Turkish forces facilitating Syria rebel reinforcements, rebels say
Syrian rebels have brought at least 2,000 reinforcements through Turkey over the past week told boost their fight against Kurdish-led militias in northern Syria, rebel sources told Reuters today.
Turkish forces facilitated the transfer from one front to another over several nights, covertly escorting rebels as they exited Syria's Idlib [province], travelled four hours across Turkey, and re-entered Syria to support the embattled rebel stronghold of Azaz, the sources said.
"We have been allowed to move everything from light weapons to heavy equipment, mortars and missiles and our tanks," Abu Issa, a commander in the Levant Front, the rebel group that runs the border crossing of Bab al-Salama, told Reuters, giving his alias and talking on condition of anonymity.
Turkey analyst Aaron Stein offers this insight into the situation in northern Aleppo province, as Syrian rebel fighters say that Turkey is bringing reinforcements and weapons across its border to reinforce rebel ranks as they battle Syrian Kurdish forces.
Russia says Syria must not be divided, no separate Kurdish state
Commenting on the possibility of the creation of an independent Kurdish state in northern Syria, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that Moscow supports a united Syria.
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Iraq Sentences 40 To Death Over 2014 Tikrit Massacre
An Iraqi court has sentenced 40 men to death for their role in the 2014 massacre of hundreds of army recruits by the Islamic State (IS) group.
A spokesman for Iraq's judiciary, Abdel Sattar Bayraqdar, said on February 18 that the Central Criminal Court in Baghdad handed down the sentences in accordance with the country's antiterrorism law.
Bayraqdar said the court acquitted seven other defendants in the case for lack of evidence.
He did not provide other details, and it wasn't immediately clear whether the verdicts could be appealed.
In a similar trial in July 2015, 24 men were sentenced to hang over the massacre committed during the first days of the IS's group's lightning offensive in Iraq in June 2014.
The militants said at the time that it had executed 1,700 soldiers who had fled Camp Speicher, a base near the city of Tikrit, but Human Rights Watch estimated that 770 soldiers had been killed.
Based on reporting by AFP and dpa
U.N. aims to make first air drops of food to besieged in Syria's Deir al-Zor
The UN plans to make its first air drops of food aid to Syria's Deir al-Zor, a town besieged by IS militants, Jan Egeland, the chairman of the UN humanitarian task force has said.
Egeland said that the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) had a "concrete plan" for carrying out the Deir al-Zor operation in coming days.
He said the WFP hoped to make progress reaching "the poor people inside Deir al-Zor, which is besieged by Islamic State. That can only be done by air drops," said Egeland.
"It's a complicated operation and would be in many ways the first of its kind," Egeland said, giving no details of the air operation which is far more costly than land convoys.
U.S.-led coalition conducts 19 fresh strikes against IS in Syria, Iraq
The U.S.-led coalition against the IS group have conducted 12 new strikes against IS in Iraq and seven in Syria, the U.S. Department of Defense has reported.
Details of the latest strikes are here on the Department of Defense website.
UN aid to reach all besieged Syria areas within a week: AFP
The United Nations should be able to deliver aid to all of Syria's 18 besieged areas within a week, a senior UN official said Thursday, after life-saving supplies reached five locations, AFP reports.
Invasion of Syria would mean end of peace process: Russia
Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that any invasion of Syria would spell an end to the peace process.
Zakharova said that Moscow hopes Turkey will remain committed to its obligations regarding a political settlement in Syria and refrain from military means, RIA Novosti reports.
UK's Syria airstrikes killed or injured 'seven IS militants': BBC
Seven fighters from the IS group have been killed or injured by British air strikes in Syria, the Ministry of Defense estimates, according to the BBC.
By the end of January four attacks had resulted in IS casualties, figures released to the Huffington Post in a freedom of information request showed.
IS currency a 'media stunt' activist tells Syria Direct
The Islamic State group never produced its much-publicized precious-metal currency and has in fact only produced a few "souvenir coins," activists in Raqqa told Syria Direct today.
Read the full report here.
Nevertheless, anti-IS activist Hani a-Rawi, a member of the Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently media campaign, told Syria Direct that IS “never banned the circulation of dollars.”
“IS even pays its fighters in dollars and prefers that taxes be paid in dollars as well,” said a-Rawi.