Bomb Kills 6 in Yemen; Russia Announces Ceasefire; Details of Iran-Hezbollah Missile
By TOC	 On Aug 30, 2019
PANAGYURISHTE, (BM) – Your briefly report on August 30 in last twelve hours from BulgarianMilitary.com:
Suicide bomber kills separatist fighters in Yemen's Aden – witnesses
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed six southern separatist fighters on Friday on the outskirts of the Yemeni city of Aden, the site of a surge of violence that had complicated the near five-year-old war and undermined peace efforts, Reuters reported.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault on the patrol from the Security Belt group, part of a separatist front fighting Yemeni government forces – who were once their allies in the broader war – for control of the city.
Russia announces ceasefire in Syria's Idlib from Saturday
Russia on Friday announced that Syrian government forces would cease fire in the northwestern province of Idlib from Saturday morning, ArabNews reported.
An agreement was reached on "a unilateral ceasefire by Syrian government forces in the Idlib de-escalation zone, from 6:00 am on August 31," the Russian Reconciliation Centre for Syria said in a statement.
The announcement came after Russian-backed regime forces advanced in the militant-held bastion, one of the last holdouts of opposition to President Bashar Al-Assad's regime.
The statement said the ceasefire aimed "to stabilise the situation" in Idlib and urged anti-government fighters to "abandon armed provocations and join the peace process".
After months of intense bombardment, regime forces launched a ground offensive against Idlib earlier this month.
IDF Unveils Details of Iran-Hezbollah Precision Missile Project
The IDF on Thursday revealed details of Hezbollah's Iranian-backed precision-guided missile project, days after drone attacks attributed to Israel targeted a site in Beirut reportedly used by Hezbollah to manufacture key components of the project, Israel Defense reported.
The Israeli military also revealed the identities of four senior Iranian and Hezbollah officials involved in the project.
According to the IDF statement, Iran began its efforts to deliver ready-to-use precision-guided missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2013-2015, under the auspices of the civil war in Syria. Most of these attempts were thwarted by attacks attributed to Israel, and Hezbollah failed to acquire such missiles.
Given those failures, in 2016, Iran and Hezbollah shifted their strategy from transporting whole precision-guided missiles to converting "dumb" rockets into precision-guided missiles on Lebanese soil.
According to the IDF, the plan was to smuggle precision missile components from Iran to Lebanon, for the sake of converting ordinary rockets from the "SARS" Center for Scientific Research in Syria into precision-guided missiles.
To sustain the conversion of "statistic" rockets into precision-guided missiles, Hezbollah established facilities across Lebanon, including in Beirut. The commander of the Lebanon Corps in the Quds Force, Muhammad Hussein-Zada Hejazi, oversaw the project, under the guidance of Qassem Soleimani, chief of Iran's Quds Force.
The materials are transported in three routes: a land route from Syria to Lebanon through the official border crossings of the State of Lebanon (such as the Al-Matsna Crossing); an aerial route using civilian flights arriving at Hariri International Airport in Beirut; and a maritime route of ships through the port of Beirut.
Read more: Russia Testing New Electronic Warfare System; Pakistan Has Successfully Test Ballistic Missile
Read more: Russia Starts Export of Next-Gen Bomb; Egypt are Pursuing 80 Militants; Turkish Airstrikes in Iraq
Follow us everywhere and at any time. BulgarianMilitary.com has responsive design and you can open the page from any computer, mobile devices or web browsers. For more up-to-date news from us, follow our YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook pages. Do not miss the chance to subscribe to our newsletter.
Source: Reuters, ArabNews, Israel Defense
Our team of columnists [TOC] is made up of freelance journalists and correspondents around the world, following both the channels of our main media partners and real-time events on site.