ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

File Image On April 25, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced in an official statement that its fact finding mission had visited a second site of the alleged chemical attack in the district of Duma and had collected samples from it.  The OPCW inspected the first site in Duma on April 21 . The OPCW added that its team had also interviewed some people who are related to the alleged chemical attack in Duma district and stressed that these interviews are part of its team’s mission. “The FFM [fact finding mission] will continue to carry out its independent and impartial mission based on interviews with relevant people, its findings from the site visits, analysis of the sample results, as well as any other information and materials collected,” the OPCW said in its official statement. In a related development, the OPCW announced that the Russian delegation to the organization will organize a briefing about the alleged chemical attack in Duma i

Kurdish fighters raise flag of PKK leader in centre of Raqqa Written by  Maksim Alexandrov ; Originally appeared on  warsonline.info ; Translated by  AlexD  exclusively for  SouthFront Not long ago in Washington at the Institute of National Strategic Studies of the National Defence University the round table on “The Multimodal Threats in the Kurdish Region” took place, a continuation of the “NATO and Regional Military and Political Alliance in 2018” Council. The organisers of the meeting, taking place on April 9 to 11, were the Institute of National Strategic Studies, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the intelligence community and the commanders of the Special Forces of the US. The main agenda of the event was focused on clarifying the conceptual and analytical foundations of American policy in the framework of topical issues of the “Kurdish question”, the problem of improving the coordination of regional allies, as well as military and political modeling of crisis

On April 25,  the Russian Defense Ministry held a press briefing providing more details on the April 14 cruise missile strike carried out by the US, the UK and France on Syria . The Russian military  revealed wreckage of the intercepted missiles and showed at least one unexploded Tamahawk cruise missile . It also added that  two unexploded missiles (a Tomahawk and a high-accuracy air-launched missile) had been delivered to Russia from Syria.  FULL TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS BRIEFING According to the April 25 press briefing by the Russian military: only 22 US, French, British missiles hit their targets; 46 missiles were intercepted by Syrian air defense systems covering the capital of Syria and Duvali, Dumayr, Blai, and Mazzeh nearby airfields; 20 missiles were intercepted in three areas of the responsibility zone of air defense of Homs; a part of the missiles failed to reach their targets by different, apparently technical, reasons. SF recalls that according to the Pentagon’s