Missile strike on the outskirts of Damascus

1 Syria

The ‘Al Hadath’ TV channel reports that the Israeli air force launched missiles at the Seyyid-Zeynab area, near the highway to the Damascus International Airport, in Syria. According to the channel, the missiles were launched from Israeli ships in the Mediterranean Sea. The Syrian state-owned news agency ‘SANA’ reported that the Syrian army reacted to the missiles from the occupied territories, and opened fire on the air targets that approached Damascus. The ‘SANA’ clarifies that one of the incoming missiles fell near the village of Akraba, 20 kilometers southeast of the Damascus. It was also reported that the Syrian air defenses shot down an aircraft over the city of Jebl.

2 Venezuela

The Venezuelan defense minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez tweeted about an attack by a group of Venezuelan opposition members on a military base near the Brazilian border. At least one Venezuelan serviceman died during the attack. The attackers seized some of the weapons from the military base, but the Venezuelan military managed to return it, and detain several attackers, whom Lopez described as «opposition members from the extremist sectors». The Minister of Defense of Venezuela called the incident a «terrorist attack.» He added that the detainees were interrogated. A chase was organized for those who managed to escape.

3 Donbass

«Some of the lists for the exchange of the PoWs in Donbass have been agreed upon by now» — said the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadim Priestayko. «In order to pick up all the PoWs — it is necessary to refine the lists first» — he underlined — “It raises a question: Should an exchange take place right now, or should we try to finalize the lists and pick everyone up, since we want to return the maximum number of people back to their families before the New Year” — Pristayko said during an interview to the ‘Ukr-inform’ agency. He also added that it was decided by the OSCE coordinators to hold a video-conference without a delay in order to complete the work on the exchange lists.

4 Iraq

The ‘Al Arabiya’ TV channel reports: on Monday, in the west of Iraq, in the province of Anbar, in the city of Al Qaim, an explosion took place. According to the TV channel — as a result of the explosion of a car bomb — two Iraqi soldiers died. One officer was injured.