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Geopolitics

Syria: Pro-Assad Forces In Homs Kill 106, Including Women And Children

SYRIAN OBSERVATORY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (UK), AL ARABIYA (UAE)

Worldcrunch

Reports emerged Thursday that pro-Assad forces killed more than 100 people earlier this week, including women and children, on farmland on the outskirts of Syria’s central city of Homs.

According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad stormed Homs’ impoverished district of Basatin al-Hasawiya on Tuesday, burning, stabbing or shooting at least 106 people. The Observatory asked for an international investigation to be launched.

Homs has been at center of the country’s ongoing civil war; since May 2011, the city has been under siege by the Syrian Army.

Meanwhile, rebels from the Free Syrian Army are reportedly trying to break a months-long deadlock in their battle for Syria’s second city Aleppo, cutting supply routes ahead of simultaneous assaults on regime bases, Al Arabiya reports.

More than 60,000 people have been killed since the uprising broke out. Also on Tuesday, at least 50 people died in a campus blast in Aleppo, Syria's economic capital.

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Geopolitics

How Argentina Has Become China's Foothold In Latin America

China has become one of Argentina's most important trading partners and is increasing its military bases in the country. As China seeks to challenge the liberal world order, Argentina risks rifts with other key allies.

Photo of Alberto Fernández and  Xi Jinping

President of Argentina Alberto Fernández and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November 2022

*Rubén M. Perina

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — There was a media furore worldwide in February over the sighting and subsequent downing of mysterious Chinese balloons by the U.S. coastline. The unnerving affair naturally raised a question mark in countries beyond the United States.

Here in Argentina, currently run by a leftist administration with leanings toward Russia and China, we might pertinently wonder whether or not the secretive Chinese base set up in the province of Neuquén in the west of the country in 2015-17 had anything to do with the communist superpower's less-than-festive balloons. It is difficult to say, of course, given the scarcity of information on the base, but the incidents are an opportunity to revise China's presence in Argentina.

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