U.S. commanders planning for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria are recommending that Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State be allowed to keep U.S.-supplied weapons, four U.S. officials said, a move that would likely anger NATO ally Turkey.
The Syrian army deployed forces near Manbij in northern Syria on Friday, a war monitor and a U.S. official said, after the Kurdish YPG militia urged Damascus to protect the town, where U.S. forces operate, from the threat of a Turkish offensive.
President Donald Trump's declaration in a phone call with Tayyip Erdogan that he was pulling U.S. troops from Syria has stunned Turkey and left it scrambling to respond to the changing battlefield on its southern border.
Bahrain said on Friday that its embassy in Damascus and the Syrian diplomatic mission in Manama had been operating "without interruption", a day after the United Arab Emirates reopened its embassy in Syria, which is still suspended from the Arab League.
The United Arab Emirates reopened its embassy in Damascus on Thursday, marking a diplomatic boost for President Bashar al-Assad from a U.S.-allied Arab state that once backed rebels fighting him.
Alarmed by a U.S. decision to leave Syria, Kurdish leaders who run much of the north are urging Russia and its ally Damascus to send forces to shield the border from the threat of a Turkish offensive.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria during an unannounced visit to Iraq, saying that many people will start seeing things on Syria the same way he does.
Russia's Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday that Israeli missile strikes in Syria the previous day had directly threatened two civilian flights, Interfax news agency reported.
A Belgian judge has ordered the government to repatriate six children of Islamic State (IS) militants and their mothers who have been detained in a camp in Kurdish-controlled Syria, the national news agency Belga said on Wednesday.
Israeli war planes attacked with missiles unspecified targets near Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Tuesday and injured three Syrian soldiers, Syrian state media quoted a military source as saying.