Amnesty said in a press release that, “Providing safe routes for those civilians who wish to flee Aleppo city will not avert a humanitarian catastrophe”.
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Intelligence officials from some Persian Gulf states have reportedly met Nusra leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani several times in the past few months to encourage him to abandon al-Qaeda and to promise funding for his terror outfit once it distances from al-Qaeda.
But if rebels grow closer to an ostensibly “al-Qaida-free” Levant Conquest Front, they are likely to see such an air campaign as just a pretext for Moscow to help Assad defeat insurgents. “We judge a group by – by what they do, not by what they call themselves”.
In a recording aired on Thursday, the leader of Syria’s Nusra Front stated that it has no remaining ties with al-Qaida in a veiled attempt to undermine a potential Russian and U.S. air campaign against its team of fighters.
Nusra has been al-Qaida branch in Syria and one of the most powerful armed groups fighting the government.
Following the start of the war in 2011, al-Qaeda sent Jolani to Syria to establish a branch that could launch attacks against the regime.
“At some point there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we’ve never seen before”, Comey said. Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama Administration’s policy of supporting the Syrian opposition against the Syrian regime since the beginning of the Syrian civil war until June 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul and Obama Administration made an about-face on its previous policy of indiscriminate support to the Syrian opposition and declared a war against a faction of Syrian opposition: that is, the Islamic State.
There are no signs yet that residents have converged on the crossings.
Unlike the IS group, which opposes all those who fail to swear allegiance, Al-Nusra has worked alongside an array of rebel groups fighting Assad and has popular support. He was detained again, two years later, in Azerbaijan, reportedly part of an worldwide CIA-led manhunt, according to an account published in journalist Lawrence Wright’s 2006 book, The Looming Tower.
The state SANA news agency says the military has taken control of the Bani Zeid neighborhood and has begun clearing land mines there. The decision was widely interpreted to be an effort to head off any joint Russian-U.S. airstrikes.
Shoigu said in televised remarks on Thursday that President Vladimir Putin, in response to a request by Kerry, ordered a general and experts to Geneva.
Assad and Nusra Front have gained ground in Syria in 2016, in part because of the degradation of the Islamic State group in the country.
“If it is a genuine humanitarian proposal, then clearly it will be accompanied by an end to the bombing campaign”, the British ambassador to the United Nations, Matthew Rycroft, told reporters in NY. A doctor for a medical charity that operates in Aleppo also said the army had fired artillery at families gathering near another humanitarian corridor, in the opposition-held Bustan al Qasr neighbourhood.
Medical and food assistance would be provided along the routes for civilians and fighters who lay down their weapons, Shoigu said, adding the operation would get underway later yesterday.
However, politicians and military officials inside Aleppo said that any talks about an amnesty and the humanitarian corridors were a simple maneuver and a “media trick” conducted by the regime and Russian Federation.
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This item has been corrected to show that Shoigu was referring to Syrian opposition fighters, not IS fighters.
