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Some 80 thousand military forces trained by Hizbullah are preparing to launch a ground offensive to recapture Syria’s commercial city of Aleppo, according to a report in the UK-based Sunday Times.
A Hizbullah commander said the fighters belonging to Syria’s National Defense Force (NDF) have been taught “to fight street by street.”
The fighters were also trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the newspaper reported.
Iran will send 4,000 Revolutionary Guard troops to Syria to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, The Independent reported on Sunday.
The decision to send soldiers to Syria was taken last week prior to Friday’s Iranian presidential election which saw cleric Hassan Rohani defeat a number of more conservative candidates.
At least 25 people were killed in troubled southwest Pakistan on Saturday when militants blew up a bus carrying women students and attacked a hospital treating survivors, officials said.
A bomb attack on a bus in Quetta, capital of the restive Baluchistan province, killed 14 women students, and another 11 people died in a blast at a city hospital around 90 minutes later.
The United States and its allies have concluded that the government of Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons in Syria’s protracted civil war, leading President Barack Obama to broaden aid — including military support — to opposition groups.
The intelligence community concluded with “high confidence” that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons — including the nerve agent sarin — “on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.”
Forces loyal to the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and Burma’s military clashed several times over the past week in northern Shan state according to KIO sources. These are the first recorded clashes since the two sides met for peace talks late last month in the Kachin state capital Myitkyina.
On Monday June 10th fighting took place near Hpai Kawng village in the Pangsai (Kyukok) region. This fighting involved Section 5 of the KIO’s local civilian militia force known as the Mungshawa Hpyen Hpung (MHH) and government forces from Infantry Battalion 125.