{"id":12692,"date":"2018-08-25T06:24:06","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T06:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12692"},"modified":"2018-08-25T06:24:06","modified_gmt":"2018-08-25T06:24:06","slug":"israeli-pm-wants-baltics-to-help-change-view-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12692","title":{"rendered":"Israeli PM wants Baltics to help change view of Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1361551\/middle-east\" readability=\"52\">\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">\nBEIRUT: Drone attacks on an air base in Syria used by Damascus ally Russia have increased since last month but all were shot down, a monitor said on Friday.<br \/>\u201cDrone attacks against Hmeimim have increased\u201d since July, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, referring to Russia\u2019s main military base in the war-torn country, where it intervened on the regime\u2019s side in 2015 to help fight the armed opposition.<br \/>The Britain-based Observatory reported 13 assaults in July and five this month, out of a total of 23 since the start of the year.<br \/>In such attacks, small unmanned aircraft have been loaded with explosives.<br \/>But \u201cmost of the drones are downed by Russian or Syrian air defenses before reaching their target,\u201d Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The others were also downed.<br \/>Hmeimim lies just west of opposition-held territory in the northwestern province of Idlib, which President Bashar Assad has said he intends to bring back under his control.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"170\" src=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/1347\/fastfa_1.png\" width=\"307\"><br \/>The attackers \u201care sending a message to Russia that they are able to directly target the main center for Russian forces in Syria,\u201d Abdel Rahman said.<br \/>On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blamed \u201cterrorists\u201d for the attacks.<br \/>\u201cThe drone attacks they have launched have become regular in Hmeimim. Our air defenses have downed 45 of them,\u201d she said.<br \/>Earlier this month, Russian army spokesman Gen. Igor Konachenkov also reported a spike in these attempts in July.<br \/>\u201cLast month, we observed an increase in attempted drone attacks\u201d against Hmeimim, he said on Aug. 16.<br \/>Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham controls more than half of Idlib while a string of opposition outfits hold most of the rest.<br \/>Analysts say Russia-backed regime forces will likely only target a small part of Idlib with any upcoming military campaign, around the town of Jisr Al-Shughur.<br \/>Sam Heller, from the International Crisis Group think-tank, told AFP last week that \u201cthe Russians are convinced that the drones that have targeted their air base &#8230; are emanating from the area around Jisr Al-Shughur.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIRUT: Drone attacks on an air base in Syria used by Damascus ally Russia have increased since last month but all were shot down, a monitor said on Friday.\u201cDrone attacks against Hmeimim have increased\u201d since July, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, referring to Russia\u2019s main military base in the war-torn country, where it&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}