Daraa

The Turkish backed jihadists terrorists reported late Friday night that they controlled Daraa (south), where the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began. It is the fourth strategic town where government forces have lost control in the past week.

Turkey on July 19 condemned the Bashar al-Assad regime's attacks in the southwestern Syrian cities of Daraa and Quneitra.

Syrian rebels and their relatives began evacuating the southern city of Daraa on July15 under a deal to bring the "cradle" of the country's uprising back under government control.

Syria's regime pounded rebel-held parts of the southern city of Daraa with rockets and barrel bombs overnight causing dozens of families to flee, a monitor and an AFP reporter said Monday.

A Syrian rebel fighter sits next to a machine gun in a fortified area near the frontlines at a rebel-held area in the southern Syrian city of Daraa on June 3, 2018. AFP PHOTO / Mohamad ABAZEED

Some 82 percent of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries would like to return to their homes if security and service are provided, the Middle East and North Africa Director of UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, Amin Awad said on Wednesday.

The governor's office in the southern province of Hatay denied reports on May 6 claiming that the Turkish army would be deployed to the opposition-held Syrian province of Idlib.      

Turkish Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar met his U.S. counterpart Joseph Dunford on May 6 in Washington, where they discussed developments in Iraq and Syria, the Turkish military told state-run Anadolu Agency in a statement.       

Russia said Feb. 11 it was ready to discuss a ceasefire in Syria as foreign ministers gathered in Munich in a bid to kick-start peace talks derailed by the regime onslaught on the besieged city of Aleppo.  

Turkey on June 25 denied "baseless" claims that Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants reentered the Syrian town of Kobane through the Turkish border crossing to detonate a suicide bomb.