By Anne Barnard
Beirut, Lebanon — A toxic gas attack (click here) killed dozens of people in northern Syria on Tuesday morning, including women and children, and sickened scores more, according to medics, rescuers and witnesses in the rebel-held province of Idlib, who said the gas had been delivered by a government airstrike.
A few hours later, according to several witnesses, another airstrike hit one of the clinics treating victims, who had been farmed out to smaller hospitals and maternity wards because the area’s largest hospital had been severely damaged by an airstrike two days earlier.
The European Union and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey condemned the attack and blamed the Syrian government. France called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council....
March 28, 2017
By F. Brinley Bruton
Russian and American troops are within "hand-grenade range" of each other (click here) in parts of Syria, according to U.S. commanders, an overlap that highlights Moscow's efforts to bolster its footprint in the Middle East.
While the Russians and Americans have traditionally been on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war — with the Kremlin supporting President Bashar al-Assad and Washington working with rebels fighting him. But now the rivals are both backing Kurdish YPG fighters as they take on ISIS there and in neighboring Iraq....
It depends on expertise and training to determine how far is "hand grenade range."
