The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) claimed responsibility for suicide and car bomb blasts that struck a Damascus suburb on Saturday near Syria's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine, and a monitoring group said at least 20 people were killed.

State television showed debris, mangled cars and wrecked shops in a main commercial thoroughfare near the Sayeda Zeinab shrine, in an area where at least three bomb attacks claimed by ISIS have killed and wounded scores of people this year.

The ultra-hardline Sunni militants of ISIS, whose many foes are advancing on a number of fronts in both Syria and Iraq, are avowed enemies of Shi'ites, whom they consider a heretical group within Islam.

State media said at least eight people were killed. But the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll had risen to at least 20, including at least 13 civilians, with the other victims coming from pro-government militias. It said the number was expected to rise because many of the scores of wounded people were in critical condition.

ISIS, also known as Daesh, said two of its suicide bombers had blown themselves up and operatives had detonated an explosives-laden car, according to the ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington condemned the attack in the strongest terms. "This terrorist act demonstrates once again the inhumanity and brutality of all that Daesh does and all it stands for," he said.

The Sayeda Zeinab shrine is a magnet for thousands of Iraqi and Afghan Shi'ite militia recruits who go there before being assigned to front lines, where they fight against the Sunni rebel groups trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Almost every Shi'ite militia fighter bears insignia on his combat fatigues with the words "For your sake, Sayeda Zeinab."

SECTARIAN SPLIT

The heavily garrisoned area near the shrine is also a well known stronghold of Lebanon's powerful Shi'ite Hezbollah group, an Iranian-backed movement that is one of Assad's chief allies.

Non-jihadist rebels say Iran's strong military intervention on the side of Assad, alongside its backing of other Shi'ite militias, is fuelling the sectarian dimension of the nearly six-year Syrian civil war by drawing even more radical foreign Sunni jihadists into the country.

Separately, U.S.-backed Syrian forces made new territorial gains against ISIS on Saturday, moving closer to another of its major strongholds in northern Syria, according to the monitoring group.

The Observatory said the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), bringing together Kurdish and Arab fighters, were now almost 17 km (10 miles) from the city of al-Bab, an ISIS stronghold north east of Aleppo.

The SDF on Friday cut off the last route into the encircled town of Manbij from al-Bab after over a week of advances around that area, allowing it to lay siege to the large town from all directions, the monitor said.

In other frontlines in northern Syria, two rebel sources said Russian and Syrian jets stepped up their relentless aerial bombing of their positions in the northern city of Aleppo.

They said fighters had overnight repelled a major Syrian army attack on the Malah front in an drive to reach the strategic Catello highway, which is the only route in and out of rebel-held areas.

The army has for months sought to advance toward the highway to lay siege to rebel-held areas where over 400,000 people live.

A convoy of aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross entered the rebel-held city of Houla in the province of Homs, the third besieged area to receive supplies in the past 24 hours, aid workers said.

On Friday, aid convoys reached two rebel-held towns near Damascus, marking the first delivery of food supplies to Daraya since 2012, after the government granted permission for the trips, the United Nations said.

(Newsweek)

As NATO’s Warsaw summit looms, the rivalry between the alliance and Russia is intensifying. The summit’s agenda includes a lengthy list of points of tension, including NATO enlargement, ballistic missile defence, positioning of NATO equipment and forces in Eastern European member states and NATO’s partnerships with states such as Georgia. At the same time, NATO is conducting a series of substantial military exercises in Eastern Europe, such as Anakonda-2016, the largest such exercises since the end of the Cold War.

The Russian leadership has responded with a mix of vocal criticism threatening retaliatory measures, most notably President Putin’s statements that Romania would be targeted as a result of its hosting elements of the missile defence shield. Other officials have stated that Russia will also increase military and security exercises and other activities in response.

These moves are in addition to others already announced, such as the reconstitution of the 1st Guards Tank army, this year’s strategic exercise Kavkaz 2016, and statements that the Admiral Kuznetsov would be deployed to the naval task force in the eastern Mediterranean and Borei class nuclear powered submarines would conduct test launches of Bulava ballistic missiles, an important part of Russia’s nuclear triad.

These additional moves by the Russian leadership are the tip of a much larger iceberg, and are not so much responses to what NATO is currently doing but rather reflections of what would have taken place anyway. Indeed, the Russian leadership is in the middle of a major transition period during which it is implementing emergency measures to move Russia onto a war footing—in effect, state mobilization.

These policies were intended to reinvigorate the defense industry and revamp the armed forces. In 2010, the Russian leadership committed $640 billion to a decade-long transformation process that would result in recruiting half a million contract soldiers and ensuring that at least 70 percent of military equipment is modern, including the procurement of thousands of pieces of high performance and heavy equipment, such as tanks, artillery, military aircraft and naval vessels.

At the same time, the Russian armed forces and internal security services have taken part in thousands of tactical, operational and strategic exercises. Over the last five years, these exercises have become significantly larger and more sophisticated, designed to test the system in place, particularly coordination between ministries and federal, regional and local authorities.

These are impressive figures. But they also represent emergency measures. On one hand, they reflect Moscow’s concern about Russia’s ability to cope with an increasingly unstable and threatening environment. In the government’s view, Russia is surrounded by an arc of crisis, stretching almost all the way around Russia, from Ukraine to the South China Sea. At the same time, the Russian authorities are concerned by threats of international terrorism, the spread of regional instability as a result of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and particularly by the prospect of US-led color revolutions not only in the former Soviet space, but even in Russia itself.

Such concerns are compounded by Moscow’s view that the 21 st century will become increasingly unstable as major powers compete for resources, particularly in Eurasia. Thus the Russian leadership often speaks of the need to protect Russian territorial integrity and sovereignty, and to insulate Russia against external threats by consolidating state institutions and civil society.

What we see today, therefore, is just part of a bigger picture, in which Russia is halfway through a sustained transformation process. It is not without problems. Exercises have revealed ongoing shortcomings within the system, particularly in terms of coordinating military and civilian authorities. There are also problems in procurement, leading to postponements and delays in equipment supply and in ongoing reforms to optimal force structure.

There is little that the West and NATO can do to alter or reduce this mobilization transformation in Russia, partly because it is intended to meet what the Kremlin sees as Russian domestic problems and weaknesses, and partly because to mitigate Russian concerns would mean implementing policies that would be unpalatable to Western leaders, such as ‘retiring’ NATO. What is does mean, however, is that NATO’s leadership should be beginning to think about what this transformation will mean for Russia over the next three years, a Russia that is more muscular and more alert to potential threats.

Andrew Monaghan is senior research fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, and the author of The New Politics of Russia: Interpreting Change, to be published by Manchester University Press in July 2016.

(Newsweek)

It had been an evening of drinking, dancing and drag shows. After hours of revelry, the party-goers crowding the gay nightclub known as the Pulse took their last sips before the place closed.

That's when authorities say Omar Mateen emerged, carrying an AR-15 and spraying the helpless crowd with bullets. Witnesses said he fired relentlessly — 20 rounds, 40, then 50 and more. In such tight quarters, the bullets could hardly miss. He shot at police. He took hostages.

When the gunfire finally stopped, 50 people were dead and dozens critically wounded in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Mateen, who authorities said had pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a 911 call shortly before the attack, died in a gun battle with SWAT team members.

Authorities immediately began investigating whether the assault was an act of terrorism and probing the background of Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen from Fort Pierce, Florida, who had worked as a security guard. The gunman's father recalled that his son recently got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami and said that might be related to the assault.

Thirty-nine of the dead were killed at the club, and 11 people died at hospitals, Mayor Buddy Dyer said.

Jon Alamo had been dancing at the Pulse for hours when he wandered into the club's main room just in time to see the gunman. "You ever seen how Marine guys hold big weapons, shooting from left to right? That's how he was shooting at people," he said.

"My first thought was, oh my God, I'm going to die," Alamo said. "I was praying to God that I would live to see another day."

Pulse patron Eddie Justice texted his mother, Mina: "Mommy I love you. In club they shooting." About 30 minutes later, hiding in a bathroom, he texted her: "He's coming. I'm gonna die." As Sunday wore on, she awaited word on his fate.

At least 53 people were hospitalized, most in critical condition, and a surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center said the death toll was likely to climb.

The previous deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, where a student killed 32 people before killing himself.

Mateen's family was from Afghanistan, and he was born in New York. His family later moved to Florida, authorities said.

A law enforcement official said the gunman made a 911 call from the club in which he professed allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The official was familiar with the investigation, but was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The extremist group did not officially claim responsibility for the attack, but the IS-run Aamaq news agency cited an unnamed source as saying the attack was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.

Even if the attacker supported IS, it was unclear whether the group planned or knew of the attack beforehand.

Mateen was not unknown to law enforcement: In 2013, he made inflammatory comments to co-workers and was interviewed twice, according to FBI agent Ronald Hopper, who called the interviews inconclusive. In 2014, Hopper said, officials found that Mateen had ties to an American suicide bomber, but the agent described the contact as minimal, saying it did not constitute a threat at the time.

Asked if the gunman had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, Hopper said authorities had "suggestions that individual has leanings towards that."

Mateen purchased at least two firearms legally within the last week or so, according to Trevor Velinor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

In a separate incident, an Indiana man armed with three assault rifles and chemicals used to make explosives was arrested Sunday in Southern California and told police he wanted to do harm to a gay pride parade.

The Orlando shooting started about 2 a.m., with more than 300 people inside the Pulse.

"He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance," said Jackie Smith, who saw two friends next to her get shot. "I just tried to get out of there."

At 2:09 a.m., Pulse posted on its Facebook page: "Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running."

Mateen exchanged gunfire with 14 police officers at the club, and took hostages at one point. In addition to the assault rifle, the shooter also had a handgun and some sort of "suspicious device," the police chief said. About 5 a.m., authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the remaining club-goers, Police Chief John Mina said.

At first, officers mistakenly thought the gunman had strapped explosives to the dead after a bomb robot sent back images of a battery part next to a body, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. That prevented paramedics from going in until authorities determined the battery was something that fell out of an exit sign or a smoke detector, he said.

The robot was sent in after SWAT team members put explosive charges on a wall and an armored vehicle knocked it down in an effort to rescue hostages.

Just before 6 a.m., the Pulse posted an update on its Facebook: "As soon as we have any information, we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love."

Authorities were looking into whether the shooter acted alone, according to Danny Banks, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident," Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.

Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News about his son seeing the men kissing a couple of months ago.

"We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident," Seddique said. "We are in shock like the whole country."

Mateen was a security guard with a company called G4S. In a 2012 newsletter, the firm identified him as working in West Palm Beach. In a statement sent Sunday to the Palm Beach Post, the company confirmed that he had been an employee since September 2007. State records show that Mateen had held a firearms license since at least 2011.

President Barack Obama called the shooting an "act of terror" and an "act of hate" targeting a place of "solidarity and empowerment" for gays and lesbians. He urged Americans to decide whether this is the kind of "country we want to be."

Authorities said they had secured a van owned by the suspect outside the club. Meanwhile, a SWAT truck and a bomb-disposal unit were on the scene of an address associated with Mateen in Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando.

Across the country, police departments stepped up patrols in neighborhoods frequented by the LGBT community.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington, Terrance Harris, Jason Dearen and Tamara Lush in Orlando and photographer Alan Diaz in Fort Pierce, Florida, contributed to this report.