Lebanese Health Ministry says Israeli airstrike kills 20 in the country's north

Associated Press

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Lebanese Health Ministry says Israeli airstrike kills 20 in the country's north.

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  • Fall of the House of Assad, with a billion-pound fortune and blood on its hands

    He didn’t look like a dictator. Awkward and gangly, his mannerisms unassuming, at least until he opened his mouth, Bashar al-Assad exuded none of the machismo of other Arab strongmen like Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein.

  • Erdogan says he and Putin are only two leaders left – as Turkish-backed rebels ‘seize Syrian city’

    Turkish-backed rebels claim to have seized a city in northern Syria from US-backed Kurdish militants.

  • Israel says it will destroy Syria's heavy strategic weaponry

    JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel will step up airstrikes on Syrian stores of advanced weaponry, Israeli officials said on Monday, and keep a "limited" troop presence on the ground, hoping to head off any threat that could emerge in the fallout of president Bashar al-Assad's overthrow. Israel has watched the upheaval in Syria with a mixture of hope and concern as it weighs the consequences of one of the most significant strategic shifts in the Middle East in years. "We are taking all the actions necessary to try to ensure our security with regard to the new situation in Syria," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in a late-night press conference at his office without going into detail.

  • Lebanon's Hezbollah sees 'major, dangerous' change in Syria

    Hezbollah played a major part propping up Assad through years of war in Syria, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel - a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines. His downfall has stripped Hezbollah of a vital ally along Lebanon's eastern border.

  • Who is the leader of Syria’s rebels and what does he want?

    The US State Department is advertising an up to 10-million-dollar reward for information leading to the capture of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who the agency first designated as a terrorist more than a decade ago, saying his group had “carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria.” Yet, Jolani is also the leader of the rebel forces that just toppled the tyrannical regime of Syrian dictator Basher al-Assad in a fast-moving offensive that surprised the world.

  • Watching with trepidation and glee, Netanyahu orders military to seize Syria buffer zone

    Israeli leaders are watching events across the border in Syria with trepidation, as 50 years of detente were upended in a matter of hours.

  • Israel seizes Golan buffer zone after Syrian troops leave positions

    PM Netanyahu said the 1974 disengagement agreement had "collapsed" with the rebel takeover of Syria.

  • The fall of Bashar Assad after 13 years of war in Syria brings to an end a decades-long dynasty

    Syrian President Bashar Assad fled the country on Sunday, bringing to a dramatic close his nearly 14-year struggle to hold onto control as his country fragmented in a brutal civil war that became a proxy battlefield for regional and international powers. The exit of the 59-year-old Assad stood in stark contrast to his first months as Syria’s unlikely president in 2000, when many hoped he would be a young reformer after three decades of his father’s iron grip. As the uprising hemorrhaged into an outright civil war, he unleashed his military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran and Russia.

  • Live: Syria rebels to release list of Assad officials accused of torture

    Syria’s White Helmets rescue group on Tuesday ended its search of Sednaya prison, long associated with atrocities committed by ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The Islamist rebel leader who led this weekend's lightning offensive against the capital vowed to pursue former senior officials for torture and war crimes. Follow our liveblog for the latest developments. Yesterday's key developments: Syria's prime minister said the government is still functioning and that he would meet with th

  • Toddler released from jail with hopes of Syria on his shoulders

    First they tried to shoot the lock off. Then they tried crowbarring it. Maybe someone found a key.

  • Why the next twist could bring yet more pain after Assad

    It took just 11 days to end the 13-year rebellion against Bashar al-Assad, an offensive so rapid that what unfolds next in Syria itself is, to an extent, anyone’s guess.

  • Syria hit by US and Israeli airstrikes as war bloggers fret about 'threat' to Russian bases

    Syria's new rebel leaders are facing the daunting task of healing a divided nation - and the toppling of the Assad regime has not put an end to fighting in the country. In northern Syria, Turkey-backed opposition fighters are still battling US-allied Kurdish forces, while both Israel and the US launched airstrikes on Syria on Sunday. President Bashar al Assad fled Damascus with his family on Sunday morning and their whereabouts were unknown until Russian state media confirmed they had been given asylum in Moscow "on humanitarian grounds".

  • Reports of people trapped underground at notorious Syrian prison

    It is thought thousands of people could still be trapped in hidden parts of the notorious Saydnaya prison.

  • The US military struck 75 ISIS targets in Syria as Assad's government fell

    President Joe Biden said the US sought to prevent ISIS from regrouping amid the chaos of Assad's fall.

  • Huthi drone fired from Yemen hits central Israeli residential building

    A drone claimed by Yemen's Huthi rebels exploded on the top floor of a residential building in the central Israeli city of Yavne on Monday, causing no injuries, the Israeli military and emergency services said.The Huthis later claimed responsiblity for the strike, with a rebels spokesman saying "the drone units targeted a sensitive target of the Israeli enemy in Yavne".

  • Why the Assad regime collapsed in Syria – and why so fast

    Syrian insurgents toppled President Bashar al-Assad's on Sunday after a stunning, two-week offensive that saw major cities slip from the regime’s fingers one by one, until rebel forces captured the capital Damascus almost without a fight. More than 50 years of Assad family rule in Syria collapsed with astonishing speed after insurgents burst out of a rebel-held enclave in the country’s north, capturing Aleppo and a string of other cities in a matter of days, before converging on Damascus. Opposi

  • ‘Beyond our dreams’: exiled Syrian activists set sights on returning home

    Fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime marks end of a chapter for citizens that began with Arab spring uprising

  • How did Syria's rebels manage to topple Assad?

    STORY: It took everyone by surprise: the lightning speed of the Syrian rebel advance and end to five decades of Assad family rule, one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations. How did the rebels pull off their offensive? :: A vulnerable Assad Andre Bank, of the Giga Institute for Middle East Studies says President Bashar al-Assad - who has fled to Moscow - was on the back foot."I didn't expect that it would only take ten days from, you know, them leaving Idlib and then arriving in Damascus. But that there was strong regime weakness and that there was a strong weakness of Assad supporters, we could clearly see this."Analysts say the weakness of Assad's regime was the deciding factor.Assad's military allies Russia and Iran were distracted by wars elsewhere and Moscow was losing interest.Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah - which helped government forces - was severely damaged by an Israeli offensive.Sources familiar with Hezbollah deployments said it withdrew many of its elite fighters from Syria over the past year.Giving rebels a valuable opportunity. "We just wanted a fair fight," a Syrian opposition source said.:: A broken armyMeanwhile Assad's army was on its knees. A regime source told Reuters corruption and looting left tanks and planes with no fuel - a sign of how hollowed out Assad's state had become.Army morale had severely eroded, the source said.Haid Haid of Chatham House says the support of armed loyalist groups may have collapsed. “Different reports that indicate that there has been some sort of contact between the at least the main coalition of armed groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, that started the offensive and led to the collapse of the regime, and the current government of regime and inside Damascus. And there are even reports that there were sort of, the instructions to armed groups inside Damascus and fighters to drop their weapons and not fight back, which maybe explains why Damascus fell quite quickly despite the presence of a big number of loyalists.”:: Turkey's role :: Ankara, TurkeyTurkey, which struck a deal with Russia in 2020 to de-escalate fighting in northwestern Syria, has long backed Syria's opposition.But it was against a major rebel offensive, fearing it would send more refugees its way. The rebels felt that changed earlier this year, the Syrian opposition leader and a diplomat from the region told Reuters.Assad had rebuffed repeated overtures from Ankara aimed at finding a political solution to Syria's military stalemate.Turkey's stance towards Assad was hardening, so the rebels communicated their plans for an offensive.They felt they received tacit approval, the sources said, though Turkish officials have denied giving them a green light. Turkey now appears to be Syria's most powerful external player, with troops on the ground and access to the new rebel leaders.

  • Who is Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of the insurgency that toppled Syria's Assad?

    Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the militant leader whose stunning insurgency toppled Syria’s President Bashar Assad, has spent years working to remake his public image, renouncing longtime ties to al-Qaida and depicting himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. Insurgents control Damascus, Assad has fled into hiding, and for the first time after 50 years of his family’s iron hand, it is an open question how Syria will be governed. Syria is home to multiple ethnic and religious communities, often pitted against each other by Assad’s state and years of war.