Turkiye working with 20 countries in Lebanon evacuation preparations

Passengers disembark a Bulgarian government evacuation flight from Lebanon at Sofia airport on September 30, 2024. (AFP)
Passengers disembark a Bulgarian government evacuation flight from Lebanon at Sofia airport on September 30, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 01 October 2024
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Turkiye working with 20 countries in Lebanon evacuation preparations

Passengers disembark a Bulgarian government evacuation flight from Lebanon at Sofia airport on September 30, 2024. (AFP)
  • Foreign Ministry said a coordination center had been set up to handle evacuation requests in line with the plans made by Turkish institutions

ANKARA: Turkiye is ready to carry out a possible evacuation of Turks from Lebanon via air and sea, and is working with around 20 countries on preparing for a possible evacuation of foreign nationals via Turkiye, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
It said the security conditions in Lebanon could deteriorate, as Israel launched a ground incursion into south Lebanon, and added a coordination center had been set up to handle evacuation requests in line with the plans made by Turkish institutions.
“The guidelines for the evacuation of foreign nationals via our country have also been set, the necessary preparations are being carried out with around 20 countries that have requested support so far,” it said. 


Israel orders troops to ‘prepare to remain’ in Syria buffer zone through winter

Israel orders troops to ‘prepare to remain’ in Syria buffer zone through winter
Updated 3 sec ago
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Israel orders troops to ‘prepare to remain’ in Syria buffer zone through winter

Israel orders troops to ‘prepare to remain’ in Syria buffer zone through winter
  • ‘Due to the situation in Syria, it is of critical security importance to maintain our presence at the summit of Mount Hermon’
JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered the military to “prepare to remain” throughout the winter in the UN-patrolled buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights.
“Due to the situation in Syria, it is of critical security importance to maintain our presence at the summit of Mount Hermon, and everything must be done to ensure the (army’s) readiness on-site to enable the fighters to stay there despite the challenging weather conditions,” Katz’s spokesman said in a statement Friday.

Fire at Jordan nursing home kills 6 residents, injures dozens

Fire at Jordan nursing home kills 6 residents, injures dozens
Updated 13 December 2024
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Fire at Jordan nursing home kills 6 residents, injures dozens

Fire at Jordan nursing home kills 6 residents, injures dozens
  • An investigation was being conducted to identify the cause of the blaze

AMMAN: Six residents died and dozens were injured after a fire broke out a nursing home in Jordan, state news agency Petra reported.

The fire at the White Beds Society’s, or Al-Asirra Al-Baydaa, elderly home killed six elderly, badly injuring five and moderately injuring fifty-five more, according to Wafa Bani Mustafa, Minister of Social Development.

The fire spread engulfed the entire 80-square-meter center, which houses 111 people, the minister added.

The injured were taken to government hospitals for treatment, while the remaining elderly were moved to other centers.

An investigation was being conducted to identify the cause of the blaze, the minister said.


Russia in contact with Syrian militants, hopes to keep military bases, Interfax reports

Russia in contact with Syrian militants, hopes to keep military bases, Interfax reports
Updated 13 December 2024
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Russia in contact with Syrian militants, hopes to keep military bases, Interfax reports

Russia in contact with Syrian militants, hopes to keep military bases, Interfax reports
  • Contacts with Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham are ‘proceeding in constructive fashion’

MOSCOW Russia has established direct contact with the political committee of Syria’s Islamist militant group, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov as saying on Thursday.

Interfax reported that Bogdanov, speaking to journalists, also said Moscow aimed to maintain its military bases in Syria.

Bogdanov said contacts with HTS, the most powerful force in the country after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, were “proceeding in constructive fashion.”

Russia, he said, hoped the group would fulfil its pledges to “guard against all excesses,” maintain order and ensure the safety of diplomats and other foreigners.

Bogdanov said Russia hoped to maintain its two bases in Syria – a naval base in Tartous and the Khmeimim Air Base near the port city of Latakia – to keep up efforts against international terrorism.

“The bases are still there, where they were on Syrian territory. No other decisions have been made for the moment,” he was quoted as saying.

“They were there at the Syrians’ request with the aim of fighting terrorists from the Islamic State. I am proceeding on the basis of the notion that everyone agrees that the fight against terrorism, and what remains of IS, is not over.”

Maintaining that fight, he said, “requires collective efforts and in this connection, our presence and the Khmeimim base played an important role in the context of the overall fight against international terrorism.”

Another Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Vershinin, and the UN’s special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, called for measures to destabilize the situation in and around Syria, according to a statement on the foreign ministry’s website.

The statement said the two diplomats discussed by telephone finding a political settlement in a way to be determined by the Syrian people and ensuring Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.


Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade

Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade
Updated 58 min 8 sec ago
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Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade

Fall of Bashar Assad exposes Syrian government’s drug trade
  • Islamist-led fighters seize military bases and distribution hubs for the banned drug captagon

DAMASCUS: The dramatic collapse of Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug captagon.

Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the black market across the Middle East.

Led by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group, the militants say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them.

On Wednesday, HTS fighters allowed AFP journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, where captagon pills were concealed inside electrical components for export.

“After we entered and did a sweep, and we found that this is a factory for Maher Assad and his partner Amer Khiti,” said black-masked fighter Abu Malek Al-Shami.

Maher Assad was a military commander and the deposed strongman’s brother, now presumed on the run. He is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.

Syrian politician Khiti was placed under sanction in 2023 by the British government, which said he “controls multiple businesses in Syria which facilitate the production and smuggling of drugs.”

In a cavernous garage beneath the warehouse and loading bays, thousands of dusty beige captagon pills were packed into the copper coils of brand new household voltage stabilizers.

“We found a large number of devices that were stuffed with packages of captagon pills meant to be smuggled out of the country. It’s a huge quantity. It’s impossible to tell,” Shami said.

Above, in the warehouse, crates of cardboard boxes stood ready to allow the traffickers to disguise their cargo as pallet-loads of standard goods, alongside sacks and sacks of caustic soda.

Caustic soda, or sodium hydroxide, is a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, another stimulant.

Assad fell at the weekend to a lightning HTS offensive, but the revenue from selling captagon propped up Assad’s government throughout Syria’s 13 years of civil war.

Captagon turned Syria into the world’s largest narco state. It became by far Syria’s biggest export, dwarfing all its legal exports put together, according to estimates drawn from official data by AFP during a 2022 investigation.

The warehouse haul was massive, but smaller and still impressive stashes of captagon have also turned up in military facilities associated with units under Maher Assad’s command.

Journalists from AFP this week found a bonfire of captagon pills on the grounds of the Mazzeh air base, now in the hands of HTS fighters who descended on the capital Damascus from the north.

Behind the smoldering heap, in a ransacked air force building, more captagon lay alongside other illicit exports, including off-brand Viagra impotence remedies and poorly-forged $100 bills.

“As we entered the area we found a huge quantity of captagon. So we destroyed it and burned it. It’s a huge amount, brother,” said an HTS fighter using the nom de guerre “Khattab.”

“We destroyed and burned it because it’s harmful to people. It harms nature and people and humans.”

Khattab also stressed that HTS, which has formed a transitional government to replace the collapsed administration, does not want to harm its neighbors by exporting the drug — a trade worth billions of dollars.


UN says 1.1 million newly displaced in Syria since offensive that toppled Assad

UN says 1.1 million newly displaced in Syria since offensive that toppled Assad
Updated 13 December 2024
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UN says 1.1 million newly displaced in Syria since offensive that toppled Assad

UN says 1.1 million newly displaced in Syria since offensive that toppled Assad

BEIRUT: The United Nations humanitarian agency said Thursday that more than a million people, mostly women and children, had been newly displaced in Syria since militants launched an offensive ousting President Bashar Assad.
“As of 12 December, 1.1 million people have been newly displaced across the country since the start of the escalation of hostilities on 27 November. The majority are women and children,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.