{"id":36552,"date":"2026-01-18T03:04:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T03:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=36552"},"modified":"2026-01-18T03:04:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T03:04:31","slug":"syria-army-tightens-grip-on-raqa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=36552","title":{"rendered":"Syria army tightens grip on Raqa"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Syria&#8217;s army took control of swathes of northern Syria and threatened to bomb parts of Raqa province on Saturday after Kurdish forces pulled back from territory they had held for over a decade.<\/p>\n<p>The government appeared to be seeking to extend its grip on parts of the country under Kurdish control a day after President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree declaring Kurdish a &#8220;national language&#8221; and granting the minority official recognition.<\/p>\n<p>The Kurds have said the move fell short of their aspirations.<\/p>\n<p>The army drove Kurdish forces from two Aleppo neighbourhoods last week and took control of an area east of the city on Saturday, after implementation stalled on a March deal that was supposed to see Kurdish forces integrated into the state.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities later announced they had seized two oil fields near the city of Tabqa in Raqa province.<\/p>\n<p>Syria&#8217;s army said four soldiers had been killed, while Kurdish forces reported several fighters dead. AFP<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Syria&#8217;s army took control of swathes of northern Syria and threatened to bomb parts of Raqa province on Saturday after Kurdish forces pulled back from territory they had held for over a decade. The government appeared to be seeking to extend its grip on parts of the country under Kurdish control a day after President [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}