Syrias Assad set to recover Golan frontier as rebels surrender

He blamed the airstrike on Russia, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s top ally.

The campaign in the southwest is now expected to target rebel-held enclaves at the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

On Sunday, regime forces battered Quneitra province with hundreds of missiles and seized the town of Masshara, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. It also reported airstrikes in a nearby village in northern Daraa, where government forces have been trying to retake a key hill there after failing to reach a deal with the rebels.

Opposition sources said officials from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a coalition spearheaded by Syria’s former al-Qaeda offshoot, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had negotiated the latest swap.

State news agency SANA said it had preliminary information on a deal for the army to return to its pre-2011 positions, before conflict erupted in the area, but did not provide more details.

The clashes left 18 regime forces and 13 rebels and allied Daesh members dead, the monitor said.

At a joint news conference in Helsinki on Monday dominated by US President Donald Trump’s insistence that Russia did not interfere with the 2016 election, both the American leader and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin were keen to stress their agreement on other areas as well, including Israel’s security and the wider situation in the Middle East.

He said the Russian government’s determination to continue joint work to combat terror has not been undermined, and the two countries will continue to move on the same path until stability and security are fully restored to Syria.

Beyond the hilltop, the sliver of Daraa that still escapes regime control includes the rebel town of Nawa and a small pocket held by an Islamic State group affiliate.

Lavrentiev touched upon the Kremlin’s transparent and firm position on the Iran nuclear deal, and said Russian Federation regards the imposition of unilateral sanctions against Iran as a violation of this global agreement.

“We’ve been through hell”, she said.

“It’s a huge loss”, Shuweish, 28, said from the bus, writing to AFP via a mobile messaging app.

“There really is nowhere else for these people to go and seek safety”, said the IRC’s Mark Schnellbaecher.

The Observatory said the suspected Russian strikes were the first in the area in over a year, when Russia, the USA, and Jordan agreed a ceasefire deal for parts of the south.

An opposition source familiar with the talks said more than 1,500 civilian and rebel prisoners would be released.

Government troops are also seeking to advance on another town to the south through negotiations with rebels there.

The province borders Turkey to the northwest but is otherwise nearly completely surrounded by government-held territory. It took place in front of Erez Crossing where Gazans can pass through to receive treatment in Israel or Palestinian hospitals in West Bank.