The United States and Russia on Tuesday agreed to reopen talks about how to avoid conflict in the skies over Syria, where both countries are conducting airstrikes.

The Russian Defense Ministry reportedly extended the offer, and the Washington Post quoted Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s deputy defense minister, as saying the talks should not just focus on avoiding mid-air collisions and hostile encounters, but also on a possible Russian partnership in the US-led coalition that has conducted bombing missions against the Islamic State for more than a year.

“We look forward to the formal response from the Russians and learning the details,” the Post quoted Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook as saying in response. “We stand ready to meet again to continue our earlier discussions as soon as possible.”

Until Tuesday, Moscow reportedly ignored US requests to meet and discuss how to avoid conflict following an initial video conference last week that had limited results.

The agreement comes the same day NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused Moscow of intentionally violating Turkey’s airspace on Saturday and Monday during Russian sorties against rebel forces in northwestern Syria.

NATO leaders are set to meet in Brussels Thursday to discuss ways in which to respond to the violations, which Russian officials say were accidental.

“Airstrikes will not lead to success against the Islamic State (IS); a land operation is needed,” said Alex Alexiev, expert in international security and chair of the Centre for Balkan and Black Sea Research, speaking for Radio FOCUS on Wednesday.
“In this respect, I am critical of the US policy as there would be no solution to the fight against terrorism in Syria, [against] the Islamic State (IS) if there are no ground troops. The Americans refuse to do that; I am not familiar with a single case in the history of wars in which air forces won a war on their own,” Alexiev remarked.
According to him, Russia’s interference in Syria has a political aim, not a military one.
Alex Alexiev believes Russia wants, on the one hand, to save Bashar al-Assad and, on the other hand, Russian President Putin wishes to divert attention away from the fact he is losing in Ukraine.
In the specialist’s view, Barack Obama is the weakest US president of the past 40 years as he is too timid.
Alexiev thinks in the meantime the USA is not launching a land operation in Syria as US people have grown weary of peace enforcement operations.
“Note that America has been fighting wars for 12 years now. First, it was with Afghanistan, then in Iraq. Considerable [financial] resources were spent on this; there were lots of victims, American victims. And there is indeed a feeling America does not desire anymore to attempt to be a “world police officer”,” Alex Alexiev stressed.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin’s air campaign in Syria may have other aims, one result seems to be that it is hitting Islamists from Russia’s Caucasus, say analysts.

High on the list of places Russia appears to have targeted are positions held by the Al-Nusra Front — an al-Qaeda associate with a high concentration of fighters from Chechnya, Dagestan and Muslim ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia.

Russia’s entry last week into the Syrian conflict is the country’s first major military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the collapse of Communism.

At the weekend, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the mission aimed at protecting Russia itself.

“It’s better to do it abroad rather than fight terrorism inside the country,” he said.

A wave of airstrikes by Russian warplanes in Syria has been accompanied by a ground assault by “regime forces”, says a monitoring group.

At least four rebel positions have been hit by the attacks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“Regime forces” is a term the Observatory uses broadly to describe the mix of Syrian military and allied local and foreign militia.

According to the Reuters news agency, Syria’s military plan involving Russia to take on the rebels was formed in July after a visit  to Moscow by an Iranian general.

Major General Qassem Soleimani’s visit started the process that led to a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war.

It has led to Russian warplanes bombing rebels from above and Iranian special forces taking part in ground operations.

Maj Gen Soleimani is the commander of the Quds Force, the elite extra-territorial special forces arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Reuters say that the general unfurled a map on the table at a top level meeting and explained to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al Assad could be turned into victory – with Russia’s help.

Sources have told the news agency he has now been seen supervising ground operations against insurgents in Syria and planning the new Russian- and Iranian-backed offensive.

A bomb attack by the Daesh terrorists on a mosque in the northwest of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, killed at least seven people.

At least seven others were injured in the explosion near the al-Nour mosque in the al-Nahda neighborhood of Sanaa on Tuesday, the Arabic al-Mayadeen news channel reported.

In June, similar blasts targeted the political office of the Houthi movement as well as three mosques in the capital. Over 30 people died.

Daesh, al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups and have claimed similar deadly bomb attacks on mosques and religious centers in the past, saying the targets were Houthis.

The blast in the Yemeni capital comes as Saudi Arabia goes on with its military campaign against Yemen.

albawaba.com

An informed source in Hawija said, that ISIS has executed about 27 of its elements in Hawija district in the province of Kirkuk because of their escape from the battlefield.

The source informed IraqiNews.com, “ISIS has executed about 27 militants from its elements in Hawija district, and hanged up their bodies over a bridge in the district.

The source added that the reason behind ISIS execution of its elements is their escape from the fighting in the province.

A sizable group of Saudi clerics has called for jihad against the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria, and by extension, Assad’s military allies Russia and Iran. The Islamist clerics praised the rebels Russia is currently bombing as “holy warriors of Syria” who are “defending the whole Islamic nation.”

“Trust them and support them,” the statement from the Saudi clerics warned, “because if they are defeated, God forbid, it will be the turn of one Sunni country after another.”

Bashar Assad is a member of a Shiite sect, the Alawites, while Iran is a Shiite theocracy. This declaration of sectarian war from the Sunni Islamists of Saudi Arabia puts them uncomfortably close to a de facto alliance with ISIS and al-Qaeda, which are officially opposed by the Saudi government and its clerics, but often portray themselves as the defenders of Sunni Muslims against Shiite oppression.

Reuters notes that the letter from these opposition Saudi clerics “also portrayed Russian involvement as part of an Orthodox Christian crusade, and attacked the West for denying the rebels anti-aircraft weapons.”

The “Western-Russian” coalition with Shiite Iran and Assad’s Alawites was blasted by the clerics for “making a real war against the Sunni people and their countries.”

The first Iraq-Russia-Iran-Syria joint intelligence meeting on countering Islamic State group (IS) was launched Tuesday in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, but no Kurdish leader took part in it, says a Kurdish MP in the Iraqi parliament.

“The Kurdish leadership must take responsibility for the absence of Kurdish security officials in Baghdad who did not take part in the meeting,” Hoshyar Abdulla, head of the Change Movement (Gorran) faction in the Iraqi parliament, told Rudaw.

Abdulla, who is also a member of the Iraqi parliament security and defense committee, told Rudaw that “six experts from each country took part in the multi-directed meeting, and each country will lead the coalition for three months.”

Falih Fayadh, the current Iraqi national security adviser, is leading the coalition, Abdulla added.

“This unit has been assigned to collect intelligence information with regards to IS militants in Iraq and Syria, and the formation of this coalition comes at a time no serious endeavor has been seen from the US-led coalition in striking IS positions in Iraq and Syria,” Abdulla added. “Within two years IS was not eliminated, rather they kept growing and took Anbar in addition to Mosul province.”

He said Kurdish leadership is also responsible in the recent weakness of the Kurdish presence in Baghdad, because “the post of the Iraqi army’s chief of staff is majority Kurdish, but now it is given to an Arab on the commission.”

Abdulla finally criticized the US coalition for not bombing IS on the main Mosul-Raqqa road, because “IS has been easily transporting its militants and weapons suppliers from Raqqa to Mosul, and vice-versa. The U.S. coalition did not manage to destroy that supply line. In this light, Iraq and Syria welcomed Russia’s participation in the fight against IS.”

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said Kurds are aware of the coalition and they will have a representative in it, but the chief-of-staff of the Peshmerga ministry told Rudaw that the “Kurdistan region is unaware of the four-direction coalition, and has no member in it.”

ekurd.net

Russia has been building up its military presence in the central Syrian city of Hama, according to activists as well a report in the US media.

The pro-rebel All4Syria outlet reported Monday that Russian forces in the past week had established a base at the Equestrian Club in southeast Hama, with the Syrian Army’s crack 4^th Division handing over its post to the Russians, who raised their flag over the building.

A field activist in the city told All4Syria that Hama has seen a noticeable increase in security measures after Russian troops were first deployed to hotels located along central Hama’s Orontes Square.

Roads around the area in the past week had been shut down for three days, according to the activist, as the 4^th Division worked to empty its headquarters for its new Russian tenants.

The Hama Media Center, in turn, said that Russia had stationed over 1050 of its military personnel in the city of Hama itself, which is firmly under regime control, as well as outlying bases.

The report came as NBC News cited a senior US Defense Department official as saying that the “Russian military has been moving artillery and ground forces towards Hama.”

Russian military forces reportedly first began deploying in Hama on September 14, with an activist from Hama saying he had received “information about the arrival of a delegation consisting of Russian officers and experts accompanied by the [Syrian] Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij [Monday] at Hama’s Al-Nawair Hotel.”

Suhaib al-Rahmoun told pro-opposition outlet Al-Souria Net that “over ten buses accompanied by several trucks loaded with equipment thought to belong to the Russian delegation reached the hotel.”

Meanwhile, All4Syria reported that 15 buses packed with armed Russians had been spotted entering the city’s Equestrian Club.

“The Equestrian Club has become a barracks for Russian nationals,” an activist told the pro-rebel outlet.

The pro-regime Al-Watan newspaper also reported on the convoy, but insisted it had transported a consignment of the humanitarian aid that Russia claimed it flew into Latakia on September 12.

Hama Governor Ghassan Khalaf told the daily that 15 tons of aid had been trucked into Hama, including “various foodstuffs as well as kitchen utensils and equipment.”

Islamic State claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks on the Yemeni government in Aden as well as Gulf Arab troops on Tuesday, it said in a statement released on twitter.

“In a blessed operation facilitated by God, four martyrdom operations targeted a gathering of Saudi, Emirati and Yemeni officers,” the statement said.