BEIRUT (5:50 A.M.) – On Sunday a Pentagon spokesman announced that an enemy drone had been shot down over eastern Syria as it flew near the vicinity of American troops. The incident happened Saturday, but with details slow to emerge and revealed by the next day, which included a U.S. F-15 fighter jet engaging the drone in the air. U.S. Army Colonel Wayne Marotto said, “Coalition aircraft successfully engaged and defeated a UAS through air-to-air engagement in the vicinity of Mission Support Site Green Village,” while a Fox News journalist separately alleged it was an Iranian UAV&nbs ..read more

BEIRUT, LEBANON (4:40 P.M.) – Following Thursday’s night’s largescale airstrikes by Israeli fighter jets on areas in and around Damascus and in Homs province, Russia’s military leadership in Syria told international news agencies that six total Israeli jets conducted the aggression using Lebanon’s airspace. Rear Adm. Vadim Kulit, head of the Russian military’s Reconciliation Center in Syria, further detailed that Syrian anti-air defenses successfully shot down a total of 22 out of 24 of the inbound missiles launched by the Israeli warplanes ..read more

BEIRUT, LEBANON (5:20 P.M.) – The U.S. troop occupation of sovereign Syrian soil in the northeast has been well-known since the Obama administration, yet U.S. President Joe Biden claimed in a Wednesday night ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos that there is no U.S. military presence in Syria. Biden’s comments came in an interview focusing on Afghanistan, where the administration is on the defensive over the botched evacuation efforts centered at Kabul international airport ..read more

BEIRUT, LEBANON (11:30 P.M.) – A major aerial attack is underway in Damascus, Syria, with residents reporting the ground and windows shaking across parts of the city, in likely another Israeli assault after fighter jets were seen traversing Lebanese airspace. Syrian air defense systems have been activated in Damascus. Unverified social media footage is circulating showing what appears to be fighter jets active near the Syria-Lebanese border in a developing situation. Local sources are saying sites in the Qalamoun Mountain region that link Lebanon and Syria were targeted, along with locations ..read more

BEIRUT, LEBANON (2:00 A.M.) – The Syrian anti-government Islamist faction and al-Qaeda spinoff which has for years occupied Idlib province, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has issued a formal statement celebrating the Taliban’s victory this week in Afghanistan. HTS called the Taliban conquest an event of “utmost joy and delight” while also saying those fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad “draw inspiration” for what it dubbed “the Syrian Revolution.” This after on Tuesday and into Wednesday HTS oversaw a ‘victory parade’ in honor of the Taliban in Idlib’s streets ..read more

BEIRUT, LEBANON (8:40 P.M.) – After an Israeli airstrike near Quneitra late Tuesday night, which SANA described as involving two missiles “fired west of the town of Hadr in the northern Quneitra countryside,” the IDF on Wednesday dropped flyers over southern Syria written in Arabic and addressing “Syrian [Arab] Army soldiers”. Containing an eagle symbol of what’s described as the IDF’s 210th “Bashan” Division, Israeli media is confirming that the pamphlet is meant to “threaten” Syrian troops near Golan and their ongoing cooperation with Hezbollah ..read more

The UN disarmament chief reported the discovery of an undeclared chemical warfare agent at a Syrian site to a Security Council meeting Thursday where the United States and its Western allies clashed with Russia over international findings that Syria has used chemical weapons. Izumi Nakamitsu didn’t name the agent detected in samples by the international chemical weapons watchdog, but said its presence “inside storage containers of large volume at a previously declared chemical weapons facility may imply undeclared production activities.” Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in Septemb ..read more

BEIRUT, LEBANON (5:45 P.M.) – On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that its forces and their Turkish counterparts carried out a joint patrol for a record distance in northeastern Syria, as it extended more than 100 km into the Al-Qamishli District of Al-Hasakah. The commander of the Russian forces convoy, Brigadier General Andrei Titov, said: “Today a new joint Russian-Turkish patrol was carried out from the Sharq crossing. The peculiarity of this patrol is the long distance of the route, as it included a large number of towns.” Titov added, “The patrol took place in an orderl ..read more

BEIRUT, LEBANON (5:30 P.M.) – The UN envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, called on the Syrian government and all parties to the conflict to release the prisoners and take measures regarding the missing. The United Nations has previously called on all parties to the conflict to end arbitrary arrests and the detention of political prisoners. Pedersen further emphasized that the presidential elections announced by the Syrian government are not part of the political process of the Security Council, adding that, “The United Nations is not involved in the upcoming Syrian presidential elections.” On the ..read more

BEIRUT, LEBANON (4:30 P.M.) – The government of Uzbekistan announced on Friday that it has repatriated 24 women and 69 children who were living inside the Al-Hol camp in Syria among the families of ISIS fighters, Reuters reported. “Among those (who have been recovered) are women who were forced to marry more than once due to the death of their husbands during the armed conflict,” the government said in a statement. In previous operation of this kind, Tashkent repatriated 438 women and children who ended up in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan with their husbands or fathers ..read more