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Syrian troops take control of strategic town

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:29:00 +0000

Syrian troops have taken full control of a town near the highway linking the capital Damascus with Jordan, a new advance in the regime's campaign to drive rebels from the strategic south, an activist group said Monday.

Rebels seeking to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad are trying to carve a pathway from the Jordanian border through the southern province of Daraa, in what is seen as their best shot at capturing Damascus.

A few weeks ago, they scored significant gains, but have since suffered setbacks in a regime counteroffensive.

In recent days, regime troops and rebel fighters battled over Khirbet Ghazaleh, a town near the Damascus-Jordan highway.

Regime forces retook Khirbet Ghazaleh on Sunday and rebels withdrew from the area, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Troops reopened the highway, restoring the supply line between Damascus and the contested provincial capital of Daraa, he said. Regime forces were carrying out raids and searching homes in Khirbet Ghazaleh on Monday.

Damascus, still overwhelmingly under regime control, is the ultimate prize in a largely deadlocked civil war.

Israeli airstrikes on Syria provoke threats

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:16:00 +0000

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel rushed to beef up its rocket defenses on its northern border Sunday to shield against possible retaliation after carrying out two airstrikes in Syria over 48 hours — an unprecedented escalation of Israeli involvement in the Syrian civil war.

Syria and its patron Iran hinted at possible retribution, though the rhetoric in official statements appeared relatively muted.

Despite new concerns about a regional war, Israeli officials signaled they will keep trying to block what they see as an effort by Iran to send sophisticated weapons to Lebanon's Hezbollah militia ahead of a possible collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

Israel has repeatedly threatened to intervene in the Syrian civil war to stop the transfer of what it calls "game-changing" weapons to Hezbollah, a Syrian-backed group that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006.

Since carrying out a lone airstrike in January that reportedly destroyed a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles headed to Hezbollah, Israel had largely stayed on the sidelines. That changed over the weekend with a pair of airstrikes, including an attack near a sprawling military complex close to the Syrian capital of Damascus early Sunday that set off a series of powerful explosions.

Can the Egyptian army keep the peace?

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 12:36:00 +0000

CAIRO, Egypt — A warning from Egypt’s defense minister this week that the Egyptian state was near collapse raised a lot of eyebrows.

Were the country’s secretive generals readying for another coup?

With their economic and political interests now safeguarded under the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government, however, the army may prefer to steer the current political crisis from the sidelines, analysts say, rather than upend its status quo.

“Our role is to protect the property of the state and maintain security,” a high-ranking military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told GlobalPost. He dismissed claims the army aims to seize power. “We’re doing what the government recommends.”

More than 50 people have been killed and hundreds more injured in a week of violent protests against the government of President Mohamed Morsi. Law and order have broken down in the Suez Canal town of Port Said, and armed gangs have looted an international hotel chain in the heart of Cairo.

Syria says 29 students killed in mortar attack

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:30:00 +0000

BEIRUT (AP) -- A mortar slammed into a school in the Damascus suburbs on Tuesday, killing 29 students and a teacher, according to state media, as the civil war closed in on President Bashar Assad's seat of power.

The state-run news agency SANA blamed the attack on terrorists, the term the regime uses for rebels who are fighting to topple the government. There were no immediate details on the ages of the students or their identities.

But the bloodshed comes as Syrian forces fired artillery at rebel targets in and around the capital and the international community grew increasingly alarmed about the regime's chemical weapons stocks.

Syrian rebels have made gains in recent weeks, overrunning military bases and bringing the fight to Damascus. Since Thursday, the capital has seen some of the heaviest fighting since July, killing scores of people, forcing international flights to turn back or cancel flights and prompting the United Nations to withdraw most of its international staff.

"The push to take Damascus is a real one, and intense pressure to take control of the city is part of a major strategic shift by the rebel commanders' strategy," said Mustafa Alani, a Middle East analyst from the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center. "They have realized that without bringing the fight to Damascus, the regime will not collapse."

Israel braces for Syrian conflict

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 16:25:00 +0000

ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER — Outside of residents of Beirut and Damascus, who suffered massive bombings last weekend, few people are more attentive to unrest in Lebanon and in Syria than intelligence officers manning Israel's Northern Command.

"We take into account every possible scenario — everything from a major military attack to a multi-focal incursion to a situation with civilians crowding the border. Also, the possibility that we may have to go inside Lebanon if we have to," said one intelligence officer in Israel’s Northern Command, standing on an outlook a rock’s throw from Lebanon and a hill away from Syria.

Beirut bomb blast kills eight, injures dozens

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 18:17:00 +0000

BEIRUT — One of Lebanon's highest security officials, Wissam al-Hassan, is reported dead in a huge car bomb explosion in central Beirut today.

According to the BBC at least eight people have been confirmed dead in the blast, which happened in Sassine Square, a busy part of the mostly Christian Ashrafiya district in the eastern part of the Lebanese capital.

Dozens more were injured, Reuters reported, citing witnesses and security officials.

Hassan was the target of the attack, a Lebanese police official told the Associated Press.

The source said he hadn't yet confirmed whether Hassan was hit, but according to Reuters, at least one Lebanese TV station is reporting that Hassan was among those killed.

Beirut car bomb kills eight

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:29:00 +0000

BEIRUT (AP) -- A car bomb ripped through eastern Beirut on Friday, killing at least eight people, shearing the balconies off apartment buildings and sending bloodied residents staggering into the streets in the most serious blast the Lebanese capital has seen in more than four years.

Dozens of people were wounded in the attack. While the motive was not immediately known, many Lebanese quickly raised the possibility it was connected to the civil war in neighboring Syria.

Tensions have already been rising in Lebanon over the war, and clashes have erupted between supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad and backers of the rebellion against his regime. The office of an anti-Syrian Christian political party is located near the site of Friday's bombing, though it was not immediately clear if it was the intended target.

The blast ripped through a narrow street at mid-afternoon in Beirut's mainly Christian Achrafieh neighborhood, an area packed with cafes and shops. The street was transformed into a swath of rubble, twisted metal and charred vehicles.

Bloodied residents fled their homes while others tried to help the seriously wounded. One little girl, apparently unconscious and bleeding from her head, was carried to an ambulance in the arms of rescue workers, her white sneakers stained with blood.

When I finally saw my blood

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 23:00:00 +0000

I'd lived in Beirut for nearly a year -- next to the mess in Syria, where more than 20,000 people had so far been killed; an hour or two from borders my wife crossed to find out why; and where, for a variety of reasons, I still had trouble explaining my own stake in all this -- when, in the kitchen the other night, I finally saw my own blood.

Before Beirut, we had lived in Turkey and Iraq, the latter of which was my wife Kelly's base. (She’s a correspondent for NPR.) Those weren't fun times, spending so many months apart. Among other problems, it was difficult to be a man, changing diapers, while my wife swash-buckled her way across Mesopotamia. With the mother of our daughter based in Baghdad, I learned how to excel at various domestic chores and also how to worry. What would happen if a mortar fell or if bad guys tested the glass on her armored truck? What would people think of a blonde woman traveling to Anbar Province? The Middle East, for my wife, was the big league. For me, it was a place to find a good doctor and maybe some daycare. Alone on a Friday night, I'd pour myself another glass and wonder: Was this it?