UN: 3 peacekeepers abducted between Israel-Syria
By Edith Lederer
Armed men broke into a U.N. outpost in a buffer zone separating Israel and Syria and abducted three U.N military observers, the U.N. peacekeeping chief said Thursday.
Armed men broke into a U.N. outpost in a buffer zone separating Israel and Syria and abducted three U.N military observers, the U.N. peacekeeping chief said Thursday.
Israel carried out an air strike near Damascus airport overnight, targeting Iranian missiles destined for Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah movement, a senior Israeli source said on Sunday.
With a second airstrike against Syria in four months, Israel enforced its own red line of not allowing game-changing weapons to reach Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a heavily armed foe of the Jewish state and an ally of President Bashar Assad’s regime, Israeli officials said Saturday.
An association of Middle Eastern Christians on Tuesday said that the two Orthodox bishops reportedly kidnapped by rebels in northern Syria have been released, in a statement citing Syrian sources.
Pope Francis is praying for the liberation of two Orthodox bishops kidnapped by rebels in northern Syria on Monday, the Vatican’s spokesman said.
An armed group kidnapped two bishops in a village in Aleppo province in northern Syria, the state news agency SANA reported late Monday.
March was the bloodiest month yet in Syria’s two-year-old conflict with more than 6,000 documented deaths, a leading anti-regime activist group said Monday, blaming the increase on heavier shelling and more violent clashes.
Pope Francis prayed for a “political solution” in Syria and for “reconciliation” on the Korean peninsula in his first Easter Sunday message in front of a crowd in St. Peter’s Square.
Syrian rebels on Friday captured a strategic town near the border with Jordan after a day of fierce clashes that killed at least 38 people, activists said, as opposition fighters expand their presence in the south, considered a gateway to Damascus.
Iran, North Korea and Syria twice blocked attempts at the United Nations on Thursday to agree on the first treaty on the conventional arms trade.
Syria’s president has vowed to rid the country of Muslim extremists whom he blamed for a suicide bombing that killed 42 people, including a top Sunni preacher.
The United Nations will investigate the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria, which would amount to a crime against humanity, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Thursday.
US President Barack Obama on Thursday demanded that foreign governments brand Hezbollah a “terrorist organization,” slamming the Lebanon-based militia for attacks on Israelis.
