Turkey Bombs ISIS Sites Inside Syria

Turkey’s air force has bombed several suspected Islamic State sites in Syria, following a deadly suicide bombing in Suruc believed to have been carried out by the radical group.

F-16 fighter jets struck three suspected ISIS sites around dawn on Friday, Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s office reported in a statement. “Four guided bombs targeted two headquarters and an assembly point,” it said.

In addition, thousands of Turkish police raided more than 100 sites of suspected ISIS as well as Kurdish and leftist armed groups overnight Thursday, Al Jazeera and other news organizations reported. At least nine people were detained in Ankara, while 251 people were detained in the provinces, officials said.

U.S. defense officials earlier said Ankara had agreed to allow U.S. warplanes to use its Incirlik air base, near the Syrian border, to attack the Islamic State.

Turkish soldiers also launched tank shells across the border after Islamic State fighters shot dead a Turkish soldier and wounded two others near Kilis.

Observers said the firefight was significant because it marks the first direct clashes between ISIS and the Turkish military.

Assad Has Retained Chemical Weapons: WSJ Report

International weapons inspectors and Western officials involved in the disposal of Syria’s chemical arsenal believe President Bashar al-Assad has retained significant portions of his chemical weapons arsenal, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In a series of exclusive interviews, inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and Western officials say they believe they were deceived by the Syrian government, which agreed two years ago to dismantle its weapons stockpile in a Russia-brokered agreement to avoid U.S. retribution.

In June, the OPCW declared the mission a success and said 1,300 tons of chemical weapons had been removed.

However, those interviewed by the newspaper said Assad’s government has kept many of its chemical weapons well hidden. They revealed the Syrians controlled exactly where and what was inspected, largely due to the harsh rules established for the OPCW mission.

The interviewees said the OPCW team could have demanded access to undeclared chemical weapons sites but never did so – mainly because Western governments wanted to avoid a “standoff” and ordered them to take a more hands-off approach, the report said.

“Nobody should be surprised that the regime is cheating,” former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford was quoted as saying.

Opposition Groups Agree to Political ‘Road Map’

After several years of talks, Syria’s two main political opposition groups in exile have agreed to a unified “road map” for a political solution to the civil war.

Representatives of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) and the National Coordination Body for the Forces of Democratic Change (NCB) meeting in Brussels said Thursday they would announce details at a press conference on Friday, the Associated Press reported.

The SNC is considered the main political group in exile, while the NCB has been tolerated by the Assad government. The SNC has long accused the NCB of being too close to Assad, while the NCB has accused the SNC of being too close to the Gulf states. However, both groups are considered largely out of touch with the reality on the ground and have almost no support among the armed groups waging bloody battles.

“Today we are breaking the parable of lack of unity within the opposition,” Khalaf Dawohd, a member of the NCB’s executive committee, told the news agency.

Hadi Bahra, a senior member of the SNC, added, “It is a message to the international community to exert pressure and discuss seriously how to bring this (Syrian) regime to the table for a political transition.”

The deal came as the U.N. special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was in Damascus as part of a campaign to find a political solution to the war.

Recommended Reads

• The New York Review of Books: The Mystery of ISIS
• Aleteia: Syrian Opposition “Worried” About Iran Nuclear Agreement
• The New York Times: U.S. Jets to Use Turkish Bases in War on ISIS
• Newsweek: Drone Images Show Destruction of Aleppo, Syria
• The Economist: We’ll Be with You in Syria