Source: Press TV
Russia says 62 Syrian forces have been killed in airstrikes by US-led coalition jets on army positions near Dayr al-Zawr military airport.

“Warplanes from the international anti-terrorist coalition carried out four airstrikes today against Syrian forces surrounded by the Daesh group in the Dayr al-Zawr air base,” the Russia army said in a statement. “Sixty-two Syrian soldiers were killed and a hundred others were injured in these strikes.”

Two F-16 and two A-10 jets entered Syrian air space from Iraq to carry out the attacks, according to the statement.

It added, “Straight after the coalition’s strikes, Daesh militants launched an offensive.” “If these strikes were due to an error in the target coordinates, that would be a direct consequence of the US’ refusal to coordinate with Russia its fight against the terrorist groups in Syria.”

The Syrian General Command referred to the incident as a “serious and blatant aggression” against the Syrian army, adding that it was also “conclusive evidence” that the US-led coalition is supporting Daesh militants.

Confirming the reports, the US military says it halted the attack after Russian officials said the targets were Syrian government forces and not Daesh Takfiri militants.

“Coalition forces believed they were striking a Daesh fighting position,” said the statement.

It added that the coalition would never intentionally attack Syrian forces, and that it will review the bombing and circumstances which led to it.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 80 soldiers were killed in the attacks.

Immediately after the US attack, Daesh launched a major offensive in the region and briefly took control of it before Syrian forces managed to retake it.

Emergency UNSC meeting

Following the attack, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it is calling for a Security Council emergency meeting. Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the attack had also jeopardized a Russian-US agreement on Syria.

“We demand a full and detailed explanation from Washington. That explanation must be given at the UN Security Council,” said Zakharova during a televised broadcast.

“The Russian ambassador to the UN has been tasked with convening an urgent meeting of the Security Council over this issue,” she added.

On September 9, Moscow and Washington agreed on a milestone deal on the Syrian crisis after some 13 hours of marathon talks in the Swiss city of Geneva. The truce went into effect at sunset on September 12. The deal’s initial aims included allowing humanitarian access to the war-hit regions and joint Moscow-Washington attacks against militant groups that are not part of the truce agreement, namely  Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

“We are reaching a really terrifying conclusion for the whole world: That the White House is defending Daesh…Now there can be no doubts about that,” she stressed.

Before Russia’s announcement, Syria’s foreign ministry called on the UNSC to condemn the attacks and to make the US respect Syria’s sovereignty.

“The Syrian Republic demands that the UN Security Council condemn the American aggression and force the United States not to repeat it and to respect Syria’s sovereignty and the unity of its land and people,” said a statement.

US warplanes have been conducting airstrikes against Daesh in Iraq since August 2014. Some Western states have also participated in some of the strikes in Iraq.

Since September 2014, the US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against Daesh inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

The US-led coalition has done little to stop Daesh’s advances in Syria and Iraq. Some analysts have criticized the US-led military campaign, saying the strikes are only meant to benefit US weapons manufacturers.

The US-led aerial campaign in Syria has also been criticized for lack of efficiency and high civilian casualties. In July, a US airstrike reportedly killed at least 70 civilians, mostly women and children near Manbij in northern Syria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHdknYHZAE4

By Afraa Dagher
Syria News
As the whole world participates in the global war against Syria, Syria’s President Bashar al Assad joined the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), for Ramadan iftar.

The world’s viewpoint against our president and our army is the same as the so-called ISIS terrorists who consider President al Assad their main enemy. ISIS terrorists call our president and our military “infidels.” Both the terrorists and the world leaders call the SAA “Assad’s troops.”

President Assad is the man who leads Syria’s civilization and secular community; the Syrian Arab Army belongs to all of Syria. Every one of them belongs to a Syrian family, has Syrian parents, has Syrian brothers and sisters, Syrian children, and Syrian blood.

This army is the protector of Syria. Some are Muslim, some Christians; it does not matter as they are all Syrian and sacrifice for the sovereignty and unity of their motherland.

Only days ago, in Washington, more than 50 State Department diplomats signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al Assad. Fifty-one State Department members asked their president to bomb our army, our army that defends us, in our own country!

Could we, as Syrians, ask our army to defend us and target NATO troops?

For sure, not. Justice is dead in such an imperialist world; consider the hypocritical contradiction of Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Aljubeir making the same demand to remove President Assad. You hear the statement, “Assad must go” for the “transitional government,” from every foreign side, but never from real Syrians — never from those Syrians who did not leave their homeland to be seized by terrorists, whatever their name might be, whether moderate rebels or in another phase, when they became ISIS. They are the same terrorist gangs, trained and financed by the US and its allies.

Thus, such as statement gets repeated by the west, Saudi, Turkey, or the GCC backed delegation, as the one called the Riyadh delegation.

We don’t need the Ankara delegation, the Syrians say.

The real Syrians are those who are in the front lines of war, who have been fighting for over five years till now, to protect Syria and the Syrian people.

The world is doing all of its efforts to destroy Syria, and to remove President Assad, and break the Syrian Arab Army.

What does a real leader do?

A real leader joins the heroic army that defends its people, its country, on the front lines.

Today is another blessed day of Ramadan; those who pretend to be Muslims of the Saudi monarchy should know that — but they are busy with their nonstop scandals of sexual assaults and bribery to be removed from the blacklist for their war crimes against civilians in Yemen.

Today is another blessed day of Ramadan. At this time, on Sunday evening 26/June/2016, President Assad participated with the brave Syrian Arab Army soldiers and the Syrian armed forces, their break fast — Iftar — after a long day of fasting.

President Assad sat on the ground with the Syrian soldiers. He is one of the Syrian Army. He is the leader who never leaves the battlefield.

He is the leader who never leaves the battlefield. He is on the front line of war, alongside the Syrian Arab Army, in the countryside of Damascus, east Ghouta, at the Marj al Sultan airport.

The US, France, and Germany, along with their local clients, the so-called Syrian Democracy forces and client YPG are busy in another front, in Aleppo, for another mission: Dividing Syria, and giving Syrian land to the separatist [Zio]Kurds, for breaking of the unified Syria.

Have you ever seen a president, who joins his people, and their army, sharing their food, their celebrations, in war times?

Our president is the only one, and he has done this before, as in Christmas time, and New Year time, one year ago: President Assad visits frontline Xmas

Our president recognizes that he is one with this people and army; yes, President Assad, you are in our eyes.

Toppling this great leader and his brothers in arms, the Syrian Arab Army, is not the willing of the Syrian people. It is the willing of the US and the Zionist entity Israel, and also most of the European countries, using the Saudi money, and the Turkish borders, for killing more and more Syrians, displacing them, starving them — all that by the name of “Democracy.”

FarsNews
Informed sources close to Jeish al-Fatah reported on Sunday that 24 ringleaders of the terrorist group are among the 167 militants killed in Aleppo recently.

They also added that 5 tanks and 34 military vehicles belonging to the terrorists were destroyed during the fighting.

Also, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) quoted a Jeish al-Fatah commander as saying that the terrorist group has sustained big losses and damage in the war with the Syrian army in Southern Aleppo.

Meantime, military sources said on Saturday that hundreds of Jeish al-Fatah terrorists crossed Turkey’s border into Northern Syria to join their comrades in the mountainous battlefields of the coastal province of Lattakia that has been the scene of government forces’ advances in the recent days.

“After significant advances of the Syrian army and its popular allies against the terrorist groups near the border with Turkey, Ankara paved the way for scores of the terrorists to enter Lattakia to join their comrades from Chechnya and Caucasus deployed in Turkmen mountain,” the sources said.

On Friday, the Syrian Army troops and popular forces continued to hit the strongholds of the terrorist groups in Northern Lattakia and pushed the militants back from more heights near the border with Turkey.

The Syrian government forces’ operation in Northern Lattakia ended in the seizure of Nawwara region and meantime claimed the lives of several militants.

Also, the Syrian army men engaged in heavy fighting with al-Nusra Front in al-Nimer region and forced the militants to retreat from the battlefield after leaving behind scores of the dead and wounded members.

FarsNews
“The Syrian army along with its allies are preparing for a broad military operation in Deir Ezzur from the direction of Palmyra,” the source said.

“The operations will begin within the next few days as soon as preparations are finished,” he added.

In a relevant development on Wednesday, the Syrian military forces discovered a long tunnel of the ISIL terrorists dug under the neighborhoods of the Eastern city of Deir Ezzur and exploded it, leaving dozens of terrorists dead or wounded.

The Syrian army men alongside engineering units found a 50-meter tunnel connecting the ISIL strongholds to al-Orfi neighborhood and exploded it heavily, which ended in the killing or wounding of tens of the terrorists.

Also, on Tuesday, the Syrian Army troops and popular forces repelled ISIL’s offensive to break through the government forces’ strongholds in the Deir Ezzur city districts, inflicting heavy casualties on the terrorists.

The Syrian pro-government forces, in heavy shelling, forced the ISIL forces to retreat from the battlefield in Panorama district.

The Syrian soldiers targeted and detonated the ISIL bomb-laden suicide vehicles before reaching to the army positions.

The ISIL left behind at least eight dead members and fled the battlefront.

By Gearoid O’Colmain
Source: Global Research
On the 12th of May a massacre was committed in the town of al-Zara in the southern contryside of Hama, Syria. Woman and children were slaughtered by Takfiri death squads branded by the Western media as ‘moderate rebels’. There was no mention of the massacre in the Western press. There was no need to mention it because it was of no use to them. Often, the Western-backed terrorists film their massacres or post pictures of the dead children on social media. These pictures are then displayed across all the front pages of corporate newspapers and flashed across television screens. People’s emotions are aroused.

Western governments rant and rave about the necessity of military intervention to ‘stop the massacres.’ This time there was silence. There is no benefit to the perpetrators of neocolonial warfare and genocide in admitting that the terrorist is NATO – that it is actually the Syrian Arab Army that is fighting terrorism and not the Western military alliance. If the masses knew this, there would be a revolution and the perpetrators of war would become its casualties.

The fact that no moderate rebels exist in Syria has been admitted by the U.S. Government on several occasions. Vice-president Joe Biden has admitted it, the Pentagon’s General Dempsey has admitted it, Tulsi Gabbard of the US Armed Services Committee has admitted it, and the Defense Intelligence Agency has admitted it. Western corporate media agencies have themselves admitted that the West is supporting al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria in an attempt to overthrow President Assad, yet, perversely, the same media systematically re-brand barbaric head-choppers and child murderers as ‘moderate rebels’, when their heinous crimes are propitious to Western foreign policy objectives.

Due to mass media saturation in the West most people believe they are well-informed about what is happening in the world. They regularly see news stories about other governments committing atrocities against their own people and hear sober press conference condemnations from Western leaders and government officials.

Massacres allegedly committed by the enemies of the West regularly make front page headlines which arouse an outpouring of sympathy and indignation that such atrocities could be committed while the ‘ international community’ stands watching. The obsequiousness and docility of the Western public enables those who own the means of production, education and communication, that is to say the Power Elite, to use war as a means of furthering their interests. They re-brand the supreme crime as ‘humanitarian intervention’ and well-intentioned citizens of the West not only accept it but often demand that the humanitarian war is carried out- such is the power of the tableau limned by corporate media professionals for general consumption.

Educational and mass media indoctrination about the benevolence of Euro-Atlantic global governance renders many incapable of perceiving the world in any other way; it is a form of instituted intellectual myopia deeply resistant to correction.

Western ‘civilisation’ has become so decadent, the masses so dumbed down, so passive and apathetic, so hopelessly addicted to simplistic sound bites and spectacles that it possible for those who keep them in such torpor to occasionally reveal the truth about Western complicity in crimes against humanity, then simply resume the tragic-comical narrative of Western benevolence. Repetition of falsity always triumphs over elucidation of truth. The society of the spectacle only sees what it is told to see. Our crimes are transposed and boldly displayed in a virtual gallery as the crimes of others.

In his painting ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’ (1625) French painter Nicolas Poussin depicts the slaughter of infants by the soldiers of the Jewish King Herod – a famous biblical episode. Herod was attempting to kill the infant Christ who, he had been told, would unseat him as ‘king of the Jews’. The mass media representation of the invasion and destruction of Syria by NATO mercenaries could be imagined as a mediocre post-modern rendition of Poussin’s tableau. In this case, the Syrian Arab Army play the role of Herod’s soldiers massacring the innocent. But the reality of this war is entirely the reverse: thousands of Assad’s soldiers have given their lives to protect the nation’s children, not harm them.

The real Herod in this war is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For this is and always has been a war waged by the Jewish state against the final bastion of anti-Zionist resistance in the Middle East. It is being carried out in accordance with the Yinon Plan, which advocates the destruction of all states hostile to Israeli regional and global hegemony.

Poussin’s painting dramatises the cruelty of imperial despotism, of an era replete with evil. The French painter lived through a period, in many respects, similar to our own. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) had completely devastated Europe. Pablo Picasso used Poussin’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ for his famous painting Guernica, which depicts the brutality of the German bombing of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Few painters today, with the notable exception of Caoimhghin O Croidheain, have anything to say about the crimes of the ruling elite. The massacre of al-Zara will not be transformed into great art.

In 1648 France was about to erupt in civil war – a situation not entirely unlike the present. In a letter Poussin described the moral turpitude of his time. His words eerily epitomise our current condition:

I fear the malignancy of the century. Virtue, conscience, religion are banished from all men. Only vice, deceit and self-interest reign. All is lost – I despair of goodness – all is overcome by unhappiness. The current remedies are not strong enough to remove the evil. If we do not get rid of the cause, we are wasting our time.

Gearóid Ó Colmáin is an Irish journalist and political analyst based in Paris. His work focuses on globalisation, geopolitics and class struggle.