Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Update Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
Above, Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Nov. 10, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 10 November 2024
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Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
  • The first strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed ‘at least 25’ people

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn on Sunday, Palestinian medics said.
Footage circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed about a dozen bodies wrapped in blankets and laid to the ground at a hospital. Residents said the building that was hit had housed at least 30 people.
The Palestinian official news agency WAFA and Hamas media put the number of people killed at 32. There was no immediate confirmation of the tally by the territory’s health ministry.
The Civil Emergency Service says its operations have been halted by an ongoing Israeli raid into two towns and a refugee camp in northern Gaza that began on Oct 5. It also could not provide a figure for those killed in the attack.
Israel says it sent forces into Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the north of the enclave to fight Hamas militants waging attacks from there and to prevent them from regrouping. It says its troops have killed hundreds of militants in those areas since the new offensive began.
In Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Sabra neighborhood killed Wael Al-Khour, an official at the Welfare Ministry, and seven other members of his family including his wife and children on Sunday, medics and relatives said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports on the strike in Jabalia and in the Sabra neighborhood.


UN says Syria fighting has displaced 280,000 since November 27

UN says Syria fighting has displaced 280,000 since November 27
Updated 7 sec ago
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UN says Syria fighting has displaced 280,000 since November 27

UN says Syria fighting has displaced 280,000 since November 27
  • UN’s Samer AbdelJaber: ‘The figure we have in front of us is 280,000 people since November 27’
  • ‘That does not include the figure of people who fled from Lebanon during the recent escalations’
GENEVA: The escalation in fighting in Syria has displaced around 280,000 people in just over a week, the United Nations said on Friday, warning that numbers could swell to 1.5 million.
“The figure we have in front of us is 280,000 people since November 27,” Samer AbdelJaber, head of emergency coordination at the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), told reporters in Geneva.
“That does not include the figure of people who fled from Lebanon during the recent escalations” in fighting there, he added.
The mass displacement has happened since militants led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) launched their lightning offensive a little more than a week ago.
That occurred just as a tenuous ceasefire in neighboring Lebanon took hold between Israel and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ally Hezbollah, following two months of full-blown war that drove hundreds of thousands to flee into Syria.
WFP warned that the fresh mass-displacement inside Syria, more than 13 years after the country’s civil war erupted, was “adding to years of suffering.”
AbdelJaber said the WFP and other humanitarian agencies were “trying to reach the communities wherever their needs are,” and that they were working “to secure safe routes so that we can be able to move the aid and the assistance to the communities that are in need.”
He also stressed the urgent need for more funding to ensure humanitarians are “ready for any scenario basically in terms of displacements that could evolve in the coming days or months.”
AbdelJaber cautioned that “if the situation continues evolving (at the current) pace, we’re expecting collectively around 1.5 million people that will be displaced and will be requiring our support.”

Thousands flee as Syrian militants push on toward Homs

Thousands flee as Syrian militants push on toward Homs
Updated 06 December 2024
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Thousands flee as Syrian militants push on toward Homs

Thousands flee as Syrian militants push on toward Homs
  • Insurgents have already captured the key cities of Aleppo in the north and Hama in the center
  • Militants led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham have pledged to press on southward to Homs

BEIRUT: Thousands of people fled the central Syrian city of Homs overnight and into Friday morning, a war monitoring group and residents said, as militant forces sought to push their lightning offensive against government forces further south.
They have already captured the key cities of Aleppo in the north and Hama in the center, dealing successive blows to President Bashar Assad, nearly 14 years after protests against him erupted across Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said thousands of people had begun fleeing on Thursday night toward western coastal regions, a stronghold of the government.
A resident of the coastal area said thousands of people had begun arriving there from Homs, fearing the militants’ rapid advance.
On Friday morning, Israeli air strikes hit two border crossings between Lebanon and Syria, Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamieh said.
The Syrian state news agency (SANA) said the Arida border crossing with Lebanon was out of service due to the attack.
The Israeli military said it had attacked weapons transfer hubs and infrastructure overnight on the Syrian side of the Lebanese border, saying these routes had been used by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah to smuggle weapons.
Russian bombing overnight also destroyed the Rustan bridge along the key M5 highway, the main route to Homs, to prevent militants using it, a Syrian army officer told Reuters.
“There were at least eight strikes on the bridge,” he added. Government forces were bringing reinforcements to positions around the city, he said.
Militants led by the Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham have pledged to press on southward to Homs, a crossroads city that links the capital Damascus to the north and Assad’s heartland along the coast.
A militant operations room urged Homs residents in an online post to rise up, saying: “Your time has come.”


Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon

Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon
Updated 06 December 2024
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Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon

Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon
  • Strikes hit the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and the Jousieh crossing which links to eastern Lebanon

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes early on Friday hit two border crossings linking Lebanon with Syria, Lebanon’s transport minister Ali Hamieh said.
The strikes hit just across the border on the Syrian side of both the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and the Jousieh crossing which links to eastern Lebanon, Hamieh said.
Both crossings are important access points to Syria’s Homs province, where anti-government rebels are seeking to advance against government forces after sweeping through northern Syria.


Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West

Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West
Updated 06 December 2024
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Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West

Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West
  • Iran conducted the launch using its Simorgh program, a satellite-carrying rocket that had seen a series of failed launches

MANAMA, Bahrain: Iran said Friday it conducted a successful space launch, the latest for its program the West alleges improves Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
Iran conducted the launch using its Simorgh program, a satellite-carrying rocket that had seen a series of failed launches. The launch took place at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Spaceport in rural Semnan province.
There was no immediate independent confirmation the launch was successful.
The announcement comes as heightened tensions grip the wider Middle East over Israel’s continued war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip and as an uneasy ceasefire holds in Lebanon.


Strikes on key bridge linking Syria’s Homs, Hama: war monitor

Strikes on key bridge linking Syria’s Homs, Hama: war monitor
Updated 06 December 2024
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Strikes on key bridge linking Syria’s Homs, Hama: war monitor

Strikes on key bridge linking Syria’s Homs, Hama: war monitor
  • Air strikes targeted a bridge on the highway linking the Syrian cities of Homs and Hama, a war monitor said Friday

BEIRUT: Air strikes targeted a bridge on the highway linking the Syrian cities of Homs and Hama, a war monitor said Friday, as government forces scramble to secure Homs after Islamist-led militants captured Hama and commercial hub Aleppo.
“Fighter jets executed several airstrikes, targeting Al-Rastan bridge on (the) Homs-Hama highway... as well as attacking positions around the bridge, attempting to cut off the road between Hama and Homs and secure Homs,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The militants led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) launched their offensive a little more than a week ago, just as a ceasefire in neighboring Lebanon took hold between Israel and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ally Hezbollah.
To slow the militants advance, the Observatory said Assad’s forces erected soil barriers on the highway north of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city which lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama.
Tens of thousands of members of Assad’s Alawite minority community were fleeing Homs on Thursday, for fear that the militants would keep up their advance, the Observatory said earlier.
The militants captured Hama on Thursday following street battles with government forces, announcing “the complete liberation of the city” in a message on their Telegram channel.
Militant fighters kissed the ground and let off volleys of celebratory gunfire as they entered Syria’s fourth-largest city.
Many residents turned out to welcome the militants. An AFP photographer saw some residents set fire to a giant poster of Assad on the facade of city hall.
The army admitted losing control of the city, strategically located between Aleppo and Assad’s seat of power in Damascus.
Defense Minister Ali Abbas insisted that the army’s withdrawal was a “temporary tactical measure.”
“Our forces are still in the vicinity,” he said in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.


Aron Lund, a fellow of the Century International think tank, called the loss of Hama “a massive, massive blow to the Syrian government” because the army should have had an advantage there to reverse militants gains “and they couldn’t do it.”
He said HTS would now try to push on toward Homs, where many residents were already leaving on Thursday.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman reported a mass exodus from the city of members of Assad’s Alawite minority community.
He said tens of thousands were heading toward areas along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, where the Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, form the majority.
“We are afraid and worried that what happened in Hama will be repeated in Homs,” said a civil servant, who gave his name only as Abbas.
“We fear they (the militants) will take revenge on us,” the 33-year-old said.
Until last week, the war in Syria had been mostly dormant for years, but analysts have said it was bound to resume as it was never truly resolved.
In a video posted online, HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani said his fighters had entered Hama to “cleanse the wound that has endured in Syria for 40 years,” referring to a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, which led to thousands of deaths.
In a later message on Telegram congratulating “the people of Hama on their victory,” he used his real name, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, instead of his nom de guerre for the first time.


The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, said 826 people, mostly combatants but also including 111 civilians, have been killed in the country since the violence erupted last week.
It marks the most intense fighting since 2020 in the civil war sparked by the repression of pro-democracy protests in 2011.
Key to the militants’ successes since the start of the offensive last week was the takeover of Aleppo, which in more than a decade of war had never entirely fallen out of government hands.
While the advancing militants met little resistance earlier in their offensive, the fighting around Hama has been especially fierce.
Assad ordered a 50-percent raise in career soldiers’ pay, state news agency SANA reported Wednesday, as he seeks to bolster his forces for a counteroffensive.
Militants drove back the Syrian armed forces despite the fact that the government sent in “large military convoys,” the Observatory said.
The militants launched their offensive in northern Syria on November 27, the same day a ceasefire took effect in the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Both Hezbollah and Russia have been crucial backers of Assad’s government, but have been mired in their own conflicts in recent years.
HTS is rooted in Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch.
The group has sought to moderate its image in recent years, but experts say it faces a challenge convincing Western governments it has fully renounced hard-line jihadism.
The United States maintains hundreds of troops in eastern Syria as part of a coalition formed against Daesh group jihadists.