Israel has conducted new airstrikes on Syria’s coast and ground raids in the country’s south, part of a wave of attacks that Israel says is necessary for its security that has raised tensions with Syria’s new government. The strikes appeared to be the latest attempt to keep weapons from the Assad regime out of the…
Syrian security forces were deployed across a predominately Druse town on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, early Sunday, two days after a gunfight between government officers and armed men from a local neighborhood left one person dead and several others wounded. A tense calm has returned to the town, Jaramana, after the deadly clash…
Sharief al-Homsi shivered, clutched his arms and pretended to go through Syrian regime withdrawal. Standing before an audience in Damascus, he was telling a joke that would have been unthinkable until just a few weeks before, when President Bashar al-Assad was suddenly ousted after more than five decades of his family’s oppressive rule. “We need…
It was billed as the first step in establishing a representative government as Syria emerged from decades of a brutal, one-family dictatorship. But for some in Syria, the highly anticipated “national dialogue” that ended on Tuesday night fell far short of those promises. Instead, the two-day conference only added to concerns about the openness of…
The Israeli military said it had struck sites in southern Syria on Tuesday, just hours after the new Syrian leadership demanded that Israel withdraw from territory it has seized since the fall of the Assad regime. The attacks were aimed at “military targets in southern Syria, including headquarters and sites containing weapons,” the Israeli military…
As the commander of a rebel group allied with Al Qaeda during Syria’s long civil war, the man known by his nom du guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, welcomed foreign jihadists, dispatched suicide bombers to blow up military posts and vowed to create an Islamic state. A decade ago, he told a journalist that Muslims should…
Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, is expected to discuss the future of Syria-Turkey relations on Tuesday during a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. The meeting in the Turkish capital, Ankara, will be Mr. Erdogan’s first with Mr. al-Shara, the rebel leader who led the opposition offensive that toppled Syria’s former autocratic leader,…
Syria’s newly appointed interim president, Ahmed al-Shara, arrived in Saudi Arabia on Sunday for his first foreign trip since his rebel coalition ousted longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad. Mr. al-Shara landed in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, early on Sunday afternoon. He is expected to stay in Saudi Arabia for two days and meet with the oil-rich…
The time had come to bend the knee — or at least bend to reality. A delegation of Russian diplomats arrived last Tuesday in a caravan of white SUVs for a summit in Damascus and an unenviable assignment: lay the groundwork for Russia to keep its military bases in Syria, less than two months after…
In the Syrian capital, Damascus, anticipation was running high on Wednesday. Ahmed al-Shara, who led the overthrow of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad, was expected to address the public for the first time since his rebel coalition seized power almost two months ago. But the speech never came. Instead, a series of critically important decisions were…