A series of deadly U.S. military strikes have killed prominent members of Syrian rebel militant groups, sparking outrage from the Syrian opposition, even though some of those killed were affiliated with al-Qaeda’s operations in Syria, like reported by vocativ.com .

The Pentagon announced last Thursday that U.S airstrikes have killed at least 20 al-Qaeda operatives in Idlib province, the main stronghold of Jabhat Fath al-Sham (JFS) in northwestern Syria. “We are confident these strikes will degrade al-Qaeda’s ability to direct operations in Syria,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. “Al-Qaeda remains committed to carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States and the West,” he said. U.S. forces would continue, he said, to “take action to deny any terrorist safe haven in Syria.”

Last week JFS confirmed that Younes Shoeyb and his 15-year-old son had been killed in a U.S drone airstrike. According to Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, Shoeyb had been a senior leader for an al-Qaeda group in Aleppo and a close aide of JFS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Other recent U.S. airstrikes in Syria killed an al-Qaeda militant who’d reportedly previously fought in Afghanistan and Yemen before moving to Syria, according to The Long War Journal.

Prominent users associated with the Syrian opposition criticized the attacks, calling the coalition the “criminal international coalition” for its targeting of the militant group, and called upon rebels to merge to liberate Syria. “We waited for America to support our revolution, and JFS is for sure the strongest faction (of the Syrian opposition). This is the result of waiting, and this is what happens to those waiting to ally with America,: remarked one member of a Facebook page for a group in Aleppo.

Others claimed the coalition wants to split the armed opposition and isolate al-Qaeda affiliated groups, calling the attacks “a clear American betrayal.”

According to a Washington Post report last November, President Obama ordered the Pentagon to find and kill JFS leaders that the administration had ignored in the past. The new direction reflected concern that the group was building al-Qaeda’s presence in Syria, as it was one of the most effective forces countering Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This is unlikely to change once President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated next week. Trump told The Wall Street Journal after his election win that his focus is on fighting ISIS rather than trying to remove Assad from power.

ISIS terrorists have cut off water supply to dozens of liberated areas in Mosul to keep civilians under control as the Iraqi army and allied fighters renew their push to expel the extremists out of their last urban stronghold, like reported by abna24.com .

Nineveh provincial council member Hossam al-Abbar told Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network on Monday that ISIS terrorists have cut water to 30 neighborhoods in the eastern flank of the city, located some 400 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad.

Abbar added that only 10 liberated districts have access to potable water intermittently.

He further noted that water stations in al-Ghabat neighborhood, which nurture western Mosul, are still under Daesh control, and that the terror group has turned off the pumps which send water toward liberated neighborhoods in the city.

The official said ISIS has ordered its members to target areas retaken from them with mortar shells and artillery rounds.

Abbar also urged the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works plus Ministry of Finance to allocate a certain budget as well as tankers to supply drinking water to Mosul neighborhoods.

Zuhair Hazem al-Jabouri, an official with Mosul’s energy and water department, said last month that “Daesh is depriving people of drinking water in eastern Mosul. They want to force people to retreat with them in order to use them as human shields.”

Iraqi Special Forces advanced towards the eastern coast of the Tigris River, which divides the city of Mosul, and surrounded Mosul University where the ISIS organization has used its laboratories, according to aawsat.com .

“The Baladiyat neighborhood is done (recaptured) and Sukkar should be done before nightfall,” Major-General Sami al-Aradi of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) told a Reuters reporter in Mosul.

“This area is very important because it overlooks the university (which) is a central district … If it falls, we will control the forests, the presidential palaces and the eastern bank of the Tigris,” he said.

The official said ISIS has used the university’s laboratories to make biological weapons and store chemicals.

On Monday, Staff Lieutenant General Abdulghani al-Assadi, a top commander in Iraq’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service, told AFP that Iraqi forces will retake east Mosul from the jihadists within days.

Asked about the time needed to purify the left coast of Mosul, al-Assadi replied: “A few days, God willing.”

Assadi said that “the bridge fell tactically,” though Iraqi forces were still some 150 meters away.

The general also said: “Our units are close to encircling Mosul University.”

Lieutenant General Abdul-Amir Rashid Yarallah, commander of the operation to recapture Mosul from ISIS said on Monday that “the federal police forces managed to liberate in full the Palestine neighborhood on the left coast of Mosul, and raised the national flag over its premises.”

Separately, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced on Monday that Iraq seeks to open new border crossings with Jordan.

Speaking at a joint press conference with his Jordanian counterpart Hani al-Mulki after a ministerial meeting in Baghdad, al-Abadi said both sides agreed to reopen the Treibel border crossing soon, in a way that will serve trade and transport activities and the movement of people between the two countries.

“We seek to encourage trade between Iraq and Jordan,” al-Abadi said, adding that soon, an agreement will be announced to implement the oil pipeline project from Iraq to Jordan.

At least 68 fighters have been killed over the weekend due to fierce military confrontations near the strategic Bab El-Mandab strait, military officials said to middleeastmonitor.com.

The clashes were between local resistance forces backed by the Yemeni army and Houthi rebels in alliance with ousted Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

According to the officials, at least 55 Houthi militia forces have been killed in fighting and 72 others wounded, military sources said. Thirteen local resistance fighters and members of the Yemeni military have also been killed, including army general Brigadier-General Abdul Aziz Al-Majidi according to AFP.

Resistance forces launched an assault on Saturday which led them to recapture the coastal Dhubab district, just 30 kilometres north of Bab El-Mandab.

Yemen has been locked in a bitter battle between Houthi rebels allied with forces loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh and government forces led by President AbdRabbuh Mansur Hadi, along with local tribes and resistance forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition.

In a sparse, one-room hideout in Dahiyeh, a Shiite suburb of Beirut, Ali, a stout, friendly-looking man in his early 50s, sits on an iron-framed bed. A pistol is holstered on his hip, and an M-16 rests on a nearby table. His friend, a grizzled man of about the same age, stands watch at the door.

Ali, who asked to be known by a pseudonym because he is not authorized to speak with the press, pulls out his smartphone and plays a video he recorded in Aleppo, Syria. In it, he’s dressed in camouflage, carrying a large machine gun and crouching behind a thicket with three other fighters. The sound of gunfire and mortars echoes in the background. “That’s me,” he says proudly, pointing at the video. “Look what I do next.”

The video shows him stooping down and running into a clearing, where someone has erected a banner bearing the symbol of Jabhat al-Nusra, a rebel Islamist group fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Ali pulls the banner down and replaces it with the flag of Hezbollah, a powerful, Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia and political party that has been fighting alongside Syrian government forces since 2012.

When the video is over, Ali puts his phone away. “[The battle] is not over,” he says. “We won Aleppo, but we’re not finished yet.”

On December 22, Assad’s regime, with the help of Hezbollah and Russia, declared victory after a protracted, costly battle for the long-besieged city. The United Nations evacuated 34,000 rebels and civilians from Aleppo, amid reports that Hezbollah and Assad’s army executed unarmed civilians, something both the regime and the Lebanese group deny.

This victory was far from assured, and Hezbollah’s decision to enter the war didn’t always seem savvy. In May 2013, when Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s secretary-general, announced that it had been fighting on Assad’s side, many Lebanese were angry and confused. The party’s popularity plunged. Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims, many of whom supported the Syrian revolution—before it was hijacked by radicals such as the Islamic State militant group (ISIS)—were incensed. The surge of outrage led to increased radicalization among Sunnis in the coastal city of Tripoli and parts of Lebanon’s northern border. Worse still, over the past four years, the war has cost the self-proclaimed Party of God many fighters and military resources.

But Hezbollah has emerged triumphant. And while Syria’s brutal civil war isn’t over—and the group faces enemies, both from within and without—Hezbollah has solidified its standing as the most powerful force in Lebanon. Once dependent on Assad for its survival, the group is now stronger than he is.

‘Fuck Those Sons of Bitches’

In another house in Dahiyeh, a tall Hezbollah commander with granite-gray eyes sits nervously on a couch while a TV blares in the background. He prefers not to be named because he doesn’t have clearance from Hezbollah to speak with the press about his party’s role in the Syrian war. “We didn’t feel like it was a local battle,” he tells Newsweek. “There was a lot of international influence in Aleppo. The terrorists are well-armed. They have lots of money and guns that have made their way through Turkey, but you name the country, they’re helping [the rebels].”

Whether that’s true or not, the Syrian rebels landed their share of blows. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent organization that documents casualties of the Syrian war, estimates that Hezbollah lost 1,387 fighters in Syria. At one point, these losses were so bad that some speculated that the group’s ability to combat Israel, its primary nemesis, had eroded. “Hezbollah has lost senior, seasoned and trustworthy commanders,” says Randa Slim, a Hezbollah analyst at the Middle East Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank. “It’s not easy for the party to find replacements quickly and easily.”

But members of the party feel their sacrifices in Syria have finally paid off, not just by keeping Assad in power but because winning in Syria has solidified Hezbollah’s standing in its own country. “Who can stand against Hezbollah in Lebanon?” the commander asks.

One reason for his confidence: politics. In October, Lebanon elected Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, as its president, the first time someone has held that office in two years. Though the Party of God’s involvement in the Syrian war initially hurt its popularity, as the rebels became increasingly radicalized, many began to see groups like ISIS as the bigger threat. Hezbollah morphed from needless aggressor to the only entity standing between Lebanon and a fundamentalist Islamic state. “On a political level, the war helped Hezbollah secure a position as strong as ever on the domestic scene,” says Aurelie Daher, a scholar at the University of Oxford who studies the group. “The election of Aoun to the presidency and the ministers chosen for the new government are good illustrations of that.”

The commander in Dahiyeh agrees. “Our wins in Syria will reflect positively on Lebanon because now Hezbollah is in communication with all the different parties in the country,” he says with a tense smile. “Suddenly, we’re friends with everybody.”

Despite its high death toll, the group also benefited from the war militarily, Daher explains. Not only did Hezbollah gain valuable battlefield experience; it also preserved its pipeline of weaponry coming from Iran through Syria, which is likely the main reason the group entered the war.

But all that came with a cost—one that went beyond loss of life. Hezbollah members now say there is tension between the Shiite group and the regime in Damascus. In his hideout, Ali, the Hezbollah fighter, snorts when asked about his feelings on Assad’s government. “We and the Syrian regime often shoot at each other,” he says, laughing. “We don’t give a damn about the Syrians. We have no intention of giving up most of the territories we control in Syria. We are not in Syria because we’re in love with a person named Bashar al-Assad for his good looks. If you come to us and tell us tomorrow that the Syrian regime is coming back to [invade] Lebanon, we would fight them. We would kill them all. Fuck those sons of bitches. We’re only there for our own benefit. We’re defending our interests.”

Slim says Hezbollah’s antipathy toward the Syrian government has been building for some time. “It is no secret that Hezbollah’s military leaders are not impressed by the Syrian army’s capacity and the discipline of pro-regime militias,” she says. “I don’t think that Assad and his army have the interest and the means to contest their presence in the near future.”

Ali’s grizzled friend seems to agree. “Assad is just a figurehead,” he says. “He has no real power. We won this war, not the regime.”

‘We’re Going to Surprise the Whole World’

For Lebanese Sunnis, Assad’s victory means Hezbollah will continue to dominate their country—and some aren’t taking it well. Mohammad, a Salafi sheikh who maintains a small militia in the Tripoli neighborhood of Bab-al-Tabbaneh, runs his little fiefdom from a shop he owns. Mohammad, who asked Newsweek not to print his real name because he fears retribution from the Lebanese government and Hezbollah, is in his mid- to late 30s, with a trademark Salafi beard. He says he was fighting in Syria with Jabhat al-Nusra and spent some time in Aleppo. “We will return and fight again,” he says, “and keep fighting until we bring down this brutal regime.”

Mohammad is passionate about the plight of the Lebanese Sunni community—and he blames what he calls their inferior standing on Hezbollah and Iran. “Sunnis in Lebanon are weak,” he says. “They don’t have much power because Hezbollah controls the government. The Sunni population is left all alone on the battlefield, being slaughtered by these people. We have to do something to defend ourselves, and we will defend ourselves, even inside Lebanon.”

Hezbollah is rightly concerned about the radicalization of Lebanese Sunnis like Mohammad. There have been many attacks by Islamists in Hezbollah territory, the most recent of which killed 43 people, in November 2015. And the threat hasn’t subsided, says the Hezbollah commander in Dahiyeh. “When the terrorists put car bombs in Dahiyeh, Hezbollah told the Lebanese government, ‘Either you do your job, or we’ll do it for you,’” he says. “And we’ve had to do their job sometimes when they were unable to. We’ve caught hundreds of attempted terrorists trying to carry out attacks in Lebanon. No matter how hard we try or how many we catch, there’s always a possibility that one or two might sneak in.”

In his Tripoli shop, Mohammad smiles grimly when asked how he plans to react to Hezbollah’s victories. “We’re going to surprise the whole world with what we’re going to do in Lebanon,” he says. “We have a plan, and we’re going to make a comeback.”

‘1,100 Pounds of Explosives’

Despite the threat of attacks on its home turf, Hezbollah’s success in Syria means the group can finally shift its focus back to its neighbor to the south, Israel. “When it comes to Israel,” the commander in Dahiyeh says, “we never sleep. We have our eyes on them always.”

It’s been more than a decade since war erupted between the two sides, and many think a new conflict might soon arise. Hezbollah put up an impressive fight against Israel in 2006, and since then, the group has become far better armed. Israeli leaders seem increasingly concerned about the Shiite group’s arsenal and recent battlefield experience. Hezbollah is said to possess GPS-guided short-range ballistic missiles that can hit Tel Aviv with 1,100 pounds of explosives, as well as Russian-made anti-tank, anti-ship and cruise missiles. In July 2016, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations claimed the group’s missile arsenal is now larger than those of the European Union’s NATO states combined. “Our Christmas day is when the Israelis come for a ground invasion,” the commander in Dahiyeh boasts. “Israel is just a big fuss for nothing. It is weaker than a spiderweb.”

Despite his bravado, the Shiite group seems in no hurry to return to the battlefield against its nemesis. In January 2015, for instance, Israel hit one of the group’s weapons convoys in Syria with targeted airstrikes. Hezbollah retaliated by launching an anti-tank missile at an Israeli convoy, killing two soldiers, but the group immediately announced it had no desire to escalate the fight. More than a year later, in November 2016, Israel again struck a Hezbollah weapons convoy, only this time the group didn’t respond. And perhaps with good reason. Israel has a far more powerful army than Hezbollah, and the consequences of a war would be severe for the group—and its home country. So it seems the strategy of “mutual deterrence” on both sides will continue—for now.

When that changes, however, Ali, the Hezbollah fighter, says and he and his comrades will be ready. As he speaks, he smiles confidently. “The Israelis have been losing this game since 2006,” Ali says. “Because we are with God, and we don’t think of anything else.”

newsweek.com

Commandos from the US-led coalition battling the terror group known as Islamic State (IS) have raided a village held by militants in eastern Syria, according to forces.tv .

US Central Command told AFP that “an operation was conducted in that area”, but declined to give further details.

At least 25 jihadists were killed in the two-hour raid, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

“Four helicopters from the international coalition yesterday [Sunday] at noon carried out a commando raid on Al-Kubar village in western Deir Ezzor province.”

– Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

The oil-rich eastern province, which borders Iraq, is almost totally under IS control and has been regularly targeted by US-led forces.

Coalition forces targeted a bus carrying 14 IS fighters, killing them all, according to Abdel Rahman.

They also targeted an IS-controlled water facility in the village, killing at least 11 IS fighters in a firefight.

A commander of the SDF, a US-backed coalition of Arab and Kurdish forces, confirmed the raid on the village, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Deir Ezzor city.

“Four American Apache helicopters and two back-up helicopters, carried out a commando raid.”

The attack targeted vehicles driven by senior IS fighters coming from Raqqa, killing several and capturing others, he added.

A Syrian Army official said military radars had detected the operation but could not identify the nationality of the aircraft.

The US has been leading a campaign against IS in Syria since September 2014.

Deir Ezzor is Syria’s second-largest province after Homs.

Since early 2015 jihadists have besieged the provincial capital, also called Deir Ezzor, home to some 200,000 people.

IS controls around 60% of the city, the rest of which is held by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The US Navy fired three warning shots at four Iranian boats after they closed in at speed on Sunday, say defence officials.

Iran supplying weapons and missiles to Lebanese Shia militia group Hizballah could have breached an arms embargo on the Islamic Republic, the UN Security Council has been told, according to alaraby.co.uk