CHICAGO: Although President Bashar Assad continues to survive the civil war that has gripped Syria since 2011, he controls only 60 percent of the country and his regime’s largest source of revenue is now drug trafficking, according to an expert on the nation’s geopolitical history.

JEDDAH: An Israeli airstrike on Aleppo airport in northern Syrian disabled the runway just as a cargo plane linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was about to land, new satellite photos show.

The images confirm that Israel has intensified strikes on Syrian airports to disrupt Iran’s increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah.

DUBAI: Comments recently made by a White House official to Al-Arabiya point to progress in indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel to find a solution to their maritime boundary dispute. But any progress raises a host of questions that Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia which holds sway over the Lebanese government, will find deeply embarrassing.

AL-MUKALLA: A Yemeni politician was gunned down in the Houthi-held city of Sanaa on Thursday shortly after an armed group executed a senior judge, raising speculation about infighting among the Houthis.

Residents in Sanaa said that unidentified men shot dead Brig. Gen. Abdullah Mohammed Al-Kibsi, a former MP and a supporter of the Iran-backed terrorist Houthis, outside his house in Al-Hasaba neighborhood, the latest in a string of drive-by killings targeting Houthi-allied military and political figures.

BEIRUT: Lebanon has welcomed the UN Security Council’s unanimous adoption of a resolution to renew UNIFIL’s mandate for another year.

The renewal request was made by the Lebanese government.

Arab News learned that after France submitted a draft of Resolution 2650, Lebanon tried to remove selected passages. However, several countries opposed the changes and insisted on passing it in its entirety.