conflict

US To Withdraw Some 1,000 Troops From Syria

The United States will roughly halve the number of troops it has deployed in Syria to less than 1,000 in the coming months, the Pentagon said Friday. Washington has had troops in Syria for years as part of international efforts against the Islamic State (IS) group, which rose out of the chaos of the country's civil war to seize swaths of ...

France Hails 'Positive Process' as Europe, US Discuss Ukraine Ceasefire

France said talks Thursday between top US and European officials on the war in Ukraine had launched a "positive process", as Europe seeks to be included in efforts to end the three-year-old conflict. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio again pressed a US peace plan during the discussions in Paris. The meetings included French President Emmanuel ...

Two Dead in Russian Strikes on Ukraine Cities: Authorities

Russian strikes killed two people and wounded at least 27 others overnight in Kharkiv and Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, authorities said Friday. Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram that one person was killed and 26 injured in the city. "According to preliminary information, the strikes on Kharkiv were carried out by ballistic missiles ...

Deadly US Strikes Hit Yemen Fuel Port Used by Huthis

US strikes on a Yemeni fuel port killed at least 58 people, Huthi rebels said Friday, in one of the deadliest attacks of Washington's renewed campaign against the Iran-backed group. The strikes also injured more than 100 people, according to a Huthi-run television station that broadcast footage of large blazes lighting up the night sky. The US ...

Sudan: What You Need to Know After Two Years of Hell

Since April 15, 2023, Sudan has been ravaged by a brutal civil war between the country’s two main armed forces: the regular army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary militia commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti. The conflict, which erupted in the heart of the ...

Russian Strike Kills 18 in Ukrainian President’s Home City

A Russian ballistic missile strike on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's home city of Kryvyi Rig killed 18 people on Friday, among them nine children, authorities said. The missile struck a residential area near a children's playground and wounded more than two dozen others, according to the head of the city's military ...

Syria: A New Phase of Conflict Between Pro-Assad Forces and the Authorities?

The Pandora’s box that opened in Syria in 2011 is far from closed. After the civil war that broke out 14 years ago, a new phase of tensions has begun in the wake of former President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster and his exile in Russia. On Thursday, fighting intensified across the country, particularly in the west, as supporters of the former ...

Syria Rebels Enter Damascus, Bashar al-Assad Flees Country

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) war monitor said that President Bashar al-Assad has left the country, after losing swathes of territory to a lightning offensive led by an Islamist-led rebel coalition that said it entered Damascus on Sunday. Residents in the Syrian capital told AFP heavy gunfire rang out, after a source close to ...

Syrian Rebels Take Control of Key City Daraa

Syrian government forces have lost control of Daraa city, a war monitor said, in another stunning blow for President Bashar al-Assad's rule after rebels wrested other key cities from his grip. Daraa was dubbed "the cradle of the revolution" early in Syria's civil war, after activists accused the government of detaining and ...

Russia Ready to Defend Itself Through "Any Means", Lavrov Says

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said he hoped Ukraine's allies took "seriously" Moscow's recent use of a hypersonic missile in the conflict there, and warned that Russia was ready to use "any means" to defend itself. The United States and its allies "must understand that we would be ready to use ...

Syria's Rebels About to Invade Central City Hama

Syrian rebel forces arrived at the gates of the key city of Hama on Tuesday, as their fighting with the military sparked "a large wave of displacement", a war monitor said. The Islamist-led rebels were advancing on Syria's fourth-largest city, buoyed by their lightning capture of swathes of the north in an offensive that ended four ...