Syrian Army Airstrikes Kill At Least 24

No fewer than 24 people, mostly civilians, were killed on Wednesday in airstrikes by Syrian army helicopters against two rebel-held areas in the north of the war-torn country, a monitoring group reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 16 people, including eight children, were killed when government helicopters dropped explosives-packed barrels on Tel Rifaat on the northern edge of Aleppo province.

The watchdog said the helicopters also killed eight civilians, including five from one family, with barrel bombs in the village of Latamneh on the northern fringe of Hama province.

The Syrian government has in recent years stepped up aerial attacks using barrel bombs against the rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

The latest surge in the government’s air raids came after Bashar al-Assad’s overstretched troops suffered a series of setbacks by rebels, mainly jihadists.

Human rights organisations have repeatedly condemned the use of barrel bombs, saying they are indiscriminate in their targeting, cause many civilian casualties and that their use constitutes a war crime.

According to activists, no fewer than 220,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Syria’s conflict since it started in March 2011. (dpa/NAN)

US War Against ISIS is ‘Total Fraud’ to Create a CIA Base: Journalist

A Pentagon plan to arm and train the so-called moderate militants in Syria to fight against the ISIS terrorist group is a “total fraud” and “bogus” claim to carve out a CIA base in the region, an American journalist in Missouri says.

The United States is fighting a “multi-front war” against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad because he operates independently from the West, said Dean Henderson, an author and columnist at Veterans Today.

“This whole ISIS thing is just an attempt to carve out this base where CIA, Mossad, British intelligence … can operate freely and attack Syria for now but maybe later Iran,” Henderson told Press TV on Sunday.

Henderson said Congress is wasting “precious US tax dollars” to fund the false fight against ISIS, which the CIA helped create in the beginning.

“We’re not against ISIS, we are ISIS, we created ISIS, we trained ISIS, we are ISIS,” he acknowledged.

On Saturday, a delegation of US senators led by John McCain, began a tour of the Middle East, which will take them to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to discuss a Pentagon plan to arm and train “moderate” militants in Syria.

The US Defense Department has announced it is deploying about 1,000 troops to train the Syrian militants to fight against the ISIS terrorist group.

Some analysts reject the notion that “moderate” militants exist in Syria. “Nobody in any position of expertise here thinks that there really is any significant moderate Syrian rebel force. It does not exist,” Dr. Kevin Barrett, a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

Credit: Press TV