Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance on Saturday by attending prayers for a key Muslim holiday at a mosque in Damascus, hours after the US-led coalition carried out new airstrikes against the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.
The airstrikes targeted Islamic State positions on Friday night in the eastern town of Shaddadeh, in the northeastern Syrian province of Hassakeh, a stronghold of the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The airstrikes caused casualties, activists said, with one group saying up to 30 Islamic State fighters were killed. It was the first time Shaddadeh was struck since the US-led campaign began nearly two weeks ago. There was no immediate confirmation by Washington.
Photo: AFP
The US and five Arab allies launched a bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Syria on Sept. 23 with the aim of rolling back and ultimately crushing the group, which has created a proto-state spanning the border of Syria and Iraq.
The militants have also massacred captured Syrian and Iraqi troops, terrorized minorities in both countries and beheaded two American journalists and two British aid workers.
About 30 explosions were heard in and near Shaddadeh on Friday night, according to an activist in Hassakeh Province, who added that the targets included several buildings occupied by Islamic State fighters.
“There were deaths for sure,” said an activist who goes by the name Salar al-Kurdi. He spoke via Skype.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists around Syria, said as many as 30 fighters from the Islamic State group were killed in the airstrikes on Shaddadeh. It said all the dead were foreign fighters.
Meanwhile, intense fighting continued on the outskirts of Kobani, on the Syrian and Turkish border, where Islamic State fighters have been trying to capture the town, to open a direct link between their positions in the Syrian province of Aleppo, and their stronghold of Raqqa to the east.
Kobani and its surrounding areas have been under attack since mid-September, with militants capturing dozens of nearby Kurdish villages. The assault, which has forced about 160,000 Syrians to flee their homes, has left the Kurdish militiamen scrambling to repel the Islamic State’s advance into the outskirts of the town, also known in Arabic as Ayn Arab.
The Observatory said fighting on Saturday was focused on the southwestern edge of the town, adding that members of the Islamic State group were shelling Kobani.
From across the border in Turkey, the sound of heavy machine-gun fire could be heard coming from Kobani. It was not immediately clear if the Islamic State had entered the town itself, which is defended by fighters of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units.
Earlier on Friday, the US-led coalition had launched airstrikes near Kobani killing at least five Islamic State militants, according to the Observatory.
Kurdish Democratic Union Party spokesman Nawaf Khalil said the coalition airstrikes near Kobani had a “positive effect” and that the militants had failed to capture a strategic hill overlooking the town after five attacks.
In Turkey, a senior special forces police officer was wounded in the head by stray shrapnel from the fighting in Kobani, reported the private Dogan news agency. There was no immediate official confirmation of the incident. The news agency said the officer was being treated in hospital.
Also on the Turkish side, a group of about 200 activists marched toward the border with Syria on Saturday, chanting slogans in support of the Kurdish fighters in Kobani. Turkish troops stopped the group about 50m from the border, then fired tear gas to push them away from the frontier.
Meanwhile, Syrian state television aired footage of al-Assad praying on Saturday at the al-Numan Bin Bashir mosque in Damascus, along with government officials and the country’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun as most Muslims around the world started celebrating the three-day holiday of Eid al-Adha.
During Syria’s civil war, which is now in its fourth year and which activists say has killed more than 190,000 people, al-Assad has been making rare public appearances.
He previously appeared in public in July, when he attended prayers for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Also on Saturday, a mortar shell struck a park where families were celebrating Eid al-Adha in the northwestern city of Idlib, killing six people, including four children, state news agency SANA reported.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS