Free Republic

Bashar al-Assad denies dropping barrel bombs in Syria, but evidence overwhelmingly says otherwise. The use of barrel bombs has fueled the mass exodus of refugees from the country. Videos continue to be posted to YouTube showing helicopters in Syria dropping what appear to be the unpredictable weapon. Human rights group Amnesty International found that more than 3,000 civilian deaths between January 2014 and March 2015 occurred in Aleppo from barrel bombs. The makeshift weapon is an oil drum filled with explosives, fuel, and metal fragments. They are dropped haphazardly from helicopters with little control for targeting. The United Nations previously...

Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday that no country could use military force in Syria without first securing the agreement of the Syrian government, the TASS news agency reported. TASS said Ryabkov was responding to a question about the prospect of the United States launching a ground operation in Syria. "The question of using military force in any form without the agreement of Damascus is for us unacceptable," it quoted him as saying.

Syrian rebel fighters have been pictured eagerly unpacking Chinese-made surface-to-air missile launchers understood to have been smuggled into the country by African arms dealers. Taken in a remote area north of the city of Aleppo, the photographs show fighters from the Free Syrian Army assembling FN-6 anti-aircraft missile launchers for use against soldiers loyal to the Assad regime. The Chinese-made weapons are thought to have been provided to the Free Syrian Army by sympathisers in Qatar, who are likely to have purchased them from dealers with links to corrupt officials in the Sudanese government, before having them smuggled into Syria...

Russian bombing and Iranian-backed forces have helped give Syrian President Bashar Assad's embattled forces an advantage in the country's bitter civil war, the top U.S. military officer said Tuesday, suggesting a sharp setback for the Obama administration. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared to contradict upbeat assessments by the White House last month that indicated Assad's government had suffered a series of military losses and was losing control. ...snip.... In recent weeks, Russian airstrikes have supported Assad's forces and Iranian-backed fighters in an offensive against rebel groups in Aleppo province. The government recaptured...

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has confirmed that the Turkish military has attacked Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) said Turkey shot at its forces in the town of Tal Abyad on Sunday. The YPG has been a key ally of the US in fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria. Turkey fears advances by the YPG near its Syrian border could fuel separatist sentiments amongst Kurds in Turkey. The attacks come amid increasing tensions in Turkey ahead of elections "We said the [YPG-aligned Democratic Union Party] PYD will not go west of...

Al-Qaeda's leader in Syria has been killed, according to local reports. The al-Nusra Front, the Sunni Islamic jihadist militia fighting against Syrian Government forces in the civil war, confirmed Sheikh Abu Sulaiman Al Masri's death this morning. Images of his body, containing a bloody head wound, have been shared online.

Turkey is ready to accept a political transition in Syria in which President Bashar al-Assad stays in symbolic power for six months before leaving office, and is discussing the plan with Western allies, two senior government officials said on Tuesday. NATO member Turkey has long been one of Assad’s fiercest critics, insisting that no lasting peace can be achieved in Syria without his removal from power. “Work on a plan for Assad’s departure is under way ... (Assad) can stay for six months and we accept that because there will be a guarantee of his departure,” one of the officials...

Rebels battling the Syrian army and its allies near Aleppo said on Monday they had received new supplies of U.S.-made anti-tank missiles from states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad since the start of a major government offensive last week. The rebels from three Free Syrian Army-affiliated groups contacted by Reuters said new supplies had arrived in response to the attack by the army, which is backed up by Russian air strikes and on the ground by Iranian fighters and Lebanon's Hezbollah. The "Free Syrian Army" refers to a loose affiliation of groups fighting Assad that do not operate with a...

Reports that Cuban forces are now fighting in Syria follow a long history of the Castro brothers working closely with their patrons in Moscow. Not for the first time Cuban forces are doing Russia’s dirty work, this time in Syria. On Wednesday it was reported that a U.S. official had confirmed to Fox News that Cuban paramilitary and Special Forces units were on the ground in Syria. Reportedly transported to the region in Russian planes, the Cubans are rumoured to be experts at operating Russian tanks. For President Obama, who has staked his legacy on rapprochement with America’s adversaries, the...

Turkey has grown increasingly vocal, and even belligerent, in criticizing the Kurds and U.S. military support for their cause in Syria and Iraq. The situation took a disturbing turn when Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu threatened to attack Kurdish fighters in Syria if they are found to be passing American weapons back to Kurdish insurgents in Syria. As if Syria was not in enough of a military and diplomatic meltdown already, a NATO member is considering bombing the vital U.S. ally on the ground against ISIS while American planes and drones are flying missions out of a Turkish airbase.

The American media has been providing evidence since 2013, that the so-called Free Syrian Army and The Al-Nusra Front, are one and the same organization. Here is a Washington Times article from 2013: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/30/al-nusra-front-free-syrian-army-seize-border-cross/ Al-Nusra Front, as the Washington Times makes clear, is the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda Have Al Qaeda now become the "moderates"? The so-called Syrian moderates belong to a movement that has killed more Americans than ISIS (Remember 911?) ISIS used to be the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda, before they re-organized themselves into a new movement - ISIL/ISIS Both the Al-Nusra Front and ISIS want...

More than a quarter of a million people have been killed in Syria's brutal conflict since it began with anti-government protests over four years ago, a monitoring group said Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it has documented the deaths of 250,124 people, including at least 74,426 civilians. The civilian toll includes 12,517 children and 8,062 women.

Kurdish forces have carried out a wave of forced displacement and mass house demolitions - amounting to war crimes - in northern Syria, a rights group says. A report by Amnesty International accuses the Popular Protection Units (YPG) of razing entire villages after capturing them from Islamic State (IS). This appeared to be in retaliation for residents' perceived sympathies with or links to the jihadist group, it says. The YPG has consistently denied accusations of forced displacements. However, the YPG - a key ally of the US-led international coalition against IS - and its political parent the PYD have admitted...

In yet another telling episode, the United States has again demonstrated its true position in regards to ISIS and the Russian bombing of the terrorist organization. As Russian forces drop bombs and missiles on top of ISIS fighters all across Syria, lobbing cruise missiles from the Caspian, regular sortie missions, and combat helicopter attacks against ISIS and other “relatively moderate” cannibals and terrorists, the United States launched a bombing mission of its own against two power plants in Aleppo. The power plants were located in al-Rudwaniya east of Aleppo and resulted in power outages affecting the Syrian people, adding to...

From Revolutionary Guards generals to Hezbollah commanders, Tehran’s agents are being offed at a rapid rate in a foreign war zone. With the aid of Russian airstrikes, Iranian-backed foreign fighters, and a combination of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regular and militia forces are on the march. Yet Iran and its proxies have taken some significant high-ranking casualties since the start of their recruitment and deployment drives to Syria. These losses all serve to map out the current offensive being launched in the northwest of the country, including Idlib, Hama, and Aleppo. While other significant losses had been suffered in past...

BEIRUT – The former head of an elite unit in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as another top general have been killed in Syria, days after one of the country’s leading officers was killed in the war-torn country. “General Farshad Hasounizad, defender of the Sayyeda Zeinab Shrine and former commander of the Saberin Brigade, was killed in Syria,” a reporter in the state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) wrote in a post on his Instagram account Tuesday afternoon. The Saberin Brigade is a special forces unit of the IRGC formed in 1998 to serve as a...

The Syrian army and allied Iranian and Hezbollah forces are preparing for a ground offensive against insurgents in the Aleppo area backed by Russian air strikes, two senior regional officials familiar with the plans said on Tuesday. The offensive would expand on a ground attack launched by the same alliance last week that is targeting rebels in Hama province further west. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said thousands of Iranian troops had arrived to take part in the ground offensives in support of President Bashar al-Assad. A big government offensive in the area near the Turkish border is...

BEIRUT — American antitank missiles supplied to Syrian rebels are playing an unexpectedly prominent role in shaping the Syrian battlefield, giving the conflict the semblance of a proxy war between the United States and Russia, despite President Obama’s express desire to avoid one. The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. Now that Russia has entered the war in support of Assad, they are taking on a greater significance than was originally intended. So...

President Obama now says he never believed in the $500-million program to train and equip the moderate Syrian opposition. The administration last week halted the failed program, which ended up “training” fewer than 100 Syrians, all but four or five of whom deserted or died after the Americans tried to turn them into anti-ISIS fighters. “Steve, this is why I’ve been skeptical from the get-go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside Syria,” Obama told CBS’ Steve Kroft during an interview for “60 Minutes.” …

CNN)U.S. military cargo planes gave 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups overnight in northern Syria, using an air drop of 112 pallets as the first step in the Obama Administration's urgent effort to find new ways to support those groups. Details of the air mission over Syria were confirmed by a U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly because the details have not yet been formally announced. C-17s, accompanied by fighter escort aircraft, dropped small arms ammunition and other items like hand grenades in Hasakah province in northern Syria to a coalition of rebels groups vetted by the US,...