Syrian troops and allies have opened several new fronts and won a string of victories against terrorists despite Saturday's missile raid by the Western powers. On Thursday night the Syrian Arab Army and allied Palestinian refugee militia launched an offensive against Islamic State (ISIS) and the al-Qaida affiliated Nusra Front in Yarmouk, a southern suburb of Damascus, Lebanon's Al Masdar News reported .  That was after the extremists rejected an offer of safe passage for them and their families to parts of the country still held by their fellows. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said only that air strikes had been launched against the two groups in al-Hajar al-Aswad, a neighbouring district to Yarmouk in the last terrorist-occupied area of the capital. But claimed video footage of the fighting emerged on social media. Foreign-backed sectarians seized the heavily urbanised Palestinian refugee camp since soon after the attempted 2011 coup against the gover

Assad defies NATO after medical centre bombed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says his country no longer fear NATO after Saturday's failed cruise missile attack by the combined forces of the western powers. Mr Assad told a visiting delegation of Russian MPs his country was “no longer afraid of NATO” after Syria's 30-year-old Russian-made air defences shot down around around 70 per cent of the incoming missiles, with no hits scored on military bases. “ According to the president's point of view, this was aggression and we share this position,” State Duma member Sergei Zheleznyak said, according to Sputnik International . “He has highly appreciated Russian weapons, which showed supremacy over the arms of the aggressors.” The US, Britain and France claimed they hit a chemical weapons facility in the attack in the small hours of Saturday morning. But the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported the target was the Pharmaceutical and Chemical Industries Research Ins

US President Donald Trump left his European allies high and dry on Thursday as he signalled a last-minute swerve away from bombing Syria. British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were left looking like turkeys after Mr Trump blinked in his game of chicken with Russia. “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place,” Mr Trump tweeted early on Thursday morning, Washington time. “Could be very soon or not so soon at all!” The three European leaders had backed military action over dubious claims ― by the US-British funded and founded 'White Helmets' ― of a chemical weapons attack on the Army of Islam terrorist group's stronghold in Douma, a few miles northeast of the capital Damascus. In the same tweet, Mr Trump abruptly shifted focus to the near-total defeat of Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq, in which Syrian, Russian, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces played a leading role. “In any eve

Chemical weapons claims, US threats and Israeli air raids failed to halt the liberation of Syria's Douma from Western-backed extremists on Monday. Army of Islam gunmen continued their withdrawal from the town in the East Ghouta region, just northeast of the capital Damascus yesterday, even as US President Donald Trump raised the spectre of a repeat of last year's cruise missile attack. A deal struck on Sunday to evacuate the insurgent group from Douma to the Turkish-occupied border town of Jarabulus, north of Aleppo, was holding. The national SANA news agency reported that 41 buses carrying hundreds of gunmen and their families left on Monday through a ceasefire corridor. A government source said hostages held for years by the Army of Islam ― often in cages as human shields ― would be freed by tonight. The first busload of mostly women and children left the terrorist stronghold about 11pm on Sunday night, a SANA reporter confirmed . A local source in Douma told Leb

The trial of South Africa's ex-president Jacob Zuma was postponed for two months on Friday pending his legal challenge to the resurrection of decade-old corruption charges. Outside the Durban High Court, thousands of Mr Zuma's supporters from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and other organisations brought the Indian Ocean port city to a standstill. Zuma supporters rally around a stage set up outside the Durban High Court The ANC Women's League, Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe Veterans' Association were present, along with the Black land First Campaign, National Interfaith Council of South Africa, the Commission for Religious Affairs. Revellers wore ANC t-shirts and other merchandise in defiance of warnings by Police Minister Bheki Cele Former minister Des van Rooyen and Eastern Cape ANC leader Andile Lungisa accompanied Mr Zuma to the doors of the court. Inside he sat smiling a few feet apart from Christine Guerrier, a representative of Fre

An overnight vigil in support of beleaguered South African ex-president Jacob Zuma turned into a festival of song and dance on Thursday night. Durban's Albert Park reverberated to the "Hands Off Zuma" rally, initially dubbed a vigil and "mother of all prayers" for the popular former leader who faced trial on 16 corruption charges at the city's High Court on Friday morning. Those charges relate to allege kickbacks from the mammoth 1998 arms deal, struck before Mr Zuma was even a member of the national government. His supporters have called the reinstatement of the charges, which were thrown out of court in 2008 and finally dropped in 2009, a witch-hunt orchestrated by "White Monopoly Capital," common parlance for neo-colonial Western business interests looking to maintain their dominance of the South African economy. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) pressured Mr Zuma to resign in February, just over a year ahead  of scheduled electi

Momentum has been building this week for a mass overnight vigil and protest in support of South Africa's sacked president Jacob Zuma when he faces trial on decades-old corruption charges this Friday. Loyal members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will converge on the Indian Ocean port of Durban, the capital of Mr Zuma's home province of KwaZulu Natal, on Thursday for an overnight vigil, followed by an early morning “Hands Off Zuma” march from three protest camps to the High Court. Rehearsals for Friday's protest march earlier this week National organisations and rank-and-file ANC cadres have pledged support for the popular former president, whose nicknames include Msholozi (his clan name), Nxamalala (his birthplace), uBaba (our father) and Mshini Wami (Bring Me My Machine Gun), the struggle song with which Mr Zuma drives rallies wild. They include the Black Land First campaign, the National Interfaith Council of South Africa, the Commission for Reli