Tag Archives: War

U.S.-backed forces push against IS in slowed Raqqa campaign

A Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter rests near destroyed airplane parts inside Tabqa military airport after taking control of it from Islamic State fighters, west of Raqqa city, Syria April 9, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S.-backed forces fighting Islamic State in Syria took several neighborhoods from the militant group in the town of Tabqa on Friday, they said in a statement, part of a campaign to oust Islamic State from its stronghold in Raqqa city.

The multi-phased campaign against the jihadists by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance made up of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighting groups, was launched in November but has slowed in recent weeks.

Pushing down from the north, the SDF is trying to take the Islamic State-held Tabqa area and its adjacent Euphrates dam, the largest in Syria, some 40 km (25 miles) upstream of Raqqa.

SDF forces surround Tabqa town, having cut it off in late March from a swathe of Islamic State territory which runs across Syria into Iraq.

On Friday the SDF said it had pushed up into the town and taken the southern neighborhoods of Nababila and Zahra, having taken Wahab neighborhood to their south on Thursday.

In recent weeks the SDF has also squeezed Islamic State’s pocket of territory around Raqqa, which the jihadist group has used as a base to plot attacks and manage much of its self-declared caliphate since seizing the city in 2014.

The Kurdish YPG militia is the strongest unit of the SDF and is taking part in the assault on Tabqa and Raqqa, but it is seen by Turkey as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency against Ankara.

On Tuesday the Turkish military conducted air strikes and cross-border shelling against YPG targets in Syria in what it said was retaliation for mortar attacks, prompting the U.S. State Department to voice concern. Sporadic clashes have continued along the border in recent days.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Israel seeks U.S. backing to avert permanent Iran foothold in Syria

By Matt Spetalnick and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Israel is seeking an “understanding” with the Trump administration that Iran must not be allowed to establish a permanent military foothold in Syria, Israel’s intelligence minister told Reuters on Wednesday.

In an interview, visiting Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said he was also using his meetings with White House officials and key lawmakers to press for further U.S. sanctions on Iran and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which is supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“I want to achieve an understanding, an agreement between the U.S. and Israel … not to let Iran have permanent military forces in Syria, by air, by land, by sea,” Katz told Reuters, saying this should be part of any future international accord on ending Syria’s six-year-old civil war.

Katz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, insisted, however, that Israel was not asking Washington to commit more forces to Syria, but to “achieve this by talking to the Russians, by threatening Iran, by sanctions and other things.”

There was no immediate comment from the White House. Katz was due to meet President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt.

For its part, Israel has stayed mostly on the sidelines in the Syrian conflict and has shown no sign of significantly altering that posture. It has carried out only occasional air strikes when its has felt threatened, including by the delivery of weapons to Hezbollah militants.

Israeli officials have estimated that Iran – Israel’s regional archfoe, but also that of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states – commands at least 25,000 fighters in Syria, including members of its own Revolutionary Guard, Shi’ite militants from Iraq and recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

ALARMING PROVOCATIONS

Katz’s visit came just a week after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Iran of “alarming ongoing provocations” to destabilize countries in the Middle East as the Trump administration launched a review of its policy toward Tehran.

Tillerson said the review would look not only at Tehran’s compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal, but also its behavior in the region.

Trump, who may visit Israel as early as next month, has adopted a tougher stance against Assad. He ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base this month after blaming Assad for a chemical weapons attack that killed at least 70 people, many of them children.

“It was important morally and strategically,” Katz said of the U.S. strikes. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the gas attack.

Israeli officials want Russia, which they see as holding the balance of power among Assad’s supporters, to use its influence to help rein in Iran’s activities in Syria.

Though Russia has shown no willingness to restrain Iran, Israeli officials say there are indications that Moscow may see any long-term Iranian military presence in Syria as potentially destabilizing.

Katz reiterated Israel’s vow to continue launching occasional air strikes in Syria against Hezbollah forces detected transporting rockets or other weapons toward the Lebanese border, which he described as a “red line.”

(Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by John Walcott and Jonathan Oatis)

Iraqi paramilitaries shut more Islamic State escape routes to Syria border

A view shows the ancient city of Hatra, south of Mosul, Iraq April 27, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi paramilitary units captured the northern province of Hatra on Thursday, cutting off several desert tracks used by Islamic State to move between Iraq and Syria, the military.

The operations in Hatra are carried out by Popular Mobilisation, a coalition of mostly Iranian-trained militias of Shi’ite volunteers formed in 2014 after Islamic State, a hardline Sunni group, overran a third of Iraq.

The militias on Wednesday dislodged Islamic State from the ancient ruins of Hatra, which suffered great destruction under the militants’ three-year rule, a military spokesman said.

Hatra, a city that flourished in the first century AD, lies 125 km (80 miles) south of Mosul, where the militants have been fighting off a U.S.-backed offensive since October.

The militants are now surrounded in the northwestern part of Mosul, including the Old City and its landmark Grand al-Nuri Mosque from where their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared in mid-2014 a caliphate also spanning parts of Syria.

Mosul is by far the largest city that had fallen to the militants in both countries. The density of the population is slowing the advance of Iraqi forces.

Hatra is also located west of Hawija, a region north of Baghdad still under Islamic State control.

Popular Mobilisation, which operates with the approval of Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government, said on Tuesday the Hatra campaign aims at cutting off Islamic State’s routes between Hawija, Mosul and eastern Syria.

Iraq’s border region with Syria is a historic hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against the rule of the Shi’ite majority community, empowered after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

French intelligence says Assad forces carried out sarin attack

FILE PHOTO: A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah/File Photo

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – French intelligence has concluded that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on April 4 in northern Syria and that Assad or members of his inner circle ordered the strike, a declassified report showed.

The chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun killed scores of people, according to a war monitor, Syrian opposition groups and Western countries. It prompted the United States to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base, its first deliberate assault on the Assad government in the six-year-old conflict.

Assad has said in two media interviews since April 4 that the evidence of a poison gas attack was false and denied his government had ever used chemical weapons.

The six-page French document, seen by Reuters and drawn up by France’s military and foreign intelligence services – said it reached its conclusion based on samples they had obtained from the impact strike on the ground and a blood sample from a victim.

“We know, from a certain source, that the process of fabrication of the samples taken is typical of the method developed in Syrian laboratories,” Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters after presenting the findings to the cabinet.

“This method is the signature of the regime and it is what enables us to establish the responsibility of the attack. We know because we kept samples from previous attacks that we were able to use for comparison.”

Among the elements found in the samples were hexamine, a hallmark of sarin produced by the Syrian government, according to the report.

It said the findings matched the results of samples obtained by French intelligence, including an unexploded grenade, from an attack in Saraqib on April 29, 2013, which Western powers have accused the Assad government of carrying out.

“This production process is developed by Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) for the regime,” the report said.

The United States on Monday blacklisted 271 employees belonging to the agency.

Syria agreed in September 2013 to destroy its entire chemical weapons program under a deal negotiated with the United States and Russia after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.

The report said that based on its assessments, there were “serious doubts on the accuracy, completeness and sincerity of the dismantlement of Syria’s chemical arsenal.”

SIX WARPLANE STRIKES

The report, which lists some 140 suspected chemical attacks in Syria since 2012, also said intelligence services were aware of a Syrian government Sukhoi 22 warplane that had struck six times on Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 and that samples taken from the ground were consistent with an airborne projectile that had munitions loaded with sarin.

“The French intelligence services consider that only Bashar al-Assad and some of his most influential entourage can give the order to use chemical weapons,” the report said.

It added that jihadist groups in the area in Idlib province did not have the capacity to develop and launch such an attack and that Islamic State was not in the region.

Assad’s assertion that the attack was fabricated was “not credible” given the mass flows of casualties in a short space of time arriving in Syrian and Turkish hospitals as well as the sheer quantity of social media posts and video showing people with neurotoxic symptoms, said the report.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on April 19 that sarin or a similar banned toxin was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack, but it is not mandated to assign blame.

Russia, which backs Assad in the conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, has said the gas was released by an air strike on a poison gas storage depot controlled by rebels.

“The Kremlin thinks as before that the only way to restore the truth of what happened in Idlib is impartial international investigation. We regret that OPCW restrains so far from such an investigation,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the French report.

A senior French diplomatic source said Paris had passed the report on to its partners and would continue to push for a probe.

Moscow was attempting to discredit the OPCW, the source said: “There is a propaganda effort by Russia to say that the OPCW’s work is not credible.”

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Callus, Pravin Char and Sonya Hepinstall)

U.S. moves THAAD anti-missile to South Korean site, sparking protests

A U.S. military vehicle which is a part of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system arrives in Seongju, South Korea, April 26, 2017. Kim Jun-beom/Yonhap via REUTERS

By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – The U.S. military started moving parts of an anti-missile defense system to a deployment site in South Korea on Wednesday, triggering protests from villagers and criticism from China, amid tension over North Korea’s weapons development.

The earlier-than-expected steps to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system was also denounced by the frontrunner in South Korea’s presidential election on May 9.

South Korea’s defense ministry said elements of THAAD were moved to the deployment site, on what had been a golf course, about 250 km (155 miles) south of the capital, Seoul.

“South Korea and the United States have been working to secure an early operational capability of the THAAD system in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile threat,” the ministry said in a statement.

The battery was expected to be operational by the end of the year, it said.

The United States and South Korea agreed last year to deploy the THAAD to counter the threat of missile launches by North Korea. They say it is solely aimed at defending against North Korea.

But China says the system’s advanced radar can penetrate deep into its territory and undermine its security, while it will do little to deter the North, and is adamant in its opposition.

“China strongly urges the United States and South Korea to stop actions that worsen regional tensions and harm China’s strategic security interests and cancel the deployment of the THAAD system and withdraw the equipment,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a briefing.

“China will resolutely take necessary steps to defend its interests,” Geng said, without elaborating.

China is North Korea’s sole major ally and is seen as crucial to U.S.-led efforts to rein in its bellicose, isolated neighbor.

The United States began moving the first elements of the system to South Korea in March after the North tested four ballistic missiles.

South Korea has accused China of discriminating against some South Korean companies operating in China because of the deployment.

The liberal politician expected to win South Korea’s election, Moon Jae-in, has called for a delay in the deployment, saying the new administration should make a decision after gathering public opinion and more talks with Washington.

A spokesman for Moon said moving the parts to the site “ignored public opinion and due process” and demanded it be suspended.

Television footage showed military trailers carrying equipment, including what appeared to be launch canisters, to the battery site.

Protesters shouted and hurled water bottles at the vehicles over lines of police holding them back.

The Pentagon said the system was critical to defend South Korea and its allies against North Korean missiles and deployment would be completed “as soon as feasible”.

‘WE WILL FIGHT’

More than 10 protesters were injured, some of them with fractures, in clashes with police, Kim Jong-kyung, a leader of villagers opposing the deployment, told Reuters.

Kim said about 200 protesters rallied overnight and they would keep up their opposition.

“There’s still time for THAAD to be actually up and running so we will fight until equipment is withdrawn from the site and ask South Korea’s new government to reconsider,” Kim told Reuters by telephone.

A police official in the nearby town of Seongju said police had withdrawn from the area and were not aware of any injuries.

The United States and North Korea have been stepping up warnings to each other in recent weeks over North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles in defiance of U.N. resolutions.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat is perhaps the most serious security challenge confronting U.S. President Donald Trump. He has vowed to prevent North Korea from being able to hit the United States with a nuclear missile.

North Korea says it needs the weapons to defend itself and has vowed to strike the United States and its Asian allies at the first sign of any attack on it.

The United States is sending the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to waters off the Korean peninsula, where it will join the USS Michigan, a nuclear submarine that docked in South Korea on Tuesday. South Korea’s navy has said it will hold drills with the U.S. strike group.

North Korea’s foreign ministry denounced a scheduled U.N. Security Council meeting on Friday, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, saying the United States was “not morally entitled” to force members states to impose sanctions on it.

“It is a wild dream for the U.S. to think of depriving the DPRK of its nuclear deterrent through military threat and sanctions. It is just like sweeping the sea with a broom,” the North’s KCNA cited a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.

DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.

China’s envoy on North Korea, Wu Dawei, met his Japanese counterpart, Kenji Kanasugi, for talks in Tokyo and they agreed that they would “respond firmly” to any further North Korean provocation, Japan’s foreign ministry said.

“We are against anything that might lead to war or chaos,” Wu said.

KCNA said earlier leader Kim Jong Un had supervised the country’s “largest-ever” live-fire drill to mark Tuesday’s 85th founding anniversary of its military, with more than 300 large-caliber, self-propelled artillery pieces on its east coast.

“The brave artillerymen mercilessly and satisfactorily hit the targets and the gunshots were very correct, he said, adding that they showed well the volley of gunfire of our a-match-for-a-hundred artillery force giving merciless punishment to the hostile forces,” KCNA cited Kim as saying.

There had been fears North Korea would mark the anniversary with its sixth nuclear test or a long-range missile launch.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel)

Mosul businesses start reconstruction without waiting for final Islamic State defeat

Workers rebulid a shop that was destroyed during fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic state fighters, eastern Mosul, Iraq, April 21, 2017. REUTERS/ Muhammad Hamed

By Mohammed Al-Ramahi

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Some businessmen in Mosul have begun rebuilding their shattered premises without waiting for financial support from the cash-strapped Iraqi government or for the final defeat of Islamic State in the city.

“If we wait for support, it could take a long time,” said Rafeh Ghanem, who owns an automotive spare-parts business in the eastern side of the city.

An airstrike in January reduced the two-storey building that houses his shop and dozens of others to a heap of rubble and twisted steel rods.

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces took back the eastern side of Mosul in January, after 100 days of fighting. They are now fighting Islamic State in districts lying west of the Tigris river that bisects the city.

Ghanem said he and the 25 other businesses that rent space in the building agreed to contribute funds to help the landlord clear the debris and rebuild one of the two storeys.

Reconstruction started on April 11 and Ghanem hopes to return to business in three to four months.

He says waiting is of no use since the price of building materials is expected to rise as more reconstruction projects get under way, boosting demand for steel and cement.

The city, captured by IS in 2014, has suffered extensive damage as hundreds of houses and public buildings including the airport, the main railway station and the university have been destroyed.

Cement and steel prices have gone down steeply since the militants were defeated in eastern Mosul, as road connections have opened up with the rest of Iraq and Turkey, allowing supplies to resume.

A metric ton of cement used to sell for up to 350,000 Iraqi dinars ($300) after the militants took over nearly three years ago. It now costs 80,000 to 90,000, said an importer, Saif Ibrahim.

For Ghanem, there is no other choice but to rebuild the city which had a pre-war population of more than 2 million.

“We live in this city, we have to bring it back.” ($1 = 1,167.0000 Iraqi dinars)

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Turkish warplanes kill six Kurdish militants in northern Iraq: army

A U.S. military commander (R) walks with a commander (C) from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) as they inspect the damage at YPG headquarters after it was hit by Turkish airstrikes in Mount Karachok near Malikiya, Syria. REUTERS/ Rodi Said

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish warplanes hit Kurdish militant targets in northern Iraq on Wednesday and killed six militants, the military said, in a second day of cross-border raids.

A military statement said the air strikes targeted the Zap region, the Turkish name for a river which flows across the Turkish-Iraqi border and is known as Zab in Iraq.

The air strikes hit “two hiding places and one shelter, and killed six separatist terrorist organisation militants who were understood to be preparing an attack,” the statement said.

The raids were part of a widening campaign against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has also hit other Kurdish fighters inside Iraq – apparently by accident.

On Tuesday, Turkish planes bombed Kurdish targets in Iraq’s Sinjar region and northeast Syria, killing about 70 militants inside the two neighbouring states, according to a Turkish military statement.

The United States expressed “deep concern” over those air strikes and said they were not authorized by the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.

Five members of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, which are also deployed in Sinjar, were killed. Kurdish authorities who run their own autonomous region in north Iraq enjoy good relation with Turkey and, like Ankara, oppose the presence of a PKK affiliate in Sinjar.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday told Reuters that he would not allow Sinjar to become a PKK base, adding that Ankara informed its partners including the United States, Russia and Iraqi Kurdish authorities ahead of the operation.

On Wednesday, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu said the parties were informed through both military and diplomatic channels.

Turkey had passed on information to the United States and Russian military attaches in Ankara, Muftuoglu said, and Turkish army chief Hulusi Akar also held a telephone conversation with his U.S. and Russian counterparts.

The Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar, responsible for providing command and air control in regions including Iraq and Syria, was also informed in advance, Muftuoglu said.

Designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the PKK has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state for Kurdish autonomy. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, most of them Kurds.

The army also reported on Wednesday cross-border mortar fire from two areas inside Syria — one believed to be under the control of Syrian government forces and the other by Kurdish YPG militants. It said there were no casualties, and it retaliated.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Editing by Dominic Evans and Angus MacSwan)

U.S. says raised deep concerns with Turkey over air strikes

Fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) inspect the damage at their headquarters after it was hit by Turkish airstrikes in Mount Karachok near Malikiya, Syria April 25, 2017. REUTERS/ Rodi Said

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Tuesday expressed “deep concern” over Turkish air strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq and said they were not authorized by the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.

The raids in Iraq’s Sinjar region and northeast Syria killed at least 20 in a campaign against groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against Turkey for Kurdish autonomy.

Turkey is part of the U.S.-led military coalition fighting militants in Syria.

Ankara has strongly opposed Washington’s support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters who are part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have been closing in on the Islamic State bastion of Raqqa.

“We have expressed those concerns with the government of Turkey directly,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on a conference call.

“These air strikes were not approved by the coalition and led to the unfortunate loss of life of our partner forces in the fight against” Islamic State, he said.

Toner said while the United States recognized Turkey’s concerns with the PKK, the cross-border raids harmed the coalition’s efforts to fight Islamic State.

“We recognize their concerns about the PKK but these kinds of actions frankly harm the coalition’s efforts to go after ISIS and frankly harm our partners on the ground who are conducting that fight,” he added.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Paul Simao)

Iraqi forces using siege and stealth to evict Islamic State from Mosul

FILE PHOTO - Federal police members fire a rocket at Islamic State fighters' positions during a battle at Jada district in western Mosul. REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal

By Ahmed Aboulenein

MOSUL, Iraq, (Reuters) – Iraqi forces are using siege and stealth tactics to drive Islamic State militants out of Mosul’s Old City, an Iraqi general said, as his forces sought to minimize casualties among hundreds of thousands of people trapped in the cramped, historic neighborhood.

Explosions from two car bombs could be heard nearby as Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi spoke to Reuters at his command post on Monday, and a Reuters correspondent saw thick smoke rising from the blasts.

“Most houses in the Old City are very old and its streets and alleyways are very narrow,” said Assadi, a commander of Iraqi counter-terrorism units in Mosul. “So to avoid civilian losses we are using siege, but that does not mean we will not enter the Old City.”

Assadi said his units were refraining from engaging enemy forces in positions where the militants were holding civilians as human shields.

“Using very careful methods and considerations, we will liberate our people from Daesh,” he said, using an Arab acronym of Islamic State.

Government forces have surrounded the militants in the northwestern quarter, including the Old City, home to the Grand al-Nuri mosque, where their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a “caliphate” over parts of Iraq and Syria.

The ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim fighters are countering the offensive using booby traps, suicide motorcycle attacks, sniper and mortar fire and, occasionally, shells filled with toxic gas.

With food and water becoming scarcer in neighborhoods of Mosul still under IS control, up to half a million people are believed to be trapped there, including 400,000 in the Old City alone, according to United Nations estimate.

Lise Grande, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, told Reuters last week fighting in the Old City could lead to “a humanitarian catastrophe, perhaps the worst” in the three-year war to evict Islamic State from Iraq.

International aid organizations have estimated the civilian and military death toll at several thousand since the U.S.-backed offensive by government forces to retake Mosul began in October. More than 330,000 people have been displaced so far, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

“Humanitarian partners are preparing contingency plans for a number of different displacement scenarios in western Mosul, including for a possible mass outflow of 350,000-450,000 civilians, or a siege-like situation of the Old City,” the U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report on Tuesday.

Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, was captured by Islamic State in mid-2014, but government forces have retaken most of it, including the half that lies east of the Tigris River.

The Iraqi military gained additional ground on Tuesday, dislodging the militants from Hay al-Tanak, one of Mosul’s largest districts by area, on the western edge of the city.

Assadi said the battle should end “very soon, God willing” but declined to indicate a time frame. “This is a guerrilla war, not a conventional one, so we cannot estimate how long it will take; Daesh is fighting house to house.”

The Iraqi military estimate the number of Islamic State fighters who remain in Mosul at 200 to 300, mostly foreigners, compared with about 6,000 when the offensive started.

The militants “don’t let themselves get captured,” said Assadi. “They came to die and the majority of them are now in hell.”

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Larry King)

Air strikes kill at least 12, damage hospital in Syria’s Idlib: medics, monitor

Damaged vehicles and hospital are pictured at a site hit by overnight airstrike, in Kafr Takharim, northwest of Idlib city, Syria April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian or Russian air strikes killed more than a dozen people and severely damaged a hospital in and around a town in rebel-held Idlib province on Tuesday, local medical workers and a monitoring group said.

The attacks came as Syria’s air force and Russian jets intensified their bombardment of Idlib, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Idlib is an insurgent stronghold, one of the few large areas still under rebel control in the west of the country. Rebels and their families who have chosen to leave areas under government siege around Damascus in evacuation deals have headed for Idlib.

A spokesman at the hospital in Kafr Takharim in Idlib told Reuters an air strike hit its courtyard killing 14 people, including patients.

The Observatory said there were no deaths from the hospital strike, but that the bombardment had put it out of action.

Separate air strikes southwest of Kafr Takharim killed at least 12 people including civilians and rebel fighters, the Observatory said.

(Reporting by Ammar Abdullah and John Davison; Editing by Alison Williams)