Iran would consider any attack on Syria an attack on itself, a senior government official was quoted as saying yesterday, in one of Tehran’s most assertive defenses of its ally yet.
Iran is a key supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is fighting an almost two-year-long revolt. Tehran has already repeatedly warned the West against intervening in the conflict against al-Assad.
“Syria has a very basic and key role in the region for promoting firm policies of resistance ... For this reason an attack on Syria would be considered an attack on Iran and Iran’s allies,” said Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the Mehr news agency.
Tehran sees Damascus as part of an axis of opposition to Israeli and Western influence in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels freed more than 100 inmates as they battled against regime troops in a major prison outside the northwestern city of Idlib yesterday, a watchdog said.
At least 10 rebels were killed on Friday in clashes inside the prison, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“The rebels have been able to free more than 100 prisoners since fighting broke out on Friday, but they have not gained control of the prison,” the Britain-based Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said by telephone.
Videos posted online by activists showed rebels inside the penitentiary, which is located at the western entrance of the provincial capital. The city remains under regime control, but Idlib Province is mostly opposition-held.
Dozens of prisoners were shown escaping to an outdoor area of the prison, protected by rebels, as gunfire and explosions were heard in the background.
One man collapsed, bleeding profusely, and others were seen struggling to carry him along with them.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
Nauru said it would hold a referendum to change its official name, described as a colonial relic from a time when “foreign tongues” mangled the native language. Nauru would change its name to Naoero to “more faithfully honor our nation’s heritage, our language and our identity,” Nauruan President David Adeang said in a statement on Tuesday. The Pacific island nation’s native language is Dorerin Naoero, which is spoken by the vast majority of its approximately 10,000 inhabitants. “Nauru emerged because Naoero could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues, and was changed not by our choice, but for convenience,” the government said in
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
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