Beirut (AFP) - At least six children were killed on Sunday in Syrian government shelling that hit a kindergarten in the rebel-held town of Harasta outside the capital Damascus, a monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said 17 people, most of them children, were also injured in the shelling.

An AFP photographer saw the body of one child, a girl, lying on a bed at a makeshift hospital, her face bloodied and her clothes torn. 

At the kindergarten, smears of blood were left on the tiled floor, underneath a small red slide propped against a wall painted with children's drawings.

Harasta is in the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta, outside Damascus, a region that is regularly targeted by government air strikes and shelling.

More than 300,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday Russia's air force would stick to the ceasefire in Syria's Aleppo unless militants launch an offensive.

"The (Russian) president deems a regime when Russian air forces don't carry out strikes on eastern Aleppo as reasonable if militants don't start combat action," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; editing by Vladimir Soldatkin)

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BEIRUT - US special operations forces have begun to deploy outside Raqqa in order to aid the recently-announced Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) campaign against ISIS around its de-facto capital.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Monday that a contingent of US special operators arrived in the Kobane region, north of Raqqa near the Syrian-Turkish border, as part of the offensive spearheaded by the Kurdish-led SDF troops backed by Washington.

Although the monitoring NGO tracking developments in the war-torn country did not provide estimates on the number of troops dispatched for the Raqqa front, trusted sources told the SOHR that more US soldiers were taking part in the new campaign than did in the Manbij offensive against ISIS earlier in 2016.

On Sunday, a source in the SDF told AFP that 50 advisors were deployed as part of Operation Euphrates Wrath, which seeks to surround Raqqa and cut logistic lines leading into the ISIS stronghold from the east and west, in conjunction with the offensive against Mosul in Iraq.

Pictures have emerged in the past day showing US troops near the frontlines, with both Reuters and Russia Today, among others, publishing photos of the special operations troops outside Raqqa.

Washington has yet to issue any official statements on its troop presence in Operation Euphrates Wrath, a large-scale campaign that is expected to last months amid regional political jockeying over which forces will enter the predominantly Arab-populated Raqqa.

The SOHR also reported that the US-led coalition fighting ISIS sent “advanced weapons and ammunition” to the SDF troops right before they launched their campaign over the weekend.

SDF spokesperson Talal Silo confirmed the claim, telling The Wall Street Journal that the “battle was contingent on the arrival of a shipment of weapons and ammunition from the coalition.”

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

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In the November issue of the US Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine, Commander Daniel Thomassen of the Royal Norwegian Navy argued that Russia's dream to build a blue water, or global, navy remains a "pipe dream." 

Russia's navy has made headlines recently with high profile cruise missile strikes on Syria, and the deployment of the core of its norther fleet, including the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier, to the Mediterranean. 

According to Thomassen, Russia's navy has considerable regional defense and anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) capabilities, but no reasonable path towards the type of naval power the US wields. 

"Russia is capable of being a regional naval power in local theaters of choice. But large-scale efforts to develop an expensive expeditionary navy with aircraft carriers and amphibious warfare ships only would diminish Russia’s geographically overstretched homeland defense forces," writes Thomassen.

Thomassen goes on to point out that strong navies have strong allies and healthy fleets. While Russia has been improving its fleet with some particularly good submarines, it lacks a big fleet that can build partnerships with allies around the world through bilateral exercises. 

The US, on the other hand, regularly engages with allies to strengthen joint operations. The US can do this in part because it has enough ships around the world.

But the state of Russia's navy now is only part of the picture. Russia has never been a major naval power, Thomassen points out. At times Moscow has established itself as a coastal naval power, but it never had a truly global reach on par with historic powers like England or Spain.

Furthermore, Russia's future as a naval power isn't that bright. Russia has been in a recession for 3 solid years. International sanctions tied to its illegal annexation of Crimea have greatly reduced Moscow's ability to bulk up its fleet.

But that doesn't seem to matter to Russian leadership, which has set "highly ambitious governmental guidelines for developing and using sea power over the next decades."

In addition to its submarine fleet, Russia wants new frigates, cruisers, and even carriers. These prospects seem especially dubious because Russia's Kuznetsov isn't really a strike carrier like the US's Nimitz-class carriers.

The Kuznetsov has never conducted a combat mission. Mechanical troubles plague the Kuznetsov, so much so that it often sails with a tugboat. Also, the Kuznetsov just isn't built for the kind of mission it will undertake off Syria's coast.

Taylor Mavin, writing for Smoke and Stir, notes the following:

"Since a major confrontation between NATO and Warsaw Pact would most likely take place in Europe, during the later Cold War Soviet planners focused on protecting the heavily defended 'bastions' shielding their ballistic missile submarines and not seaborne power projection. 

In fact, Russia itself doesn't have the makings of a global sea power. While it has both Pacific and Atlantic coasts, like the US, the population of Russia's far east is about as sparse as you'll find anywhere in the world. 

But one powerful reason dictates why Russia's leadership still marches towards this seemingly unattainable goal — prestige. Being seen as a credible alternative to Western naval power seems important to Russian leadership, and operating a carrier is one way to do that. Additionally, Moscow will spin its carrier deployment as propaganda, or a showcase for its military wares.

So while Russia has capable, credible naval forces to defend its homeland and near interests, it will likely never project power abroad like the US and other naval powers of the past have. 

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While Americans head to the polls all across the US, Russia's sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, will position itself to strike at rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Reuters reports.

“While in previous cases, when missile attacks were launched from the Caspian Sea, there were dozens of targets destroyed, this time, in literally two to three days, hundreds of terrorist targets will be destroyed from long range," a source told Russia's  Gazeta.

A common Russian talking point is to define all who oppose Assad as "terrorists," when independent reports indicate that many of Russia and Syria's airstrikes actually kill civilians and moderate rebels, perhaps purposefully. 

Aleppo, where Russia has continuously carried out airstrikes for over a year, represents one of the last strongholds of Syrian rebels fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has also seen grisly acts as Syria and Russia have been tied to war crimes for bombing schools, hospitals, and other civilian areas.

Russia's Northern fleet headed to the Mediterranean in October, causing concern for NATO nations as the heavily armed flotilla made its way down.

Recently, a Russian sailor aboard one of the world's largest battleships, the Peter the Great, may have revealed the position of the battle group by posting a selfie on social media.

While Russia's deployment of the fleet may send a message, it does not greatly change the military situation. Russia's aircraft carrier has limited capabilities, and won't greatly improve Moscow's overall capabilities in the region.

In fact, Andrew Fink at the US Naval Institute's news service concluded that Russia's naval deployment to Syria's coast was "propaganda, not practical."

Russia often releases video along with its strikes, so perhaps we'll see a display of their military might and support for Assad while the US counts its ballots.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) — Donald Trump's election as U.S. president on Wednesday drew concern among Syrian rebel groups and a degree of optimism in Damascus, where his victory was seen as a better outcome than a Hillary Clinton win.

Syrian rebels have long been fiercely critical of what they perceive as the Obama administration's inadequate backing for their fight against President Bashar al-Assad, though Washington has been an important sponsor of the uprising.

But Trump's statements on Syria, and his more open-minded stance toward Assad's ally Russia, have fueled rebel concern about the policy he may adopt on Syria's conflict, in which the Russian air force has been bombing insurgents.

"I think things will become difficult because of Trump's statements and his relationship with Putin and Russia. I imagine this is not good for the Syrian issue," Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of an Aleppo-based rebel group, told Reuters.

The Syrian opposition says Obama failed to back them adequately after calling for Assad to leave power, failing to enforce his own "red line" against the use of chemical weapons and blocking the delivery of anti-aircraft weapons to rebels.

"The Americans were never honest with us. They left us in a quagmire that drowned the Syrians ... Everyone is trading with our blood and suffering," said Abu Hamed, head of the military council of rebel group Liwa al Haq Brigade, speaking from Hama.

Some rebels believe that Trump will make no difference to long-established American policy towards the region.

"Trump is like any American president ... Western policy and especially American policy have become clear towards the region and especially the Middle East in its enmity towards the aspirations of people suffering injustice," said Abu Assad Dabeq, a commander in a Turkish-backed rebel group fighting Islamic State in northern Syria.

In Damascus, a member of the Syrian parliament said he was cautiously optimistic that U.S. policy would shift Assad's way.

"We must be optimistic, but cautiously optimistic," Sherif Shehada, the MP, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

He said Gulf Arab states — which have backed the Syrian rebellion — had been depending on a Clinton victory and were now in "a predicament.""The American administration must carry out what it said in the election campaign."

Russia's intervention in support of Assad last year helped Damascus turn the tide against insurgents who had been making steady territorial advances, and gave Moscow decisive influence over diplomacy.

Prominent Syrian opposition politician George Sabra said: "We do not expect much from the new American administration, but we hope that the face of President Donald Trump is totally different to the face of Mr. Donald Trump the candidate."

Trump said in an Oct. 25 interview with Reuters that defeating Islamic State was a higher priority than persuading Assad to step down, and warned that Clinton could drag the United States into a new world war over the Syria conflict.

Clinton was the U.S. secretary of state when the uprising against Assad began in 2011, during a wave of protests against Arab autocrats known as the Arab Spring.

The Syrian uprising mushroomed into a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, allowed for the rise of Islamic State and created the world's worst refugee crisis.

Russia and Iran have provided direct military support to Assad while countries that want to see him gone from power, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, have provided rebels with backing including military support.

Another political opposition figure said indications Trump might have a more isolationist policy than President Barack Obama would mean other regional powers could start to play a bigger role in the Syrian and other Middle East crises.

Hadi al-Bahra, former president and current member of the Syrian National Coalition, an opposition political body, told Reuters that potential positive aspects to Trump's presidency included his opposition to Iranian influence and Iran's nuclear deal with world powers, and his perceived willingness to work with Russia on the Syrian issue.

"All these indicators can be built upon to form policies which align with the national aspirations and objectives of the Syrian revolution," Bahra said.

(Reporting by Tom Perry and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Moscow (AFP) — Russia on Wednesday accused a Dutch submarine of trying to monitor its aircraft carrier and escort vessels in the Mediterranean, denouncing such manoeuvres as "dangerous." 

According to the Russian defence ministry, the Severomorsk and the Vice-Admiral Kulakov, two of its anti-submarine ships, had "spotted a submarine from the Dutch navy ... which tried to approach the Northern Fleet's aircraft carrier group in the eastern Mediterranean."

The Dutch submarine, which was detected by anti-submarine helicopters, was located around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Russian warships, it said. 

"The vessels followed its manoeuvres for more than an hour and forced it to leave the deployment area of the aircraft carrier's group," a ministry statement said. 

"These clumsy attempts to carry out dangerous manoeuvres in the immediate proximity of a group of Russian vessels could have had grave navigational consequences," it said. 

Russian warships "regularly" detect NATO submarines on their way to the Mediterranean, the ministry said. 

Contacted by AFP, the Dutch defence ministry had no immediate comment on its naval operations. 

In recent months, Russia has reinforced its naval presence in the Mediterranean as part of its intervention in Syria where it has been conducting an aerial campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad. 

Russia also has an airbase in Hmeimim just south of the Syrian city of Latakia from which it has carried out air strikes since the start of its military intervention in September 2015, as well as a naval facility in the port city of Tartus.

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GENEVA (Reuters) - Aid workers in eastern Aleppo were distributing the last available food rations on Thursday as the quarter of a million people besieged in the Syrian city entered what is expected to be a cruel winter, U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said.

The United Nations sent a four-part humanitarian plan to all parties to the conflict several days ago, covering delivery of food and medical supplies, medical evacuations and access for health workers, and Egeland said he was hopeful of a deal.

"I do believe we will be able to avert mass hunger this winter," he told reporters in Geneva, adding that he had the clear impression that Russia would continue its pause in air operations over the northern city.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles)

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BEIRUT - A top commander in the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has been assassinated in mysterious circumstances near the Syrian-Turkish border, according to local media outlets.

On Wednesday, the activist Hasakeh Press reported that an improvised explosive device blast killed Ali Boutan, who the outlet called a “YPG leader,” and two of his bodyguards as they drove along the road linking the border city of Qamishli with the nearby town of Qahtaniyeh (Tirbespiye in Kurdish).

A number of other local outlets and activists, including pro-YPG ones, wrote similar accounts of the incident, without going into details on the possible perpetrators of the attack or Ali Boutan’s role in YPG.

The YPG, for its part, issued a terse statement Wednesday that a taxi laden with explosives detonated on the Qamishli-Qahtaniyeh road at approximately 5:30 p.m., killing “two fighters.”

However, the Kurdish fighting force did not identify the victims of the blast.

Less than a day after the IED explosion, Turkey’s Anadolu News trumpeted the assassination, saying that Ali Boutan, also known Haji Kurkhan, was the “leader of the YPG special forces.”

“Boutan was responsible for sending [PKK] fighters to Turkey to conduct terror operations,” the report further claimed.

The state-run agency account of his death echoed earlier ones from northern Syria, with Anadolu citing “local sources” as saying the YPG commander was killed in an armed attack targeting his car on the Qamishli-Qahtaniyeh road near the Syrian-Turkish border.

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

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The US Naval Institute News' Sam LaGrone reports that armed fighters have flown from Russia's Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.

As of yet, no strikes have been carried out. Only scouting missions involving the Su-33s and MiG-29Ks have gone forward, according to Lagrone.

While the Kuznetsov and attack planes on board add little to Russia's capabilities in the region, the US has nonetheless condemned Russia escalating a conflict where humanitarian catastrophes and possibly war crimes go on with some regularity.

“We are aware of reports that the Russian Federation is preparing to escalate their military campaign in Syria. The United States, time and again, has worked to try and de-escalate the violence in Syria and provide humanitarian aid to civilians suffering under siege,” a Pentagon statement provided to USNI News on Wednesday read.

Russia's deployment of the troubled, Soveit-era Kuznetsov to Syria serves little military purpose, and likely deployed for propaganda purposes.

Read the full article at USNI News here»

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In an interview with NPR, aides to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad expressed joy and enthusiasm for incoming US President Trump.

"We are happy that Clinton did not win. This is for sure. She's the one who considered all these terrorist, Islamist, jihadist groups as moderate rebels," a Syrian parliamentarian told NPR.

The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad classifies all who oppose them as terrorists; however, the conflict began with pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring.

There remains moderate, pro-democratic forces fighting Assad's forces in Aleppo and elsewhere in Western Syria, many of whom the US backs via train and equip missions. However, the regime places treats these forces, some of which support democracy and secularism, in the same category as ISIS or al-Qaeda affiliates.

When the Syrian regime and their Russian backers talk about eliminating "terrorists" in Syria, they almost exclusively mean the rebel groups. Almost all of the offensives on ISIS have been carried out by Kurds, or a US-led coalition.

But Donald Trump has echoed the regime's claims saying, during a debate with Hillary Clinton in October, "I don't like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS."

At one point, Trump even went as far as to say he wished the US and Russia could fight the terrorists together.

The map below shows Russia isn't really interested in fighting ISIS, and that it is only interested in propping up the Assad regime.

"They have spent almost all their time trying to eliminate the moderate opposition because they want to boil it down to a choice between the extremists and Assad," Robert Ford, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who was the US ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014, said of Assad's regime targeting rebels to Business Insider in October.

The rebels, for their part, seem disheartened by the election results. Syria and Russia have been linked, by numerous and credible sources, to heinous war crimes in Syria having bombed schools, hospitals, civilian areas— nothing is safe.

In fact, the few remaining doctors in Syria's Aleppo have had to hide underground from the constant Russian and Syrian air raids. Syrian and Russian planes, however, have found a way to circumvent this by using bunker-busting bombs to destroy the hospitals anyway.

Defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton proposed taking measures to protect civilians in Syria, igniting hope in the rebels.

"The opposition was really looking forward to Secretary Clinton coming forward and implementing some kind of civilian protection ... Now that hope has been completely devastated," a Syrian-American activist with knowledge of the rebels told NPR.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany supports a dialogue between the United States and Russia, but Donald Trump must not ignore Russian actions in Crimea and Aleppo when he sits down with President Vladimir Putin, the German defence minister said on Friday.

Speaking at an event in Berlin, Ursula von der Leyen also said that NATO would be "dead" if any one of its members refused to come to the defence of another that was under attack.

Trump, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election this week, praised Putin repeatedly during his campaign and questioned whether the United States should defend NATO allies that were not shouldering their fair share of the financial burden in the alliance.

"It is a good thing when the new American president immediately seeks a dialogue with the Russian president. It is good and it has our full support," von der Leyen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, said.

"What can't happen is forgetting - forgetting the annexation of Crimea, forgetting the hybrid war in Ukraine which continues, forgetting the bombardment of Aleppo," she said.

Trump's election has deeply unsettled the government in Berlin, which has been the driving force behind EU sanctions against Russia for Putin's military intervention in Ukraine and has strongly condemned the bombing of civilians in the rebel-held Syrian city of Aleppo by Russian-backed forces.

Russia is hoping the united front between Europe and Washington on sanctions will crumble under Trump. On Thursday, a Kremlin spokesman described Trump and Putin's approach to foreign policy as "phenomenally close". [nL8N1DB8PK]

Von der Leyen acknowledged that Trump's victory meant Germany and Europe would likely have to take on more responsibility for their own defence.

But she said the German government was still struggling to answer the question of what a Trump presidency meant, saying "we know next to nothing." 

(Reporting by Noah Barkin; editing by Mark Heinrich)

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies hope to benefit from Donald Trump’s election win, believing it has saved them from the risks of an interventionist Clinton administration.

Trump's win may have already shifted the course of the Russian-backed military campaign in Aleppo. A senior pro-Assad official told Reuters that plans to capture the rebel-held east by January were shaped around an assumption Clinton would win.

The confidence in Damascus will have been justified if some of Trump’s comments on Syria crystallize into policy, though there are questions over how far he will follow through on suggestions such as cooperating with Russia - President Bashar al-Assad's most powerful military ally - against Islamic State.

One complicating factor could be Trump's tough stance on Iran, Assad's other main military backer. Trump has threatened to rip up the nuclear deal with Iran and heaped criticism on the sanctions relief it brought. Long-standing Republican aversion to Assad may also block any big policy shift, analysts say.

Yet Trump has struck a different tone to current U.S. policy on some aspects of the multi-sided Syrian conflict, where the United States with allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia has backed some of the insurgents who have been fighting to topple Assad for more than five years.

Trump has questioned the wisdom of backing rebels, played down the U.S. goal of getting Assad to leave power, and noted that while he didn't like him, "Assad is killing ISIS" with Iran and Russia. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

"This is very comforting for us and our allies in Syria," said the senior official in the military alliance fighting in support of Assad, who is backed by the Russian air force, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and other militias.

"The wave is currently with us, serving our interests, and we must benefit from it as fully as possible," said the official, who declined to be identified by nationality or affiliation so he could give a frank assessment.

The war has shattered Syria into a patchwork of areas controlled by Assad's state, rebels battling to topple him, a powerful Kurdish militia, and the Islamic State group. It has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and created the world's worst refugee crisis.

While Washington has provided significant support to the opposition, it has never matched the backing given to Assad by Russia and Iran. The rebels have seen U.S. policy as a betrayal of their revolt, with Washington focusing mostly on the fight against IS in the last two years.

Trump 'a new factor' for Damascus

The ground war between Assad and the rebellion has this year focused largely on Aleppo, in the north west of Syria. The government is trying to recapture the rebel-held east of the city, the opposition's most important urban stronghold.

Expectations of a Hillary Clinton win have been shaping military planning in the Aleppo campaign for some time, and the aim had been to conclude the campaign before the new U.S. president took office, the senior official said.

While that is still the plan, the official said Trump's victory was a "new factor". Russian President Vladimir Putin would "certainly have a different approach towards the entire Syrian crisis based on what will happen with Trump".

The Syrian newspaper al-Watan said most Syrians had felt "joy" at the result, and that many had spent the night up following the U.S. election. Trump had no designs in Syria, or the region, it declared.

While some in the opposition expressed concern about Trump's statements and views on Putin, others still hold out hope for a U.S. policy that serves their cause. A senior rebel leader noted Trump's views on Iran were "positive" for the Syrian opposition.

"Today, the role of the United States remains active and essential in Syria, regardless of whether he tries to distance himself from it, he won't be able to," said the rebel, who declined to be identified so he could talk freely.

A build-up of Russian forces has fueled speculation of an imminent escalation in the campaign for eastern Aleppo, where hundreds of people were reported killed in air strikes before Russia declared a pause on Oct. 18.

Rebels say they are well-entrenched in eastern Aleppo, a besieged area the United Nations says is home to 270,000 people. The rebels say it will be impossible for government forces to take the area.

Russian firepower has in recent weeks focused on rebel-held areas to the west of the city, from where insurgents recently launched their own offensive on government-held parts of Aleppo. Rebel shelling has killed dozens of people in western Aleppo.

Asked about Aleppo in an October debate with Clinton, Trump said it was a humanitarian disaster but the city had "basically" fallen. Clinton, he said, was talking in favor of rebels without knowing who they were.

The rebels fighting Assad in western Syria include nationalists fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner, some of them trained in a CIA-backed program, and jihadists such as the group formerly known as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Rather than focusing on fighting Assad, Islamic State, has prioritized the expansion and defense of its self-declared "caliphate" in eastern and central Syria.

Republican aversion to Assad, Putin, Iran

Damascus had hoped that it could win back international legitimacy as part of the international fight against Islamic State, but the United States has rejected that idea, viewing Assad as part of the problem.

The U.S.-led fight against Islamic State in Syria is fraught with complications. The United States has built its strategy around a powerful Kurdish militia that has carved out a self-governing areas across much of northern Syria.

But its alliance with that militia, the YPG, has angered Turkey, a U.S. ally worried that Kurdish influence in northern Syria will fuel separatism among its own Kurdish minority.

The YPG has in turn fought FSA rebels backed by Turkey, which is itself waging a major operation in northern Syria.

One senior adviser who Trump will inherit is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine General Joseph Dunford.

Dunford told Congress in September he thought it would not be a good idea for the military to share intelligence with Russia on Syria, something Moscow has long sought. Republican stalwarts who might join Trump's cabinet or become advisers are unlikely to want close relations with Putin.

Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, forecast that Trump would start out by sounding out Russia on options for a political transition or agreement to end the war.

Failing that, he may decide to leave western Syria as a Russian zone of influence, with the United States and its allies fighting Islamic State in the east.

"I think it is going to be fluid. Remember a lot of the Republican foreign policy folks in Washington will probably go into this government, and they have very strong feelings about Iran and about the Assad regime, so I don't see a situation where the United States suddenly cozies up to Assad," he said. 

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by Janet McBride)

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In the midst of the ongoing war in Damascus, Syria became too dangerous for Rana and her four children, so they fled to the relatively safe suburb of Jamarana. But they only had enough money to rent a cinder block-walled home without mattresses or plumbing.

A recent initiative by the Red Cross in Norway aimed to help Rana and other struggling families in Syria. Rana's family currently receives food and other donations from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, a humanitarian organization that's a part of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross partnered with Ikea to build a replica of Rana's home at the flagship store in Stockholm, so that shoppers could explore it and empathize with her story. People could donate in-store or online.

The installation, which was up in October and visited by 40,000 weekly visitors, was part of a larger campaign to support the Red Cross' efforts in Syria. The organization told CNN that the campaign raised $23.8 million.

The project in Ikea, conceived by the advertising agency POL, was called "25 meters of Syria," the size of the home's replica. That translates to 269 square feet, or just a little bigger than the average one-car garage.

Instead of beds, there were foam mats and just a few blankets. Ikea's iconic tags told stories about Rana and her family for shoppers to read.

According to Ikea, the goal was to raise money for war victims and show the horrors of war in Syria, amongst the other picture-perfect home set-ups in the store.

Check out a video about the project below:

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A Russian navy MiG-29K fighter crashed into the Mediterranean while attempting to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier after operating over Syria, Fox News reports.

A helicopter recovered the pilot, whose status is unknown, US officials told Fox.

Recent reports and videos suggest that Russia began the Kuznetsov's first combat deployment last week in the Mediterranean to support Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Experts agree that the Kuznetsov's deployment to Syria doesn't meaningfully increase Russia's capabilities in the area and that the deployment was done more for propaganda purposes and to showcase Moscow's military hardware, like the MiG-29K, which was featured prominently in a flashy video of the operations aboard the Kuznetsov.

The news of the crash could hurt Russia's prospects of exporting the plane to nations like India, Thailand, and China, which also operate MiGs and ski-slope-style aircraft carriers.

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AMMAN: Turkish-backed Syrian rebels are battling Islamic State fighters and meeting “fierce resistance” two kilometers from the self-proclaimed caliphate’s last major stronghold in Aleppo province on Monday, the second day of a renewed push to capture al-Bab with the support of Ankara’s artillery and warplanes.

“The battle has begun in earnest,” Mahmoud Abu Hamzah, the commander of Liwa Ahfad Salaheddin, a Kurdish Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigade participating in the campaign told Syria Direct on Monday.

Al-Bab, located 30km south of Turkey’s southern border with Syria, is the Islamic State’s last major holding in northeast Aleppo province.

The well-fortified city is the latest objective of Turkish-backed rebels currently fighting within Operation Euphrates Shield, a campaign launched by Turkey in late August to battle not only the Islamic State but also US-backed Kurdish forces, in northern Syria.

Over the past 12 weeks, Syrian rebels and their Turkish backers have reportedly cleared IS from “almost 1,600 square kilometers” of land, Ankara’s Anadolu Agency reported on Monday.

“We have entered the outskirts of al-Bab city,” said Abu Hamzah, after a “very swift advance” with the “heavy” support of Turkish artillery, armored vehicles and warplanes.

Fighting is currently concentrated at a livestock market north of al-Bab. The commander said that more than two dozen Islamic State (IS) fighters were killed there in the battles.

“We are meeting fierce resistance,” he added. Islamic State fighters “are battling with everything they have.”

At least nine FSA fighters have been killed and 52 others injured in recent days, Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported on Monday, citing a statement by the Turkish Armed Forces. Four Turkish soldiers have also been wounded.

Syrian rebels began the fresh attack to capture al-Bab early Sunday morning. Pushing southward from their territory in northeastern Aleppo province, FSA fighters have now advanced roughly nine kilometers towards al-Bab, leaving them 2km from the city. In the process, they captured seven villages and towns, according to the official Euphrates Shield account on Twitter.

FSA fighters and their Turkish backers are not the only ones with eyes on al-Bab. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—which Turkey accuses of links to the PKK—declared their intent to capture the city earlier this year.

Following advances by Kurdish-led forces towards al-Bab from territory they hold west of the city in recent weeks, “Turkish Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army accelerated operations,” Anadolu reported on Sunday. After the latest FSA advance, it appears virtually impossible for the SDF to move in from the west and take the city.

Now, FSA fighters are in position not only to storm al-Bab, Abu Hamzah told Syria Direct, but also to capture Qabaseen, a Kurdish-majority town roughly seven kilometers to the northeast. 

In the latest advance over the weekend, rebels recaptured Jabal a-Deir, an elevated area that overlooks both Qabaseen and al-Bab, said Abu Hamzah. The elevated position allowed rebels to “fire cut the supply route between the two towns,” he added.

“It’s game over,” added the commander. “With the fall of al-Bab and Qabaseen, the two largest remaining cities IS holds in Aleppo, their presence will be virtually over.”

There were conflicting reports on Sunday regarding the United States-led international coalition’s role in the latest fighting in northeast Aleppo province.

FSA commander Abu Hamzah told Syria Direct that rebels “provided coordinates of IS positions to the coalition,” which he says were then struck. IS-affiliated media agency Amaq reported on Sunday that “three American air raids targeted the outskirts of al-Bab.”

The coalition did not report airstrikes in Aleppo on Sunday. Turkey’s Anadolu Agency on Monday reported that “no aircraft from the international anti-Daesh [IS] coalition were involved” in the latest fighting.

Turkish airstrikes reportedly struck “15 Daesh terrorist targets,” the Anadolu Agency reported on Monday, referring to the Islamic State’s Arabic acronym.

Aerial and ground bombardment of al-Bab by Turkish and FSA forces continued on Monday. A video published by IS media outlet Amaq the day before, purportedly of the aftermath of Turkish shelling, includes a clip of injured adults and a child in a hospital.

With FSA and Turkish forces 2km north of al-Bab, Amaq claimed on Monday that Ankara’s tanks were “indiscriminately bombarding residential areas” of the city.

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SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Russia launched coordinated missile strikes against rebels in Syria on Tuesday and Moscow for the first time used its only aircraft carrier in combat, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said.

Shoigu said a frigate had fired cruise missiles, jets from the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia's sole aircraft carrier, had been involved in action, and missiles had been loosed from a mobile land-based missile system inside Syria.

Reporting to President Vladimir Putin in southern Russia, Shoigu said Russia had targeted sites associated with Islamic State and the Nusra Front, which has changed its name to Fateh al-Sham, in the Homs and Idlib provinces.

"We carried out exhaustive advance research on all targets," said Shoigu. "We are talking about warehouses with ammunition, terrorist training centers ... and factories."

Shoigu said the strikes would continue. He made no mention of Aleppo, where a civil defense official and a resident said air strikes had struck several districts in the rebel-held east of the city for the first time in weeks.

Syrian state television said Syria's air force carried out strikes on Aleppo on Tuesday. Russia says its air force is for now honoring a unilateral moratorium on hitting rebel targets inside Aleppo.

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This week, President Barack Obama admitted that the US had essentially been muscled out of Syria by being relegated to a diplomatic role in the country.

"With respect to Syria, in Benghazi we had an international mandate,"Obama said at a Monday news conference, comparing the situation in Syria to the 2011 intervention against Libyan Col. Muammar Gaddafi. "We had a UN Security resolution. We had a broad-based coalition, and we were able to carry out a support mission that achieved the initial goal of preventing Benghazi from being slaughtered fairly quickly."

In March 2011, US Air Force B-1 bombers took off from South Dakota, flew halfway around the world, and slammed Libya's air defenses. US Navy ships in the Mediterranean pounded targets with cruise missiles. Seven months later, Gaddafi was killed by Libyan rebels, and the intervention was complete.

The conflict exemplified the US's ability to crush foes militarily through coalition-building.

But Obama acknowledged on Monday that the US military no longer had that capability in Syria. "Syria is a much more messy situation, with proxies coming from every direction," Obama said, referring to Iran and Russia, which have inserted themselves into the conflict on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In some ways, politics prohibit Obama from striking Assad the way he struck Gaddafi. Obama, as one expert on Iran and Yemen put it, has proved "phobic" of confronting Iran, a key backer of the Assad regime, because of the US pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran.

Another reason Obama can't strike Assad the way he did Gaddafi is strategic. Russia has installed advanced missile defense and antiaircraft batteries in Syria. These present significant threats to the US military and greatly complicate the US's options.

So with Russia's help, Assad's forces continue to pound rebel targets in Syria, even targeting civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools. The international community has repeatedly accused Assad and Russia of war crimes at least on par with the abuses that spurred the US to strike Gaddafi.

"I wish that I could bring this to a halt immediately," Obama said of the suffering in Syria.

"We have made every effort to try to bring about a political resolution to this challenge," he said. "John Kerry has spent an infinite amount of time trying to negotiate with Russians and Iranians and Gulf states and other parties to try to end the killing there."

And here is Obama's acknowledgment that the US has run out of leverage in Syria: "But if what you're asking is do we have the capacity to carry out the same kinds of military actions in Syria that we did in Libya, the situation is obviously different.

"We don't have that option easily available to us."

But military solutions represent only a small portion of the US's options. The White House has attempted diplomatic solutions, lately between the US and Russia, time and time again.

"I recognize that that has not worked," Obama said of the diplomatic efforts. "And it is something that I continue to think about every day, and we continue to try to find some formula that would allow us to see that suffering end."

Indeed, the US's lack of credible military leverage must complicate the "formula" to get Russia, Syria, and Iran to act against their interests.

"You have a Syrian military that is committed to killing its people indiscriminately, as necessary, and it is supported by Russia that now have substantial military assets on the ground and are actively supporting that regime, and Iran actively supporting that regime," Obama said.

But he made it clear that his priority wasn't with protecting the rebels or civilians under fire from a ruthless regime, as it was in Libya with Gaddafi, but rather it was with fighting ISIS, the international terrorist group also known as the Islamic State. "The situation is not the same as it was in Libya," Obama said, regarding the presence of ISIS in Syria.

The Obama administration's policy toward Syria has been inconsistent with previous US interventions. The suffering of the Syrian people and the brutality of the Assad regime, with even Assad's crossing of Obama's "red line" by using chemical weapons, didn't spur the US into action.

Earlier in the Syrian conflict, the US could have overthrown Assad much as it did Gaddafi, but that window has closed.

And now Obama has admitted that.

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U.S. lawmakers passed bills on Tuesday renewing sanctions on Iran for 10 years and imposing new sanctions on Syria, underscoring their determination to play a strong role in Middle East policy no matter who occupies the White House.

The House of Representatives voted 419 to one for a 10-year reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, a law first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran's energy industry and deter Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The House also passed by voice vote a bill that would sanction the government of Syria, and supporters including Russia and Iran, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Iran measure will expire at the end of 2016 if it is not renewed. It must still be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama in order to become law.

The Obama administration and other world powers reached an agreement last year in which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

But lawmakers said they wanted the ISA to stay in effect to send a strong message that the United States will respond to provocations by Iran and give any U.S. president the ability to quickly reinstate sanctions if Tehran violated the nuclear agreement.

"Even after a hard-fought election here at home and power changing hands, American leadership on the global stage won't falter," said Representative Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a bill sponsor.

Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the bill's lead sponsor, called the ISA "a critical tool."

"Its expiration would compound the damage done by the president's dangerous nuclear deal and send a message that the United States will no longer oppose the destructive role of Iran in the Middle East," said Royce.

The vote took place one week after Republican Donald Trump was elected U.S. president. Congressional Republicans unanimously opposed the nuclear deal, along with about two dozen Democrats, and Trump has also strongly criticized it.

Lawmakers from both parties said they hoped bipartisan support for a tough line against Iran would continue under the new president.

There was no immediate word from Senate leaders on when the ISA and the Syria measure might be taken up in that chamber.

Many Senate Democrats favor a "clean" renewal of the ISA, like the one that passed in the House. But other lawmakers have pushed to add new sanctions such as some specifically targeting Iran's ballistic missile tests.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Tom Brown)

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Damascus (AFP) - Syria's Bashar al-Assad said in an interview aired on Tuesday that Donald Trump will be a "natural ally" if the US president-elect fulfills his pledge to fight "terrorists".

"We cannot tell anything about what he's going to do, but if... he is going to fight the terrorists, of course we are going to be ally, natural ally in that regard with the Russian, with the Iranian, with many other countries," the Syrian president told Portugal's RTP state television.

Asked about Trump's campaign comments suggesting the United States should focus more on fighting the Islamic State group, Assad said he would welcome such a move but was cautious.

"I would say this is promising, but can he deliver?" said Assad, who was speaking in English.

"Can he go in that regard? What about the countervailing forces within the administration, the mainstream media that were against him? How can he deal with it?" said the Syrian leader.

"That's why for us it's still dubious whether he can do or live up to his promises or not.

"That's why we are very cautious in judging him, especially as he wasn't in a political position before," said Assad.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week, Trump said "I've had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria".

He also said that if the United States attacks Assad "we end up fighting Russia", an ally of the Syrian regime.

Assad also accused the United States of interfering in the affairs of other countries. "They think that they are the police of the world. They think they are the judge of the world. They're not," he said.

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