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Members of al-Nusra Front gesture as they drive in a convoy touring villages in the southern countryside of Syria’s Idlib province, Decembe, 2014. (Photo: Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

As President Trump continues his tour of Saudi Arabia and Israel, neither Trump nor the Western media seem aware of the growing anger in Turkey at the shabby treatment Turkish President Erdogan received from his hands during his visit to Washington last week.

On Thursday, the US-led coalition announced it had launched an air strike against “pro-Assad forces” inside Syria killing several government-aligned militia soldiers and destroying numerous military vehicles near the al-Tanf region where the borders of Syria, Iraq and Jordan meet. The US coalition claim that Syrian forces inside of Syria posed a threat to US and NATO troops and the ‘rebels’ they are training and arming on the Jordanian side of that border region.

Though the fact is barely reported, the siege of the eastern desert city of Deir Ezzor – more so than the siege of Raqqa – has become the focus of the Syrian war.
Deir Ezzor’s strategic importance was explained previously by Afra’a Dagher here, and the city has faced a sustained attempt to capture it by ISIS since January.

Funerals of civilians massacred by ISIS in Aqarib, Salamiyeh. (Photo supplied to 21st Century Wire by resident)
21st Century Wire says…

Dr. Can Erimtan
21st Century Wire
Turkey’s first elected President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (aka the Prez) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have met on numerous occasions previously, but their recent meeting in Sochi came after a relatively long dry spell with Russo-Turkish relations at sub-zero temperatures.

Michael Flynn sits in the front row before the start of the President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe joint new conference in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, Friday, Feb. 10, 2017. (AP/Carolyn Kaster)
Former US national security adviser, Michael Flynn, reportedly blocked a military plan against the Islamic State that was opposed by Turkey just days before President Donald Trump was sworn in.

Julian Assange (left) with American linguist, philosopher Noam Chomsky on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. (Photo: Yui Mok/PA)

A traveler holds his laptop and iPhone that he travels with at a security checkpoint at San Jose International Airport in San Jose, Calif. (AP/Paul Sakuma)
US news reports say Israel was the source of intelligence that President Donald Trump disclosed to the Russians during a White House meeting last week, igniting further controversy for the beleaguered administration.
According to a New York Times report on Tuesday, Israel was the source that shared with US spy agencies sensitive intelligence materials that Trump is said to have disclosed with the Russians.

Israeli leaders have spoken out about revelations that the Washington Post’s story based on leaks from a conversation that US President Donald Trump had with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov may have compromised an Israeli mole embedded with ISIS.
Israel’s Defence Minister, the well known hardliner Avigdor Lieberman Tweeted the following,