Russia and the UN have discussed the strategy to create normal living conditions in Syria, writes SANA. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin has met with UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen. “The two sides exchanged points of view on the situation in Syria within the framework of the …

Regime forces have restarted bombing Turkish-backed militias in Idleb, reports North Press. On Thursday, Syrian government forces renewed their ground bombardment on the posts of the Turkish-backed armed opposition groups, south of Idleb, after the region witnessed a relative calm for the last 48 hours.

SOHR sources from inside eastern Ghouta say that members of the branch “277”, known as “Military Security”, have seized hundreds of apartments, shops and farms again in several areas in eastern Ghouta, under the decision of “provisional seizure.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has monitored Russian flying over the Syrian desert, after suspension of aerial operations for more than 48 hours. Where six Russian jets executed more than 40 airstrikes since the morning, targeting ISIS positions in the desert of Deir ez-Zor and the Aleppo-Hama-Raqqa triangle. Meanwhile, …

The intense activity of ISIS mercenaries comes in the absence of Russian warplanes for more than 48 hours from bombing the Badia, while helicopters and warplanes of the Damascus government carried out about ten air strikes in the past 48 hours. In a related context, the Syrian Observatory for Human …

An American journalist, living in northwestern Syria for nearly a decade, has been released, six months after he was captured by an al-Qaeda-linked militant group, Syrian opposition media reported. Bilal Abdul Kareem, a native of Mount Vernon, N.Y., has been living in the rebel-held Syrian northwest since 2012, reporting on …

SOHR sources say that gunmen, believed to be ISIS cells, targeted with machine guns a military patrol of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the village of Al-Zar in eastern rural Deir al-Zour, but no casualties have been reported so far. Yesterday, Syrian Observatory activists documented the death of an SDF …

Syria continues to offer the ground where Russia and the United States compete over control of oil and gas fields and the transportation routes that bring energy to consumers. Russia seeks to expand its energy footprint in Syria to build influence over rebel-controlled areas in Northeast Syria that are backed …

The controversial Geert Wilders has had spats with the Turkish government before amid wider crises between Turkey and the Netherlands. The Turkish government and a far-right Dutch politician are in a row over a tweet portraying the Turkish president as a terrorist and Islamic State (IS) supporter.

India will also join the defense maneuver, according to the Iranian navy. The Iranian military began a naval drill with Indian and Russian forces on Tuesday.