BEIRUT (AP) — A hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders and specializing in pediatrics in a rebel-held northern Syria province has been destroyed in a series of airstrikes over the weekend that killed 13 people, including four staff and five children, the international medical charity said Monday.

The group, known by its French acronym MSF, said that two of four airstrikes directly hit the hospital in Millis, in the northern province of Idlib and put it out of service. Six other hospital staff members were wounded in the broad daylight airstrikes Saturday. The bombing of the hospital that serves as a reference center specializing in pediatrics also destroyed the operating theater, intensive care unit, pediatric department, ambulances and a generator, the charity said. It was not clear which government had conducted the airstrikes and the MSF statement did not specify.

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. has not conducted any airstrikes near Idlib.

MSF said the hospital attack deprives 70,000 people in Millis and surrounding areas of essential medical care. The hospital, supported by MSF since 2014, used to receive 250 patients per day, many of them women and children

"The direct bombing of another hospital in Syria is an outrage," says Silvia Dallatomasina, medical manager of MSF operations in northwestern Syria. She called for an immediate end to attacks on hospitals, pointing that four out of five UN Security Council members are participants in the war in Syria.

Hospitals, mostly in rebel-held areas, are regularly attacked. In July alone, the U.N. said it has recorded 44 attacks on health facilities in Syria. Syria's government and Russia, a major ally that has been carrying out airstrikes in Syria since September, deny targeting health facilities.

In recent days, a number of attacks were reported on medical facilities amid increased violence, and ultimately increased pressure on the health facilities, in northern Syria.

MSF said two facilities it supports in Idlib, controlled by insurgents, have reported nine mass-influxes of wounded in July, that left 466 wounded and 37 dead. In the first six-months of 2016, the same facilities reported only seven mass-influxes of wounded, with a total 294 wounded and 33 dead.

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Experts painted a graphic portrait of barrel bombings, attacks on medical facilities, chemical weapons use and the ongoing suffering inside the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo, shaming the international community for its inaction at an informal Security Council meeting Monday organized by the United States.

Dr. Zaher Shaloul, a Syrian-American doctor from Chicago, said medical facilities in eastern Aleppo are routinely targeted, creating a situation where people are dying from treatable conditions for lack of medical care and basic supplies.

Shaloul, who last visited Aleppo in July, said he asked a nurse there what she wanted most from the United Nations and she replied that she wanted help evacuating a 10-year-old girl named Shahd who was wounded by a barrel bomb and is now dying due to a shortage of medicine.

"We don't need condemnations, prayers or pointing fingers, we had enough of that. I ask you to meet the people of Aleppo and see them as humans. I have one request, besides saving Shahd, visit Aleppo yourself and meet with its doctors, nurses and patients. If three doctors from Chicago were able to do that, you can do it," Shaloul told diplomats.

Shahloul then showed slides showing women and child victims, one of them a child he said was injured in a chlorine gas attack.

He said only 35 physicians remain in Aleppo where 15 health care facilities had been attacked in July alone.

Currently, more than 250,000 people are besieged by government forces in the eastern part of Aleppo, a city that has been divided into rebel and government-controlled parts since 2012. The government completely closed the main road into the rebel-held areas of Aleppo on July 17, effectively cutting off all supplies and exit routes.

Rebels breached the Syrian government siege on opposition neighborhoods in Aleppo on Saturday, opening a corridor in the south and marking a major military breakthrough, but observers said civilians still don't have a safe route out because of intense airstrikes and shelling in the area.

Abdullah Nawhlu, a member of Syrian Civil Defense, a neutral and impartial humanitarian group, speaking by video from Aleppo, described a dire situation with rapidly dwindling stocks of food and fuel, not to mention medical supplies.

"If the siege of Aleppo continues ... greater humanitarian disasters will happen, as there will be no medicine for the injured and no flour for people to bake with," Nawhlu said as a constant barrage of gunfire could be heard in the background. "We are speaking about a siege of 350,000 people, not 10 or 50 or 100 people. We're talking about 350,000 humans, a huge humanitarian disaster that will shame humanitarian organizations forever."

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power called on the Security Council to "send a clear, unified message that these sieges must end, and that there's no justification for cutting innocent people off from basic aid."

"To this end, we once again urge Russia to stop facilitating these sieges, and to use its influence to press the regime to end its sieges across Syria once and for all," Power said.

Russia responded by accusing the U.S. of playing politics with a humanitarian issue.

"We urge our colleagues to refrain from their usual deceit and admit that the main cause of all the humanitarian problems in Syria is not the counter-terrorist actions by the legitimate government in Syria to bring order against the external interference in intra-Syria affairs in 2011 which sought to topple legitimate authorities and provide weapons to the opposition," Russia's deputy ambassador Vladimir Safrankov said. "Because before then the humanitarian situation in Syria was not a cause of concern to anyone."

SEE ALSO: Why Aleppo is Syria's fiercest battleground

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Hillary Clinton threw down a gauntlet worthy of a medieval knight when she attacked Donald Trump’s foreign policy competence in her much-noted speech in San Diego a couple of months ago. She bragged that she was the voice of experience – especially compared to Trump, who she described as “dangerously incoherent.”

If only it worked that way.

Experience in and of itself is not a value. Ford built the Edsel after 54 years of experience. Clinton was secretary of throughout President Obama’s first term. How much does that experience matter? Not much, if you match her record against the foreign policy planks in Clinton’s 2016 presidential platform.

One overarching theme is instantly evident: Clinton is almost weirdly incapable of learning from experience. It’s as if she fixed her thinking at some point in the past and lacks the confidence to alter it in response to a world that changes more swiftly than anyone could’ve imagined even a few years ago.

Here’s a brief look at the major policy questions—the big stuff that will define a Hillary Clinton presidency, should she be elected in November. (Two of the largest issues, China and Russia, were considered in this space in the past two weeks.)

Syria

Clinton favors aggressive intervention in the Syria conflict, which lines her up with a faction at the State Department that raised its voice in a memo to Secretary of State Kerry leaked to The New York Times in mid–June. The shared argument is that deposing President Assad must remain the objective of U.S. policy.

You don’t need a taste for Assad to recognize the error here. Knock over Assad before defeating the Islamic State and you’ve created another post–Qaddafi Libya. This danger is precisely what drew Russia into the Syria conflict last fall. Why can’t Clinton learn from her very costly misjudgment in the Libyan case?

Israel

In foreign policy as in love, “unconditional” is a dangerous word. Yet Clinton hasn’t tempered her unqualified support for Israel since she declared it during her years as New York’s junior senator. It’s wrong in numerous dimensions, two of them big. One, it drastically reduces Washington’s room to maneuver in a region amid fundamental flux. Two, it’s also a case of false kindness toward Israel.

Asher Schechter called Clinton “Israel’s worst best friend” in his Haaretz column earlier this year. “She has enabled and even encouraged self-destructive behaviors and elements that have effectively killed the two-state solution and are now threatening Israel’s security and democracy,” Schechter elaborated.

That’s straight to the point. Israel needs a dose of tough love, and Clinton isn’t long on that kind.

The Greater Middle East

 Whoever moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next January will have to navigate exceedingly complex rivalries among regional powers with whom U.S. relations are in flux, notably Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two poles in the region’s Shi’a–Sunni conflict.

Whether Clinton is up to this is a serious question. The problems here are balance and—as so often with the Clinton’s—potential conflicts of interest.

Having famously threatened to “obliterate Iran” while running against Obama in 2008, Clinton remains hawkish toward Tehran even amid shifting winds. There were no reformists in power eight years ago; there are now. Do we want to encourage them or sabotage them?

On the other side, Clinton took Washington’s long-consolidated ties to Riyadh just as she found them, and these, too, are changing. Equally, the Saudis have long been prominent among the Clinton Foundation’s donors, as has been widely reported. This can’t be dismissed as immaterial.

Trade

Clinton vigorously endorsed the Trans–Pacific Partnership as secretary of state but flipped in response to Bernie Sanders’ opposition (and Trump’s). She now opposes it “in its current form,” prompting widespread suspicion that she’ll tweak it and flip again if elected.

Treating the TPP as a political football doesn’t instill confidence. This pact is monumentally complex; standing for or against it doesn’t conflate with a position on free trade. Pushing the TTP through—and the TTIP, its Atlantic equivalent—requires a lot more caution and balance than Bill Clinton displayed when he signed NAFTA into law. The question: Does Hillary Clinton have enough of either?

Two broader questions also hang over Clinton’s foreign policy positions.

One: Clinton has a hawkish preference for policies that rank military options first. The use of force has to be recognized as a necessity in some cases. In no case will it ever succeed unless it is accompanied by sound, sophisticated diplomatic and political work that addresses underlying problems and conflicts.

Does Clinton grasp this point? It’s unclear but looks doubtful. She clearly missed it, to tragic result, when she backed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and again when she encouraged NATO’s bombing campaign in Libya five years ago.

Of her thinking now on Syria after Assad, we have heard nothing. This has to be a worry.

Two: Clinton believes without apparent questioning or doubt in American primacy in global affairs. That was the 20th century game, but the rules are different in the 21st. The world’s multipolar now: We must all face this core reality, no matter our different political stripes.

Hillary Clinton comes across as too rigid on this point, a touch stuck in the past. Dexterity and imagination are what we want to see in the next president. Clinton’s experience in foreign affairs is extensive, but it doesn’t seem to have endowed her with much of either. 

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Filmed at Al Dhafra airbase in the United Arab Emirates, this clip shows F-22 pilots with the 90th Fighter Squadron from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, preparing to launch at night for a mission in support of Operation Inherent Resolve against ISIS in the modernized US Air Force Raptor multirole jets.

Each Raptor mission against Daesh usually involves multiple aerial refueling operations since the aircraft, to keep their stealthiness, do not carry external fuel tanks.

The Alaskan Raptors belong to the latest available Block and can drop 8 GBU-39 small diameter bombs; they also have a radar upgrade that enhanced the capabilities of the aircraft in the realm of the so-called “kinetic situational awareness."

Although they drop very few bombs against ground targets, the 5th generation stealth planes exploit their advanced onboard sensors, such as the AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar, to gather details about the enemy targets that they share with other attack planes, such as the F-15E Strike Eagles. 

SEE ALSO: America's B-2 stealth bomber is unlike any military aircraft in the world

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NOW WATCH: Britain started bombing ISIS mere hours after voting in favor of airstrikes

One in three foreign fighters combating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is an American citizen, the majority of whom are also military veterans, according to a new report.

Published on Aug. 9, by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank, the report drew its findings from 300 foreign fighters who travelled to Iraq or Syria to join groups fighting against ISIS.

The majority of those traveling to Iraq and Syria to fight against the Islamic State come from Western countries, the report finds.

Of the 26 countries that have citizens fighting ISIS, those with the highest proportion of volunteers are the United States, which accounts for 38% of all Western volunteers; followed by the United Kingdom at 14%; Germany at 8%; France and Sweden, both with 6%; and Canada, whose volunteers make up 5%.

In contrast, of the estimated 4,000 to 7,000 Westerners who have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State, only 6% are estimated to be from the United States.

According to the report, Western fighters are most likely to serve alongside the Syrian-Kurdish YPG or the Iraqi-Kurdish Peshmerga. Additionally, while female Westerners are drawn to ISIS at higher rates than those joining anti-ISIS groups, the women who take up the fight against the Islamic State are far more likely to take on combat roles, usually as part of women protection units, Kurdish defense forces often referred to as the YPJ.

When asked why they volunteered to fight against ISIS, those surveyed cited similar reasons: They were frustrated with how their nation or the international community has responded to ISIS’ rise; they had a thirst for adventure, thrill-seeking, and belonging; or they felt an altruistic need to combat “evil” or “terrorism.”

In the case of military veterans, especially those who served in the Global War on Terror, many said they were motivated by “a desire to ‘finish the job’ and ensure previous sacrifices were not in vain,” notes the report.

SEE ALSO: These are the biggest threats to the US and its interests

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NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As a Syrian migrant arriving in Berlin, Munzer Khattab could barely say a word in German, let alone fill out a pile of forms in the language.

So over the past year Khattab has not only learned German but also worked with five other Syrian refugees or asylum seekers to design a smartphone app to make forms less daunting.

The app, called 'Bureaucrazy', to be launched in January, will translate various forms into Arabic and English for newcomers facing a pile of paperwork ranging from registering with authorities to opening a bank account.

It will also provide them with a map with Berlin offices that all newcomers need to navigate and deal with other questions about red tape that can leave asylum seekers in knots.

Khattab, 23, who fled his coastal hometown of Latakia last year to avoid military service in Syria, said the inspiration came as he ploughed through more than a dozen registration forms in German after arriving in Berlin.

"Even when we asked Germans they had problems understanding the forms," Khattab told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview. "If the Germans found them unreadable, how could we [migrants] read them?"

The app's name stemmed from Khattab, whose first language is Arabic, being caught out mispronouncing the word 'bureaucracy'.

"Someone heard it and said 'Bureaucrazy? What did you say? That's a cool name'," said Khattab.

Khattab and his partners developed the app as part of a program in computer-coding they are taking at ReDI, a Berlin non-profit school with a mission to integrate refugees.

It won a local software development contest and later drew praise at the Startup Europe tech conference earlier this year.

The developers believe it will help migrants fleeing violence and poverty, more than a million of which have entered Germany in the past year.

"Everyone has the same problem: they come to Berlin as newcomers from Spain to Italy, and they have the same problems that we had," Khattab said.

SEE ALSO: Google is donating 25,000 laptops to help refugees

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The first images of what appear to be British special forces operating on the ground in Syria have emerged, showing vehicles patrolling near the scene of an attack by Islamic State.

The pictures were taken in June and were first published by the BBC.

It is believed to be the first time British forces have been photographed operating inside Syria, where they are engaged in relatively small numbers in wide-ranging roles that include surveillance, advisory and combat.

The images depict British special forces sitting on Thalab long-range patrol vehicles as they move around the perimeter of a rebel base close to the Syria-Iraq border.

The Thalab (Fox) vehicles are essentially modified, militarised and upgraded Toyota 4x4s used for long distance reconnaissance and surveillance missions, which were developed jointly in the middle of the last decade by a state-backed defence company in Jordan and the UK company Jankel.

The vehicle, which has mounted weaponry and is often used for border patrols, has been primarily used by Jordanian special forces.

Al-Tanf, where the vehicles were reportedly photographed, is a border crossing between Syria and Iraq that had been under Isis control, and is also not far from the Jordanian border. It is unclear how many Nato countries have deployed the modified trucks, though Belgium ordered a shipment of modified Fox vehicles earlier this year.

The images seem to show British forces securing the perimeter of the rebel base following an attack by Isis, according to the BBC. The soldiers can be seen carrying anti-tank missiles, sniper rifles and other heavy artillery.

The BBC reported the soldiers were working at the base in a defensive role and a spokesman for the New Syrian Army acknowledged that British special forces had provided training, weapons and other equipment.

The Ministry of Defence, as is standard with special forces, declined to comment on the photographs. But an independent source confirmed they were UK special forces, which are operating against Isis in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

They prefer to operate in secrecy, at least until sufficient time has passed for the publication of memoirs. But, with cameras commonplace and the forces they operate alongside not feeling bound to respect that secrecy, it is becoming increasingly more difficult.

The UK has about 300 conventional forces operating in Iraq mainly in and around Baghdad, restricted to training and advisory roles, operating from behind the relative safety of secure bases. Britain has also promised to provide between 800-1,200 troops to an Italian-led international force to support the Libyan government, though there is little sign of these being deployed.

The special forces have a free-ranging role, operating in the border areas between the Isis stronghold of Raqqa in Syria and the towns and villages linking it to its northern Iraqi bastion, Mosul. The US special forces established a base in the Syrian desert between Raqqa and the Iraqi border aimed both at achieving this and in support of Syrian rebel forces trying to squeeze Raqqa.

The UK parliament approved an air campaign against Isis in Syria but not ground troops. Special forces, though, have always been treated differently. The government mantra is that special forces can be deployed wherever there is judged to be a threat to the UK.

The convention is that special forces are never mentioned on the floor of the British parliament but they are subject to oversight through the parliamentary intelligence committee.

Defence ministers argue that it is illogical to expect special forces engaged against Isis to stop at the Iraqi border, given that the terror group does not recognise any border between Iraq and Syria.

The New Syrian Army was established with American backing in 2015 as a moderate rebel force to primarily fight against Isis in Deir ez-Zor province, which is almost entirely under the control of the militants.

The American training programmes for rebel forces have been widely seen as failures, primarily because few rebel fighters are willing to exclusively fight Isis while ignoring the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The US has had more success when it closely coordinated with fighters on the ground and backed them up with airstrikes, the modus operandi it has adopted with the mostly Kurdish fighters in northern Syria known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are on the verge of taking back the city of Manbij in northern Aleppo from Islamic State, and have conquered vast tracts of land over the past few months. The US also has special forces troops operating on the ground with the Kurds.

The New Syrian Army has had a halting and uninspiring track record. Their most significant operation occurred in June this year, when the group launched an attack on Al-Bukamal, a town on the Iraqi border that has long been a crossing point for foreign jihadis during the American occupation, and which is now held by Isis. The attack failed, apparently due to the lack of sufficient air power backing by its western allies.

One report in the Washington Post suggested American warplanes that were supposed to assist in the battle had to be diverted to Falluja, where they bombed a convoy of Isis vehicles fleeing the city.

SEE ALSO: Here’s what we know about the Americans going overseas to fight ISIS

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The battle for Aleppo has the Arab world, Middle East observers and Western policymakers on edge.

In what is likely a turning point in the long Syrian civil war, a coalition of opposition fighters is attempting to break Bashar al-Assad regime’s siege of the country’s commercial capital.

Meanwhile, the Syrian government – with Russian support – is bombing rebel strongholds in the city which is still home to 250,000 people, according to the BBC.

Thanks to recent U.S. diplomatic overtures to deepen cooperation with Russia against the Islamic State, or IS, and al-Qaida affiliate Al-Nusra Front, the U.S. could be considered a partner in those airstrikes. The U.S. overtures have been criticized as strategically inconsistent and Putin-pleasing.

As a student of American policy in the Middle East, I’d argue that American efforts are key to the tumultuous trajectory of Syria’s uprising-turned-war.

What’s less clear to me is how much U.S. President Barack Obama’s approach prioritizes either the immediate needs of Syrians suffering from war and terrorism or their aspirations for self-liberation from authoritarian rule.

ISIS overshadows Syrians

Cynics might consider U.S. policy in Syria apathetic to the plight and aspirations of the Syrian people.

Even worse, we may be witnessing a microcosm of a teetering world order in Syria. Longstanding international dynamics have been upended as the freedom- and dignity-seeking popular uprisings of the Arab Spring have gone bloodily awry.

What there is now, in the words of democratization specialists Thomas Carothers and Oren Samet-Marram, is a new “global marketplace of political change” that is contested by an array of international actors rather than just influenced by Western democratic powers. In addition to the U.S., Russia, China, Qatar, Iran, IS and Hezbollah are all vying to shape the politics of transitional countries in the Middle East. Sometimes their tools are diplomacy; more often, military force or terrorism.

So whose political interests are winning out in Syria?

More losers than winners

It’s complicated, because so many interests are at play.

Ever since late 2011, months after Assad began violent attacks on his own people, Obama has pledged to work toward his ouster.

However, Russian’s President Vladimir Putin has long ties to Assad and has remained loyal to him.

The U.S. and Russia first overcame this difference and agreed to a “political solution" in Syria after meeting in Geneva in June 2012. In August of that year, Obama declared that any use of chemical weapons by Assad would be a “red line” that the Americans would not tolerate.

Then, in August 2013, Assad unleashed a chemical weapons massacre in the suburbs of Damascus, killing as many as 1,400 of his own citizens. Obama threatened airstrikes but reversed himself after Russia mediated a deal that stayed Obama’s hand in return for a promise that Assad would turn over Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal to be destroyed.

Obama’s vacillating Syria policy has spurred ongoing debate, especially with regard to fighting IS. The counterterrorism turn, starting with the anti-IS “Inherent Resolve” campaign in September 2014, is one way to explain the dissonance in U.S. policy.

The fact is that since fall 2015, Russian military intervention has bolstered Assad positions on the ground. And Assad’s strength has strengthened Moscow’s position in negotiations with the U.S.

In parallel, in December of last year, the U.N. moved its focus from the Geneva mandate to seek a “Syrian-led political transition” to one focused on stamping out terrorism in the region through Security Council Resolution 2254.

But Syrians living under aerial bombardment in a half-emptied-out country don’t have the luxury of the UN and Obama’s extended time horizon. The president may be able to exercise “strategic patience” through January 2017, when a new president will occupy the Oval Office, to further test Russian promises. But each passing day means starvation and bloodshed for Syrians. Besieged populations suffer in Aleppo as well as areas such as Damascus suburb Darayya.

The banalization of death intensifies as “international norms” of warfare are disregarded. The latest testament of ongoing horror has been Assad regime targeting of six hospitals in Aleppo last week.

The U.S. goal to “degrade and ultimately destroy” IS has taken precedence over any other imperative. U.S.-Russian bargaining within the International Syria Support Group, the working group they cosponsor that seeks diplomatic solution to Syria’s conflict, centers around the identification of targeted terrorists as a means to end the war. The new proposal from the White House, in which the U.S. and Russia will cooperate in specifically pursuing al-Nusra, is just one more sign of this new focus.

Uncertain political transition

But a stronger U.S.-Russian partnership is unlikely to achieve the elusive political solution.

Russia’s unabashed flouting of the February 2016 internationally agreed “cessation of hostilities” demonstrates these long odds. And the path toward a ceasefire is made more difficult by the agreement’s exclusion of ambiguously defined terrorist groups and territory.

Russian bombing, combined with Assad strikes, are responsible for most of more than 5,000 civilian deaths since the cessation of hostilities began, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. The new Washington-Moscow cooperation is intended, in theory, to clearly mark out Russian and U.S. targets and therefore avoid civilians and U.S.-backed “moderate” opposition fighters. In exchange, Putin is to pressure Assad to abide by U.N. provisions against bombing civilians.

In the meantime, Al-Nusra has announced that it is splitting from al-Qaida. The effects of this move are as yet unclear, but the fallout will likely impact both armed opposition dynamics and U.S. policy.

Ultimately, in my view, the U.S. has made itself complicit in Russia’s support for Assad. Washington is effectively buttressing a regime whose repressive crackdown on peaceful protests in 2011 pushed the country into its downward spiral of proxy and regional warfare.

Obama chides Putin in speeches: “It is time for Russia to show it is serious” about “reduc[ing] the violence.“ A military counterterrorism strategy is the key, he said. But in the same breath, he declared a commitment to working with Russia on those very goals. Such remarks put nobody at ease except perhaps Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers.

The apparent skepticism with which Syrians approached peace talks earlier this year is vindicated. The Syrian High Negotiations Committee stuck to its minimalist humanitarian conditions. These included a suspension of barrel bombing, the freeing of political prisoners and an end to siege-and-starvation tactics. These calls echoed those by Syrian civil society activists on the eve of the talks in late January.

Yet these appeals have been repeatedly trampled upon in a U.S.-blessed process. John Kerry has not, in my view, made a serious effort to meet the U.N.-sanctioned opposition demands, based in the “confidence-building measures” agreed upon in Vienna in the lead-up to Resolution 2254. These attempts to mitigate Assad’s so-called “starve or kneel” strategy, in which Putin has become a credentialed associate, are basic requirements unmet thus far in the ISSG process.

The dramatic suspension of the opposition’s participation in the peace talks in April was thus no surprise. The latest U.S.-Russian agreement will not help U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura’s attempts to resume negotiations later this month.

An important question must be clearly enunciated. Where is this U.S.-Russian orchestrated process, claiming to seek an end to Syria’s war and a political transition, headed?

When the running cost of diplomatic road maps with open-ended timetables is buckets of blood, the acrobatics of international statecraft appear unsuited for an explosive region and a post-colonial order whose unraveling began with cries of “al sha’b yureed,” or “the people want.”

In my opinion, the U.S.-Russian process promises neither to substantively address the dire humanitarian situation nor seriously pursue an end to the war. That a political transition hammered out among Syria’s “people” can emerge from this diplomatic deadlock is even less likely. The battle for Aleppo confirms the primacy of violence over politics in Syria today. No solutions, diplomatic or otherwise, are in sight. The war rages on.

Layla Saleh, Assistant Professor of International Affairs, Qatar University, Qatar University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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In an obscure yet publicly available report, the Pentagon has for the first time indicated that it was hiring military contractors for operations in Syria.

In an investigation from The Daily Beast, the nearly 300 US troops already present in Syria would be receiving “intelligence analysis services” from Six3 Intelligence Solutions Inc., a privately held defense contractor based out of McLean, Virginia. This $10 million contract would place an unknown number of contractors in various countries, including Syria.

According to The Daily Beast, neither the Pentagon nor Six3 Intelligence Solutions would elaborate further on the type of services or other relevant information on the subject.

Details on Six3 Intelligence Solutions also remain scant; however, Georgetown University professor and former contractor Sean McFate provides some insight.

“This is no ordinary contractor… Six3 Intelligence Solutions is a private intelligence company, and the fact that we outsource a good portion of our intelligence analysis creates a strategic dependency on the private sector to perform vital wartime operations,” McFate explained to The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast also managed to glean a statement from an archived version of Six3 Intelligence Solutions’ website: “Our expertise ranges from finger, palm, face, and iris examinations to exploitation and forensic analysis.”

This assortment of biometrics and identity services offered by the contractor essentially analyzes individual human characteristics to figure out who each person is. In addition to the forensic analysis, however, the contractor also claims to provide counterintelligence and reconnaissance services as well.

The contract award comes at the heels of the additional 250 special forces troops that were ordered to deploy to Syria, in order to “advise and assist” the local forces that the US hopes will be fighting ISIS militants.

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Ahmad Al-Rashid, a 26-year-old from Aleppo living in Buckinghamshire, is one of 5,000 Syrian refugees who have settled in the UK since being displaced by the on-going civil war.

In September 2015, then Prime Minister David Cameron pledged that Britain would "live up to its moral responsibility" and take 20,000 more Syrian refugees from camps on the borders of Syria by 2020.

However, a Home Affairs Committee report released on August 4 said that it is "unlikely" that Britain will meet this target. Between September 2015 and March 2016, only 1,602 Syrian refugees have been resettled, according to the report.

Al-Rashid is not included in this number as he arrived in the UK illegally in July 2015, on the back of a lorry at the end of a gruelling 55-day journey from Aleppo to Hull.

Business Insider spoke to Al-Rashid about what it's like to be part of Britain's tiny community of Syrian refugees.

Before the war in Syria, Al-Rashid was an English Literature student at the University of Aleppo.

"Life was quite peaceful," he told Business Insider. "I was a young man enjoying university, life, music, and cinemas."

But when the war began in 2011, Al-Rashid's Kurdish identity left him in particular danger. He was at the mercy of government forces, who accused him of being a PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) supporter, and Islamist radicals, who labelled him an infidel.

Al-Rashid campaigned by giving talks against "human rights abuses on both sides." Friends warned him that this activity made him likely to be attacked. Al-Rashid decided that he had to leave Syria, and his wife and two daughters, in May 2015.

"It was a very difficult decision to take," he said. "I was already separated from my family because of the conflict. I was on the other side of the country."

Al-Rashid began his journey out of Syria by crossing the Tigris river into Turkey. The border was guarded by the Turkish army, who shone bright lights on the river. People smugglers bribed the Turkish soldiers to turn off these lights for 10 minutes at midnight, allowing a small number of Syrians to successfully cross the border.

To cross the river, Al-Rashid shared a small dinghy with six other refugees. They made it to the Turkish side in seven minutes — just in time to get across before the lights went back on. No one approached them on arrival, and they entered Turkey unquestioned.

Now out of the war zone, Al-Rashid felt a small sense of relief. He travelled to the west coast of Turkey and, choosing one of hundreds of traffickers advertising on Facebook, paid for a seat on a boat to Kos, an island in Greece. He was told that there would be 24 passengers, but when he arrived there were 88.

"Before we set off, it was already leaking," he said. "We were in the middle of the sea. Half of us were women and children. We got so lucky."

Three hours later, everyone on the dinghy arrived safely in Kos.

"You have to put your faith in smugglers because you don't have an option," Al-Rashid explained. "You already know he's a liar and a criminal, but you just hope that he will be a good person. Plenty of them are bad people."

From Kos, he boarded a ferry to mainland Greece and then travelled to Athens using money transferred to him by one of his brothers who was still living in Syria. Al-Rashid never carried large quantities of cash during the journey because he was afraid of being robbed. He said he was able to travel around easily within Greece.

In Athens, he bought a fake Bulgarian passport for 4,000 Euros from a "well-known" smuggler, who had queues of refugees stretching outside his office door. When it was Al-Rashid's turn, the smuggler told him to change his clothes and shave. The smuggler then booked Al-Rashid a plane ticket to Marseille using the fake details.

He made it through passport control smoothly, but while he was waiting in the airport departure lounge, two security officers began double-checking certain passengers' passports.

"They managed to catch four Syrians," he said. Al-Rashid said that he could distinguish fellow Syrians just by looking at their faces. Not long after the four refugees had been escorted away, Al-Rashid was approached. "Show me your passport," a guard said.

Al-Rashid offered his fake document. "I am meeting my girlfriend in France," he said. "We are celebrating our anniversary. Is there any problem?"

Fortunately, the guard bought his story and wished him "good luck." As soon as Al-Rashid boarded the plane, he went to the toilet and destroyed his fake passport. The smuggler in Athens told him to do this because if he was found with a fake passport at French passport control, he would likely be deported back to Greece.

However, to Al-Rashid's great surprise, when he arrived at the airport in Marseille, there was no passport control at all. He was allowed to walk straight through. He was pleased, but regretted discarding the Bulgarian passport so quickly.

Because he speaks English, Al-Rashid had always planned to claim asylum in the UK. Britain's family reunion rules would also allow him to bring his family over, if he made it. He was only sporadically in contact with his wife and two daughters because internet and phone signal is hard to find in Aleppo.

To get to the UK meant travelling north by train to France's largest migrant camp: the Calais Jungle. Since the signing of the Touquet agreement in 2003, Brits have been conducting border control checks in France. With a large number of migrants unable to pass through the Calais border, thousands are settled in the Jungle, hoping to climb onto the back of lorries, or walk through the Channel Tunnel to enter the UK.

"These were the worst days of my life," Al-Rashid said of his two weeks in the Calais Jungle. "It was an awful place. I spent everyday chasing cars, lorries, and trucks."

Two weeks after arriving in Calais, one of many smugglers in the town convinced Al-Rashid to climb into a tanker truck full of flour, with seven other refugees.

After 12 hours, Al-Rashid and the others inside began to suffocate, so they started furiously pounding on the side of the truck. On hearing the noise, the driver — who had no idea that there were refugees inside — stopped to let them out.

"To our surprise, we were near the Italian border," he said. "I was mad as hell. I went back to Calais covered in flour." He travelled by train back to Calais, though he didn't stay long there.

The recent spate of ISIS-inspired terror attacks in Turkey and subsequent attempted coup, combined with foreign fighters’ incessant attempts to enter ISIS’s shrinking territory have kept Turkey’s border with Syria, once dubbed a “jihadist highway”, at the forefront of regional security issues.

Has Ankara responded adequately to the international community’s demands to bring its 911 kilometer border with Assad’s regime under control, or are smuggling and border crossings by militants a continuing threat?

SEE ALSO: These are the biggest threats to the US and its interests

Gasoline smuggling

Earlier this year, gasoline smuggling from Turkey to Syria received international attention after Russia accused the Turkish government of facilitating contraband routes across the Syrian border. While gasoline smuggling has long been a contentious issue in the region, the illicit practice appears to be declining.

According to figures from Turkey’s Office for Combatting Smuggling and Organized Crime, only 4.33 million liters were seized in 2015, compared with 13.7 million in 2014; these numbers represent a 70% year-over-year decrease. Nonetheless, gasoline smugglers are continuing the illicit practice. Using industrial drilling machines, they continue to install pipes 5-10 meters under the border to facilitate smuggling.

Narcotics

As drug smuggling — particularly of an amphetamine called Captagon — continues to play a major role in financing armed groups in Syria, the illicit practice has emerged as a major threat to border security.

Smugglers continue to find increasingly sophisticated methods of smuggling the pills into Turkey for further distribution into traditional consumer bases in the Persian Gulf. An April 2016 seizure in the border region of Hatay, for example, yielded over half a metric ton of the drug.

Hidden inside pipes, the stash had previously gone undetected by drug-sniffing dogs. One month later in the same region, two law enforcement operations led to the discovery of over 3 million Captagon tablets.

Fortress on the border

In 2015, approximately 910 militants were caught crossing the Syrian border into Turkey. This number is modestly lower than the 992 militants captured in 2014, according to figures from the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF).

In an effort to decrease militant border-crossings, the TAF has already spent 300 million Lira implementing a project dubbed the “Syria Physical Border Security System,” which aims to seal off the 911 kilometer frontier through a combination of concrete walls, watchtowers, observation blimps, flood-lamps, ditches and drones alongside the border.

In order to prevent militants from entering Turkey via standard routes, the government created a database of individuals banned from entering the country due to alleged ties to militant groups. According to a parliamentary statement by Turkey’s Interior Minister, the database currently contains 41,000 names.

Despite hardened security measures, a recent incident has caused many to question the extent to which Ankara has abandoned efforts to support anti-Assad foreign fighters operating in Syria.

Secret files signed by the assistant governor of Ağrı, a region in Turkey’s east that borders Iran, were leaked in early May 2016, exposing that 19 foreign fighters were given medical treatment at a refugee holding center. This incident has since been brought up by opposition members of Parliament.

Even if Turkey succeeds in sealing the border, Ankara faces the challenge of dealing with the substantial number of Turkish fighters currently fighting on the ground in Syria. Files from Turkish federal police that were leaked to the national newspaper Cumhuriyet estimated that 2,750 Salafi Turks have gone to fight in Syria since April 2011. Approximately 750 of these Turks are currently fighting for ISIS, and 130 remain in the ranks of the al-Nusra Front.

Two million people are without water as the battle for Aleppo between the Syrian government and opposition groups intensifies, heavily damaging the city's electric and water infrastructure, according to the United Nations.

And the water that's still available through wells and tanks isn't nearly enough to sustain the population's needs, warned UN emergency relief coordinator Stephen O'Brien on Tuesday in a statement.

As government warplanes targeted rebel-held parts of the city, the UN relief wing warned that two million people trapped by the fighting were in even greater danger because of rising temperatures and diminishing medical supplies in the area.

It called for an "immediate halt to the hostilities and, at a minimum, a two-day weekly humanitarian pause" to allow the city's crippled water and electrical networks to be repaired.

A new round of fighting is expected to begin soon since the Islamist-led rebel coalition of more than two dozen groups, collectively known as Jaysh al Fateh, broke a government-held siege in Aleppo on Sunday, opening a way in from the south and prompting a major airstrike campaign. Reinforcements are being brought in, CBS reported.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city, is crucial to the Syrian civil war, and it's unclear whether or not opposition groups will be able to keep a hold on their recent gains. 

"I told the Council that we must all be gravely concerned for the safety, health and protection of those terrified civilians. They are counting on us to deliver assistance and end their suffering," O'Brien said about his briefing to the UN security council in a news release, adding that UN agencies and partners are ready to help civilians in Aleppo, but need a day or two of safe access to do so.

SEE ALSO: Meet the 26-year-old Syrian refugee who took a gruelling 55-day journey from Aleppo to Hull

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Aleppo, which has been beset by constant violence since 2012, and the site of unspeakable suffering from air strikes, ground fighting, and even chemical weapons attacks, has become a humanitarian nightmare.

A shortage of well-supplied hospitals has resulted in countless deaths that might have been prevented had the mortally wounded been able to seek medical treatment — a shortage of doctors, many of whom have either been killed or fled Aleppo since the fighting erupted, has made the situation even more dire.

"We are 15 of the last doctors serving the remaining 300,000 citizens of eastern Aleppo," a group of doctors claiming to be among the last in the city wrote in a letter to US president Barack Obama on Thursday.

"Whether we live or die seems to be dependent on the ebbs and flows of the battlefield," they added. "Despite the horror, we choose to be here. We took a pledge to help those in need."

Allegations of war crimes by pro-government forces have been flying around for over a year, but the situation on the ground precludes a thorough investigation of human rights violations. The situation has rapidly deteriorated over the past month, as a government-imposed siege prevented food and medical supplies from entering the rebel-held east.

"We do not need tears or sympathy or even prayers," the letter read. "We need action."

The nearly monthlong government siege of Syria's largest city is now on the verge of collapse, after a week of heavy fighting in northern and eastern Aleppo led to the defeat of pro-regime forces by a coalition of Syrian opposition groups.

The siege has not been completely broken, and the situation remains unstable, said Syrian journalist Hadi Alabdallah, who was in Aleppo while the battle unfolded.

Fights are still erupting sporadically across the city, he said, and airstrikes continue to puncture any aura of calm.

Both the regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad — and its close ally, Russia — have offered to impose a temporary ceasefire on the city long enough to evacuate civilians. But the doctors, in their letter, characterized the proposals as "thinly-veiled threats" to essentially "flee now or face annihilation."

The note contains horrific details about doctors with limited resources who must regularly decide who is worth saving, based on the extent of their injuries.

Its harshest rebukes, however, are pointed towards the Obama administration's perceived inaction in attempting to end the violence.

"We have seen no effort on behalf of the United States to lift the siege or even use its influence to push the parties to protect civilians," the letter read.

"The burden of responsibility for the crimes of the Syrian government and its Russian ally must...be shared by those, including the United States, who allow them to continue."

The White House told CNN that they had seen the letter, and condemned the "indiscriminate bombing of medical facilities by the Assad regime in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria." The statement made no mention of Russia, whom they hope to pressure, along with the UN, into allowing humanitarian aid to flow into Aleppo.

"These attacks are appalling and must cease," the White House official said. "We commend the bravery of medical professionals across Syria who are working every day in perilous circumstances with minimal supplies to save lives."

Read the full letter here.

SEE ALSO: Kurds backed by US special forces killed ISIS' oil overseer

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NOW WATCH: EX-PENTAGON CHIEF: These are the 2 main reasons ISIS was born

On July 26, coalition military forces in support of Operation Inherent Resolve continued their hunt against ISIS militants with eight airstrikes near Manbij, Syria.

A press release from US Central Command states that the airstrikes hit eight tactical units, destroyed 12 fighting positions, and eliminated two ISIS vehicles.

Manbij, a city in northern Syria, is the last piece of ISIS territory that shares a border with Turkey. Currently, US-backed forces have almost completely retaken the city from ISIS in a major blow to the group's territory.

In addition to the strikes in Manbij, coalition forces also struck other ISIS targets in Iraq — destroying weapons caches, bunkers, and mortar positions.

In total, 22 airstrikes using bombers, attack fighters, and remotely piloted aircraft were coordinated against ISIS, the militant group also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh.

Here's what the strike against fighting positions near Manbij, Syria, looked like:

Watch the entire video from CJTF Operation Inherent Resolve:

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SEE ALSO: Watch British forces drop 2 2,000-pound bombs on an ISIS camp in one of Saddam Hussein's old palaces

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In one fell swoop, a series of aerial strafing and bombing runs destroyed 83 oil tankers belonging to ISIS forces in Syria.

USA TODAY reports that after a pilot witnessed a gaggle of vehicles in the oil-rich, ISIS-held region of Deir ez-Zor province, US-led coalition forces sent a surveillance aircraft to provide intelligence on the area. After confirming the targets, A-10s and F-16s were scrambled to dispense more than 80 munitions against the vehicles.

After the dust settled, an estimated $11 million worth of oil and trucks were destroyed in the largest single airstrike against ISIS forces in Syria this year.

“You’re going to have multiple effects from this one strike,” said Air Force commander Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian.

The vehicles, which were reported to have been out in the open, may be indicative of the declining state of ISIS’ leadership and control. After a series of devastating airstrikes from both coalition and Russian forces, ISIS militants have grown accustomed to evade aerial threats by avoiding traveling in large convoys; however, this latest lapse in judgment could be a sign of worse things to come for the militants.

“This is a very good indication that they’re having trouble commanding and controlling their forces,” Harrigian explained to USA TODAY.

The bombing campaign, otherwise known as Tidal Wave II, was enacted to wipe out ISIS’ oil market that was generating more than $1 million a day during its peak.

At the beginning of this operation, coalition aircraft would drop leaflets on the oil tankers prior to their bombing runs to provide the option for drivers to escape. However, after new military rules were implemented, leaflets are no longer required to be dropped.

Instead, pilots are now firing warning shots to indicate their arrival.

SEE ALSO: Watch US-led airstrikes eradicate an ISIS tactical unit

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NOW WATCH: Trump says he was being sarcastic when he called Obama the 'founder of ISIS'

A report verified on Friday by US-backed forces and a separate human rights organization claimed that Islamic State militants in the city of Manbij, Syria had kidnapped around 2,000 civilians to use as “human shields.”

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described that during ISIS’ retreat from Manbij to Jarabulus, a city on the Turkish border, the militants took ahold of their hostages in hopes to slow the SDF’s advances on what was once a major ISIS-held city.

In order to accomplish taking such a large number of hostages, a report by the AFP suggests that ISIS took the residents’ cars and forced civilians into them as they made their retreat — preventing the SDF from targeting them.

After SDF forces began their offensive on May 31, they’ve so far liberated about 90% of Manbij and even rescued 2,500 captive civilians; however, dozens of ISIS fighters still remain and have put up a noticeable resistance.

This wouldn’t be the first time that ISIS has taken hostages during a retreat. More than 400 civilians, including women and children, were taken from eastern Syria in January. Although 270 of them were eventually released, the jihadists had also used hostages for booby-trapped cars and suicide bombings.

Manbij has been a critical Syrian city for ISIS’ supply routes to their main stronghold in Raqqa. After being assaulted not only by the SDF but US-led coalition forces, the militants here have been making numerous blunders during their operations — including having 83 oil tankers out in the open for an easy airstrike.

However, liberating the city has taken a heavy toll as well. The UN has claimed that more than 78,000 people have been displaced since the assault began; and the Observatory suggested that at least 437 civilians, 105 of them children, were killed.

SEE ALSO: US-led forces executed the largest single airstrike of the year against ISIS' oil business

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NOW WATCH: The US Army is sending Apache attack helicopters to fight ISIS in Iraq

The northern Syrian town of Manbij was this week liberated from ISIS after an extended battle between the terrorist group and Kurdish and Arab fighters.

Reuters photographers were on hand to witness the liberation of the town and its people, which also saw the freeing of 2,000 people who were used as a human shield by ISIS.

Check out the incredible photos of Syrians enjoying their freedoms and rescue below:

Manbij in Northern Syria has been a critical Syrian city for ISIS’ supply routes to their main stronghold in Raqqa. ISIS troops have held the city since 2014.

US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters, known as the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), began an assault 73 days ago to try and drive ISIS out.

Source: BBC

The UN has claimed that more than 78,000 people have been displaced since the assault began; and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights suggested that at least 437 civilians, 105 of them children, were killed.

Source: BI

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's military says it has started exercises in the eastern Mediterranean near Syria to test the navy's ability to respond to "crisis situations of a terrorist nature."

The Defense Ministry statement says that in the exercises that began Monday a naval strike force will fire artillery and missiles in combat-like conditions.

The ministry says among the vessels taking part are two Buyan-M corvettes equipped with long-range cruise missiles of the type used to strike the Islamic State group in Syria last year.

Since intervening in Syria's civil war in September, Russia has kept warships off Syria's coast, reviving a Soviet-era practice when Soviet warships maintained a permanent vigil in the Mediterranean. Russia's naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus is now the only such facility outside the ex-Soviet Union.

SEE ALSO: The British army has admitted it is no match for Russia

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BEIRUT – Rebels have assassinated a regime general in the outskirts of the normally-secure Suweida province in southern Syria.

The Army of Free Tribes—a Jordanian-backed tribal coalition active in the Daraa province—claimed responsibility late Sunday for the killing of Ali Sabouh, a three-star general serving in the government’s elite Republican Guard.

In a statement posted on its official Facebook page, the group announced that it killed Sabouh in a “special operation” following a ten-day period in which it monitored his movements.

“We vow to this murderous regime [that we will conduct] earth-shattering operations in its own headquarters,” the rebel faction— a collection of fighters from tribes in Suweida, Daraa, Quneitra and southern rural Damascus—warned.

Pro-regime outlets on Sunday mourned Sabouh’s death, with the Suweida News Network reporting that the Republican Guard officer was killed Saturday when “his vehicle was ambushed between the villages of Khersa and Ariqa while conducting an inspection tour of army positions.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in turn, reported a similar account of the incident, saying that “unknown gunmen targeted vehicles transporting regime forces with an IED along the road between the villages of Khirsa and Ariqa in the outskirts of Suweida.”

“[The blast] killed a general and a number of his bodyguards while injuring other regime force members,” the monitoring NGO tracking developments in the war-torn country added.

Previous Suweida assassination

Another assassination hit the outskirts of the Suweida province in June when Alaa Makhlouf, a staffer of Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad, was killed by a roadside bomb in the Druze-populated province.

An official death notice for Makhlouf circulated in his hometown of Qardaha said that he was killed “at the hands of treachery and treason in the city of Suweida,” but did not go into the circumstances of the incident.

The little-know Free Alawite Brigades was the only opposition group to claim responsibility for the assassination of the Makhlouf, who worked for Asma al-Assad handling outreach to the families of regime soldiers killed in combat.

Despite the claim, the mysterious rebel faction has no known operational presence, and it has yet to either upload a video purporting to show the attack—as has been the practice of many previous assassinations—or provide any further details on the operation.

NOW's English news desk editor Albin Szakola (@AlbinSzakola) wrote this report.

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NOW WATCH: EX-PENTAGON CHIEF: These are the 2 main reasons ISIS was born

Clarissa Ward, a CNN correspondent who has reported on wars for more than a decade, described the "hell" that is Syria in powerful testimony to the UN Security Council earlier this month.

Ward said that in all of her experience covering war, she has "never seen anything on the scale of Aleppo," a Syrian city that was recently under siege.

Driving into Aleppo, Ward was "blown away by the scale of the destruction," she said.

"You heard Dr. [Samer] Attar use the words 'apocalyptic wasteland,'" Ward continued, referring to a doctor with the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation, who also testified. "Those are the words I wrote down and it sounds like hyperbole, but it is not."

Syria seemed like an "apocalyptic wasteland" even in 2012, only one year into the civil war between President Bashar Assad, rebels fighting his regime, and terrorist groups.

"The shelling was relentless, there were snipers everywhere, and I just remember the feeling of exhaustion from being so petrified all the time," Ward said. "[A]gain I find myself using the same language that we've heard from the doctors — this is actually hell. This is what hell feels like."

She described the journey down a road into eastern Aleppo.

"When you're driving along it, you have to drive at absolute top speed because it's flanked by enemy positions on either side and the only thing you can see — they built these little berms of earth to try to protect and it feels like such a feeble, futile gesture — these little berms of earth to protect cars going along from the full force of the artillery and the air power that's coming its way," Ward said.

"And you can see these cars, all along the road, that have just been blown up and left, abandoned," she said.

The landscape had worsened drastically during several more years of war. Ward described what she saw:

"The 'apocalyptic landscape' had become a 'moonscape.' There was nothing but dust, rubble, gray.

"Entire city blocks razed to the ground. You just saw the pictures. Buildings, apartment buildings with no walls, still sort of hanging suspended there.

"But no walls, uninhabitable. It didn't seem like life could exist there. And yet it did."

Despite the constant fighting, some choose to stay in Aleppo rather than flee.

"They made a decision a long time ago that they would rather die in dignity in their homes than leave," she said.

Ward also talked about how the war has gotten only worse since Russia entered the fray last year, running airstrikes in support of the Assad regime while it claims to be fighting terrorism.

Syrians say that Russian airstrikes have hit hospitals filled with innocent civilians, killing men, women, and children.

Watch Ward's powerful testimony below:

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