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Tag: Bashar al-Assad

  • The UAE has invited Syrian President Assad to the COP28 climate summit

    The UAE has invited Syrian President Assad to the COP28 climate summit

    Bashar al-Assad of Syria has been invited by the United Arab Emirates to the COP28 Climate Summit, which will start on November 30 in Dubai.

    Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi, had extended an offer to Assad to attend COP28, according to a tweet from the UAE embassy in Damascus on Sunday.

    On Monday, the invitation was also verified by SANA, Syria’s official news agency.

    It might lead to diplomatic issues for nations that continue to put sanctions on Assad’s regime. If Assad attends, it will be his first major meeting since the deadly civil war in Syria began in 2011.

    The UN climate summit has already attracted controversy for appointing as its president Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers.

    A COP28 spokesperson told Reuters in a statement this week: “COP28 is committed to an inclusive COP process that produces transformational solutions. This can only happen if we have everyone in the room.”

    In March, Assad visited the UAE on an official invitation for the first time since the Syrian civil war began. It was also his first visit to an Arab state since 2011.

    Earlier this month, Arab nations agreed to re-admit Syria into the Arab League despite repeated objections from the United States to ending the more than decade-long isolation of a regime that it holds accountable for the deaths of more than 300,000 civilians and displacement of millions in the country’s civil war.

  • Syrian government, opposition clash overnight amid quake crisis

    Syrian government, opposition clash overnight amid quake crisis

    Syrian government forces and opposition groups reportedly engaged in combat overnight in northwest Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a monitoring organisation based in the United Kingdom.

    Since the devastating earthquakes that struck the area last week, gunfire has not broken out until now. Armed organisations opposed to the Damascus administration of President Bashar al-Assad are in charge of some areas of northwest Syria.

    According to SOHR, government troops shelled the area around the rebel town of Atareb. It said that at a nearby front line, government and rebel forces were fighting with powerful machineguns at the same time.

    SOHR reported that clashes also took place in another part of the northwest near the government town of Saraqeb, while government forces shelled the outskirts of two villages in Hama province.

    “No casualties have been reported yet,” it added.