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US Strikes Syrian Regime-Iran Militias near Border with Jordan and Iraq | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Residents walk through damaged streets at the mountain resort town of Zabadani in the Damascus countryside, Syria, Thursday, May 18, 2017. Hassan Ammar, AP


Beirut, London, Washington- Coalition warplanes pounded on Thursday Syrian regime forces and Iranian-backed militias advancing towards the crossing of al-Tanf where the borders of Jordan, Syria and Iraq meet.

An official at the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) said Coalition warplanes hit a convoy of vehicles allied with the Syrian regime while advancing towards al-Tanf military camp after ignoring warning shots from US aircraft.

A Syrian opposition source said the airstrike destroyed the convoy, which is affiliated to the “regime forces and Iran.”

For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes hit a convoy on its way towards al-Tanf borderline with Iraq, where regime forces are trying to advance, hours after a meeting between head of the Syrian regime Bashar Assad and Iraq’s National Security Adviser and Envoy of Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, Faleh al-Fayadth.

The meeting aimed to “discuss practical and field steps for military coordination on the shared border between the two armies, as well as the prospects of forthcoming direct cooperation between the Syrian and Iraqi armies.”

At the political level, the sixth round of the Geneva intra-Syrian talks ends on Friday while experts from the office of UN special envoy to Syria Staffa de Mistura met with experts from the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) and the regime delegation to discuss a mechanism on the country’s constitution.

Talks in Geneva returned to square one after de Mistura withdrew a document he had suggested last Tuesday on a special mechanism for discussing Syria’s new constitution, to be the base on which negotiations would later be built on.

Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the next round of the Geneva talks is expected on the 20th of Ramadan.

HNC spokesman Riyad Naasan told the newspaper that all meetings expected on Friday, “will not carry any new results while the UN envoy is trying to evade seriously discussing the political transition because the regime still refuses to tackle this issue.”

A high-ranking HNC source told Asharq Al-Awsat that members from the delegation of armed factions, which consists of eight people, decided to withdraw from the talks on Thursday “due to the Committee’s unclear strategic vision.”