Moscow Confirms Death of High-Ranking Officer

A Russian marine major was killed by shelling in Syria on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Russian news agencies confirmed the death of Major Sergei Bordov on Thursday. The Russian defense ministry said he was killed when militants attacked a garrison, adding that he was “among a group of Russian military advisers who took part in the training of a unit of Syrian troops.”

“They were caught in shellfire. Two of our Russian servicemen and two Syrian soldiers died,” a former colleague of Bordov, Vyacheslav Pavlyuchenko, told Reuters.

Moscow denied reports of the death of the two other officers, according to the pro-Syrian government website Al Masdar News.

“The rumors about an alleged death of two Russian officers in Syria are yet another instance of disinformation and they stand at variance with reality,” it quoted the ministry as saying.

Bordov is one of the highest-ranking Russian servicemen to have been killed in Syria. Moscow first intervened militarily on behalf of the government of Bashar al-Assad in September 2015.

Moscow has denied downplaying its losses in Syria, with the defense ministry saying an estimated 30 Russian service personnel had been killed in combat.

Evacuation of Four Besieged Towns Resumes

The evacuation of civilians and fighters from four besieged towns resumed on Friday after a 48-hour pause, according to Syrian state media and the United Kingdom-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Reuters reported.

The agreement allows safe passage for civilians and rebel fighters from Zabadani and Madaya, two rebel-held towns outside the capital that are being besieged by the government. They are heading to rebel-held areas of Idlib province.

This is in exchange for the safe passage of civilians and pro-government fighters from Fou’a and Kafraya, two government-held towns in Idlib that are under siege from rebels. They are heading to government-held Aleppo city.

The deal had been put on hold for 48 hours, after a rebel demand that the government release 750 prisoners, according to the SOHR. Convoys carrying thousands of people from Fou’a and Kafraya, mostly civilians, and hundreds of people from Zabadani, mostly fighters, were left waiting on the outskirts of Aleppo for two days.

It is not clear whether the government has released the prisoners, but the convoys began to move again on Friday. At least 126 people, mostly from Fou’a and Kafraya, were killed in a bomb blast that targeted evacuees’ buses on Saturday, which were also waiting on the outskirts of Aleppo.

U.S. Says Syria Still Has Chemical Weapons, Will Be Handled Diplomatically

In a visit to Israel, United States defense secretary James Mattis said Syria had dispersed its military aircraft and accused the government of retaining chemical weapons, Reuters reported.

“They have dispersed their aircraft in recent days,” Mattis said. “The bottom line is, I can say authoritatively they have retained some [chemical weapons]. It’s a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions, and it’s going to have to be taken up diplomatically.”

The U.S. fired 59 cruise missiles at the Syrian government’s Shayrat airbase on April 6 and claimed that it had destroyed 20 percent of Syria’s functional aircraft. This was in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack launched from the base left more than 80 people dead in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.

The Assad government has denied using chemical weapons but the Israeli military said on Wednesday that Syria still has several tons of them. Damascus pledged to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile in a 2013 agreement between Russia and the U.S.

The Syrian government is reported to have moved its remaining aircraft from Shayrat to another base in Latakia that is run by Moscow.

RECOMMENDED READS:

• IRIN: Decree 66: The Blueprint for al-Assad’s Reconstruction of Syria?
• Newsweek: Report Sees ISIS Benefiting From Assad Downfall
• Financial Times: Syria’s ‘Aleppo Boil’ Spreads With Refugees Through the Region
• Al Monitor: Under Turkey’s Watch, al-Bab Tries to Rebuild
• The Intercept: The Syrian People Have Been Betrayed by All Sides