de-escalation zone in northern Syria rose to 15. Five civilians were killed in town of Kafr Zita and two others in Latmeen in the central Hama province.
• During the attacks in the evening eight more civilians including a civil defense official were killed.
• Since the beginning of last week, at least 123 people were killed in ground and air attacks on the de-escalation zone.

Syria Tuesday July 30, 2019:

• Syrian government air attacks have killed at least 14 civilians in Hama and Idlib provinces.
• Activists say the government's week-long aerial attacks have been the bloodiest in three months and seem deliberately aimed at health facilities in Syria.
• The Syrian government has made inroads into the rebel-held province of Idlib, but a three-way tussle between the Assad government, Turkey and Russia is complicating matters. ---

Syria Saturday August 3, 2019:

• A massive explosion at Shayrat air base in Syria's central Homs province on killed at least 31 regime soldiers and allied paramilitaries.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not clear what caused the munitions blast.
• Syria's official news agency SANA reported that it was the result of a "technical error during the transport of expired ammunition." It added that there were casualties but did not specify how many.

Syria Wednesday August 7, 2019:

• A car bomb killed three children near a village post office in northeast Syria, controlled by Kurdish forces who warn they face jihadist sleeper cells. It was “a terrorist blast” that had sought to target a military vehicle.
• Photos showed plumes of smoke rising from a building and from a car turned into charred, twisted metal.
• In recent weeks, a series of attacks, including car bomb blasts, has hit towns and districts in northeast Syria under the control of the Kurdish YPG militia and its allies.

Syria Saturday August 10, 2019:

• One civilian was killed and six others were injured in a bomb blast in the northern city of Azaz.
• A bomb-laden motorbike exploded in the city centre, killing one person and injuring six others.

Syria Sunday August 11, 2019:

• Syria’s army has captured a strategically important town in Idlib in the rebels’ last major enclave.
• The capture of al-Hobeit represents the most significant advance the army has made in Idlib province since the start of its offensive three months ago.
• The Hezbollah media unit described the town as the gateway to the southern countryside of Idlib, to the main Damascus-Aleppo highway and to the city of Khan Sheikhoun.
• Rebels have not yet commented on the fighting around al-Hobeit but this week acknowledged losing ground nearby as the army ramped up its offensive after a brief ceasefire.
• Fighting killed more than 100 fighters from both sides as the army and its allies unleashed about 2,000 air and artillery strikes against rebels dug into Syria’s northwest.

Syria Thursday August 15, 2019:

• Syrian air defences identified a missile that was fired toward the city of Masyaf near Hama and destroyed it before it hit its target.
• The missile was fired from the direction of northern Lebanon.

Syria Friday August 16, 2019:

• A suspected Russian airstrike hit a displaced people's gathering in a town in Syria's last rebel enclave killing at least 13, including a number of children.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike, suspected to have been carried out by Russian aircraft, hit in the town of Hass south of Idlib province, where peopled displaced by the violence had congregated. The monitoring group said the attack killed at least four children.

Syria Sunday August 18, 2019:

• A car bomb killed one member of a security force and wounded two others in the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria.
• Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack which it said had killed six members of a Kurdish militant group.
• The car bomb targeted a training facility that was being guarded by members of the internal security force for northern and eastern Syria, also known as the Asayish.
• Qamishli, on the border with Turkey, is part of a swathe of eastern and northern Syria controlled by Kurdish-led forces that have fought alongside the U.S.-coalition against Islamic State.

Syria Monday August 10,2019:

• Syrian government forces opened fire on a Turkish observation post in northwest Syria; there were no Turkish casualties.
• The incident came after an airstrike halted a Turkish military convoy and killed three civilians as the convoy headed south towards another observation post.
• Turkey has 12 observation posts in northwest Syria, set up under an agreement with Russia and Iran. Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said all of Turkey's observation posts will remain in place, and support to the posts will continue.

Syria Saturday August 24, 2019:

• A heavily fortified Turkish observation post in the northwestern village of Morek stood surrounded on all sides by Syrian troops, a testament to the rapid advance of President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria's northwest over the past three weeks as rebel defences collapsed.
• Syrian authorities took a group of journalists to tour the observation post, several newly captured villages and the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which was a major rebel stronghold until it was taken by government forces earlier this week.
• In Morek, there was no sign of friction between the Turks and the Syrian troops who took positions hundreds of meters away from the observation post. The journalists were kept about 2 kilometers away from the Turkish post.

Syria Monday August 26, 2019:

• Airstrikes targeted Syria's last major rebel stronghold in the northwestern province of Idlib, killing at least four people, including a woman and her child.
• The attacks come as Syrian government forces turn their focus on another rebel-held town in Idlib, Maaret al-Numan, following gains they made last week.
• The troops have been on the offensive since April 30, and have also captured all rebel-held areas in the adjoining Hama province, as well as the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib. From the town, they are now pushing north.

Syria Wednesday August 28, 2019:

• Kurdish forces have started to withdraw from outposts along the Turkish border after the United States and Turkey reached a deal to establish a "safe zone" there earlier this month.
• Work had begun over the weekend in the Ras al-Ain area, including moves such as removing earth mounds as well as withdrawing heavy weapons and a group of fighters.
• On Monday, they repeated the steps in Tal Abyad, "showing the seriousness of our commitment to current understandings" on the buffer zone.
• Ankara has been pressing for the zone - running in the east of the Euphrates River towards the Iraqi border - to push the US-allied predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) away from its border.
• Jets believed to be Syrian or Russian struck a main rebel-held city in northwest Syria, killing at least nine civilians, in stepped up strikes on the last rebel bastion in that part of the country.
• The air strikes hit Maarat al-Numan, from which tens of thousands of people have fled in the last two weeks fearing an imminent assault by advancing Russian-backed Syrian troops.
• Heavy air strikes hit other villages and towns in Idlib province. One hit a market in the city of Saraqeb, causing injuries and extensive damage to a main residential area.

Syria Saturday August 31, 2019:

• The Iman Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital in Orum Al Kubra in the Aleppo countryside was targeted by seven airstrikes. The hospital was damaged and put out of service. No casualties were reported but two patients and one staff were injured. Newborn babies that were still in incubators had to be evacuated.
• This marks the 50th medical facility to be targeted since April 28. At least 10 of those hospitals, including Alzerbeh Hospital attacked yesterday, were deconflicted with coordinates provided to the UN.

Syria Thursday September 5, 2019:

• At least three Russian soldiers have been killed in a firefight in Syria’s de-escalation zone this week.
• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, backed by Russian airpower, have been waging an offensive in the Idlib region, the last remaining rebel-held territory in Syria. Much of the region is controlled by jihadists linked to the former Nusra Front, which was linked to al Qaeda.

Syria Monday September 9, 2019:

• Warplanes have struck positions of Iran-backed militias near Syria's border with Iraq. At least 18 Iranian and pro-Iranian fighters were killed.
• It was not clear who carried out the overnight strikes in and around the town of Albu Kamal. But Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on Iranian-linked targets in Syria during the country's civil war. It has sought to thwart what it calls Iran's "military entrenchment" in Syria and shipments of Iranian weapons to militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Syria Tuesday September 10, 2019:

• Overnight airstrikes targeted an Iranian base in eastern Syria. At least 21 people were killed at the site, which was hit with eight strikes.
• The target probably hosted ammunition, weapons or other kinds of infrastructure to serve the forces which were to use this base.
• Both Iran and Syria have remained quiet about the existence of this base. This is the first time that the Iranian military is building a base of this scale from scratch in Syria. There is an American army position less than 200 miles from the new Iranian compound.

Syria Saturday September 14, 2019:

• Regime and Russian fire has killed at least six civilians in northwestern Idlib province two weeks after Moscow declared a ceasefire in the jihadist-dominated region.
• The truce, which brought a halt to four months of devastating bombardment on Idlib province by the government and its ally Russia, had largely held apart from sporadic artillery fire and air strikes.
• But on Tuesday, Russia carried out its first air strikes in the area since the ceasefire began.
• On Friday, regime rocket fire on the towns of Maaret Al-Numan and Kafranbel in southern Idlib province killed five civilians including a child.
• A sixth civilian was killed in a Russian air strike in the rural west of the province.
• That brought to 11 the number killed since the ceasefire came into effect.

Syria Sunday September 15, 2019:

• At least 12 civilians were killed and many were left heavily injured in a car bombing outside a hospital near the Turkish border in the town of Al-Rai (Çobanbey) in Syria's northern Aleppo province. A bomb-laden vehicle exploded in a parking lot near the hospital in the south of the town.
• The attack took place inside the Syrian borders across Turkey's southern Kilis province, just 10 kilometers away from Elbeyli district. The hospital sustained heavy material damage and officials fear that the number of deaths could rise. The deputy head of the town council, Alaa al-Hammad, said the truck appeared to have been detonated remotely.

Syria Tuesday September 17, 2019:

• A missile attack by an unidentified aircraft hit a position near a Syrian government-held town along the Iraqi border overnight on Tuesday killing at least 10 Iran-backed fighters.
• The attack took place in Al Bukamal, in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Az Zor. The raid was carried out by unmanned aerial vehicle. However, according to the report, it caused no casualties.
• The missile hit a weapons depot belonging to Iraqi factions operating under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Forces, the name given to mainly Shia militias in Iraq that are backed by Iran.

Syria Saturday September 21, 2019:

• A drone was shot down in Quneitra province in southern Syria, the second such incident in 48 hours.
• Authorities "dismantled a drone" after it was shot down on the edge of Jabal al-Sheikh in the Quneitra countryside, southwest of Damascus. The drone was loaded with bombs and C4 explosive.

Syria Thursday October 3, 2019:

• An artillery attack has hit a hospital in rebel-held Idlib province, wounding seven people with one in a critical condition.
• Save the Children said artillery shells struck the southern wing of a health centre it supports in the town of Maarat al-Numan in northwestern Syria.
• "The Maraat al-Numan health compound served up to 300,000 people living in the area, with on average 200 visitors daily, offering critical help to hundreds of children and their families. The attack put the facility out of service, but the full extent of the damage was not yet clear.

Syria Saturday October 5, 2019:

• At least 16 civilians were injured in terrorist attacks by bomb-laden motorcycles in northern Syria.
• A motorbike exploded in the opposition-held town of Qabasin, the northern Al-Bab city, injuring 12 people.
• Four other people were injured in another explosion in the city of Jarabulus and were rushed to hospital for medical treatment.
• A third explosion took place in the town of Al-Rai, the northern Aleppo Governorate, near Turkish border, but no injuries were reported.
• No group has yet claimed responsibility for the explosions, but local security forces blame the YPG/PKK terrorist group for the attacks.

Syria Thursday October 10, 2019:

• Thunderous explosions echoed across northern Syria as Turkish artillery paved the way for an all-out ground assault. The Turkish military said they've struck more than 180 "terrorist targets" along a 150-mile path.
• Ground troops have already crossed into the stretch of land between Tel Abyad and Ras al Ayn, the two border towns where U.S. special forces vacated bases earlier this week.
• Some of the tens of thousands of people who have fled the intense shelling, bottle-necked on the main road leading out of the border city of Gamishli.
• Throughout the day, and now into the night, there have been these huge traffic jams, people trying to get out of the range of Turkish weapons, airstrikes and artillery. The Turkish border is just a mile in that direction and nobody here wants to risk another night.

Syria Wednesday October 16, 2019:

• Syrian forces rolled into the strategic border town of Kobani, blocking one path for the Turkish military to establish a “safe zone” free of Syrian Kurdish fighters along the frontier as part of its week-old offensive.
• The seizure of Kobani by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad also pointed to a dramatic shift in northeastern Syria: The town was where the United States military and Kurdish fighters first united to defeat the Islamic State group four years ago and holds powerful symbolism for Syrian Kurds and their ambitions of self-rule. The convoys of government forces drove into Kobani after dark.
• Syria’s presence in Kobani puts a firm limit on Turkish ambitions in its offensive. The town lies between a Turkish-controlled enclave farther west and smaller areas to the east that Turkey seized in the past week.
• Turkey had talked of creating a 30-kilometer deep “safe zone,” driving out Kurdish fighters from the border region. Turkish forces had shelled Kobani in recent days as part of the offensive but had not advanced ground troops on it.

Syria Thursday October 17, 2019:

• US Vice President Mike Pence announced in Turkey that he and Turkish President Erdogan agreed to a ceasefire halting Turkey's incursion into northern Syria, which was launched after President Donald Trump effectively gave Turkey the go ahead on a phone call with Erdogan earlier this month.
• The deal appears to secure Turkey most of its military objectives, forcing America's one-time allies in the fight against ISIS -- Kurdish forces -- to cede a vast swath of territory, with one senior US official very familiar with operations in Syria telling CNN that the deal meant the US was "validating what Turkey did and allowing them to annex a portion of Syria and displace the Kurdish population."
• The Turkish government is insisting that the agreement is not a ceasefire, but only a "pause" on operations in the region, reflecting Ankara's views of the status of the Syrian Kurds. ---

Syria Thursday October 24, 2019:

• Russian aircraft carried out strikes on the last rebel stronghold in northwestern Syria raising fears of an all-out Syrian regime offensive to retake the area following a Moscow-brokered border deal with Turkey.
• The airstrikes targeted the Idlib, Hama and Latakia provinces amid intense artillery shelling and rocket fire. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
• The Russian strikes raised fears that Idlib was part of a broader bargain agreement between Moscow and Ankara to delineate their influence in Syria. Terms of the main pact were announced after Tuesday’s summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and covered a large Kurdish-controlled area in Syria’s northeast. While Idlib wasn’t part of the agreement, Turkish officials have said they feared that securing Russia’s support to establish a safe zone in the northeast could invite a resumed offensive by Russian aircraft and Syrian regime troops on Idlib.
• Russian troops are also filling a vacuum left by U.S. soldiers in northeastern Syria after President Trump ordered them to exit Syria.
• Russian planes carried out 32 strikes throughout the day.

Syria Saturday October 26, 2019:

• ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a raid conducted by the US military in northwest Syria. The final confirmation is pending while DNA and biometric testing is conducted. Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest during the raid. The raid was carried out by special operations commandos. The CIA assisted in locating the ISIS leader.
• Iraqi forces also gave "important information" in the operation.

Syria Saturday November 2, 2019:

• At least 13 people were killed, and many others injured in a car bomb explosion in a northern town that Turkey took control of last month. No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion at a market in Tal Abyad near the Turkish border
• Turkey's defense ministry blamed the armed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), while a group aligned with the Kurds blamed Turkey.
• The attack in Tal Abyad that targeted civilians is noteworthy for those that see the YPG as innocent and protects them
• A spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG makes up a large part, denied any responsibility. We believe this is the work of the Turkish state and their intelligence and mercenaries to frighten and terrorize the local people.

Syria Sunday November 3, 2019:

• Multiple artillery strikes landed about 1 kilometer from a road where U.S. forces in northeast Syria were paroling. No U.S. forces were injured and the patrol was not hit.
• Russia said American troops came under attack from Turkish-backed forces as they were driving along the M-4 highway just outside outside of Tel Tamir. The American convoy was headed towards the Iraq border.
• A humanitarian group has said one of its members from Myanmar working as a cameraman and medic has been killed by shelling in northeast Syria.

Syria Saturday November 9, 2019:

• An ambulance on its way to rescue people wounded in a Turkish airstrike has been damaged in a bombing, in the latest of what Kurdish groups say is a pattern of attacks against medical staff in north-eastern Syria.
• The ambulance, which had red markings indicating it was a medical vehicle, was heading to villages north of the town of Tal Tamr when it was struck by shrapnel from a weapon that exploded close by. The two paramedics inside were injured in the blast.
• The ambulance was targeted with heavy weapons. At the time of the attack the ambulance was not operating at the frontline.

Syria Saturday November 16, 2019:

• A car bomb exploded in a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters, killing at least 18 people and wounding several others.
• Northern Syria has been hit by several explosions that have killed and wounded scores of people over the past month. That's since Turkey began a military operation against Kurdish fighters in the wake of President Donald Trump's decision to pull the bulk of American troops out of northern Syria.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 19 people, including 13 civilians, were killed Saturday in the town of al-Bab in Aleppo province. The Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, said 15 people were killed in the blast in a busy part of town near a bus station.
• Turkey’s Defense Ministry said the blast killed 18 people and blamed the main Kurdish militia, known as the People’s Protection Units.

Syria Wednesday November 20, 2019:

• Israeli aircraft struck dozens of Iranian and Syrian targets in Syria in what it described as a retaliatory attack.
• In response to the rockets fired by an Iranian force from Syrian territory at Israel last night, IDF fighter jets struck dozens of military targets of the Iranian Quds Force and the Syrian Armed Forces, including surface-to-air missiles, headquarters, weapons warehouses and military bases.
• While the Pentagon has ordered the withdrawal of most US troops in Syria, others are now heading in to secure the country's eastern oilfields and ensure ISIS can't use the revenues from that oil to reconstitute their failed caliphate. But the Turkish military is taking advantage of the fact Americans have left the northern buffer zone, with devastating consequences for the civilians in that area.
• Turkey and Russia now patrol northern Syria side-by-side as Turkish President Erdogan moves ahead to annex much more land bordering his country. Local Syrians showed their displeasure by pelting a Turkish patrol with rocks near the town of Derrik.
• Turks fired what they claim to be tear gas to disperse the protests.  The questionable chemical, however, sent ten unconscious people to the hospital – something rarely caused by tear gas. One protester was run over by a Turkish vehicle and later died
• Doctors at this hospital in Tal Tamr have treated more than 700 patients so far.
• At least 16 civilians were killed when rockets struck an internally displaced persons camp, in the village of Qah in Syria's Idlib province according to the volunteer rescue group known as the White Helmets.
• The camp was targeted by a missile loaded with cluster munitions. The attack also "led to a huge fire that burned many tents and caused huge material damage.
• "I saw a lot of dead bodies, mostly children... I saw tents burning...most people, thousands, ran away of the camp after the strike," said one Syrian eyewitness.
• Idlib, near the Turkish-Syrian border, is the last opposition-held territory in Syria. It is home to more than 3 million Syrians including a dense population of internally displaced persons. The area is dominated by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, the once Al Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra.

Syria Saturday November 23, 2019:

• A car bomb exploded in a Turkey-controlled northern Syrian town killing at least three people.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, put the death toll from the explosion in Tal Abyad at nine, saying four of them were from the same family.
• More than 20 people were wounded in the explosion in the industrial neighborhood of Sinaa. The difference in numbers couldn't be reconciled immediately.
• At least three civilians were killed in Russian airstrikes in the Idlib de-escalation zone in northwestern Syria.
• The airstrikes pounded the district of Marratinnuman, Maarat al-Naasan, Tawil al-Halib, al-Dar al-Kabirah in Idlib province.
• At least three civilians were killed in the district of Maarat al-Naasan in the airstrikes.
• The death toll from the attacks on residential areas in the Idlib de-escalation zone over the past month reached 75, including 13 children.
• Moreover, the attacks on the ground were also carried out by Iran-backed terror groups supporting Bashar al-Assad regime in Idlib's villages of Kafr Nabl, Kafar Roma, Hass, Bsakla, Deir Sunbul and Hazareen.

Syria Tuesday November 26, 2019:

• A car bomb went off in a Turkish-controlled area of northeastern Syria killing at least 17 people. More than 20 others were wounded in the explosion in the village of Tal Half, near the city of Ras al-Ayn.
• Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters captured the Ras al-Ayn area in October when Ankara invaded northeastern Syria to drive away Syrian Kurdish fighters.
• The attack, the latest in a string of deadly car bomb attacks in the area, was blamed on Syrian Kurdish fighters.

Syria Sunday December 1, 2019:

• Two days of clashes between regime forces and armed groups in Syria’s last major opposition bastion have killed nearly 70 on both sides, undermining a months-long ceasefire agreement.
• The battles in the northwestern province of Idlib are “the most violent” there since a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement went into effect in late August.
• Residents of affected villages fled north to escape the fighting, adding to the hundreds of thousands who have already flooded out of the province’s violence-plagued south since fighting escalated earlier this year.
• Clouds of smoke rose over the Maaret al-Numan region as warplanes pounded jihadists and allied rebels in positions they had recently recaptured from regime forces. The Britain-based Observatory on Sunday put the death toll from fighting at 69 combatants since battles started the previous day. At least 36 in the regime forces were among those killed.

Syria Monday December 2 2019:

• Separate airstrikes, suspected of being carried out by the Syrian government and Turkey, have killed at least 20 people.
• One of the airstrikes, believed to be carried out by the Syrian government, hit a popular market in the northwestern rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan, killing 13 civilians. The Syrian Civil Defense, comprised of first responders, put the death toll at nine civilians.
• A second market in the nearby town of Saraqib was also hit by airstrikes, killing several people.
• Syria's northwestern region is the last major area controlled by Syrian rebels after more than eight years of civil war. The area has become home to hundreds of thousands of people who fled other parts of Syria during the conflict.
• Eight children were among 11 civilians killed in a Turkish artillery attack that hit near a school in a northern Syrian town in Aleppo province.
• The shelling on Tal Rifaat, controlled by local Kurdish fighters, took place as students were leaving the building and wounded 21 others.
• Most of those killed in the attack were displaced from the Afrin region which was captured last year by Turkish troops and their Syrian proxies.
• Tal Rifaat, a strategic town  located  20 kilometres south of Turkey's frontier, is the site of regular confrontations between Turkish-backed forces and Kurdish fighters they view as "terrorists".

Syria Tuesday December 3, 2019:

• American forces carried out an airstrike in northwestern Syria, killing two people in a minivan just 10 miles from the compound where ISIS fiend Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a US raid in October.
• The projectile used in the attack in Atmeh is believed to be a rare Hellfire missile known as the AGM-114R9X — which, instead of a traditional warhead, has sword-like blades that protrude out of it. The dead targets were “mashed” from the impact of the weapon.
• One of the van’s occupants was also believed to be part of a group that splintered from al Qaeda in 2017, called the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham.

Syria Thursday December 5, 2019:

• Airstrikes on areas in the last major rebel stronghold in northwest Syria killed at least four people -including 2 women and 1 children- and wounded others as a three-month truce crumbles.
• The airstrikes on Idlib province have intensified over the past few weeks as the government appears to be preparing for an offensive on rebel-held areas east of the province to secure the main highway that links the capital Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest and once commercial centre.
• Five others were killed in the village of Ibdeita and a child in another village nearby.

Syria Saturday December 7, 2019:

• Air raids by Syrian government and Russian forces have killed at least 18 people in the last major rebel stronghold in northwest Syria.
• Attacks on Idlib province have intensified over the past few weeks as the government appears to be preparing for an offensive on rebel-held areas east of the province to secure the main highway that links the capital Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest and once a commercial centre.
• Air strikes by unidentified warplanes have killed five pro-Iran fighters in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor near the Iraqi border.
• The strikes ltargeted "positions of Iranian forces and allied militias" on the edge of the town of Albukamal. Five non-Syrian fighters were killed.

Syria Sunday December 15, 2019:

• Fighter jets of the Syrian regime struck a town in northwestern Syria, killing a child and wounding seven people.
• Warplanes hit a bakery in the town of Maarsurin in Idlib province, which falls within a de-escalation zone where acts of aggression are explicitly prohibited. Regime planes carried out another attack in the town, killing a child and wounding seven people.
• On December 7, the Bashar Assad regime and its ally Russia struck a marketplace in Idlib, leaving 19 people dead.
• Since Moscow and Ankara reached a deal in September 2018, over 1,300 civilians have been killed in the Idlib de-escalation zone. Over a million Syrians have moved near the Turkish border following intense attacks.
• Since the eruption of the bloody civil war in Syria in 2011, Turkey has taken in over 3.6 million Syrians who fled their country, making Turkey the world's top refugee-hosting country. ---

Syria Tuesday December 17, 2019:

• Airstrikes and artillery shelling killed at least 16 civilians — including six members of the same family — amid intensified violence in rebel-held areas of northwestern Syria.
• The bombardments hit three villages in Idlib province, Syria's last major rebel stronghold.
• The objective appears to be reopening the main highway linking the capital, Damascus, with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest. Before the war began in 2011, Aleppo was the country's commercial center.
• Idlib province is dominated by al-Qaida linked militants.
• The six family members killed were hit by shelling in the village of Bdama, while four civilians died in an airstrike in the village of Maasaran, both in Idlib province.
• The shelling in Bdama killed the wife and three daughters of a relief worker with the opposition paramedic group Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets.

Syria Saturday December 21, 2019:

• Airstrikes on a rebel-held town killed eight people and wounded more than a dozen in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last remaining rebel stronghold in the war-torn country The attack came amid a government offensive in the region.
• The latest casualties in the town of Saraqeb came as government forces captured two new villages on the southern edge of Idlib. The province has been the center point of a government push under the cover of airstrikes.
• The offensive has already forced thousands of civilians to abandon their homes and flee for their lives.
• Possible "drone attacks" have targeted three government-owned energy facilities in central Syria.
• The "terrorist" attacks caused damage to production at Homs oil refinery as well as two natural gas installations in different parts of the central Homs province.
• Firefighters were trying to control the fire and were undertaking repair work at the facilities.
• The attack triggered explosions and fires in the facilities. No group has so far claimed responsibility.

Syria Monday December 23, 2019:

• Russian-backed Syrian forces have gained ground after a week-long renewed assault against the last opposition enclave in Syria’s northwest, the biggest such push in more than three months that has prompted a large civilian exodus.
• The wide-scale offensive led by intense aerial strikes on civilian areas in rural southeastern Idlib province broke months of stalemate on the frontlines, where rebels had been holding back the army from major advances.
• Russian and Syrian jets have stepped up strikes on villages and towns around Maarat al-Numan, from which thousands of people have fled to the relative safety of the Turkish border fearing an imminent assault.
• Russian jets hit a convoy of civilian cars fleeing the city. At least eight people were killed, including three women and two children.
• On Saturday, Russian jets hit a busy marketplace in Saraqeb city, east of Idlib, leaving at least eight dead and scores injured.
• A vehicle rigged with explosives blew up in a market in a northern Syrian town, killing five people and wounding others. The blast occurred in the village of Suluk near the Turkish border, putting the death toll at five people and reporting 20 more were injured.
• An Israeli missile strike overnight near the capital of Damascus killed at least three foreigners, who were most likely Iranians. Some others were wounded.
• The top Syrian diplomat accused Israel of carrying out missile “aggression” on Damascus and its suburbs. There was no immediate comment from Israel.
• Explosions could be heard near the capital. One of the Israeli missiles was shot down near the suburb of Aqraba.

Syria Tuesday December 24, 2019:

• At least eight people, including five children, were killed in Russian air strikes in the northwest; the strikes targeted the village of Jubass near the town of Saraqeb in southern Idlib province, killing civilians sheltering in a school and nearby.
• Heightened regime and Russian bombardments on southern Idlib since December 16 have forced tens of thousands of vulnerable people to flee their homes.

Syria Wednesday December 25, 2019:

• Five pro-Iran fighters were killed by unidentified missiles in the eastern province of Deir Az Zor.
• Missiles of unidentified origin targeted the headquarters of the 47th Brigade of pro-Iranian militias in the town of al-Bukamal, in the east of Deir Az Zor province, killing five fighters.

Syria Wednesday January 1, 2020:

• Land-to-land missiles fired by Syrian regime forces killed eight civilians, including four children, in a school in northwestern Syria.
• Part of the building in the town of Sarmeen had been turned into a shelter for the displaced. Sixteen people were wounded, including some in a critical condition.
• Almost nine years of civil war in Syria has left more than 380,000 people dead including over 115,000 civilians.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of sources across the country, said they included around 22,000 children and more than 13,000 women.
• The conflict flared after unprecedented anti-government protests in the southern city of Daraa on March 15, 2011.

Syria Saturday January 4, 2020:

• There were a series of airstrikes in northeastern Syria, near the town of Al Bukamal on the Iraqi border, on multiple facilities belonging to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Shiite militias.
• Several bases were hit in the attack, which was carried out by unidentified warplanes. Several Iranian nationals were wounded in airstrikes on the Imam Ali base, Iran's flagship project in Syria.

Syria Sunday January 5, 2020:

• 14 civilians were killed by unknown gunmen in the northern province of al-Raqqa. The bodies of the civilians were found in the Sabkha desert area which is under the government control in the southeastern countryside of Raqqa.
• It is still not clear about the identity of the killers, speculating that it could be sleeper cells of the Islamic State (IS) or other militants.
• Raqqa was the de facto capital of the IS before the Kurdish forces dislodged them in 2017.
• Syrian regime airstrikes killed nine civilians in the embattled opposition stronghold of Idlib. Jihadi-dominated Idlib has come under mounting bombardment in recent weeks, displacing tens of thousands of people in the northwestern region home to some 3 million.
• The regime air raids in the town of Ariha also wounded more than 19 people.
• The Damascus government has repeatedly vowed to retake Idlib, which is run by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group dominated by Syria’s former al-Qaida affiliate. A cease-fire announced in late August was supposed to stop Russia-backed regime bombardment of the region after strikes killed some 1,000 civilians in four months.

Syria Friday January 10, 2020:

• Unidentified aircraft struck targets near the border with Iraq, killing eight Iran-backed Iraqi militiamen. The rights group, which is based in the United Kingdom, obtains information through a network of activists on the ground in Syria, documenting the war in Syria over the past decade.
• The attack, carried out by “unknown drones,” targeted vehicles and armories. However, the head of the Syrian Observatory said it was “unidentified aircraft” that launched the attacks, without elaborating.
• Unidentified aircraft targeted vehicles and arms depots in the Albu Kamal area, causing a large explosion. At least eight Iraqi Hashed fighters were killed.

Syria Saturday January 11, 2020:

• Eighteen civilians were killed when Syrian government jets launched strikes in the region of Idlib - the country's last opposition stronghold - despite a cease-fire there agreed by Turkey and Russia.
• Seven were killed in the city of Idlib, the capital of the province of the same name, seven in the town of Binish and four in the village of Nairab. Dozens were also injured in the strikes.
• The reported attacks came two days after the Russian military announced that a cease-fire has taken effect in Idlib in accordance with agreements with Turkey. On Friday, Ankara said the truce would start Saturday at midnight.
• A man and his daughter sustained injuries when a booby-trapped motorcycle exploded in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. The motorcycle went off in the town of Hajin in the countryside of Deir al-Zour. The town is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
• Hajin came under the occupation of the Islamic State (IS) in 2014. In late November 2017, Hajin became IS' de facto capital after they lost key other areas in Syria and Iraq. On December 28, 2017, the SDF reached Hajin and began a campaign to remove IS. Hajin was captured by the SDF in December 2018.

Syria Tuesday January 14, 2020:

• Syria’s air defences confronted an aerial “aggression” from Israel that targeted an air base in the country's centre. Three Iranians or fighters in Iranian-backed militias were killed in the strike and several others are in critical condition.
• The attack targeted the T-4 air base in Homs province. The attack only caused material damage to the base as most rockets were intercepted while only four landed in the targeted area.
• Israel is widely believed to have been behind airstrikes mainly targeting Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria that have joined the country’s war fighting alongside the government.

Syria Wednesday January 15 2020:

• More than a dozen people were killed and 60 injured in airstrikes in the last rebel-held area in northwest Syria.
• The deaths come after a ceasefire agreement in the province went into effect on January 12. The deal was brokered by Turkey and Russia.
• At least 15 people were killed in strikes on a market and the industrial zone in Idlib city. There are reports of people still buried under the rubble.

Syria Saturday January 18, 2020:

• An air strike by Syrian regime ally Russia killed five civilians, including four members of the same family, in an opposition bastion in the country's northwest.
• Three children were among those killed in the village of Bala in the jihadist-run Idlib region.
• A man, his wife, and their two little girls were among those killed," said the head of the Britain-based monitoring group.

Syria Monday January 20, 2020:

• At least seven civilians, including five children, were killed in air strikes on northwest Syria by regime ally Russia despite a truce declared by Moscow. The raids hit several villages held by jihadists and rebels in the western countryside of Aleppo province.
• Three girls were killed in the village of Kfar Taal while four civilians, including two other children, died in separate strikes that hit other villages in the area.
• Idlib and parts of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces, are dominated by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group dominated by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate.

Syria Tuesday January 21, 2020:

• Russian-led air strikes killed at least 18 people – including an entire family – in north-west Syria, where a major government offensive to clear out rebels has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing toward the border with Turkey.
• The family of eight including six children were killed in the rural village of Kfar Taal, west of government-controlled Aleppo, while another four civilians were killed in Maardabseh in the south-east of Idlib province.
• At least eight other civilians were killed in other strikes by Russian and Syrian government warplanes on rural opposition areas that have been hit hard since the Russian-led military campaign, supplemented by Iranian militias, began in December.
• It has left dozens of towns in ruins and knocked down hospitals and schools.
• An Islamic State group official who oversaw oil and gas operations and helped finance sleeper cells was killed last week in a joint coalition special operations raid with Syrian partner forces.
• The ISIS official known by the pseudonym Abu al-Ward al-Iraqi was killed along with another militant who officials have not yet identified during the raid in Deir al-Zour province on January 14.

Syria Wednesday January 22, 2020:

• Up to 40 Syrian soldiers have been killed in an assault by hundreds of militants in north-western Syria. There were several attacks in which the militants seized two settlements in Idlib province.
• Members of a jihadist alliance set off car bombs and used heavy fire as they targeted army positions in the Maarat al-Numan area. Army units were re-deployed to the area and eventually repelled the attacks "with high efficiency".
• Idlib is the last stronghold of the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad and is home to three million people, of whom 76% are women and children.

Syria Friday January 24, 2020:

• The U.S. Department of Defence announced the death of a North Carolina soldier serving in Syria.
• Army Spcialist Antonio I. Moore was supporting Operation Inherent Resolve in Deir ez Zor Province. He died in a rollover accident while conducting route clearing operations.

Syria Wednesday January 29, 2020:

• Syrian government forces captured one of the largest and most strategic rebel-held towns in the country’s northwest, part of a Russian-backed military assault that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to safer areas.
• The town of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, which had been in rebel hands since 2012, sits on the highway linking Damascus with Aleppo and is considered critical to President Bashar Assad’s forces. The town is now largely empty as a result of intense bombardment in recent weeks.
• Warplanes struck a town in a rebel-held enclave in northwestern Syria, killing at least 10 people, including some who were fleeing the attack. The attack, believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes backing a Syrian government offensive, also put a local hospital out of service.
• The assault on Ariha, a town in Idlib province, comes as the rebel-held enclave is under intense fire amid Syrian government advances on the area, which had been controlled by the opposition for nearly eight years.
• The Russian Defense Ministry rejected claims it was behind the attack, calling them a "provocation.'' The ministry said Russian warplanes did not fly any combat missions in the area.
• At least 24 people were wounded, including a doctor, a White Helmet volunteer, three women and two children.

Syria Saturday February 1, 2020:

• Syrian insurgents carried out two suicide car bomb attacks in an assault on pro-government forces in Aleppo and opened a new front northeast of the city, an attempted fightback after territorial gains for President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria Sunday February 2, 2020:

• Turkey hit targets in northern Syria, responding to shelling by Syrian government forces that killed at least six Turkish military personnel. 13 Syrian troops were also killed.
• Airstrikes in the country's northern, rebel-held region killed at least nine civilians Monday.
• The exchange between Ankara and Damascus came hours after a large Turkish military convoy entered the northwestern province of Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria. It is likely to further increase tensions between the two neighboring countries, as such direct clashes have been rare, and could also cause friction between Moscow and Ankara, which have sought to coordinate their actions in Syria.
• Earlier, the Turkish forces were sent to Idlib as reinforcements and were attacked there despite prior notification of their coordinates to the local authorities. Turkish forces responded to the attack, destroying targets. Four Turkish soldiers died at the scene while another soldier and a Turkish civilian member of the military personnel died later in hospital. Seven Turkish troops were wounded.

Syria Monday February 3, 2020:

• Shelling hit a natural gas plant in the south-central area of the city of Homs as well as the Ebla gas plant there.
• Firefighting units are still trying to put out a fire at the south-central area gas plant while no damage was reported at the Ebla gas plant.
• It was not immediately known whether production from the south-central area gas plant was affected and no further information was available on the source of the shelling.
• The Ebla gas plant provides local power plants with approximately 2.5 million cubic meters of gas per day and both gas plants are used to provide fuel domestically.

Syria Tuesday February 4, 2020:

• Today it was confirmed that seven Turkish soldiers and one civilian personnel were killed in Syria on Sunday, Turkey's first fatalities as a result of direct confrontation between the countries since the start of Syria's civil war in 2011.
• Several other troops had been also wounded in northwest Syria's Idlib province after they came under heavy artillery fire from the Syrian government; the troops were reinforcements.
• On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said up to 35 Syrian government soldiers had responded and pledged further retaliation.
• The Turkish president, Erdogan, said up to 40 Syrian targets were being considered as part of the operation, and warned Russia -the most powerful backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad- to "not stand in our way."
• An air defense system at Syria's Hmeimim air base has downed two drones near the facility.
• The air base is currently operated by Russia, which intervened in Syria's war in 2015 in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria Thursday February 6, 2020:

• Russia and Syrian regime carried out air strikes in the Idlib de-escalation zone, northwestern Syria, killing at least 15 civilians; Turkey sent more reinforcements into the region, setting up new positions in an attempt to stop a regime offensive.
• The White Helmets civil defence group said 15 civilians were killed after air strikes targeted Idlib's city centre and villages.
• Syrian regime forces were also locked in clashes with militants and allied rebels in a key highway town in northwest Syria despite Turkey warning pro-regime militants to back off. Fighting is ongoing in the south of the town of Saraqeb.
• Ankara sent in reinforcements north of the town of Saraqeb overnight, a move that came after the Syrian regime targeted Turkish observation posts killing seven Turkish soldiers and a Turkish civilian member of the military on Monday. ---

Syria Wednesday February 12, 2020:

• A civilian Syrian was killed and another was wounded in a rare clash between American troops and a group of government supporters who tried to block a U.S. convoy driving through a village in northeastern Syria.
• The killed man was among residents of a village east of the town of Qamishli who had gathered at an army checkpoint, pelting the U.S. convoy with stones and taking down a U.S. flag from one of the vehicles. At that point, American troops fired with live ammunition and smoke bombs at the residents.
• Coalition forces conducting a patrol near Qamishli encountered a checkpoint occupied by pro-Syrian government forces. After coalition troops issued a series of warnings in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, the patrol came under small-arms fire from unknown individuals. In self-defense, coalition troops returned fire.

Syria Thursday February 13, 2020:

• Israeli strikes on Damascus airport killed seven fighters, the latest in a string of attacks targeting Iran's military presence in Syria.
• Syria said only that its air defences intercepted missiles over the capital overnight while Israel did not immediately comment on the strikes.
• Israel routinely fires missiles at what it says are Iranian targets in Syria, where elite Iranian forces and allied militia play a key role. The strikes launched hit military targets in the area of the international airport.
• The dead were three Syrian soldiers and four members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Syria Friday February 14, 2020:

• A Syrian military helicopter has been shot down in northwest Syria, where an intensifying government offensive to retake the country's last rebel-held areas has caused a massive wave of displacement.
• The aircraft was hit by a missile near the town of Urum al-Kubra in the western countryside of Aleppo.

Syria Sunday February 23 2020:

• Syria’s capital was rocked by multiple explosions and the country’s air defenses fired back in the latest attack by Israel on targets in Syria.
• Air defences confronted a wave of “enemy rockets” coming from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
• The Israeli military claimed responsibility saying it staged a series of strikes targeting the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad in Syria and the Gaza Strip.
• Multiple explosions shook Damascus and lasted for about 15 minutes as air defences fired back. It was not immediately clear what targets were hit.
• The explosions resulted from Israeli bombing of suspected Iranian-backed militias in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport.

Syria Saturday February 29,2020:

• Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group lost at least eight fighters in northwest Syria in skirmishes with insurgents and airstrikes by Turkey's air force.
• The casualties followed the death of at least 33 Turkish soldiers earlier this week. The deaths marked the highest for the group in Syria in years as Hezbollah has pulled out many of its fighters from the neighboring country.
• Hezbollah sent thousands of its battle-hardened fighters into Syria a year after the country's conflict began in 2011, helping President Bashar Assad's forces win major battles against insurgents. But over the past two years, Hezbollah has withdrawn many of its forces, leaving only a few hundred of them in several areas around the war-torn country.
• 14 Hezbollah fighters were killed Friday afternoon in the village of Talhiyeh when Turkish drones attacked their post as well as others of the Syrian army. The Observatory said 48 Syrian soldiers have also been killed since Thursday in Turkish bombardments and drone attacks in the region.
• Turkish ground and air strikes on Syrian government forces and their allies in northwest Syria's Idlib have killed 48 pro-Damascus soldiers in the past 24 hours.
• Syrian government and Russian warplanes continued air strikes on the strategic eastern Idlib city of Saraqeb, a focal point of intensified fighting in recent days between Turkish-backed rebels and Damascus.

Syria Sunday March 1, 2020:

• Thousands of migrants and refugees massed at Turkey's western frontier, trying to enter Greece by land and sea after Turkey said its borders were open to those hoping to head to Europe.
• Turkey's decision to ease border restrictions came amid a Russia-backed Syrian government offensive into Syria's northwestern Idlib province. That offensive has killed dozens of Turkish troops and led to a surge of nearly a million Syrian civilians fleeing the fighting toward Turkey's sealed border.
• Turkey backs the Syrian rebels fighting in Idlib province, and has sent thousands of troops into the area. Idlib is the last opposition-held stronghold in Syria, and is dominated by al-Qaida linked fighters.
• A Turkish official said the fighting in Idlib was directly linked to Turkey's decision to open the gates for refugees to Europe. He said Ankara had changed its focus to preparing for the possibility of new arrivals from Syria “instead of preventing refugees who intend to migrate to Europe.”
• In Syria, Turkish troops shot down two Syrian warplanes after the Syrian military downed a Turkish drone, a major escalation in the direct conflict between Syrian and Turkish forces.

Syria Monday March 2, 2020:

• Syria confirmed that two of its warplane were shot down by Turkish forces inside northwest Syria, amid a military escalation there that’s led to growing direct clashes between Turkish and Syrian forces.
• The jets were targeted over the Idlib region; the four pilots ejected with parachutes and landed safely.

Syria Saturday March 7, 2020

• A fuel tank collided with two passenger buses and several other cars on a highway near the capital Damascus killing 30 people.
• The accident happened on the Damascus-Homs road in the Baghdad Bridge area, adding that a number of other people were injured.
• No details were immediately available and it was not immediately clear what caused the collision. The war-devastated country marks nine years of conflict next week. It has ravaged the country’s economy and infrastructure.

Syria Wednesday March 11, 2020:

• The World Health Organization (WHO) said that it has documented more than 500 military attacks on medical facilities in Syria since it began counting them in 2016, with nearly as many deaths among staff and patients.
• About two-thirds of those struck were in Syria’s northwest where fighting has intensified in recent months as Damascus, backed by Russia, has sought to capture the last slice of the country beyond its control.
• A ceasefire between Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the conflict, was agreed last week and only minor violations have occurred.
• The data documented 494 attacks on health facilities between 2016-2019, the report showed in what the WHO says is the first comprehensive time it has released of data on medical strikes.
• Since the start of this year, it has confirmed nine further attacks, all in northwest Syria, that resulted in 10 deaths, without saying who was responsible.
• The total death toll of medical workers and patients was 480 from January 2016 to present.

Syria Thursday March 19, 2020:

• Six people, including three children, were killed after artillery shells fired by Syrian regime forces hit a village in southern Syria. This came after regime forces clashed with Syria's opposition forces at Jalin village in Daraa countryside, leaving two members of opposition forces and eight regime forces dead.
• The regime withdrew its forces from the region and carried out the artillery attack targeting the village.
• Inflicted with unemployment, corruption and oppression under a single-party rule for half a century, Syrian people carried out demonstrations across the country. When the Syrian regime began to suppress demonstrations with violence, it evolved into a fully-fledged civil war.
• UN officials said that the Syrian regime has committed war crimes such as using chemical weapons, starving the population, deportation, blockade, arbitrary arrests and tortures.

Syria Saturday March 21, 2020:

• Four civilians were injured in a car bombing in al-Bab, northern Syria.  The explosion also caused material damage.
• Volunteers of Syrian civil defense agency White Helmets rushed to the site as first responders. Local security forces said they suspected YPG/PKK terrorists of carrying out the attack.
• Al-Bab was cleared of terrorist YPG/PKK elements in 2016 as part of Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield.

Syria Tuesday March 31, 2020:

• Syrian air defences intercepted several Israeli missiles fired at targets in the centre of the country, probably in Homs province.
• Syrian air defences shot at missiles fired from Israeli warplanes and shot down some of them. The jets fired missiles while flying in Lebanese airspace and targeted a Syrian army position.
• The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said Israeli jets fired eight missiles at the Shayrat airbase in Homs province.
• Residents in the Lebanese capital of Beirut heard the sound of warplanes right before the incident was reported. Israel often attacks Syria with airstrikes targeting Iran, Hezbollah and their allies.
• In February, an Israeli drone strike at a car in Syria killed one person with opposition activists saying that the targeted man was working against Israel.

Syria Saturday April 4, 2020:

• Turkish shelling has inflicted damage on an electricity station in Syria's northeastern province of Hasakah. The Turkish shelling targeted the electricity lines in the town of Tal Tamr in the countryside of Hasakah, which caused the electricity station to go out of service.
• This comes a few days after the Turkish forces cut off water supply lines from areas in Hasakah.
• On April 2, Turkish shelling killed two people in Tal Tamr and wounded four others.

Syria Saturday April 4, 2020:

• The PKK terrorist organization’s Syrian affiliate, the YPG, has caused the death of eight civilians, including children, with land mines laid around the northern Ayn al-Arab in the last month. Ten additional people were also wounded by the devices.
• The large number of land mines surrounding Ayn al-Arab, which is located opposite of southern Şanlıurfa’s Suruç district, has become the worst fear of the region’s people.
• New mines had been laid by the YPG/PKK around Ayn al-Arab’s southern districts, around the Euphrates river to its east, in the Operation Peace Spring area, border villages and areas close to the Turkish border.
• Ayn al-Arab has been occupied by the terrorist organization since January 2015, with U.S. support under the pretext of fighting Daesh.
• Turkey has long decried the threat from terrorists east of the Euphrates in northern Syria, pledging military action to prevent the formation of a "terrorist corridor" there.
• Since 2016, Turkey's Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations in northwestern Syria have liberated the region from YPG/PKK and Daesh terrorists, making it possible for nearly 400,000 Syrians who fled the violence to return home.

Syria Wednesday April 8, 2020:

• An investigative team with the international group that monitors compliance with the chemical weapons ban accused the Syrian government of having launched three chemical weapons attacks on one village in northern Syria in March 2017, sickening scores of people.
• The team, established by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said in a report that in the span of one week, Syrian fighter jets had twice dropped bombs containing sarin nerve agent on the village and a helicopter had targeted its hospital with a cylinder containing chlorine.
• Reports of chemical weapons use have surfaced frequently during Syria’s nine-year civil war, and officials from the United States, Turkey and other countries have accused the Syrian government of using banned weapons to try to break the back of the rebel movement that is seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
• The O.P.C.W. verified the use of chemical weapons in many of these cases, but had refrained from assigning blame for who deployed them, raising criticism from activists that holding back such judgments diminished the chances for accountability.
• So the organization established an investigative body, known as the Investigation and Identification Team, that was assigned to determine responsibility for chemical weapons use in Syria. The report on Wednesday was the team’s first, and it pointed the finger at Mr. al-Assad’s forces.
• The team based its investigation on a range of evidence, including witness testimonies, videos, forensic reports on recovered munitions scraps, medical records and satellite imagery, the report said.
• Daesh have managed to take over the Syrian town of Al-Sukhna located in the northern countryside of Homs.
• The Syrian Air Force has reportedly carried out airstrikes over the Al-Waar area amid on-going clashes between the army and Daesh fighters.

Syria Sunday April 12, 2020:

• A resilient Islamic State (IS) has become increasingly active over the past few weeks in eastern Syria, especially in the desert in the south and Kurdish areas in the north.
• IS militants have launched attacks against Syrian regime forces and their allied militias, while also targeting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to a lesser extent. These attacks point to IS’ ability to restructure cells and carry out large-scale operations.
• IS is likely to carry on its attacks, explosions and executions, especially in the eastern desert of the central province of Homs and the desert in eastern Deir ez-Zor. IS is taking advantage of the world’s and Syria’s preoccupation with the coronavirus crisis and the measures imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, including curfews and quarantines.
• On April 9, IS targeted a regime convoy and military posts in the Homs desert. Russian aircraft launched a series of air raids against IS positions there. The clashes and airstrikes killed 18 regime fighters and allied gunmen, and 11 IS militants.
• The Syrian Kurdish Anti Terror Forces (HAT) has arrested a senior health official in the ranks of the so-called Islamic State in rural northeastern Hasakah province.
• HAT is affiliated with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is the US-led Coalition's partner in the fight against the terrorist organization in Syria.
• A HAT unit arrested Mohammad Rashid Diyab, the head of the Islamic State Health Bureau, in a joint operation with the US-led Coalition in the Hasakah town of Shaddadi.
• The town was an Islamic State stronghold for its oil trade operations in northeast Syria and was liberated by the SDF in February 2016.

Syria Monday April 13, 2020:

• A civilian was killed in the northwestern Afrin province from the explosion of a mine previously planted by the YPG/PKK terrorist group. The mine detonated in the rural areas outside Afrin's city center, where a shepherd was pasturing his drove. As a result of the explosion, the shepherd was killed.
• Afrin had been a major stronghold for the YPG/PKK since July 2012, when the Assad regime in Syria left the city to the terror group without putting up a fight. In order to end the terror group's oppression of local people, Turkey cleared the area of PKK-affiliated terrorists using 72 Turkish aircraft to strike targets following an announcement of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Jan. 20, 2018.

Syria Wednesday April 15, 2020:

• Two missiles from an Israeli drone targeted a Hezbollah car on the Syrian side of the Syria-Lebanon border. There were no casualties, with the passengers escaping before the car was hit and destroyed.
• One missile blew up near the vehicle as it traveled in rural Damascus near a border crossing with Lebanon. The second missile hit after the driver managed to get out of the vehicle. The border crossing is officially closed, except for commercial transit, as part of the measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
• Syria state media also reported the attack, saying it targeted a civilian car and left material damage only.

Syria Friday April 17, 2020:

• The Syrian regime has regained control of oil fields in the Badia after battles with Daesh. Wells and oil and gas installations in Hayyan and Al-Shaer fields in the countryside of Homs Governorate have been put back into production after they were recaptured.
• The production will return to the fields gradually to reach the full amount of the previous production. This morning, it will be re-pumped to the gas grid and power plants.
• The security situation in the Badia region led to the suspension of a number of wells in Hayan and Al-Shaer fields. The electrical network was affected as a result of the loss of gas supplies.

Syria Saturday Apil 18, 2020:

• Two officers of the Syrian regime forces have been killed in an assassination carried out by unidentified persons riding a motorcycle in the northeastern countryside of Daraa; they are: the Chief of Staff of the 52nd Brigade, Colonel Hamid Makhlouf, and the Head of the organization section of the 52nd Brigade, Colonel Mahmoud Habib.
• The two officers were being targeted on the road linking “52nd Brigade” with the western al-Mleh town on the outskirts of al-Harak town, northeast of Daraa.
• Fifteen fighters from the Syrian regime and the Lebanese Hezbollah party were killed last week in the Daraa countryside. The regime and its collaborators were victim to ten attacks, ranging from assassinations to armed assaults, in the eastern and western Daraa countryside.
• Unknown gunmen attacked a military vehicle of the 52nd Brigade as it was passing through the eastern Daraa countryside. Three regime fighters were killed.
• The unrest in Daraa, which is held by the regime and allied militias, has been ongoing since June. Not a day goes by without an assassination attempt that often targets regime fighters or collaborators. Damascus has so far failed to rein in the chaos in the southern province.
• The unrest has claimed the lives of 133 regime fighters and armed gunmen loyal to them, 17 members of Hezbollah and Iranian forces and six members of the Russian-established “Fifth Brigade”.
• Syria Monday April 20, 2020:
• Nine fighters, including six foreigners loyal to the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, were killed in an Israeli airstrike near Palmyra in Syria’s Homs Governorate. The Israeli strike targeted Iranian and Iran-backed fighters.
• Israel has in the past acknowledged carrying out airstrikes in Syria, mostly against Iranian and Hezbollah targets.
• Syria country’s air defenses has downed several Israeli missiles near Palmyra. This was the third such attack reported in the past three weeks.

Syria Thursday April 23, 2020:

• The Islamic State (IS) attacked the Iraqi Hezbollah group in eastern Syria, leaving two killed and five wounded. The IS attacked the Iraqi Hezbollah group in the desert region of the city of Mayadeen in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour province in eastern Syria.
• ````````````````````````````````````````several areas, mainly in eastern Syria. The IS group has been carrying out attacks in eastern Syria, targeting Syrian forces and allied fighters.
• As many as 418 Syrian soldiers and pro-government fighters have been killed by IS attacks in eastern Syria since March 24. The IS lost key areas across the country, but sleeper cells and some groups in the desert region often launch attacks on Syrian forces.

Syria Monday April 27, 2020:

• Israeli warplanes flying over Lebanon fired missiles toward areas near Damascus killing three civilians; a war monitoring group said four Iran-backed fighters were also killed.
• Syrian air defenses shot down some of the missiles in the attack. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the missiles hit positions belonging to Iran and its regional proxies, killing four fighters and causing damage south of Damascus. The deads were not Syrians nor members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
• The airstrike is the fourth in Syria in less than a month, despite the coronavirus pandemic gripping the region, and comes amid rising tensions between Israel and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group in Syria as well as along the Lebanon-Israel border.
• iShrapnel from the Israeli missiles hit homes in the Damascus suburbs of Hajira and Adlieh, killing three people there and wounding four. Both areas are close to the Sayyida Zeinab suburb that is home to a holy Shiite shrine and Iran-backed fighters have a presence there. (---)

Syria Monday April 27, 2020:

• Israeli fighter jets flew over Lebanese airspace and fired missiles at areas near Damascus in the fourth reported Israeli strike in Syria in the last month.
• Three civilians were killed by the strikes; four Iran-backed fighters were also killed.
• Syrian air defences shot down some of the Israeli missiles. The targeted positions belonged to Iran and its regional proxies.

Syria Tuesday April 28, 2020:

• At least 40 people have been killed in a bomb attack in the north-western Syrian city of Afrin as a fuel tanker rigged with a hand grenade exploded at a crowded market place.
• Afrin is controlled by Turkish forces and allied Syrian opposition factions.
• In 2018, they launched a joint operation to drive the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia out of the city and its surrounding region.

Syria Thursday April 30, 2020:

• Israeli helicopters fired several rockets from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on targets inside southern Syria, Syrian state media reported on Friday, in what intelligence sources say is part of an increase in strikes against Iran-backed militias.
• Opposition sources in the area said several militia posts near Quneitra were targeted in the attack, which caused only material damage.
• Bases and convoys run by Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia, which has a strong presence in the Syrian Golan Heights, have been hit by Israel in recent years.
• Israel is stepping up raids in Syria at a time when world attention and the region, including Syria, were distracted by the coronavirus pandemic.
• The Syrian army said that a series of blasts at an ammunition depot east of Homs had led to casualties but was not caused by an attack as earlier announced. However, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blasts were caused by Israeli strikes targeting a military base on the Homs-Palmyra road run by Hezbollah.
• Two weeks ago, an Israeli drone attack targeted a car carrying forces from Hezbollah in southern Syria along the border with Lebanon without causing casualties.

Syria Friday May 1, 2020:

• Two sets of explosions occurred and there are conflicting reports on Israel’s possible involvement.
• One set of explosions took place at a military warehouse in the central Syrian city of Homs. Ten civilians were injured and the Israeli military declined to comment on the incident.
• The explosion on the city's outskirts was caused by “human error” and took place at an ammunition depot. The explosion occurred during the movement of ammunition. Some people were injured due to shrapnel from the explosion and the incident is under investigation by local authorities.
• However, the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Israeli shelling of ammunition and missile storage facilities in Homs caused the explosion.
• Also today, Israel reportedly fired missiles into the Syrian Golan Heights in the south of the country. Syria activated its air defense systems and the missiles came from the Israeli part of the Golan Heights.

Syria Sunday May 3, 2020:

• Unknown gunmen abducted and killed nine policemen in southern Syria in a rare attack on a government building in the defeated cradle of the nine-year uprising.
• The nine policemen were killed "after a terrorist group attacked them as they were performing their job", using the government's term for rebels and fighters. The killings occurred in a town called Muzayrib in Daraa province.

Syria Tuesday May 5, 2020:

• Israel was accused of launching a series of attacks on Iran-backed militia targets inside Syria as it reportedly intensifies cross-border raids.
• Israeli aircraft hit military barracks in al-Safirah in the eastern Aleppo countryside. A research centre was targetted. The army said it was now assessing the damage caused by the raids.
• Israeli airstrikes in eastern Syria killed 14 Iranian and Iraqi fighters and wounded others, some seriously.
• The late Monday strikes in eastern Deir el-Zour province targeted positions of Iranian and Iran-backed fighters. There was no immediate comment from Israel. Israeli strikes targeted military depots in the region of Safira, south of the northern city of Aleppo.

Syria Friday May 8, 2020:

• A total of 855 medical personnel have been killed since civil war erupted in Syria in 2011.
• A report released by Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) presents the most remarkable challenges faced by medical personnel and detainees in Syria amid the spread of the coronavirus.
• Of these fatalities, the Syrian Regime forces killed 669, while Russian forces killed 68, Daesh/ISIS terrorist organization killed 40, and factions of the Armed Opposition killed 36. The YPG/PKK terror group killed eight medical personnel, the US-led coalition forces killed 13 medical personnel, and an additional 21 medical personnel were killed by other parties.
• At least 3,353 detained medical personnel are awaiting their release, 3,327 of them jailed by the Syrian regime.
•  “Perpetrator” parties in Syria conducted at least 860 attacks on medical facilities between March 2011 and May 2020, 87% of which were committed by Bashar Assad regime and Russia.

Syria Sunday May 10, 2020:

• Clashes in northwest Syria killed 48 regime fighters and jihadists in the highest such death toll since the start of a two-month-old ceasefire there. The clashes in the Sahl al-Ghab area killed 35 regime fighters as well as 13 jihadists including from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Hurras al-Deen group.
• A truce since March 6 had largely stemmed fighting in Syria's last major rebel bastion of Idlib after a months-long regime assault that killed hundreds of civilians and forced almost a million to flee.
• But before dawn on Sunday rebels attacked the positions of pro-regime fighters on the western flank of the jihadist-dominated region. It's the highest death toll for fighters since the truce came into force. There had been intermittent clashes and mutual bombardment between both sides before, but this is the most violent attack yet.
• At least 11 civilians were wounded in a bomb attack carried out by the YPG/PKK terror group in the northern city of al-Bab. The terrorist group targeted an Operation Euphrates Shield area.
• The Syrian armed opposition factions repealed an attack launched by the Syrian regime forces and retook a strategic village in Hama countryside. The opposition factions retook control of the village of Al-Manara in Sahel Al-Ghab, west of Hama and advanced towards the village of Tangara.
• More than ten members of the Syrian regime’s forces were killed or wounded while the opposition forces seized a tank, weapons and various munitions.
• Following the attack, the regime forces carried out a massive artillery and missile shelling against the towns of Kansafra, Kfar Weid in Idlib’s countryside as well as other villages in Hama’s countryside.

Syria Thursday May 14, 2020:

• At least five civilians were wounded when two bombs simultaneously exploded in northern Syria’s al-Bab province, in an attack suspected to have been carried out by YPG/PKK terrorists.
• This was the third attack in the province killing civilians this month. At least 11 civilians were wounded in a bomb attack carried out by the YPG/PKK terror group in al-Bab on May 10 while in a previous attack on May 5, one civilian was killed in a bomb explosion in the same province.
• Al-Bab, which was previously ruled by Daesh terrorists who destroyed the infrastructure and displaced thousands of civilians, became a fully functioning city with a local council, schools, hospitals and a university, thanks to Turkey's efforts. The city was liberated three years ago in Operation Euphrates Shield, which was carried out by the Turkish military and the Syrian National Army (SNA). Following its liberation, most of al-Bab's residents returned to the town, with its population almost doubling from 130,000 in February 2017 to 250,000 in February 2020.
• Al-Bab was cleared of terrorist YPG/PKK elements in 2016 as part of Turkey's Operation Euphrates Shield, which was launched to eliminate terrorists along the Syrian border and ended in March 2017. However, the terrorist group still continues to conduct attacks on innocent civilians both in Syria and in Turkey.

Syria Saturday May 16, 2020:

• Unknown warplanes attacked Iran-backed fighters in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, killing several of the Iraqi militiamen possibly 7. The strikes targeted a base near the border town of Boukamal, killing seven fighters.
• Israel was most likely behind the attack, but gave no evidence.
• Israel rarely comments on such reports, although it has acknowledged carrying out airstrikes inside Syria on numerous occasions over the course of Syria's nine-year conflict, saying it was going after Iranian military targets in the country.
• There have recently been several reports of suspected Israeli strikes inside Syria, including one on May 4 that left 14 Iranian-backed fighters dead.

Syria Friday May 22, 2020:

• A joint raid with Syrian Democratic Forces and members of the U.S.-led coalition in northeastern Syria left two Islamic State leaders dead. The terrorist group’s governor of North Baghdad, known as Abu Ali al-Baghdadi, was killed in Deir al-Zour province on May 17, along with a senior logistics and supply official known as Abu Ammar.
• Al-Baghdadi was the nom de guerre of Ahmad Isa Ismail al-Zawi, who was responsible for disseminating guidance from ISIS leaders to operatives in north Baghdad. Ammar, whose real name was Ahmad Abd Muhammad Hasan al-Jughayfi, directed the acquisition and transportation of weapons, bomb materials and personnel across Iraq and Syria.
• The removal of these ISIS leaders will disrupt future attacks against innocent civilians and our security partners and in the region. The raid was part of an intensified campaign supported by special operations forces.

Syria Tuesday May 26, 2020:

• An airstrike in eastern Syria carried out by the US-led military coalition assembled to fight the Islamic State (IS) has killed one of the group's senior figures. Mu'taz Numan 'Abd Nayif Najm al-Jaburi headed the terrorist group’s foreign operations. Jaburi, who used the nom de guerre Hajji Taysir, was known as the Islamic State’s governor of Iraq.
• There was no confirmation from the US military today; the US Department of Justice has since September 2019 offered up to a $5 million bounty for information on his whereabouts. The department describes Jaburi as one of IS' most important leaders, and one who oversaw the group’s chemical and biological weapons research as the deputy head of IS manufacturing in Syria.
• The reported strike on Jaburi in Deir ez-Zor was carried out by the US-led international military coalition using intelligence provided by Iraq.
• Deir ez-Zor province was home to the Islamic State’s final stronghold in Baghouz before it fell to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the coalition in March 2019.
• Three U.S. soldiers were wounded when their convoy was attacked by unknown militants in Syria's eastern province of Deir al-Zour.
• The targeted U.S. convoy was accompanied by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said SANA, adding five SDF fighters were also wounded in the attack that took place near the village of Ruwaishid in the countryside of Deir al-Zour.
• Separately, the U.S. forces brought military and logistic supplies into Syria from Iraq; communication towers were brought into the country as well.
• It's worth noting that the United States controls several bases in northeastern and eastern Syria, particularly in areas controlled by the SDF.
• The Syrian government has for long accused Washington of violating the Syrian sovereignty, urging the international community to pressure the United States to withdraw its troops from Syria.

Syria Saturday May 30, 2020:

• Two people were injured after a car-bomb explosion in the Jarabulus district of northern Syria that is believed to have been set by the YPG/PKK terror group.
• The explosion took place in an area which was cleared of terror elements following Turkey's Operation Euphrates Shield.
• The blast caused property damage to the district center.
• Security sources argue the terror group might be behind the attack as it commits acts of terrorism by regularly targeting Azaz, Jarabulus and Afrin regions of Syria.

Syria Sunday May 31, 2020:

• An air strike in eastern Syria killed five non-Syrian fighters backed by Iran. The strike targeted three military vehicles belonging to Iran-backed paramilitary fighters near the Iraqi border,.
• The monitor did not specify who was behind the attack near the border town of Albu Kamal. Still, Israel was likely responsible.
• Israel has launched hundreds of strikes in Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011, targeting government troops, allied Iranian forces and fighters from the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah. After a lull amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, Israel had resumed its strikes in Syria. It rarely confirms details of its operations in Syria, but says Iran's presence in support of President Bashar al-Assad is a threat and has vowed to continue its strikes.
• Iranian-backed militias and their allies command a significant presence in eastern Syria, south of the Euphrates Valley.
• At least 125 civilians, including eight who died due to torture, were documented killed in Syria in May 2020 at the hands of the perpetrator parties to the conflict, in addition to one massacre, noting that the civilian death toll increased compared to the previous month as a result of remote bombings.
• The crime of murder has become widespread and systematic, mainly at the hands of Syrian regime forces and their affiliated militias; the entry of several parties into the Syrian conflict has increased the importance and complexity of documenting the victims killed in Syria.
• This report records the death toll of victims documented killed by the main perpetrator parties to the conflict in Syria in May 2020, particularly focusing on the victims amongst children and women, those who died due to torture, and victims amongst media, medical and Civil Defense personnel, paying particular attention to the massacres committed by the main perpetrator parties to the conflict over the past month. As the report reveals, the statistics provided for the death toll of victims include extrajudicial killings by the dominant powers in each area which occurred as a violation of both International Human Rights Law or International Humanitarian Law, and do not include natural deaths or those caused by disputes between individual members of society.

Syria Tuesday June 2, 2020:

• Russian air raids have targeted Syria's last major rebel-held enclave in the country's northwest for the first time since a March ceasefire came into effect.
• The attacks, which came in waves hit an area where the boundaries of Hama, Idlib and Latakia provinces meet.

Syria Thursday June 4, 2020:

• At least nine people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a suspected weapons lab and factory.
• The nine died when Israeli planes bombed Syrian government military depots near the city of Masyaf in northwest Syria.

Syria Friday June 5, 2020:

• Syrian air defences have intercepted an Israeli attack near a central town that caused explosions and a large fire in the area.
• The Israeli air attack occurred near the town of Masyaf in the Hama countryside. There was no immediate word on casualties or damage.
• Residents in neighbouring Lebanon reported hearing the Israeli warplanes flying at low altitude over parts of the Mediterranean country on their way to bomb.
• Two children were killed and three civilians wounded when a car bomb went off in Syria's northeastern city of Ras al-Ayn.
• The explosion was caused by a booby-trapped taxi, which was detonated near the national hospital in the city in the evening.
• Ras al-Ayn, located in the northwestern countryside of Hasakah Province, is under the control of the Turkey-backed rebels. The infighting between rebel groups renewed.

Syria Saturday June 6, 2020:

• Meizileh base, used as the headquarters of Iranian militias, was the target of eight drone strikes that destroyed training and weapon storage facilities. The 12 fatalities were said to be Afghan and Iraqi militias. Unidentified drones" bombed a military base used by pro-Iran militias in eastern Syria killing 12 people.
• The strikes took place a few days after the Iranian-backed forces "brought in significant reinforcements" to the base, including a military convoy of 30 vehicles and missies. The strikes destroyed training facilities and weapon storage hubs.
• Iranian bases in the Deir ez-Zur region in east Syria have been targeted by Israeli airstrikes in the past as part of Israel's efforts to prevent Iran from gaining a stronger military foothold in the war-torn country, which is Israel's neighbor to the north.
• Last week, Syrian media accused Israel of targeting a weapons facility in Masyaf, in northern Syria, killing nine people and causing massive damage.
• At least eight people were killed and seven others wounded by the explosion of a car bomb in Syria's northeastern province of Hasakah. The explosion took place near the silos of the Tal Halaf area south of the city of Ras al-Ayn in the northwestern countryside of Hasakah.
• A day earlier, two children were killed and three people were wounded when a car bomb went off in Ras al-Ayn. The explosion was caused by a booby-trapped taxi cab, which was detonated near the national hospital.
• Ras al-Ayn, in the northwestern countryside of Hasakah province, is under the control of the Turkey-backed rebel groups.
• The area witnesses rebel-on-rebel battles, adding that the rebels infighting renewed on Friday.
• The Turkey-backed rebels used medium and light weapons in their infighting, which also includes detonating car bombs. Turkey and the Ankara-backed rebels captured slivers of territory in northeastern Syria following a military campaign launched in October of 2019 as Turkey was aiming to quell the influence of the Kurdish-led rebel groups in that area.

Syria Monday June 8, 2020:

• At least two civilians have been killed in air raids launched by Russian military jets on several villages in Syria's northwest Idlib province.
• The attacks were the first since a ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia came into effect more than three months ago, helping halt major fighting in Syria's last rebel-held enclave.

Syria Tuesday June 8, 2020:

• Suspected Russian airstrikes pounded villages on the edge of the last rebel enclave in northwestern Syria. The violence at the edge of Idlib province is the most serious breach of the cease-fire in place since early March, when an agreement between Turkey and Russia halted the Syrian government's three-month air and ground campaign into rebel-held Idlib.
• The Syria Response Coordination Group, a team of aid workers, said the military escalation displaced more than 5,800 civilians in the last 24 hours from areas in southern Idlib and western Hama countryside. Many of the displaced had only recently returned to their villages after the cease-fire.

Syria Sunday June 14, 2020:

• A drone strike in northwestern Syria killed two senior commanders with an al-Qaida-linked group.
• The strike was believed to have been carried out by the U.S.-led coalition, which has been targeting extremists in Syria for years.
• The drone strike hit a vehicle carrying the two commanders — a Jordanian and a Yemeni — in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last remaining rebel stronghold in war-torn Syria. Idlib is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants, and also is home to 3 million civilians.

Syria Friday June 19, 2020:

• At least eight soldiers of the Syrian National Army (SNA) were killed in an attack carried out by the YPG/PKK terrorist group in Afrin, northwestern Syria.
• From Tal Rifat district, terrorists attempted to infiltrate front lines in Bassouta region in the south of Afrin province.
• The terrorist group continued to target Syrian National Army and civilian settlements in Afrin and Azaz provinces from Tal Rifat despite a Turkey-Russia deal that foresees their withdrawal from the region.
• Afrin was liberated on March 18, 2018, day 58 of the operation.

Syria Saturday June 20, 2020:

• At least four civilians, including children, were injured when a bomb-laden vehicle exploded in Afrin city, northern Syria.
• In Afrin’s city center, which was liberated from terrorists by Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch, a bomb planted in a parked car exploded. Apart from the injured, material damage was also seen in the area. The attack is thought to be carried out by YPG/PKK terror group.
• The terror group, which still occupies Tal Rifaat and Manbij cities of Syria, often target al-Bab, Azaz, Jarabulus and Afrin.

Syria Sunday June 21, 2020:

• The Islamic State (IS) launched an attack on a Syrian military position in eastern Syrian killing eight soldiers and capturing three others. The IS attacked the Syrian military site on the outskirts of the city of al-Mayadeen in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, engaging in battles with the Syrian army.
• The attacks are the latest in a string of offensives launched by the IS in the desert region in eastern Syria.
• The IS lost key areas across the country, but sleeper cells and some groups in the desert region often launch attacks on Syrian forces.

Syria Tuesday June 23, 2020:

• At least two Syrian soldiers have been killed and four others wounded in Israeli missile attacks on southern and eastern Syria.
• Several hostile missiles were fired at the military positions in Kababej", near Deir Az Zor, and in the al-Sukhna region. At the same time, one of the military positions was targeted near the town of Salkhad in the southern city of Sweida, resulting in the death of two martyrs and the wounding of four other soldiers.
• The attacks also caused material damages. No further details were provided and there was no comment by the Israeli army.
• Israel has in the past acknowledged carrying out dozens of air raids in war-torn Syria over the years, most of them aimed at alleged Iranian weapons shipments believed to be bound for Hezbollah, which fights alongside Syrian government forces.
• YPG/PKK terrorists have killed five innocent civilians and injured a dozen others in a bomb attack in northern Syria. The YPG/ PKK terrorist organisation continues to attack innocent Syrian civilians; the attack also injured 12 civilians.
• The deadly attack took place in the town of Tel Halaf, part of Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring zone, just south of Turkey’s border with Syria.
• The PKK/YPG terrorist organisation carried out 62 attacks from Tel Rifaat on Operation Euphrates Shield and Operation Olive Branch zones within the last month, and 10 PKK/YPG terrorists were neutralised.
• An explosion hit a military base of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour.
• The explosion rocked the base in the city of Bsireh in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour. Big parts of the base were destroyed as the nearby buildings were also affected.
• The SDF cordoned off the area and prevented entry or exit. It stopped short of naming the cause of the bombing or whether there are casualties. The SDF controls areas in Deir al-Zour and Hasakah province in northeastern Syria.
• The Syrian army has responded to Israeli attacks on southern, central and eastern Syria in which two soldiers were killed in what military defectors and intelligence sources said was a wave of raids that targeted Iranian bases.
• Israeli jets hit an army outpost in Salamiya and another in Sabura towns in Hama province only hours after missiles struck other military installations in Deir Az Zor province along the border with Iraq and in southern Syria near the border with Jordan.
• Earlier, several attacks occurred simultaneously, one at a military outpost in Kabajib, east of Deir Az Zor and in the vicinity of the town of Sukhna in the nearby eastern desert.

Syria Thursday June 25, 2020:

• Airstrikes in Syria Tuesday that were attributed to Israel struck an onion-processing plant and a cattle feed factory converted by Iranian forces into ammunition warehouses. One strike targeted the onion factory in Salamiyah, near Hama in western Syria.
• The plant is operational but part of it had been taken over by Iranian forces and converted into a weapons warehouse. The strike caused numerous secondary explosions that lasted for several hours, and that fragments from these explosions went on to wound local residents.
• A second strike targeted the feed plant in Aqrab, also in the Hama region, which was being used by Iranian forces to conceal weapon storage facilities.
• The strikes carried out by Israel targeted several regions in Syria and killed at least seven people, including two Syrian soldiers and five pro-Iranian militia members.

Syria Saturday June 27, 2020:

• Six Iranian militiamen were killed in an airstrike near the Syria-Iran border in an attack attributed to Israel.
• The aircraft bombed sites belonging to the Assad regime and pro-Iranian militias in the al-Bukamal area near the Iraq border.

Syria Sunday June 28, 2020:

• Air strikes targeting positions of Iran-backed militias in eastern Syria killed nine fighters in the second such raid in 24 hours. Israel was "likely responsible" for the strikes near the Iraqi border.
• They came hours after a similar raid killed six other Tehran-backed fighters, raising the total toll to 15 killed in 24 hours. The fighters killed in the early Sunday raids were mostly Iraqi nationals.
• Israel has launched hundreds of strikes in Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011. It has targeted Syrian regime forces, allied Iranian forces and fighters from the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah. It rarely confirms details of its operations in Syria but says Iran's presence in support of regime leader Bashar al Assad is a threat and that it will continue its strikes.

Pakistan Monday June 29, 2020:

• Police and paramilitary forces surrounded the exchange in Karachi during an hourlong firefight in which at least three security officers and four attackers were killed.
• Armed with assault rifles and hand grenades, separatist militants tried to storm Pakistan’s stock exchange in the city of Karachi killing three people and wounding several others before security officers shot and killed the attackers.
• Workers fled for safety, taking shelter in the exchange building as the gunmen and security forces waged a gun battle outside. Three security officers — one police officer and two private security guards — were killed, along with all four attackers dead, and the separatists were unable to get into the building.
• The Baluchistan Liberation Army, the separatist group claimed responsibility for the attack. The B.L.A. is an ethnic Baluch insurgent group in Baluchistan Province, the resource-rich southwestern region of Pakistan, which has been racked by violence for years.

Pakistan Thursday July 2, 2020:

• At least 21 people have been killed after a train hit a van carrying Sikh pilgrims in north-eastern Pakistan. The crash, involving a Karachi-Lahore express train, happened on a level crossing near Sheikhupura, in Punjab province.
• Most of the dead are said to be from one family, on their way home from Nankana, one of the Sikh religion's main sites. Ten others were hurt. There are not thought to be any train passengers among the casualties.
• The accident comes after a string of recent fatal accidents on Pakistan's railways. More than 70 people died when a Karachi-Rawalpindi train caught fire during its journey in November last year. It was just one of more than 100 railway-related incidents in the country in 2019.

Syria Friday July 3, 2020:

• A police officer was killed and two civilians injured in a roadside bombing by terrorists in Afrin, northwestern Syria. The bomb was detonated in Afrin's city center which was cleared of terrorists with Turkey’s anti-terror Operation Olive Branch.
• On June 24, two civilians were killed and five others injured in the Afrin city center, when a bomb-laden motorbike exploded.
• The terror group, which still occupies Tal Rifaat and Manbij cities of Syria, often targets al-Bab, Azaz, Jarabulus and Afrin.

Syria Saturday July 4, 2020:

• Clashes between Russia-backed Syrian regime forces and the Daesh group have killed more than 40 fighters on the two sides in just 48 hours.
• Fighting and Russian air strikes in the central desert province of Homs since late Thursday have taken the lives of 18 pro-government fighters and 26 extremists.
• The fighting started in the night of Thursday to Friday with an extremist assault on regime positions near the town of Al-Sukhna.
• Daesh extremists have retained a roving presence in Syria’s vast Badia desert, despite losing their last shred of territory last year. They regularly carry out attacks there.
• Daesh declared a cross-border “caliphate” in large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, but several military campaigns against it chipped away at that proto-state and eventually led to its territorial demise.
• Syria’s war has killed more than 380,000 people since it started in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests, before evolving into a complex conflict involving world powers and extremists.

Syria Sunday July 5, 2020:

• A person was killed and another injured when a bomb-laden vehicle exploded in Afrin, northern Syria. The casualties were caused by the terrorist bomb attack in the district center of Afrin. Security sources assert that the YPG/PKK carries out bomb attacks in the region cleared of terrorists.
• On Friday, a police officer was killed and two civilians injured in a roadside bombing by terrorists in Afrin.
• In January 2018, Turkey launched a major military offensive -- Operation Olive Branch -- with the stated aim of purging Afrin of YPG/PKK terrorist elements. Afrin was liberated on March 18, 2018.
• The terror group, which still occupies Tel Rifaat and Manbij cities of Syria, often target al-Bab, Azaz, Jarabulus, and Afrin.

Syria Tuesday July 7, 2020:

• At least six civilians, including three children, were killed and seven others injured in a bomb attack in northeastern Syria.
• The explosives-laden vehicle blew up in the southeast of the town of Tal Abyad. Local security forces suspect the YPG/PKK terror group may be behind the attack. Four of the injured civilians, who were in critical condition, were brought to Turkey. ---

Syria Saturday July 11, 2020:

• At least 35 Iran-backed terrorists fighting in the ranks of the Assad regime were killed in an airstrike in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria. 
• Unidentified warplanes targeted a military convoy of Iran-backed foreign terrorists in Deir ez-Zor province, Albukamal region along the Iraqi border. Two high ranking commanders were also killed in the attack.
• A man who left London to join the Islamic State group in Syria has died while being held in prison in the country. Ishak Mostefaoui, previously from east London, was killed while attempting to escape custody.
• Another said the death came during serious disorder in a jail in Hassakeh, which houses IS prisoners from various countries. The death and surrounding circumstances have not been officially confirmed.
• After being captured last year, the 27-year-old was held in a prison in north-east Syria controlled by the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. He was one of around 10 British men and 30 British women being held by the militia - but he was the first to die in SDF custody.
• The prison where he was held is a converted school. When the BBC spoke to him there last October he admitted joining IS.

Syria Tuesday July 14, 2020:

• At least three Russian and several Turkish soldiers have been wounded in the Idlib province when a joint military patrol was hit by an improvised explosive device. The device blew up as the soldiers' convoy patrolled the M4 highway in the southern part of a de-escalation zone. 
• A Russian and a Turkish armoured vehicle were damaged, with three Russians lightly injured. Several Turkish soldiers were also wounded. 
• Russia and Turkey launched the patrols along the strategic highway in March following a ceasefire agreement aimed at stopping heavy fighting in and around Idlib, the last major bastion of anti-government forces in Syria's war. 
• Numerous explosions were heard as the patrol passed in a village northeast of the town of Ariha. The blast occurred "despite Turkish forces having thoroughly combed the area 24 hours before the joint patrol set off on the road separating areas controlled by the rebels from those held by government forces.
• Unidentified gunmen assassinated Mohammad Maher Al-Rifai, a former officer in the Syrian Army who allegedly joined the opposition, in the country’s southern province of Daraa. Rifai has defected the Syrian forces since the beginning of the revolution in 2011 and joined the opposition’s Free Syrian Army.
• Al-Rifai, known as “Abu Bahr”, had re-joined the regime’s compulsory military service after a settlement agreement between Bashar Al-Assad’s army and the opposition forces. He had later joined the opposition again. The local sources noted that the ex-soldier’s family blamed the Syrian military’s security branch for his assassination.

Syria Thursday July 16, 2020:

• Shamima Begum, a woman who traveled to Syria from London as a schoolgirl to join ISIS, should be allowed to return to appeal the government’s decision to strip her of her British citizenship.
• The Court of Appeal ruled that the only way Ms. Begum would be able to pursue a “fair and effective appeal” was “to be permitted to come into the United Kingdom.”
• Ms. Begum, now 20, spent years in Islamic State territory, but fled to a refugee camp in northeastern Syria after the group lost control in the region, and had expressed a desire to return to Britain.
• Her case is a prominent example of the challenges many Western governments face with citizens who joined the group, and who some argue would pose a national security threat if repatriated.

Syria Sunday July 19, 2020:

• An explosion rocked a rebel-held area in northern Syria across the border from Turkey killing at least five people and wounding dozens. The car bomb went off near the Bab al-Salameh border crossing with Turkey. The area is controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters.
• The blast killed seven and wounded more than 60, including women and children. The opposition war monitor said the blast was most likely carried out by sleeper cells of the Islamic State group. Other opposition activists said the blast killed five and wounded dozens.
• Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported that at least five civilians were killed and 85 wounded in the blast. The agency said that some of the wounded who were in critical condition were taken for treatment in Turkey. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, adding that Kurdish fighters have carried out such attacks in the past.
• Another blast wounded 13 people, including children, in the Syrian town of Afrin, which is controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters.

Syria Monday July 20 2020:

• Israeli airstrikes on military posts south of the capital, Damascus, killed five foreign fighters and wounded several others.
• Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group said in a statement that one of its fighters, Ali Kamel Mohsen, was killed in the strike near Damascus International Airport, south of the Syrian capital. Mohsen's family will not be receiving condolences due to the coronavirus, adding that a date will be set later for the funeral.
• Airstrikes struck arms depots and military posts on the southern edge of Damascus. The country's air defenses responded to Israeli air raids in south Damascus; they wounded seven soldiers and caused material damage.
• Israeli warplanes carried out the attack while flying over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war. Several missiles were shot down before they reached their target.
• Israel rarely comments on such reports but is believed to have carried out scores of raids targeting Iran's military presence in Syria. In the past two months alone, Syria has accused Israel of carrying out at least eight air raids on its territory. The last reported strikes came in late June.
• Iran has been a key ally of the Syrian government in the nearly decade-long civil war. Tehran sent thousands of Iran-backed fighters in the past years to fight alongside Syrian government forces. Israel views Iran as a regional menace and has vowed to prevent any permanent Iranian military buildup in Syria, particularly near its frontier.

Syria Tuesday July 21, 2020:

• A U.S. service member died. The individual, whose service branch hasn’t been released yet, was assigned to the Operation Inherent Resolve coalition.
• Initial reports indicate the incident was not due to enemy contact. The incident is under investigation.

Syria Sunday July 26, 2020:

• A bomb in a Syria border town controlled by Turkey and its Syrian proxies killed at least eight people, including six civilians. The blast from an explosive-rigged motorbike ripped through a vegetable market in the volatile town of Ras al-Ain, wounding at least 19 people.
• Such bombings are common in the town, which was held by Kurdish forces before Turkish troops and their Syria proxies seized it last October.
• The attack was blamed on the US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which still controls much of northeastern Syria. Despite the key role the YPG played in the US-led campaign to drive the Islamic State group out of northern and eastern Syria, Ankara has launched repeated incursions against the group, which it regards as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has waged a deadly insurgency in southeastern Turkey since 1984.
• The terror organisation PKK/YPG once more targeted innocent civilians. During its most recent incursion against the YPG last year, Ankara established a "safe zone" extending along 120 kilometres of the border and including the town of Ras al-Ain. The area is a frequent target for bombings and other attacks.
• Last week, a car bomb killed four people and wounded 10.
• At least one civilian was killed in a mortar attack by Assad regime forces in the de-escalation zone in Idlib, northwestern Syria. Two others were also injured in the attacks targeting Ein Laruz village.
• Idlib falls within a de-escalation zone forged under an agreement between Turkey and Russia. The area, lying along Turkey's southern border, has been the subject of multiple cease-fire understandings, which have frequently been violated by the Assad regime and its allies.
• The influx of displaced civilians has increased its population to about four million in recent years.
• At least one civilian was killed in a mortar attack by Assad regime forces in the de-escalation zone in Idlib, northwestern Syria. Two others were also injured in the attacks targeting Ein Laruz village.
• Idlib falls within a de-escalation zone forged under an agreement between Turkey and Russia. The area, lying along Turkey’s southern border, has been the subject of multiple cease-fire understandings, which have frequently been violated by the Assad regime and its allies.

Syria Tuesday July 28, 2020:

• A civilian was killed in a bomb attack in Ras al-Ayn, northeastern Syria. A bomb-laden motorcycle detonated in the center of Ras al-Ayn, a city near the Turkish border.
• On Sunday, eight civilians, including children and women, were killed and 10 others were injured as a result of explosion of a bomb-laden motorcycle in a covered vegetable bazaar in Ras al-Ayn.

Syria Thursday July 30, 2020:

• A car bomb blast in northeastern Syria targeting a checkpoint manned by Turkish-backed forces has killed at least five people. The bombing in the village of Tal Halaf, near the border town of Ras al-Ain, also wounded 12 people.
• Turkish forces and their Syrian rebel allies last year seized a 120km stretch of land inside the Syrian border from Kurdish forces viewed by Ankara as "terrorists", running from Ras al-Ain to Tal Abyad.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's blast. Security forces in the area are examining the possibility that Syrian Kurdish fighters may have carried out the attack.
• The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, gave a higher casualty toll in the explosion - nine people killed and 15 wounded.
• It was the latest in a series of attacks that have rocked the area in recent months, including several in the past week alone.

Syria Friday July 31, 2020:

• At least two people were injured when Israeli military helicopters attacked several Syrian military facilities in the south of the country. Three Syrian army outposts were attacked by Israel.
• Israeli military helicopters have attacked several Syrian army facilities in the country’s south in response to the shelling of the Golan Heights earlier in the day.

SyriaSunday August 2, 2020:

• The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) in its monthly report released today that at least 107 civilians, including 26 children and 11 women, were killed in July 2020 at the hands of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria, in addition to documenting four massacres and 13 victims who died due to torture during the same period.
• The crime of murder has become widespread and systematic, mainly at the hands of Syrian regime forces and their affiliated militias; the entry of several parties into the Syrian conflict has increased the importance and complexity of documenting the victims killed in Syria.

Syria Monday August 3, 2020:

• 12 Pro-Regime, 6 Rebel Fighters Die in Syria Clashes and other 17 pro-regime fighters were wounded while on the jihadist-led side six fighters died.
• Jihadists and allied rebels in northwestern Syria Monday killed at least 12 pro-regime fighters, thwarting their advance. Another 17 pro-regime fighters were wounded while on the jihadist-led side six fighters died.
• The forces loyal to President Bashar-al Assad had launched an attack with artillery and heavy gunfire in Syria’s last major opposition bastion. But the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alliance, headed by ex-leaders of Syria’s former al-Qaeda affiliate, and their allies reportedly thwarted the advance
• Four HTS and two other rebel fighters were killed in the clashes in a rural area of Latakia province.
• The HTS-led alliance also controls large areas of Idlib province and slivers of territory in neighboring Aleppo and Hama. The region they hold is home to some three million people, nearly half of whom have been displaced from other parts of the country.
• Syria‘s nine-year-old war has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced nearly half of the country’s pre-war population.
• The rebel-held area is a regular target of attacks by regime forces and their Russian and Iranian allies.
• A Russian-backed government offensive between December and March displaced nearly a million people in the region.
• A Moscow-backed ceasefire agreement in March has reduced violence in the area, but shelling and air strikes by the regime and its backers continue.
• Russian air strikes on the town of Binnish in Idlib province killed three people from the same family on Monday.
• Israeli fighter jets and attack helicopters have struck military targets in southern Syria belonging to the Syrian army. The attack came hours after the military said it had thwarted an infiltration attempt from Syria by suspected militants trying to plant explosives.
• In a rare statement acknowledging strikes in neighboring Syria, the army said the targets struck included “observation posts and intelligence collection systems, anti-aircraft artillery facilities and command and control systems” in Syrian army bases.


Syria Wednesday August 5, 2020:

• Two civilians were killed by the YPG/PKK terrorist group in eastern Syria's Deir el-Zour.
• Syria detained dozens of civilians in an attempt to quell the ongoing large-scale protests. The protests began after the assassination of Sheikh Mutchir al-Hammud al-Jed'an, the leader of the Akaidat tribe.
• Al-Jed'an was killed by unidentified attackers on Sunday in the eastern countryside of the province. Deir el-Zour, east of the Euphrates River, is currently under the control of the terrorist YPG/PKK.

Syria Saturday August 15, 2020:

• At least three pro-government fighters were killed and six others wounded in an ambush by the Islamic State (IS) in the country's eastern province of Deir al-Zour. The IS ambushed the group of fighters in the desert region of the city of al-Mayadeen in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour at dawn Saturday.
• The IS attack is the latest in a series of ambushes and confrontations with the Syrian army in the desert region of Deir al-Zour province.
• As many as 644 Syrian soldiers and pro-government fighters as well as 273 IS militants had been killed in similar attacks in the desert region since March of 2019.
• The IS group has lost key areas in Syria but it's still active in the Syrian desert and other areas through sleeper cells.

Syria Monday August 17, 2020:

• A clash between Syrian forces and U.S. troops reportedly left at least one Syrian dead — a rare fatal confrontation on a battlefield confused by a surplus of foreign intervening forces in the protracted civil war. The U.S.-led military coalition in Syria denied reports that an American service member was wounded in the incident near a Syrian air base, and that the coalition had carried out an airstrike during the clash.
• An independent war monitoring organization and Syrian state media spoke only of Syrian casualties.
• The incident occurred south of Qamishli, a city in northern Syria near the Turkish border, when Syrian troops refused to allow a U.S. patrol to cross a checkpoint near Qamishli air base.

Syria Tuesday August 18, 2020:

• The U.S. lost two drones over Syria after a midair collision. There was speculation that the aircraft were MQ-9 Reapers — a remotely piloted aircraft used predominately as an armed hunter-killer drone, but also capable of surveillance and intelligence collection — and were shot down.
• The defense official could not confirm the type of drone involved.
• Reports indicate there was a collision but whether they were shot at afterwards — and whether that caused the crash — is unclear.
• A Russian general was killed and two other servicemen were wounded by a land mine explosion in Syria. The attack took place in the southeastern province of Deir el-Zour when a Russian military convoy was returning to the base after a “humanitarian” mission.
• The general died of wounds while being evacuated.
• Russia has deployed its troops in Syria since 2015 to shore up President Bashar Assad’s government.

Syria Friday August 21, 200:

• Three civilians were injured in a bomb attack in Tal Abyad, northern Syria. The bomb strapped to a motorbike went off in southeastern Suluk town. The injured were referred to the closest hospital.
• The Syrian National Army troops and local security forces, who rushed to the scene following the attack, suspect the YPG/PKK terror group could be behind the attack near Turkey's southern border.
• Tal Abyad was cleared of terrorists last October during Turkey's Operation Peace Spring, which was launched to eliminate YPG/PKK terrorists in the region east of the Euphrates River to secure Turkey’s borders, aid in the safe return of Syrian refugees and ensure Syria’s territorial integrity.
• Since then, Turkey has reached agreements with both the US and Russia to force the terrorist group to withdraw from the planned terror-free zone.
• However, the YPG/PKK has continued to carry out attacks in Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn districts despite pulling out of areas under a deal reached by Turkey and the US on Oct. 17.

Syria Monday August 24, 2020:

• A Russian major general was killed by an improvised explosive device. Major General Vyacheslav Gladkikh died after a roadside IED detonated under a convoy of Russian soldiers and Syrian pro-regime militiamen near the city of Deir ez-Zor.
• Three other Russian military personnel were wounded. A local commander of Syria’s National Defense Forces, a pro-Assad militia, was also reportedly killed.
• The militiamen have changed their tactics there. They do nighttime infiltrations, lay mines and booby traps.

Syria Wednesday August 26, 2020:

• In the most violent skirmish in months between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria, a vehicle collision in the eastern part of the war-torn country left American troops with concussions, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
• Russian vehicles sideswiped a light-armoured U.S. military vehicle, injuring four Americans. Two Russian helicopters flew above the Americans, and one of the aircraft was within about 70 feet of the vehicle. A Russian vehicle struck the American vehicle near Dayrick, in northeast Syria.
• To deescalate the situation, the coalition patrol departed the area. Unsafe and unprofessional actions like this represent a breach of deconfliction protocols, committed to by the United States and Russia in December 2019.

Syria Monday August 31,2020:

• An Israeli missile attack on Syria has killed two people, injured seven others and caused damage.

Syria Thursday September 3, 2020:

• Presumed Israeli airstrikes on eastern Syria killed 16 Iran-backed fighters, hours after Damascus said it intercepted Israeli missiles fired at a central air base. Those killed were Iraqi paramilitary fighters loyal to Iran, seven of whom were killed outside the city of Mayadeen. The other nine were killed in strikes south of the city of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border further east.
• Israel was "likely" responsible for the attack, which if confirmed, would mark the second such strike in less than 24 hours and the third this week.
• Late Wednesday, Syrian air defenses intercepted missiles fired by an Israeli warplane at the T-4 Airbase, also known as Tiyas Military Airbase, in central Syria.
• On Monday, Israeli strikes killed one civilian, three government troops and seven allied foreign fighters. Monday's strikes hit Syrian army positions south of Damascus and facilities used by Iran-backed paramilitaries, including fighters of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, in the southern province of Daraa.
• Israel has carried out repeated strikes in Syria since the civil war erupted in 2011, mainly targeting regime forces and their Iranian and Hezbollah allies. In January, the Syrian regime accused the Israeli Air Force of carrying out an attack on the T-4 Airbase in central Syria, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said killed at least three Iranian-backed militia members.
• The Israeli army rarely acknowledges individual strikes but did confirm on August 3 that it had used fighter jets, attack helicopters and other aircraft to hit military targets in southern Syria.
• In January, the Syrian regime accused the Israeli Air Force of carrying out an attack on the T-4 Airbase, which the Observatory said killed at least three Iranian-backed militia members.
• Last year Israeli airstrikes killed three foreigners fighting alongside government forces south of the capital. The previous month, the Israeli army claimed responsibility for a wave of airstrikes against Syrian military sites and Iranian forces that killed 23 people, including 16 foreigners.

Syria Friday September 11, 2020:

• Israeli warplanes have fired missiles on suburbs of the northern city of Aleppo. The attack comes amid increased Israeli airstrikes on Syria in recent weeks. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
• On August 31, an attack targeted the southern suburbs of the capital Damascus killing two soldiers and wounding seven.
• Israel rarely comments on such reports, but is believed to have carried out scores of raids targeting Iran’s military presence in Syria. In the past three months alone, Syria has accused Israel of carrying out at least nine air raids on its territory.
• The Syrian regime’s air defenses intercepted Israeli airstrikes in the northern city of Aleppo. The Zionist enemy carried out an airstrike by a salvo of missiles targeting the area around the city of Aleppo. The Syrians air defense systems hit and felled most of them.
• The raid took place in the town of al-Safirah in the eastern Aleppo countryside, with the warplanes targeting military factories and a scientific research center. There were no reports of casualties.
• Israel is behind a number of similar strikes in recent weeks against Syrian regime and Iranian assets.
• On September 2, Syria said its air defenses thwarted a number of Israeli missiles targeting the T4 airbase near the central city of Homs. The Israeli military claims the base is used by Iran to transfer weapons to its proxy fighters around the region, including the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
• On August 31, Israel fired a round of missiles at military sites in the south of the capital, Damascus.
• 79 Israeli strikes have targeted Syria between early 2018 and the start of September.
• At least 21 people – moslly children and women- were injured in two bomb attacks in Ras al-Ayn, northeastern Syria. The explosives detonated near the town post office.
• Just after the blast, an explosives-laden motorbike exploded near the town's entrance, where no casualties were reported.
• The YPG/PKK terror group might be behind the attack near Turkey's southern border.
• Ras al-Ayn was liberated from YPG/PKK terrorists last October as part of Turkey's Operation Peace Spring, launched to secure Turkey's borders by eliminating the terror group from northern Syria east of the Euphrates River, aid in the safe return of Syrian refugees, and ensure Syria's territorial integrity.

Syria Saturday September 12, 2020:

• Two were killed and 12 wounded in a bomb attack in Ras al Ayn, a town in northern Syria that Turkey captured in last October’s cross-border military operation.
• Improvised explosive device (IED) was the cause of the explosion which targetted Turkish-backed National Army.
• Turkish-controlled areas in northern Syria have been a frequent target of bomb attacks that have claimed the lives of several Turkish-backed militia fighters and civilians.

Syria Monday September 14, 2020:

• A suspected Israeli airstrike on Iran-backed fighters in eastern Syria killed 10 fighters, including eight Iraqis.
• Israel rarely comments on such reports, but is believed to have carried out scores of raids targeting Iran's military presence in Syria in recent years.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike hit an area close the town of Boukamal near the Iraqi border. It added that the strikes also destroyed arms depots and ambulances were seen rushing to the area.
• The 10 killed were eight Iraqis and two Syrians. The strike is the third this month in Syria's eastern province of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq.