The Jim Bakker Show

Nearly 90,000 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in EU in 2015

Two children gather poppies at a field next to a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Some 88,300 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in the European Union in 2015, 13 percent of them children younger than 14, crossing continents without their parents to seek a place of safety, EU data showed on Monday.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa reached Europe last year. While that was roughly double the 2014 figure, the number of unaccompanied minors quadrupled, statistics agency Eurostat said.

Minors made up about a third of the 1.26 million first-time asylum applications filed in the EU last year.

European Union states disagree on how to handle Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two and anti-immigrant sentiment has grown, even in countries that traditionally have a generous approach to helping people seeking refuge.

Four in 10 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in Sweden, where some have called for greater checks, suspicious that adults are passing themselves off as children in order to secure protection they might otherwise be denied.

Eurostat’s figures refer specifically to asylum applicants “considered to be unaccompanied minors”, meaning EU states accepted the youngsters’ declared age or established it themselves through age assessment procedures.

More than 90 percent of the minors traveling without a parent or guardian were boys and more than half of them were between 16 and 17 years old. Half were Afghans and the second largest group were Syrians, at 16 percent of the total.

After Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Austria followed as the main destinations for unaccompanied underage asylum seekers.

Seeking to stem the influx of people, the EU has struck a deal with Turkey to stop people crossing from there into the bloc. Turkey hosts some 2.7 million refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Syria calls local truces; U.N. condemns monstrous disregard for lives

People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes, in the rebel-held area of Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr

By Lisa Barrington and Jack Stubbs

MOSCOW/BEIRUT – (Reuters) – Syria declared brief local truces near Damascus and in one province on Friday but made no mention of halting combat on the main battlefield in Aleppo, after a surge in fighting the United Nations said showed “monstrous disregard” for civilian lives.

The new “regime of calm”, to begin from 1:00 a.m. on Saturday, would last just one day in the capital’s eastern Ghouta suburb and three days in the northern countryside of the coastal province of Latakia, the army said in a statement.

Both districts have seen intensified fighting in recent days. The statement made no mention however of the city of Aleppo, scene of the worst violence, which is divided between rebel-held and government areas. An air strike on an Aleppo hospital killed at least 27 people this week.

Russian news agencies quoted an opposition figure saying the new truce would also apply to Aleppo, but there was no separate confirmation of this.

The Syrian military statement gave no details of the meaning of the term “regime of calm”, but Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted the officer in charge of a Russian ceasefire monitoring center as saying it meant all military action would cease.

Damascus described the truces as an attempt to salvage a wider “cessation of hostilities” agreement. That ceasefire has been in place since February to allow peace talks to take place but has all but completely collapsed in recent days along with the Geneva negotiations.

The U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said violence was “soaring back to the levels we saw prior to the cessation of hostilities”.

“There are deeply disturbing reports of military build-ups indicating preparations for a lethal escalation,” Zeid said. The reports revealed a “monstrous disregard for civilian lives by all parties to the conflict”, he added.

The United Nations has called on Moscow and Washington to help restore the ceasefire to prevent the collapse of peace talks, which broke up this week in Geneva with virtually no progress after the opposition walked out.

“I DREAD THE HORROR”

“The cessation of hostilities and the Geneva talks were the only game in town, and if they are abandoned now, I dread to think how much more horror we will see in Syria,” Zeid said.

Air strikes on rebel-held areas of Aleppo and shelling of government-held areas of the city resumed on Friday after a brief dawn lull.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said air strikes and government shelling had killed at least 131 civilians including 21 children in rebel areas in the past week, while rebel shelling of government areas had killed 71 civilians including 13 children.

At least six people died and more were injured and trapped under fallen buildings in air strikes on Friday on rebel-held areas, the Observatory said.

Bebars Mishal, a civil defense chief working in rebel-held areas of Aleppo, told Reuters there were a number of air attacks in the morning, many of them around mosques in rebel-held areas. Mishal said one hit a clinic in Aleppo’s Al-Marja district.

Syrian state television said people had been killed and wounded and a building set on fire during shelling of government-held quarters in Aleppo, which included a hit on a mosque as people were leaving Friday prayers.

The war in Syria has killed more than 250,000 people, with the U.N. envoy giving a toll as high as 400,000.

(Writing by Peter Graff, reporting by Omar Fahmy, editing by Peter Millership)

Air strikes on Aleppo hospital kill 27, U.N. declares catastrophe

A civil defence member carries a child that survived from under the rubble at a site hit by airstrikes in the

By Lisa Barrington and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – Air strikes destroyed a hospital and killed dozens of people in rebel-held areas of Syria’s Aleppo including children and doctors, and the United Nations called on Moscow and Washington to salvage a “barely-alive” cease-fire.

The city of Aleppo is at the epicenter of a military escalation that has undermined peace talks in Geneva to end the five-year-old war and U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura appealed to the presidents of the United States and Russia to intervene.

Six days of air strikes and rebel shelling in Aleppo, which is split between government forces and rebels, have killed some 200 people in the city, two-thirds of them on the opposition side, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.

“The catastrophic deterioration in Aleppo over the last 24-48 hours” has jeopardized the aid lifeline that delivers supplies to millions of Syrians, said Jan Egeland, chairman of the U.N. humanitarian task force. “I could not in any way express how high the stakes are for the next hours and days.”

The Geneva talks aim to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis, allowed for the rise of Islamic State and drawn in regional and major powers but the negotiations have all but failed and a truce to allow them to take place has collapsed.

Winding up the Geneva talks, de Mistura said he aimed to resume them in May, but gave no date.

“Wherever you are, you hear explosions of mortars, shelling and planes flying over,” Valter Gros, who heads the International Committee of the Red Cross Aleppo office, said.

“There is no neighborhood of the city that hasn’t been hit. People are living on the edge. Everyone here fears for their lives and nobody knows what is coming next,” he said.

A Syrian military source said government planes had not been in areas where air raids were reported. Syria’s army denied reports that the Syrian air force targeted the hospital.

The Russian defense ministry, whose air strikes have swung the war in favor of President Bashar al-Assad, could not immediately be reached for comment. Russia has previously denied hitting civilian targets in Syria where it launched air raids late last year to bolster its ally.

The British-based Observatory said 31 people were killed as a result of air strikes on several areas of opposition-held Aleppo on Thursday. In addition, it said at least 27 people were killed in the air strike on the hospital that was struck late on Wednesday. Rescue workers put the toll higher.

In government-held areas, rebel mortar shelling killed at least 14 people, the Observatory and Syria’s state news agency SANA reported.

“WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?”

The bombed al-Quds hospital was supported by international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which said it was destroyed after being hit by a direct air strike that killed at least three doctors.

“This devastating attack has destroyed a vital hospital in Aleppo, and the main referral center for pediatric care in the area,” said Muskilda Zancada, MSF head of mission, Syria. “Where is the outrage among those with the power and obligation to stop this carnage?”

ICRC spokesman Ewan Watson told Reuters in Geneva: “It is unacceptable, any attack on hospitals is a war crime. But it is up to an investigator and it is for a court to take that decision on whether it is a war crime or not.”

Peace talks, which have been deeply divided on the future of Assad, looked to be over last week when the opposition walked out, saying the Syrian government was stalling for time to advance on the ground and calling for implementation of a U.N. resolution requiring full humanitarian access to besieged areas.

De Mistura voiced deep concern at the truce unraveling in Aleppo and at least three other places, but also said he saw some narrowing of positions between the government and opposition visions of political transition.

“Hence my appeal for a U.S.-Russian urgent initiative at the highest level, because the legacy of both President Obama and President Putin is linked to the success of what has been a unique initiative,” de Mistura told a news conference.

They should “be able to revitalize what they have created and which is still alive but barely”.

The United States and Russia must convene a ministerial meeting of major and regional powers who compose the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), he said.

Egeland said: “So the appeal of Staffan de Mistura to the United States, to Russia and to the other powers in the ISSG is ‘you did it once, you can do it again.'”

FUTURE OF ASSAD CRITICAL

Bashar Ja’afari, who led the government delegation, said on Tuesday the round had been “useful and constructive”. But he gave no sign of ceding to the opposition HNC’s central demand for a political transition without Assad. The government has said the future of Assad is non-negotiable.

De Mistura, asked whether Assad’s fate was discussed, replied: “We didn’t get into names of people … but actually how to change the current governance.”

The U.N. envoy said the two sides remained far apart in their vision of a political transition, but shared some “commonalities”, including the view “that the transitional governance could include members of the present government and the opposition, independents and others”.

Giving a chilling statistic about the backdrop of violence against which the talks played out, de Mistura said that in the past 48 hours there had been an average of one Syrian civilian killed every 25 minutes and one wounded every 13 minutes.

Hossam Abu Ghayth, 29, a documentary film-maker living in the rebel-held area of Kalasa in Aleppo which was bombed on Thursday, said by WhatsApp: “There are still planes (flying) … They’re hitting everything, mosques, markets, residential buildings, field hospitals.

“Dozens of people are under the rubble and the Civil Defence cannot dig out the bodies because of the intensity” of the bombardments.

Tony Ishak, 26, a resident of the government-held area of Suleimaniya in Aleppo and a politics student, said via WhatsApp:

“It’s been really bad for around four days now, the situation is worse than bad. Shells are falling like rain everywhere. The hospitals are full.”

(Writing by Peter Millership. Reporting by Lisa Barrington, Tom Perry, Suleiman al-Khalidi, John Davison, Stephanie Nebehay and Shadia Nasralla)

Russia wants more details on U.S. special forces in Syria

A Syria Democratic Forces fighter walks under contrails made by U.S. alliance air forces on the outskirts of al-Shadadi town, Hasaka

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia wants to know more details about U.S. plans to bolster its special forces in Syria, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since its civil war began.

The deployment of up to 250 Special Forces soldiers increases U.S. forces in Syria roughly sixfold and is aimed at helping militia fighters who have clawed back territory from Islamic State militants in a string of victories.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Denis Pinchuk)

In an added story…

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia holds enough forces at its Hmeymim air base in Syria to safeguard the ceasefire and assist Syrian government forces in fighting rebels from Islamic State and the Nusra Front, General Sergei Rudskoi, a senior Russian Defence Ministry official, Interfax news agency quoted him as saying on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov)

Aleppo Death toll mounts; rescue workers killed

Residents and civil defence members inspect a damaged building after an airstrike on the rebel-held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Attacks by government forces and rebels killed at least 30 people, including eight children, in the last 24 hours in Aleppo, a city seeing some of the worst of a renewed escalation in the Syrian war, a monitoring group said.

Intensified fighting has all but destroyed a partial ceasefire that started at the end of February, with U.N.-led peace talks in disarray.

In Aleppo, divided between areas controlled by the government and by rebels, 19 people were killed by rebel shelling and 11 were killed by government air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

That adds to another 60 people killed over the weekend in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, according to the Observatory. Air strikes were also reported in rebel-held areas near Damascus and in Hama province on Tuesday.

In a separate incident west of Aleppo, five Civil Defence workers – first responders in opposition-held territory where medical infrastructure has all but broken down – were killed by air strikes and a rocket attack on their centre.

The Observatory and Civil Defence colleagues said the attack appeared to have deliberately targeted the rescue workers in the town of Atareb, some 25 km (15 miles) west of Aleppo.

“The targeting was very precise,” Radi Saad, a Civil Defence worker, told Reuters.

“They were in the centre and ready to respond. When they heard warplanes in the area they did not think they would be the target.” Two people were seriously wounded and ambulances and cars belonging to doctors were destroyed, another Civil Defence member, Ahmad Sheikho, said.

It was unclear whether Syrian or Russian warplanes had launched the raids. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

Each side accuses the other of targeting civilian areas in the five-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

A Syrian military source said the army would “respond firmly” against rebels attacking government-held parts of Aleppo. State news agency SANA said what it called terrorist groups, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had shelled those neighborhoods.

In the north of Aleppo, insurgents resumed bombardment of a Kurdish-controlled neighborhood, Sheikh Maqsoud, according to the Kurdish YPG militia.

“Civilian areas were shelled at random,” the YPG said.

The YPG and its allies have been battling rebels, including groups backed via Turkey by states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, for several months near Aleppo and close to the Turkish border.

Rebels accuse the YPG of collaborating with the government in trying to stop people using the only road into opposition-held Aleppo, something the YPG denies.

Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and is concerned at moves by Kurdish forces to expand their control along the Syrian-Turkish border, where they already hold an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwan Makdesi in Damascus; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

60 killed in Syria’s Aleppo violence in Past 3 days

BEIRUT (Reuters) – At least 60 people have been killed in three days of fighting in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as violence continues to escalate.

Seven children and 10 women were among those killed in a series of air strikes by the government side and shelling attacks by insurgents since Friday, the monitoring group said.

Fighting has intensified in Syria in recent weeks, all but destroying a partial ceasefire that took effect at the end of February. Last week, the main opposition walked out of formal talks in Geneva.

Beginning early on Friday, government warplanes bombed a number of rebel-held parts of Aleppo, control of which is split between the warring sides. The government air raids killed 45 people, the monitoring group said.

Insurgent bombardments, including the use of home-made rockets and gas canisters fired as shells, meanwhile killed 15 people on the government-held western side.

The city was calmer on Monday but shells were still being fired onto government-held areas, said the British-based Observatory, which tracks the war using sources on the ground.

Syria’s foreign ministry said it sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council to protest what it called terrorist attacks on populated areas in Aleppo and Damascus on Saturday, the state news agency SANA reported.

It said the shellings violated the cessation of hostilities agreement brokered by the United States and Russia, which took effect in western parts of the country in February.

The United Nations is anxious to salvage the Geneva negotiations, which are the most serious attempt to end the five-year-old civil war.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has vowed to continue the fragile peace talks despite the walkout by the opposition and signs that both sides are gearing up to escalate the war, which has killed more than 250,000 people.

(Reporting by John Davison, editing by Larry King)

Expansion of U.S. Ground Troops in Syria

Children walk near garbage in al-Jazmati neighbourhood of Aleppo

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since the civil war there began, saying he would dispatch 250 special forces soldiers to help local militia to build on successes against Islamic State.

The new deployment increases U.S. forces in Syria six-fold to about 300. While the total U.S. ground force is still small by comparison to other American deployments, defense experts said it could help shift the momentum in Syria by giving more Syrian fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support.

Announcing the decision in Germany at the end of a six-day foreign tour, Obama said the move followed on victories over Islamic State that clawed back territory from the hard-line Sunni Islamist group.

“Given the success, I’ve approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria, including special forces to keep up this momentum,” Obama said in a speech at a trade fair in the northern city of Hanover, the last stop on a trip that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain.

“They’re not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back,” he added, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but the campaign’s effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years.

Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria last year, which has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow’s ally but a foe of the United States.

CLOSE AIR SUPPORT

Washington’s main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, who wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. The alliance is complex because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG.

“Presumably these are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria,” Tim Ripley, defense analyst and writer for IHS Janes Defence Weekly magazine, said.

“You can provide more advisers to more units, to allow more units to receive close air support,” Ripley said, of the new U.S. deployment. “The more people you have, the more militia groups can have close air support that makes them more effective so they can advance in more areas.”

The Syria Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, said it welcomed Obama’s announcement but still wanted more help.

“Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support,” SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. “So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware …”

Ripley said Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey strongly objecting to the Kurds taking more territory.

“The real question has to be: are they going to let the Kurdish YPG forces actually go and attack and capture some territory? This is something the Americans have not been happy about because when the YPG forces attack and capture territory, it tends to anger the president of Turkey,” Ripley said.

If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river.

That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas.

THE RACE FOR RAQQA

U.S. special forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State’s main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital.

“This places them in another quandary. Do they coordinate their attack on Raqqa with the Syrian army and the Russian air force, who are … advancing on Raqqa? … The question is who’s going to get there first,” Ripley said.

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The group controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.

“Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more,” Obama said ahead of talks later in the day with Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy.

European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission targeting Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where the five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people.

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, briefing reporters before Obama spoke, said U.S. forces “are not being sent there on a combat mission”.

In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.

TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS

But Washington’s lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The sudden entry of Moscow into the conflict last year has tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad, against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West.

Washington and Moscow sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad’s government and many of his foes to begin last month. However, those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire.

Fighting has increased in recent days near Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, now split between rebel and government zones. A monitoring group said 60 people had been killed there in three days of intense fighting, including civilians killed by rebel shelling and government air strikes.

The Syrian government’s negotiator at the Geneva talks said a bomb hit a hospital near a Shi’ite shrine near Damascus, killing many innocent people and proving the government’s enemies were terrorists.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke in Hanover, Jeff Mason and Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington, Michelle Martin in Berlin and Peter Graff in London; writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership)

Syrian peace talks limp on to next week without opposition

By John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. special envoy for Syria has vowed to take fragile peace talks into next week despite a walkout by the main armed opposition, a breakdown in a truce and signs that both sides are gearing up to escalate the five-year-old civil war.

Staffan de Mistura, who dismissed the opposition’s departure as “diplomatic posturing”, expected the delegation to return to the negotiating table. The opposition declared a “pause” this week because of a surge in fighting and too little movement from the government side on freeing detainees or allowing in aid.

Asked whether talks would carry on, de Mistura said on Thursday night: “We cannot let this drop. We have to renew the ceasefire, we have to accelerate humanitarian aid and we are going to ask the countries which are the co-sponsors to meet.”

The talks at U.N. headquarters in Geneva aim to halt a conflict that has allowed for the rise of the Islamic State group, sucked in regional and major powers and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

In an interview with French-language Radio Television Suisse (RTS), de Mistura said 400,000 people had been killed in the war, far higher than the previous U.N. toll which has varied from 250,000 to 300,000.

The war was tilted in Assad’s favor late last year by Russia’s intervention, supported on the ground by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who have been bolstered recently by the arrival of members of Iran’s regular army.

WASHINGTON CONCERNED BY RUSSIAN MOVES

The White House has expressed concern that Russia has repositioned artillery near the disputed city of Aleppo.

The Russian military moves have sharpened divisions in Washington over whether President Vladimir Putin genuinely backs the U.N.-led initiative to end the war or is using the talks to mask renewed military support for Assad.

“The regime is so reliant on external support that it is inconceivable that its allies don’t have the leverage to change its approach,” Britain’s envoy to the Syria peace talks, Gareth Bayley, said on Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that the decision by the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) to quit Geneva was not a loss for anyone except the HNC itself.

“If they want to ensure their participation (in the peace talks) only by putting ultimatums, with which others must agree, it’s their problem,” Lavrov said, adding:

“For God’s sake, we shouldn’t be running after them, we must work with those who think not about their career, not about how to please their sponsors abroad, but with those who are ready to think about the destiny of their country.”

The head of the Syrian delegation, Bashar Ja’afari, confirmed he met de Mistura to discuss humanitarian issues on Friday and would be meeting with him again on Monday.

Moscow and Washington sponsored the fragile cessation of hostilities that went into effect on Feb. 27 to allow talks to take place but has been left in tatters by increased fighting in the past week.

In Aleppo, government air strikes in different parts of the city killed at least 10 people and wounded dozens more on Friday, with the death toll expected to rise due to serious injuries, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Further southwest in Hama province, warplanes targeted rebel-held areas in the strategic Ghab plain that borders Latakia province, Assad’s coastal heartland.

Insurgents announced a new battle in Latakia earlier this week which they said was in response to ceasefire violations by the government side, launching fierce assaults there. Fighting raged in the area on Friday, said the British-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict with a network of sources on the ground.

ASSAD MAIN ISSUE

Endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, the Geneva peace talks marked the most serious effort yet to resolve the war, but failed to make progress on political issues, with no sign of compromise over the question of Assad’s future.

Government negotiators say Assad’s presidency is non-negotiable. Underlining confidence in Damascus, a top Assad aide reiterated its view that local truce agreements and “destroying terrorism” were the way toward a political solution.

The opposition wants a political transition without Assad, and says the government has failed to make goodwill measures such as releasing detainees and allowing enough aid into opposition-held areas besieged by the military.

The HNC, which is backed by Western nations and key Arab states, had this week urged more military support for rebels after declaring the truce was over and said talks would not re-start until the government stopped committing “massacres”.

All the main HNC members had left Geneva by Friday, leaving a handful of experts and a point of contact behind.

With violence escalating, peace talks might not resume for at least a year if they are abandoned, one senior Western diplomat said.

Syria is now a patchwork of areas controlled by the government, an array of rebel groups, Islamic State, and the well-organized Kurdish YPG militia.

On Friday, rare clashes between YPG fighters and government-allied forces and militiamen took place for nearly a third day, the Observatory said, in fighting which a Syrian Kurdish official said had killed 26 combatants. Kurdish and government forces have mostly avoided confrontation in the past.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Geneva; writing by Peter Millership; editing by Peter Graff)

Russian forces in Syria fired on Israeli aircraft: Israeli newspaper

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Russian forces in Syria have fired at least twice on Israeli military aircraft, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek improved operational coordination with Moscow, Israel’s top-selling newspaper said on Friday.

Asked about the alleged incidents, however, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “In this case, Israeli press reports are far from reality.”

But Netanyahu, in remarks published by Israeli reporters whom he briefed by phone on his talks on Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said “there have been problems” regarding Israeli military freedom of operation in Syria.

He gave no details, but said: “If you don’t deal with the friction, it could develop into something more serious.”

The unsourced report in Yedioth Ahronoth made no mention of dates or locations for the two reported incidents, nor did it give any indication of whether the Israeli planes were hit.

Russia mounted its military intervention in Syria in September to shore Damascus up amid a now 5-year-old rebellion.

Separately, Israel’s Channel 10 TV said a Russian warplane approached an Israeli warplane off the Mediterranean coast of Syria last week but that there was no contact between them.

An Israeli military spokesman declined comment. Netanyahu’s office and the Russian embassy in Israel did not immediately respond.

Israel, which says it has carried out dozens of bombings in Syria to foil suspected arms handovers to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, was quick to set up an operational hotline with Moscow designed to avoid accidentally trading fire with Russian interventionary forces.

In Moscow on Thursday, Netanyahu told Putin in televised remarks: “I came here with one main goal – to strengthen the security coordination between us so as to avoid mishaps, misunderstandings and unnecessary confrontations.”

In an apparent allusion to Syria, Putin said: “I think there are understandable reasons for these intensive contacts (with Israel), given the complicated situation in the region.”

According to Yedioth, the reported Russian fire on Israeli planes was first raised with Putin by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who visited Moscow on March 15. At the time, Putin responded that he was unaware of the incidents, Yedioth said.

(Writing by Dan Williams and Jeffrey Heller; Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Humanitarian Aid sets off to besieged Syria after blocked for months

A bird flies near a torn Syrian national flag in the city of Qamishli

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Dozens of trucks carrying humanitarian aid set off on Thursday for the town of Rastan in Syria’s Homs province for a delivery to a besieged area where supplies have not been able to enter for months, the Red Crescent said.

Rastan was one of the first areas to be bombed by Russian warplanes when Moscow intervened in the five-year Syrian war in September. New government air strikes have targeted the area in recent days as a partial truce in western Syria has unraveled.

A spokesman for the Red Cross, which was to deliver the aid alongside the Red Crescent, said Thursday’s convoy included 65 trucks carrying food and medical aid. He said it was one of the largest joint humanitarian aid deliveries in Syria.

United Nations and Red Cross aid deliveries have reached a number of besieged areas in Syria this year, including during a U.S.-Russian-brokered cessation of hostilities agreement that took effect in February.

The truce is now in tatters after fighting intensified, and peace talks in Geneva appeared to collapse this week.

Fresh fighting has displaced tens of thousands more people in recent days near the northern city of Aleppo, the United Nations says. Many locations besieged by government forces and their allies, Islamic State fighters and other insurgents remain hard to reach, aid agencies say.