US sending F-16 fighter jets to protect ships from Iranian seizures in Gulf region

US Air Force F-16 fighter jets to be deployed around the strategic Strait of Hormuz to protect ships from Iranian seizures, says senior defense official. (AP file photo)
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Updated 15 July 2023
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US sending F-16 fighter jets to protect ships from Iranian seizures in Gulf region

  • Move comes after Iran tried to seize two oil tankers near the strait last week, opening fire on one of them
  • US says also considering a number of military options to address increasing Russian aggression in Syrian skies

WASHINGTON: The US is beefing up its use of fighter jets around the strategic Strait of Hormuz to protect ships from Iranian seizures, a senior defense official said Friday, adding that the US is increasingly concerned about the growing ties between Iran, Russia and Syria across the Middle East.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters, the official said the US will send F-16 fighter jets to the Gulf region this weekend to augment the A-10 attack aircraft that have been patrolling there for more than a week. The move comes after Iran tried to seize two oil tankers near the strait last week, opening fire on one of them.
The defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of military operations in the region, said the F-16s will give air cover to the ships moving through the waterway and increase the military’s visibility in the area, as a deterrent to Iran.
The US Navy said in both instances the Iranian naval vessels backed off when the USS McFaul, a guided-missile destroyer, arrived on the scene.
In addition, the defense official told reporters the US is considering a number of military options to address increasing Russian aggression in the skies over Syria, which complicated efforts to strike a Daesh group leader last weekend. The official declined to detail the options, but said the US will not cede any territory and will continue to fly in the western part of the country on anti-Islamic State missions.
The Russian military activity, which has increased in frequency and aggression since March, stems from growing cooperation and coordination between Moscow, Tehran and the Syrian government to try to pressure the US to leave Syria, the official said.
The official said Russia is beholden to Iran for its support in the war in Ukraine, and Tehran wants the US out of Syria so it can more easily move lethal aid to Lebanese Hezbollah and threaten Israel. The US has seen more cooperation, collaboration, planning and intelligence sharing, largely between mid-level Russian and Iranian Quds force leaders in Syria, to pressure the US to remove troops from Syria, the official added.
There are about 900 US forces in the country, and others move in and out to conduct missions targeting Daesh group militants.
The US does not believe Russian aircraft plan to drop bombs on US troops or shoot down manned aircraft. But there are concerns that Russian pilots will knock a Reaper drone out of the sky and that Moscow believes that type of action would not get a strong US military response, the official said.
As an example, in March, a Russian warplane poured jet fuel on a US surveillance drone and then struck its propeller, forcing the US military to ditch the MQ-9 Reaper into the Black Sea. The incident spiked tensions between the two countries and triggered a call between their defense chiefs, but led to no direct military response.
Last week, Rear Admiral Oleg Gurinov, head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, said the Russian and Syrian militaries have been doing joint training. In comments carried by Syrian state media, he said Moscow is concerned about drone flights by the US-led coalition over northern Syria, calling them “systematic violations of protocols” designed to avoid clashes between the two militaries.
US and Russian military commanders routinely communicate over a deconfliction phone line that has been in place for several years to avoid unintended clashes in Syria, where both sides have troops on the ground and in the air.
There are often many calls a day, and at times result in angry threats as commanders argue over an ongoing operation, said the US official. Describing a conversation, the official said the Russians will often declare an area of space a restricted operating zone and say they are doing military exercises there.
The US sees no exercises, and tells Russia that American forces are on a counterterror mission against the Daesh group and plan to fly in that area. The Russians then say they can’t guarantee US aircraft safety if they go there. And once the mission begins, and the aircraft move into the zone, “it sometimes gets very heated,” said the official, as both sides loudly protest and reject the other’s assertions.
The most recent incident was Friday morning, when a Russia aircraft flew repeatedly over the at-Tanf garrison in eastern Syria, where US forces are training Syrian allies and monitoring Islamic State militant activity. The official said the Russian An-30 aircraft was collecting intelligence on the base.
The US did not have fighter aircraft in the area and took no direct action against the Russian flight.


Families of Syrians who disappeared during its civil war say the search must go on

Updated 28 sec ago
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Families of Syrians who disappeared during its civil war say the search must go on

  • A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the interim government led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared

DARAA, Syria: Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the country’s 14-year civil war gathered in the city of Daraa on Sunday to urge the newly installed interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.
The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared during the war, many of them detained by former President Bashar Assad’s network of intelligence agencies as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist Daesh group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing.
When rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham overthrew Assad in December, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government’s dungeons. Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.
On Sunday, the 14th anniversary of the countrywide uprisings that spiraled into civil war, Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government’s security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn’t heard from him since.
Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad’s ouster, trying to figure out her father’s whereabouts.
“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she said. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”
A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the interim government led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared. The commission also urged the new government to pursue perpetrators.
Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with Al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.
Syria’s civil war began after Assad crushed largely peaceful protests in 2011, one of the popular uprisings against Arab rulers known as the Arab Spring. Half a million people were killed during the conflict, and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.
 

 


Yemen rebel leader calls for ‘million-strong’ rally after deadly US strikes

Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Houthis, during a televised speech on the group's Al-Masirah TV channel (Screengrab
Updated 7 min 23 sec ago
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Yemen rebel leader calls for ‘million-strong’ rally after deadly US strikes

  • The Houthis have repeatedly targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, sinking two vessels, in what they call acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel has been at war with Hamas, another Iranian ally
  • US officials on Sunday vowed further strikes until the Houthis stop attacking Red Sea shipping

SANAA: The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Sunday called for a “million-strong” march of defiance after deadly US strikes hit the capital, Sanaa, and other areas.
“I call on our dear people to go out tomorrow on the anniversary of the Battle of Badr in a million-strong march in Sanaa and the rest of the governorates,” Abdulmalik Al-Houthi said in a televised address, referring to a celebrated military victory by the Prophet Muhammad.
 

 


At least 16 people killed after ordnance from Syrian civil war explodes in port city of Latakia

Updated 47 min 50 sec ago
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At least 16 people killed after ordnance from Syrian civil war explodes in port city of Latakia

  • The group and residents said the explosion occurred in a metal scrap storage space on the ground floor of the four-story building

DAMASCUS, Syria: Ordnance from Syria’s 13-year conflict exploded in the coastal city of Latakia, collapsing a building and killing more than a dozen people, the Syrian Civil Defense said Sunday.
The paramedic group known as the White Helmets said it worked overnight, searching through debris and recovered 16 bodies, including five women and five children, and that 18 others were injured. The group and residents said the explosion occurred in a metal scrap storage space on the ground floor of the four-story building.
Elsewhere, the Syrian Defense Ministry late Sunday accused the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group of crossing the Lebanon-Syria border and killing three Syrian soldiers. Hezbollah denied any involvement in the killing that took place near northeastern Lebanon, where clashes between Syrian forces and Lebanese clans happened last month.
Local Lebanese media have reported Syrian shelling on the northeastern Lebanese border town of Al-Qasr.
“The Defense Ministry will take all the necessary measures after this dangerous escalation from the Hezbollah militia,” a statement from the ministry read.
The United Nations said in February that about a hundred have been killed from exploding ordnance during the last 13 years, adding that since the ouster of Bashar Assad in December, over 1,400 unexploded devices across Syria have been safely disposed of and 138 minefields and contaminated areas identified in Idleb, Aleppo, Hama, Deir-ez-Zor and Lattakia.
Latakia, a key port city, and Syria’s coastal province recently witnessed a surge in violence, after gunmen loyal to Assad ambushed a security patrol. While the government’s counter-offensive, alongside allied factions, crushed the insurgency, it led to widespread destruction and numerous cases of retaliatory attacks against members of the Alawite community, which the Assad family is part of.
The clashes and revenge killings led to the deaths of more than 1,000 people.


Sudanese seek refuge underground in western region of Darfur

Updated 17 March 2025
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Sudanese seek refuge underground in western region of Darfur

EL-FASHER: Beneath the broken earth of the besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher in the western region of Darfur, Nafisa Malik clutches her five children close.

As shells rain down, the 45-year-old mother tries to shield them in a cramped hole barely big enough to crouch in.

“Time slows down here,” Malik said, from her home near El-Fasher’s Hajjer Gadou market.

“We sit in the darkness, listening, trying to guess when it’s over,” she said.

For almost two years the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and Sudan’s army have waged a war that has killed tens of thousands.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday called it a “crisis of staggering scale and brutality.”

El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, is the only major city in Darfur still under army control, making it a strategic prize.

The paramilitary troops have tried for months to seize it.

Malik’s crude shelter, held up by splintered wooden planks and scraps of rusted metal, is one of thousands in the war-battered city, according to residents.

The army regained much of the capital Khartoum this year, but the paramilitary troops have intensified their attacks on El-Fasher.

Desperate for safety from artillery and drone strikes, residents have built makeshift bunkers.

Some are hurriedly excavated foxholes, others are more solid and reinforced with sandbags.

Mohammed Ibrahim, 54, once believed hiding under beds would be enough, “until houses were hit.”


Syria authorities accuse Hezbollah of killing three soldiers

A member of security forces loyal to the interim Syrian government speaks on a cell phone while standing by Mediterranean sea.
Updated 17 March 2025
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Syria authorities accuse Hezbollah of killing three soldiers

  • Hezbollah in a statement denied any involvement in clashes with Syrian security forces or in Syrian territory
  • Group was a key backer of Syria’s former president Bashar Assad before he was toppled in a lightning offensive

DAMASCUS: Syria’s defense ministry on Sunday accused Lebanon’s Hezbollah group of abducting three soldiers to Lebanon and killing them there, state media reported, as Hezbollah denied any involvement in clashes.
“A group from the Hezbollah militia... kidnapped three members of the Syrian army on the Syrian-Lebanese border... before taking them to Lebanese territory and eliminating them,” the news agency SANA quoted the defense ministry as saying.
“The defense ministry will take all the necessary measures after this dangerous escalation from the Hezbollah militia,” it added of the incident which it said occurred near the Zeita Dam, west of Homs.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah in a statement denied any involvement in clashes with Syrian security forces or in Syrian territory.
The group said it “categorically denies any connection to the events taking place today on the Lebanese-Syrian border.”
It added that it “reaffirms its previous announcements that Hezbollah has no relation to any events within Syrian territory.”
Lebanon’s state news agency NNA reported that rockets fired from Syrian territory had landed in the Lebanese village of Qasr near the border.
“A number of rockets, fired from the Qusayr countryside inside Syrian territory, fell on the border town of Qasr,” it said, without providing further details.
Hezbollah was a key backer of Syria’s former president Bashar Assad before he was toppled in a lightning offensive by militants in December.
The country’s new authorities announced last month the launch of a security campaign in the border province of Homs, aimed at shutting down routes used for arms and goods smuggling.
They accused Hezbollah of launching attacks, saying it was sponsoring cross-border smuggling gangs.