Damascus is ready for a ceasefire but will not tolerate terrorists exploiting it to restore their positions or receive support from abroad, Syrian president Bashar Assad said as the top Russian and US diplomats discussed "practical cooperation" in implementing the truce. "We have said that we are ready to stop military operations," Syrian president Bashar Assad stated, while noting that the nationwide cessation of hostilities "relates to more important factors."

First of all, for the truce to hold, terror groups must be prevented from "using it to improve their positions," Assad said in an interview with the Spanish EL PAIS Newspaper. Secondly, any ceasefire deal must ensure that "other countries, especially Turkey, are prevented from sending more terrorists and weapons, or any kind of logistical support. More than 80 countries supported those terrorists in different ways, some of them directly with money, with logistical support, with armaments, with recruitments," Assad said. "Some other countries supported them politically, in different international forums."

When the ceasefire takes place, the fight will still continue against Al-Nusra and ISIS, as well as radical Islamist Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam, the Syrian president said, once again stressing that in order for the truce to work the borders must be sealed. That is what the Syrian army and the Kurdish forces have been doing around Aleppo lately, Assad said: "closing the roads between Turkey and between the terrorist groups. That's why Turkey has been shelling the Kurds recently."

Meanwhile the Russian FM, Sergey Lavrov, and his US counterpart, John Kerry, discussed "practical cooperation" on Syria between the US and Russia during a telephone call on Saturday.

Turkey's been blasting away all month long shelling heavy artillery mortars from its side along the Turkish border killing Syrian National Army soldiers, Syrian Kurd forces (YPG), at least one Russian advisor and defenseless civilians in border villages inside Syria. Widespread reportage of the ongoing daily Turkish artillery barrage into Syria was publicly confirmed by the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu since February 13th. Though a NATO member, longtime close US ally and next to Empire and Israel among the world's leading partners-in-crime for state sponsored terrorism, earlier this week Turkey was asked by Washington to cease its border aggression. Yet Turkish President Recep Erdogan has elected to defy his US master and continues his daily bombardment of northern Syrian villages and Syrian militarily controlled outposts abandoned recently by decimated escaping Islamic State terrorists.

Because the US has consistently backed Turkey's provocative acts of war in the past, including Turkey's premeditated shoot down last November 24th of the Russian Su-24 jet killing its pilot immediately defended by Obama's bogus contention that Turkey has every right to protect its own airspace despite no evidence the ill-fated warplane had ever entered Turkish airspace, Erdogan miscalculated counting on America's ongoing unconditional support and felt betrayed when the US began backing the Syrian Kurds. The Turkish president assumed that regardless of how severe his violation of international laws or magnitude of violent transgressions become, the US and NATO will always have his back. But if Erdogan was paying attention to history, he would realize the US Empire has a long track record of turning against its onetime allies after using them up for their own self-serving gains (vis-à-vis Saddam, Muamar, Mubarak, Osama and even Putin).

It seems that Erdogan may be a bit over-confident after Obama and his neocons minimally gave the tacit go-ahead recently for an upcoming joint Saudi-Turkish invasion of Syria where US uses its proxy allies to fight the Russian coalition that in recent weeks has been making mincemeat out of their darling terrorists. As of late the Turkish leader's vital supply line to his terrorists has been significantly severed. He and the Saudi monarchy are seething over America-NATO's reluctance to directly commit its ground forces in Syria. This has the arrogant dictator chomping at the bit to save his vested lost ISIS holdings behaving with unpredictable brashness and recklessness reaching unprecedented megalomaniacal heights.

After saying US cooperation with Russia in the Syrian conflict doesn't extend beyond basic flight safety rules, the Pentagon has revealed it gave the Russian military the locations of US special forces in Syria, in the hope Russian aircraft would avoid the area.

The disclosure reveals a modest breakthrough in military - to-military communication and cooperation between the US and Russia beyond the very basic "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) signed in October last year which focused on safety protocols for both Russian and American air crews operating in Syrian airspace.

"We provided a geographical area that we asked them to stay out of because of the risk to US forces," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The request was an attempt to maintain special forces' safety "in a dangerous situation." It was made outside the scope of the flight safety memorandum, Cook said.

Up to this point, the Russian military "has honored this request," he added.

Thousands of Serbs marched through the heart of Belgrade to the Russian embassy, in protest at a new co-operation agreement with NATO, and the death of two Serbian hostages during a US air strike in Libya.

Organized by the ultra-conservative, nationalist Zavet and Obraz movements, the march proceeded peacefully, as the demonstrators brandished portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin in military fatigues, and held placards with the slogan "Expel NATO ASAP." One banner read "Putin for President," another "Medvedev for PM," in reference to the head of the Russian government, Dmitry Medvedev.

Two Serbian diplomats died in the result of the US airstrikes in the northwestern Libyan town of Sabratha, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said Saturday.

The US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS), which is prohibited in numerous countries including the United States and Russia, conducted airstrikes in Libya against a terrorist training camp and Tunisian IS leader Noureddine Chouchane after establishing he was planning attacks in the region, US Defense Department spokesperson Peter Cook said in a briefing on Friday.

"Unfortunately, as a result of the attack on the Islamic State position in Libya, two of them lost their lives," Agence France[-Presse cited Dacic as saying at a press conference.

Dacic stated that the identification of victims would be carried out shortly. They are likely to have been kidnapped on November 28, 2015.

Washington has been considering the possibility of expanding its anti-IS campaign into Libya amid the terrorist group's rise in the country. So far, the United States, however, has ruled out sending ground troops to Libya and has pushed for the formation of a unity government.

The US-led coalition against the Islamic State, which is prohibited in numerous countries including the United States and Russia, conducted airstrikes in Libya against a terrorist training camp and Tunisian IS leader Noureddine Chouchane after establishing he was planning attacks in the region, US Defense Department spokesperson Peter Cook said in a briefing on Friday.

There is no other word for it. Turkey is now waging a proxy war against US in Syria. It has always been clear that Turkish and American interests in Syria do not necessarily match, but until now Turkey had refrained from using its military to blast those contrary US interests to high heaven. That's all changed now that it has emerged that Turkey is now bringing its military force to bear not only against its old enemy the Syrian Kurds, but also an allied formation that is a US creation from the get-go.

In Syria US has always had two problems. The first problem was that whichever non-jihadi "Free Syrian Army" groups it created, trained and equipped these as a rule were quickly pressured by Al Nusra to disband and their weapons and fighters incorporated into the rebel military structure controlled by Al Nusra. Try as it might - except in the south on the border with Jordan - US could not establish a meaningful Syrian rebel network of its own (and eventually "got around" the problem by simply funneling resources into the one controlled by Al Qaeda).

Secondly, in its slow motion war against ISIS it found that having shunned Assad the only forces who could possibly act as its boots on the ground were the Kurds. However, the usefulness of Kurds is limited firstly because they are not necessarily interested in dying en masse to eject ISIS from areas they can not hope to ever make part of their Syrian Kurdistan region. And secondly, because Syria's majority Sunni Arabs are not necessarily thrilled to see the Kurdish YPG take over military control of more of the country.

Russia has started the renovation of a mothballed airfield on the Crimean Peninsula to deploy Black Sea Fleet's naval helicopters and drones after 2017, a source in the Sevastopol city administration said Saturday.

The Khersones airfield in Crimea has been mothballed for 20 years, according to the Russian military.

"The renovation work may take several years and envisions full renovation of the airfield's infrastructure," the source told RIA Novosti.

"The deployment priority will be given to helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles," the source stressed.

"Highly dangerous" radioactive material that had gone missing in Iraq last year has been found dumped near a petrol station in the country's south, officials say.

The chief of the security panel in Basra provincial council, Jabbar al-Saidi, said on Sunday that the material was found by a passer-by in the southern town of Zubair, which is located around 15 km (9 miles) southwest of Basra.

He said there were no concerns about radiation from the material.

One of Spain's leading newspapers, El País, sat down with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus for an interview about what lies ahead for Syria. We've compiled some highlights below:

Q. A truce was announced by Russia and the United States. Is the Syrian government willing to respect the cessation of military operations in Syria?

A: Definitely ... A ceasefire is about - if you want to say ceasefire, it's not the correct word, because a ceasefire is between two armies or two countries - it's better to say cessation of hostility, or, let's say, stopping the operations ... It's about preventing other countries, especially Turkey, from sending more recruits, more terrorists, more armaments, or any kind of logistical support to those terrorists. There is a United Nations resolution, or Security Council resolution, regarding this point that's not implemented. If we don't provide all these requirements for the ceasefire, it will be against the stability; it's going to make more chaos in Syria, it may lead to a de facto division of the country.

According to breaking reports, ISIS was boiled alive in the East Aleppo cauldron. Hundreds of ISIS fighters apparently fled the area, leaving less than 200 to defend the thermal power plant, which is now under full SAA control. ISIS is now on the run:

The Syrian Arab Army's "Tiger Forces" and their allies have officially captured every village inside the Al-Safira Plains today after a very long battle at the Aleppo Thermal Power Plant this past week.

According to a battlefield correspondent at the Kuweires Military Airport, sappers from the Syrian Arab Army's engineering corps are now clearing the IEDs placed by the terrorists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) before they fled the area.

The source added that some 700 ISIL terrorists fled the Al-Safira Plains this past week, leaving only 100-150 fighters left to control the Thermal Power. However, those terrorists were unable to hold on for very long, thanks in large part to the Tiger Forces, who surrounded the entire facility while also seizing the Aleppo-Raqqa Highway.