A bigger anti-ISIL campaign on its way

On Sept. 28 agencies reported that the last two hospitals serving in the east of the Syrian city of Aleppo were bombed by Syrian or Russian planes.

On Sept. 27 the Syrian army, loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, announced that they managed to close the circle around Aleppo by taking the last remaining part from the hands of rebel forces. That was possible thanks to the heavy air support by Russian jets, which brought the U.S. and Russia into confrontation with each other amid strong words at the U.N. Security Council meeting last week. 

On Sept. 26, when Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said that the Baath Party was ready to share power with the opposition in a transition government, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the bombing of Aleppo was not the way to show their good will; the bombing was denounced as "barbaric" by Samantha Power.

On Sept. 23 President Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey said that the aim of the Syrian regime was to push the population of Aleppo to the nearby border with Turkey, which already hosts nearly 3 million refugees who escaped from the five-year-old civil war in Syria.

Again on Sept. 27 a ranking American delegation consisting of diplomats, soldiers and intelligence officers were carrying out talks in Ankara for a possible campaign on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in both Iraq and Syria. The team included key figures like U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL Brett McGurk. In the afternoon hours Erdoğan called a security meeting with Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and National Intelligence...