The Syrian-Russian Friendship Committee at the People’s Assembly, and Russian Ambassador to Syria Alexander Yefimov, discussed Sunday bilateral relations between the two friendly countries and how to upgrade them, according to the official news agency SANA. “ Russia has been and remains willing to offer all support to Syria and its people,” the Ambassador said. He added that the idea of establishing branches of Russian universities in Syria is being discussed, in addition to studying the reconstruction process and working to settle COVID-19 vaccine production in Syria.
Security forces in Lebanon and Syria said Saturday that they had seized two separate shipments of the banned stimulant captagon, the latest in a string of similar busts, according to the Saudi pan-Arab media outlet al-Arabiya. Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces said it “thwarted an attempt to smuggle four million captagon pills” hidden in a coffee shipment destined for Saudi Arabia via Jordan. In a separate operation, Syrian authorities seized “hundreds of thousands” of captagon pills in the southern province of Daraa, the official SANA news agency said, citing a security source.
Read Also: Authorities in Syria Thwart Captagon Smuggling to Saudi Arabia
Russian airstrikes have killed three people and injured 12 others, including women and children, in northwest Syria’s Idleb, a UK-based Syrian war monitor said on Frida, according to the opposition website Zaman al-Wasl. The strikes hit targets in the al-Yaaqubiyah area on the outskirts of the rebel-held town of Jisr al-Shughur, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said. The strikes coincided with the firing of 30 rockets by Syrian regime forces on the village of al-Qahira in the Sahl al-Ghab area of neighboring Hama province, the SOHR said.
A delegation of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) met with the Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto in the capital Helsinki on Saturday and discussed many issues, most notably the means for the political settlement of the Syrian crisis, the Kurdish agency North Press reports. The SDC delegation included the President of the SDC Executive Committee Ilham Ahmad, and the co-chair of the Local Administrations and Environment Board of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), Jihad Omar. The two sides discussed how to push the political process forward and make progress in solving the Syrian crisis in accordance with UN resolutions, and the role of the Republic of Finland in this respect.
Remark by the Observer: The visit occurred following a trip by the SDC to neighboring Sweden.
