The US military strike on a Syrian airbase has caused several deaths, said the governor of Homs province where the Shayrat base is located.
“There are martyrs, but we don’t yet know the number either of martyrs or of wounded,” Talal Barazi told AFP by telephone.
He said parts of the base were on fire and some of the wounded were suffering from burns.
“It will take some time to determine the extent of the damages,” he said.
“Of course we condemn this, all action targeting Syrian military bases is condemnable,” Barazi said.
He said the forces present at the base “provide important support” in the battle against the Islamic State group in the Palmyra region, home to a famed desert city that Syrian troops recaptured from jihadists last month.
President Donald Trump has ordered a temporary ban of nationals from war troubled Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen pending the review of the vetting processes.
The president also ordered the erection of a wall along the US-Mexico border beginning from Wednesday (today).
He said this on Tuesday as he unveiled his actions on border and national security.
He has indicated temporary ban on immigration from Muslim countries deemed a ‘threat to national security’.
Trump will also sign other domestic immigration enforcement measures that will include targeting sanctuary cities that decline to prosecute undocumented aliens.
The president posted a tweet on Tuesday evening signaling that major announcements were in the offing.
‘Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow (Wenesday)’, Trump tweeted.
‘Among many other things, we will build the wall!’
The new Trump directives will also stop most refugees including those from Syria coming to America while vetting processes are reviewed.
The one exception is religious minorities fleeing persecution – which would apply to Christians fleeing Syria and other Muslim majority countries.
In total the six immediate actions are as follows: Release of funds toward the construction of a wall along the southern border; Target so-called ‘sanctuary’ cities that decline to prosecute undocumented aliens; Institute a four-month freeze on admission of all refugees.
Others are Temporarily ban nationals from Muslim-majority countries that are ‘terror prone’; Halt visas to people from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen; Grant exceptions to Christians and other minorities fleeing Muslim persecution.
The incoming U.S. administration led by Donald Trump has been invited to participate in Syria peace talks in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Tuesday.
Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, have been coordinating the peace talks between the Syrian government and rebel groups.
They are scheduled to begin on Monday in the Central Asian nation.
Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow that terrorism has been the world’s biggest threat over the past year.
He said he hoped that with Trump as president, Russia, and the U.S. would be able to work more closely on countering terrorism, particularly in Syria.
Self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of dreadful Al-Qaeda terrorist group have been ranked in the recently published Forbes world’s most powerful people list.
Ayman al-Zawahiri Leader, Al-Qaeda.
Among hundreds of candidates from various walks of life all around the globe measured along four dimensions: power over lots of people, financial resources controlled by each person, powerful in multiple spheres and active use of power, the two notorious terrorist leaders happened to fall into the selection criteria of Forbes.
To calculate the final rankings, Forbes said “a panel of Forbes editors ranked all of our candidates in each of these four dimensions of power, and those individual rankings were averaged into a composite score”.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, 65, emerging 71 on the list, is an Egyptian-born terrorist leader who succeeded Osama bin Laden as leader of al Qaeda.
Al-Zawahiri has been indicted for his role in the August 1998 bombings of United States (US) embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and is believed to have participated in the planning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York.
According to Forbes, despite a contentious relationship between Al-Zawahiri and other terrorist leaders, the terrorist master still has significant symbolic power, and drives many of his followers to violence.
In October, al-Zawahri called on Sunnis living in Iraq to wage a long guerrilla war against Shiite forces as they take back land from the Islamic State in Syria.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Self-proclaimed caliph, Islamic State.
45 years old Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on the other hand retained his position on the list, a position he occupied in the 2015 edition of the ranking by Forbes.
The self-declared caliph of the Islamic State (IS), a global terrorist network seeking to establish a radical Islamic empire in Iraq and the Levant, has, in a remarkably short period of time, mobilized ISIS fighters to seize significant portions of eastern Syria and western Iraq.
Al-Baghdadi has commandeered planet earth’s attention with a series of barbaric beheadings and earned non-negligible amounts of cash, largely through black-market oil sales said to total $1 million a day.
Propaganda efforts have also helped ISIS mint new extremists capable of carrying out terror attacks throughout the Western world.
While al-Zawahiri is making the Forbes list for the first time, al-Baghdadi has made the list in 2015 occupying 57th position.
“This year’s list comes at a time of rapid and profound change, and represents our best guess about who will matter in the year to come,” Forbes said.
Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Wednesday blasted the United States for “inefficient” cooperation over Syria, saying talks between the two countries have been “fruitless”.
Moscow still maintained contacts with Washington, but every time the two sides meet for agreement, Washington backtracked, Lavrov told a meeting of the Dialogue for the Future program broadcast live by Russian 24 TV.
Meanwhile, the Russian diplomat gave credit to Russia’s interaction with Turkey over Syria.
“This channel (with Turkey) may prove to be more efficient than our fruitless small talks with our American colleagues over many months,” he said.
Moreover, Lavrov blamed the United States for contributing to the formation of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. “It was the United States, which liberated the current IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from an Iraqi prison in 2006,” he said.
The United States suspended talks with Russia over Syria in early October, followed by rising tensions between the two powers with each side accusing the other of violating commitments under a cease-fire deal aimed to facilitate a peaceful solution to the Syria crisis.
Since then, no concrete agreements have been reached between the two sides.
The latest effort, which brought together experts from both sides in Geneva on Saturday, ended again without any agreement.
