Israel armys say ‘eliminated’ five Hamas militants in north Gaza raid
Israeli military: Slain militants had ‘led the murders and kidnappings in the area of Mefalsim’
Updated 22 November 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said on Friday it had “eliminated” five Hamas militants, including two commanders, in an overnight raid in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia.
In a statement, the military and the Shin Bet security agency said they had “eliminated five Hamas terrorists, including a Nukhba (commando) company commander and an additional company commander who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre” that sparked the Gaza war last year, adding that the slain militants had “led the murders and kidnappings in the area of Mefalsim,” a kibbutz in southern Israel.
Survivors describe executions, arson in attack on Sudan’s Zamzam camp
UN reports 400,000 fled Zamzam, 300-400 killed in attack
RSF aims to consolidate control in Darfur by defeating army
Updated 10 sec ago
Reuters
Sitting in a crowd of mothers and children under the harsh sun, Najlaa Ahmed described the moment the Rapid Support Forces men poured into Darfur’s Zamzam displacement camp, looting and burning homes as shells rained down and drones flew overhead. She lost track of most of her family as she fled. “I don’t know what’s become of them, my mother, father, siblings, my grandmother, I came here with strangers,” she said — one of six survivors who told Reuters of arson and executions in the raid. The Rapid Support Forces — two years into their conflict with Sudan’s army — seized the massive camp in North Darfur a week ago in an attack that the United Nations says left at least 300 people dead and forced 400,000 to flee. The RSF did not respond to a request for comment, but has denied accusations of atrocities and said the camp was being used base being used as a base by forces loyal to the army. Humanitarian groups have denounced the raid as a targeted attack on civilians already facing famine. Najlaa Ahmed managed to get her children to safety in Tawila — a town 60 km (40 miles) from Zamzam controlled by a neutral rebel group — the third time, she said, she had been forced to flee the RSF in a matter of months. She said she watched seven people die of hunger and thirst, and others succumb to their injuries on her latest journey. The RSF has posted videos of its second-in-command, Abdelrahim Dagalo, promising to provide displaced people with food and shelter in the camp where famine was determined in August.
BODIES FOUND More than 280,000 people have sought refuge in Tawila according to the General Coordination for Displaced People and Refugees, an advocacy group, on top of the half a million that have arrived since the war broke out in April 2023. Speaking from Al-Fashir — the capital of North Darfur 15 km north of Zamzam which the RSF is trying to take from the army — one man who asked not to be named said he had found the bodies of 24 people killed in an attack on a religious school, some of them lined up. “They started entering people’s houses, looting... they killed some people ... After this people fled, running in different directions. There were fires. They had soldiers burning buildings to create more terror.” Another man, an elder in the camp, said the RSF had killed 14 people at close range in a mosque near his home. “People who are scared always go to the mosque to seek refuge, but they went into every mosque and shot them,” he said. Reuters could not independently verify the reports. One video verified by Reuters showed soldiers yelling at a group of older men and young men outside a mosque, interrogating them about a supposed military base. Other videos verified by Reuters showed RSF soldiers shooting an unarmed man as others lay on the ground, calling them dogs. One showed armed men celebrating as they stood around a group of dead bodies. The RSF has said such videos are fake.
FIGHT FOR DARFUR The capture of Zamzam comes as the RSF tries to consolidate its control of the Darfur region. Victory in Al-Fashir would boost the RSF’s efforts to set up a parallel government to the one controlled by the army which has been on the upswing lately, retaking control of the capital Khartoum. The war between the Sudanese army — which has also been accused of atrocities, charges it denies — and the RSF broke out in April 2023 over plans to integrate the two forces. The RSF’s roots lie in Darfur’s Janjaweed militias, whose attacks in the early 2000s led to the creation of Zamzam and other displacement camps across Darfur. Researchers from the Yale School of Public Health said in a report on Wednesday that more than 1.7 square km of the camp, including the main market, had been burned, and that fires had continued every day since Friday. The researchers also saw checkpoints around the camp, and witnesses told Reuters that some people were being prevented from leaving. In Tawila, Medical aid agency MSF received 154 injured people, the youngest of them seven months old, almost all with gunshot wounds, emergency field coordinator Marion Ramstein told Reuters. Supplies of food, water and shelter were already low before the new arrivals. “The lucky ones are the ones who find a tree to sit under,” Ramstein said. Ahmed Mohamed, who arrived in Tawila this week, said he was robbed of all his possessions by soldiers on the road, and was now sleeping on the bare ground. “We are in need of everything a human being would need,” he said.
Tunisian court sentences opposition leaders to jail terms of 13 to 66 years
The opposition says the charges were fabricated and the trial a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule
The state news agency did not provide further details about the sentences.
Updated 18 min 40 sec ago
Reuters
TUNIS: A Tunisian court handed jail terms of 13 to 66 years to opposition leaders, businessmen and lawyers on charges of conspiring against state security, the state news agency TAP reported on Saturday, citing a judicial official.
The opposition says the charges were fabricated and the trial a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule.
Rights groups say Saied has had full control over the judiciary since he dissolved parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree. He dissolved the independent Supreme Judicial Council in 2022.
The state news agency did not provide further details about the sentences.
Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, were being prosecuted in the case. More than 20 have fled abroad since being charged.
Some of the opposition defendants — including Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawahar Ben Mbrak, Abdelhamid Jlassi, Ridha BelHajj and Khyam Turki — have been in custody since being detained in 2023.
“In my entire life, I have never witnessed a trial like this. It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous and shameful,” said lawyer Ahmed Souab, who represents the defendants, on Friday before the ruling was handed down.
Authorities say the defendants, who include former officials and former head of intelligence, Kamel Guizani, tried to destabilize the country and overthrow Saied.
“This authoritarian regime has nothing to offer Tunisians except more repression,” the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party, Hamma Hammami, said.
Saied rejects accusations that he is a dictator and says he is fighting chaos and corruption that is rampant among the political elite.
Republican congress members pay an unofficial visit to Syria as US mulls sanctions relief
Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida visited the Damascus suburb of Jobar and met with Christian religious leaders
They were toured around by Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, the only woman and only Christian serving in the transitional government
Updated 19 April 2025
AP
DAMASCUS, Syria: Two Republican members of the US Congress were in the Syrian capital Friday on an unofficial visit organized by a Syrian-American nonprofit, the first by US legislators since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.
Also Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in his first visit since Assad’s fall and since the beginning of the Syrian uprising-turned-civil-war in 2011.
Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida visited the Damascus suburb of Jobar, the site of a historic synagogue that was heavily damaged and looted in the civil war, and the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma, where they met with Christian religious leaders. They also were set to meet Al-Sharaa and other government officials.
The Trump administration has yet to officially recognize the current Syrian government, led by Al-Sharaa, an Islamist former insurgent who led a lightning offensive that toppled Assad. Washington has not yet lifted harsh sanctions that were imposed during Assad’s rule.
Mills, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Associated Press that it was “very important to come here to be able to see it for myself, to be with various governmental bodies, to look at the needs of the Syrian people, to look at the needs for the nation for stability.”
Mills said he expected discussions with Al-Sharaa to include the issue of sanctions, as well as the government’s priorities and the need for the transitional administration to move toward a “democratically elected society.”
“Ultimately, it’s going to be the president’s decision” to lift sanctions or not, he said, although “Congress can advise.”
The Congress members came at the invitation of the Syrian American Alliance for Peace and Prosperity, a nonprofit based in Indiana that describes its mission as fostering “a sustainable political, economic, and social partnership between the people of Syria and the United States.”
Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, the only woman and only Christian serving in the transitional government, joined the congressional team on a visit to Bab Touma, which she said was “very important” to Syrians.
US Congressman Cory Mills, Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, and others walk on a street during a visit to Bab Touma, a geographic landmark of Christianity, in the Old city of Damascus on April 18, 2025. (Reuters photo)
The US State Department, meanwhile, issued a statement Friday reiterating its warning against US citizens visiting Syria. The statement said the State Department “is tracking credible information related to potential imminent attacks, including locations frequented by tourists.”
Palestinian leader visits as Israeli troops remain in Syria
The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said that Abbas’s visit, his first since 2007, was “aimed at strengthening Palestinian-Syrian relations and discussing pressing regional developments.”
Abbas and Al-Sharaa discussed the ongoing war in Gaza and international efforts to move forward long-stalled efforts to reach a two-state solution to the to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “agreed to form joint committees aimed at enhancing bilateral cooperation across multiple sectors,” it said.
Syria has a population of about 450,000 Palestinian refugees. The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was once widely considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora before it was largely destroyed in the war.
Accompanied by unidentified members of the delegation, US congressman Cory Mills, second from right, walks in the Old City of Damascus on April 18, 2025. (AP Photo)
Palestinian refugees in Syria have never been given citizenship, ostensibly to preserve their right to go back to the homes they fled or were forced from during the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. But in contrast to neighboring Lebanon, where Palestinians are banned from owning property or working in many professions, in Syria, Palestinians historically had all the rights of citizens except the right to vote and run for office.
Syria does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. While the new Syrian authorities have said publicly that they are not interested in entering a conflict with Israel, the Israeli government regards the Islamist former insurgents now in power in Damascus with suspicion.
Israeli forces seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone inside Syria after the rebels toppled Assad and have launched an extensive series of airstrikes on military facilities in Syria. Israeli officials have said that they will not allow the new Syrian military south of Damascus.
Abbas’ arrival in Damascus was delayed after Israeli authorities denied permission for a helicopter to land in Ramallah that was supposed to arrive from Jordan to take the Palestinian president, said a Palestinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. Israeli officials did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.
Hamas says ‘no’ to new Israeli bid to rewrite Gaza truce
Updated 19 April 2025
Reuters AFP
GAZA: Hamas on Friday rejected Israel’s latest attempt to renegotiate the Gaza ceasefire as at least 43 more Palestinians died in airstrikes.
Among the victims were 10 members of the Baraka family killed in an attack on their home near Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said its troops were operating in the Shabura and Tel Al-Sultan areas near the southern city of Rafah, and in northern Gaza, where it has taken control of large areas east of Gaza City.
Last month Israel ended a two-month truce that had largely halted fighting, and it has since seized about a third of the enclave. A new Israeli offer to renew the truce for 45 days included demands that Hamas release 10 Israeli hostages and lay down its arms. The militants dismissed the proposal on Friday as imposing “impossible conditions.”
“Partial agreements are used by Benjamin Netanyahu as a cover for his political agenda ... we will not be complicit in this policy,” a Hamas spokesman said on Friday.
Hamas sought “a comprehensive deal involving a single-package prisoner exchange in return for halting the war, a withdrawal of the occupation from the Gaza Strip, and the commencement of reconstruction,” the spokesman said.
Egyptian mediators have been trying to revive the original January ceasefire deal but there has been little sign the two sides have moved closer on fundamental issues.
Tunisian court set to rule in conspiracy trial, lawyers protest
Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case
“It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous,” lawyer Ahmed Souab said
Updated 18 April 2025
Reuters
TUNIS: A Tunisian court is set to issue a ruling in the conspiracy case against prominent opponents, as lawyers protested and described the trial as a farce, while others called the proceedings a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule.
Rights groups say the trial highlights Saied’s full control over the judiciary since he dissolved the parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree before later dissolving the independent Supreme Judicial Council.
Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case. More than 20 have fled abroad since being charged.
Some of the opposition defendants — including Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawahar Ben Mbrak, Abdelhamid Jlassi, Ridha BelHajj and Khyam Turki — have been in custody since being detained in 2023.
Following the judge’s decision to clear the courtroom in preparation for deliberation and the issuance of rulings, dozens of lawyers protested, raising slogans calling for freedom and justice.
“In my entire life, I have never witnessed a trial like this. It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous and shameful,” Lawyer Ahmed Souab told reporters.
Journalists and civil society groups were barred from attending the trial.
Some of the country’s most prominent opposition politicians — including Nejib Chebbi, the leader of the main National Salvation Front opposition coalition — face a range of conspiracy charges in the trial that started in March and has been postponed twice.
“The authorities want to criminalize the opposition. I wouldn’t be surprised if heavy sentences are issued tonight,” Chebbi told reporters before going into the court.
Authorities say the defendants, who also include business people and former officials including the former head of intelligence, Kamel Guizani, tried to destabilize the country and overthrow Saied.
Activists and families of the defendants shouted “free the prisoners,” “stop the farce” and other slogans.
“This authoritarian regime has nothing to offer Tunisians except more repression,” the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party, Hamma Hammami, said.
