Citing Middle East Studies Professor Zhao Weiming of Shanghai International Studies University, the site also stated that Beijing’s new Syria policy was retaliation for the USA “pivot to Asia” aiming to isolate China. “In developing a closer relationship with Syria, one has to take into account the changes at hand in Syria and the region, including the fast recovering relations between Turkey and Russian Federation”, said Wang Lian of the School of International Studies at Peking University.
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Davis said coalition forces attempted to reach the pilots of the Russian-made jets on the appropriate radio frequency but got no response – leaving them confused as to the bombers’ intentions.
It said two Buyan-class corvettes including its new Zelyony Dol patrol ship staged 3 launches of Kalibr missiles against targets linked to the former Al-Nusra Front group, which has renamed itself the Fateh al-Sham Front.
The fighting in Syria’s civil war is showing no signs of slowing down.
Shortly afterward, clashes broke out anew, a Kurdish official said.
BEIRUT, Aug 23 (Reuters) – Kurdish forces were in near full control of Syria’s city of Hasaka on Tuesday after battling pro-government militias, though some government officials remained holed up in buildings in the city centre, a Kurdish official and monitoring group said.
But it illustrated the increasingly tense and ambiguous Syrian battlefield, where aircraft and ground troops from multiple countries – with multiple agendas and loyalties – are fighting overlapping wars. Jarablus, which lies on the western bank of the Euphrates River where it crosses from Turkey into Syria, is one of the last important IS-held towns standing between Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria.
Fighting in Hasakeh comes less than a week after the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella of Arab and Kurdish militia, retook the strategic city of Manbij from the “Islamic State”.
Coalition and US special operations forces were in the area at the time, but no one was affected by the airstrikes and they are safe, he added.
“The presence of the coalition aircraft encouraged the Syrian aircraft to depart the airspace without further incident”, he said. Five pro-government gunmen of the National Defense Force were killed as well, the Observatory said.
IS controls most of the Euphrates valley to the south of Hasakeh, and tensions between regime and Kurdish forces have sometimes led to armed clashes in spite of their common jihadist enemy.
Also Friday, SDF official Nasser Haj Mansour told The Associated Press that fighting erupted again and was underway in several neighborhoods of the city.
The partnership has been a continuing irritant in the relationship between the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member Turkey, which considers the YPG an extension of Turkey’s Kurdish separatists, with whom Turkey is at war.
The Kurds control much of northeastern and northern Syria along the Turkish border, where they have set up an autonomous administration since the regime withdrew in 2012 to focus on rebel groups seeking President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster.
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Earlier in the month, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif travelled to Turkey for talks with Turkish officials.
