Hama

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said his attempts to meet with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad were rebuffed, as fighting intensifies between opposition and government forces in the war-torn country.

Syrian anti-regime forces encircle the key central city of Hama "from three sides", a war monitor said Thursday, despite a counteroffensive launched by government forces to retain control of the city.

By late Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said anti-regime fighters had "surrounded Hama city from three sides."

Nearly 50,000 people have recently been displaced in Syria, where opposition forces have wrested swathes of territory from control of President Bashar al-Assad's government, the U.N.'s humanitarian agency has reported.

Jihadists and rebels have seized most of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, including its airport, during a lightning assault that left over 320 people dead, a monitoring group reported on Saturday, as the international community voiced concern.

Israeli airstrikes on Sunday evening killed at least 14 people near the Syrian town of Masyaf in Hama province, according to a report from Reuters. The strikes targeted a military facility believed to be a chemical weapons production site, which reportedly housed Iranian military experts involved in weapons development.

Israeli strikes hit central Syria late Sunday, killing at least 16 people and wounding 43 others as well as causing fires at sites believed to house Iranian forces, according to Syrian state media.

Israeli planes targeted a military position near the province of Hama in Syria on April 13, but Syrian air defenses intercepted and downed some of the rockets, Syrian state television said.

The MoD said that two Su-34 warplanes "wiped out a workshop of Jabhat al-Nusra where the militants were making attack drones and kept explosives in store," while a Su-35S "eliminated a warehouse of portable anti-aircraft missiles," TASS is reporting.

A number of military positions of the Bashar al-Assad regime were hit late on April 29 by rockets in Syria's Hama and Aleppo provinces, according to the regime's official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). 

The Syrian army said Israel targeted a military site in Hama province early on Sept. 7 which a war monitor said could be linked to chemical weapons production. 

The airstrike killed two soldiers and caused damage near the town of Masyaf, an army statement said. It warned of the "dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region."