The Syrian army has given dozens of Soviet-era tanks to the Islamist Hezbollah organization to help battle its enemies, Kuwaiti newspaper Alrai reported Saturday.
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The opposition has accused Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government of working with its allies, including Iran, on moving populations around to empty government-held areas of Sunnis.
Russian Federation insists Assad must be included in the global campaign against Islamic State, but the United States opposes this, saying the Syrian president is part of the problem.
The Syrian army’s control over the town would entirely cut off the supply lines used by the militants for transferring ammunition and forces into areas near the capital, Damascus, while it would also secure the highway.
The leader of Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah group has welcomed what he described as Russia’s growing “combat presence” in Syria, saying it will have a significant impact on the war in the neighboring country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, during their meeting in the Novo-Ogaryovo residence, outside Moscow, Russia, Monday, September 21, 2015.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Netanyahu said that an unprecedented and crucial mechanism had been established to prevent such misunderstandings.
“If we would feel a need for that we would study it and ask for it”, he said according to the official Syrian news agency SANA.
“It looks to me like a force that could have significant offensive capability”, he said.
The Observatory said explosions had been heard in Taftanaz, with activists blaming government barrel bombs for killing at least five people there. Netanyahu came to the Kremlin to “clarify our policies, and to make sure that there is no misunderstanding between our forces”, he said.
Russia’s military expansion into Syria has thrown three years of USA policy planning about Syria into disarray, derailing calculations and assumptions about ways to resolve the country’s war that may never have worked but now nearly certainly won’t.
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“The Saudi regime holds the full responsibility for the Mina incident as it was the sole manager of the pilgrimage and it has always refused to share this responsibility with anyone else”, Nasrallah said, as he stressed that blaming the pilgrims for this tragedy was a simplification of things. “We are trying (to contact the Russians) through our friends, but we find all of them puzzled”, he said.
