Bashar Assad

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This Tuesday, March. 18, 2014 photo provided by the anti-government activist group Aleppo Media Center (AMC), which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, a Syrian man, injured by a government airstrike, walks outside a damaged building in Aleppo, Syria. Activists said Syrian warplanes and helicopter gunships carried out several air raids in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday killing and wounding a number of people. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center, AMC)

Syrian troops and rebels clash near Turkish border

By BASSEM MROUE - Associated Press

A wounded Israeli soldier is brought to a hospital in Haifa, Israel, Tuesday, March 18, 2014. A roadside bomb hit an Israeli patrol near the frontier with the Golan Heights on Tuesday, the army said, wounding four soldiers in the most serious violence to strike the area since the Syrian conflict began three years ago. Israel said it responded with artillery strikes on Syrian army targets. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed the strategic area in a move that was not internationally recognized. (AP Photo/Hertzel Shapira) ****ISRAEL OUT***

Israeli airstrikes kill 1 Syrian soldier, wound 7

By Albert Aji - Associated Press

US closes Syrian embassy in Washington

By LARA JAKES - Associated Press

Syrian government forces ride a motorcycle around the main square after being deployed in Yabroud town, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2014. Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters seized a key rebel supply town on the Lebanese border on Sunday, driving them from the area and scoring a major blow against them in the three-year-old-conflict. The fall of Yabroud immediately emboldened government forces to attack nearby rebel-held towns, pressing forward in what has been nearly a yearlong advance against rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad. The Syrian revolutionary flag is seen painted at right. (AP Photo)

Syrian army ousts rebels from border stronghold

By DIAA HADID and BARBARA SURK - Associated Press

FILE - In this file photo taken Friday, Jan. 31, 2014, Syria's Foreign Minister and head of the Syrian government delegation Walid al-Moallem gestures during a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Lebanese security officials said Friday, March 14, that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem has been rushed to a Beirut hospital and is undergoing treatment there. The officials didn’t say when al-Moallem was brought to the American University of Beirut Medical Center. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File)

Syrian foreign minister’s heart surgery a success

By BASSEM MROUE - Associated Press

Syrian president Bashar Assad, center left, visits a shelter of internally displaced people in the Damascus suburb of Adra, Syria, Wednesday, March 12, 2014. (Associated Press)

Syria’s Assad makes rare public appearance on civil war frontlines

Associated Press

** FILE ** In this Monday, Aug. 26, 2013, file photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad gestures as he speaks during an interview with a Russian newspaper in Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/SANA, File)

Amnesty International says Syria guilty of war crimes for food blockade

By Jessica Chasmar and Cheryl K. Chumley - The Washington Times

This photo provided by an anti-Bashar Assad activist group Edlib News Network (ENN), which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, show anti-Syrian government protesters hold a placard resembling U.S. President Barack Obama during a demonstration, at Kafr Nabil town, in Idlib province, northern Syria, Friday, March 7, 2014. The Arabic in the background reads, &quot;Kafr Nabil,&quot; the name of the town. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN)

Syrian forces wrest border town from rebels

By DIAA HADID - Associated Press

In this picture taken on Wednesday, March 5, 2014, Ibrahim, 18, a Syrian rebel who lost one of his eyes during a battle against government forces and Hezbollah fighters in Rima village near Yabroud, the last rebel stronghold in Syria's mountainous Qalamoun region, lies on his bed as his aunt helps him to put hat on his head, at a makeshift hospital in the Lebanese-Syrian border town of Arsal, eastern Lebanon. Trucks of armed fighters rumble from this Lebanese Sunni town through the mountains to the front in Syria, where rebels are in a furious fight to keep a vital stronghold. At the same time, Lebanese Shiite fighters from a town not far away are also streaming in to join the battle _ but on the opposing side, backing Syrian government forces. The battle has effectively erased the border between the two countries and underlines how dangerously Lebanon is being sucked into its neighbor’s civil war. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Battle for Syrian rebel town erases Lebanon border

By BARBARA SURK - Associated Press

This picture taken on Saturday, March 1, 2014, provided by the anti-government activist group Coordination Committee In Kfar Takharim, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Syrian citizens inspecting destroyed cars and buildings which were attacked by a Syrian government forces airstrike in the town of Kfar Takharim in the northwest province of Idlib, Syria. Government airstrikes hit residential buildings in the town of Kfar Tarakhim in the northwest province of Idlib on Saturday afternoon, according to the Idlib News group and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. (AP Photo/Coordination Committee In Kfar Takharim)

Syrian army advancing on rebel town near Lebanon

By ALBERT AJI - Associated Press

Residents of the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk line up to receive food supplies in Damascus. A United Nations official is calling on warring sides in Syria to allow aid workers to resume distribution of food and medicine in the capital. (United Nations Relief and Works Agency via associated press)

Proxy war between Iran, Saudi Arabia playing out in Syria

By Ashish Kumar Sen - The Washington Times

Israeli soldiers of the Golani brigade adjust their weapons during training near the border with Syria in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2014. Hezbollah says Israel carried out an airstrike targeting its positions in Lebanon near the border with Syria earlier this week, claiming it caused damage but no casualties. The Wednesday statement was the group's first acknowledgement of the reported Monday night airstrikes. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Israel takes risk with airstrike on Hezbollah

By JOSEF FEDERMAN - Associated Press

UN aid workers deliver food to Damascus district

By BARBARA SURK - Associated Press

Lebanese men carry an wounded man at the site of an explosion, near the Kuwaiti Embassy and Iran's cultural center, in the suburb of Beir Hassan, Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014. A blast in a Shiite district in southern Beirut killed at least two people on Wednesday, security officials said — the latest apparent attack linked to the civil war in neighboring Syria. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Beirut suicide blasts cause panic, bitterness

By DIAA HADID - Associated Press

A wounded Lebanese man is carried from the site of an explosion in a suburb of Beirut on Wednesday. A blast in a Shiite district in southern Beirut killed several people Wednesday, security officials said. Twin suicide bombings killed at least six people. (Associated press)

Al Qaeda affiliate targets Hezbollah in Beirut

By Ashish Kumar Sen - The Washington Times

White House press secretary Jay Carney speaks during his daily news briefing at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2014. Carney answered questions including ones on Syria and North Korea. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

As Syria threat expands, Obama mulls options

By BRADLEY KLAPPER and JULIE PACE - Associated Press

Kerry accuses Assad of stonewalling in peace talks

By Matthew Lee - Associated Press

In this photo taken in 2013 and provided by the anti-government activist group of the Media Office for the Revolutionary Command Council in Quneitra and Golan, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Brig. Gen. Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir, the new military chief of the Free Syrian Army, posing for a picture in Jordan. The Western-backed Free Syrian Army has appointed a new military chief, opposition groups announced Monday as they try to restructure a rebel movement that has fallen into disarray as it faces rampant infighting and declining international support for its fight to topple President Bashar Assad. (AP Photo/Media Office for the Revolutionary Command Council in Quneitra and Golan)

Syrian rebels name new military commander

By ZEINA KARAM and BARBARA SURK - Associated Press

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, hold up his portraits as they march during a demonstration is solidarity with government forces, in al-Inshaat neighborhood of Homs, Syria, Wednesday Feb. 11, 2014. Meanwhile the Syrian government on Tuesday allowed over a hundred men of fighting age to leave rebel-held areas of the besieged city of Homs after they were questioned and cleared of rebel links, state media said. (AP Photo/SANA)

Analysis: In peace talks, Assad plays for time

By ZEINA KARAM - Associated Press