Business has been terrible for Abu Tareq, a taxi driver, so last week, without telling his wife, he agreed to drive a man to the Damascus airport for 10 times the usual rate. But, he said later, he will not be doing that again. On the airport road, he could hear the crash of artillery […]
Is Assad’s brother Maher dead?
The Syrian Information Ministry on Monday denied the news reported by Russia Today that a high-ranking Syrian officer died in a Moscow hospital earlier on Monday. “The news is baseless and falls within the framework of desperate psychological warfare to undermine the determination of the Syrian people,” the statement said
UN: Syria has ‘chosen the path of war’
Syria’s government and rebels have “chosen the path of war”, a U.N. peacekeeping chief said as the world body ended its doomed monitoring mission to Damascus and deadlock persists among world powers over how to contain the spreading conflict. Two weeks after former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan quit as mediator in frustration with the failure […]
Syrian Rebels State Terms for Freeing the 48 Iranians
The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) has laid out conditions for releasing 48 Iranians who were kidnapped in Damascus this month. In an interview with VOA’s Persian News Network, Deputy FSA Commander Colonel Malik al-Kurdi said the hostages would be freed if the Iranian government respected the human rights of “its own people”
Assad’s brother Maher may have lost leg in bombing, report
President Bashar al-Assad’s feared brother Maher lost a leg in a bomb attack on the Syrian leader’s security cabinet a month ago, Western and Gulf sources said on Thursday. While a Lebanese politician with ties to the Assads questioned their assertion that Maher al-Assad had been badly wounded, it would be a heavy blow to […]
Abductions near Lebanon-Syria border
Gunmen abducted five Syrian men including four Alawites and one Shiite on Sunday along the border with Syria in retaliation for the kidnapping of Sunni Lebanese earlier on Sunday in the same region, a security official and witnesses told AFP. The tit-for-tat abductions occurred in the Wadi Khaled border region between the two countries, where […]
Israel warns Hezbollah over Iran
Any Hezbollah retaliation to an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would prompt Israel to launch a war in Lebanon so ferocious that it would take a decade to rebuild the villages it destroys, a senior Israeli military officer has warned. Despite the inevitable international outcry, Israel would be left with no choice but to lay […]
Geagea: Assad wants to gain Sunni legitimacy
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad wants to gain Sunni legitimacy by receiving Lebanese Sunni figures, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said during an interview with An-Nahar newspaper published on Friday , in reference to the visits of former Prime Ministers Salim al-Hoss and Omar Karami to Damascus.
U.S. plans for Syria without Assad
Increasingly convinced that President Bashar Assad of Syria will not be able to remain in power, the Obama administration has begun to make plans for U.S. policy in the region after he exits. In coordination with Turkey, the United States has been exploring how to deal with the possibility of a civil war
Dar al-Fatwa calls for removal of illegal building in Ouzai, update
Dar al-Fatwa Lebanon’s highest spiritual Sunni authority which is headed by Mufti Mohammed Rashid called for removing an illegal building built on the property of Muslim Ulemas ( scholars ) in Ouzai, south of the capital Beirut.