Syrian intelligence agency says it thwarted a planned Daesh attack on a Shiite shrine

Update Syrian intelligence agency says it thwarted a planned Daesh attack on a Shiite shrine
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A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on Jan. 11, 2025, shows what the agency says are members of the Daesh group arrested by Syria’s intelligence agency near Damascus. (AFP)
Update Syrian intelligence agency says it thwarted a planned Daesh attack on a Shiite shrine
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Above, an aerial view of Sayyida Zeinab, locally believed to hold the grave of Zeinab bint Ali, the daughter of Imam Ali and Fatima and granddaughter of the prophet Muhammad, in the southern suburbs of Damascus. (AFP/File)
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Updated 11 January 2025
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Syrian intelligence agency says it thwarted a planned Daesh attack on a Shiite shrine

Syrian intelligence agency says it thwarted a planned Daesh attack on a Shiite shrine
  • SANA reported, citing an unnamed official in the General Intelligence Service, that members of the Daesh cell planning the attack were arrested
  • The intelligence service is “putting all its capabilities to stand in the face of all attempts to target the Syrian people in all their spectrums”

DAMASCUS: Intelligence officials in Syria’s new de facto government thwarted a plan by the Daesh group to set off a bomb at a Shiite shrine in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, state media reported Saturday.
State news agency SANA reported, citing an unnamed official in the General Intelligence Service, that members of the Daesh cell planning the attack were arrested. It quoted the official as saying that the intelligence service is “putting all its capabilities to stand in the face of all attempts to target the Syrian people in all their spectrums.”
Sayyida Zeinab has been the site of past attacks on Shiite pilgrims by Daesh— which takes an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam and considers Shiites to be infidels.
In 2023, a motorcycle planted with explosives detonated in Sayyida Zeinab, killing at least six people and wounding dozens a day before the Shiite holy day of Ashoura,
The announcement that the attack had been thwarted appeared to be another attempt by the country’s new leaders to reassure religious minorities, including those seen as having been supporters of the former government of Bashar Assad.
Assad, a member of the Alawite minority, was allied with Iran and with the Shiite Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as well as Iranian-backed Iraqi militias.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, the former insurgent group that led the lightning offensive that toppled Assad last month and is now the de facto ruling party in the country, is a Sunni Islamist group that formerly had ties with Al-Qaeda.
The group later split from Al-Qaeda, and HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa has preached religious coexistence since assuming power in Damascus.
Also Saturday, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati arrived in Damascus to meet with Al-Sharaa.
Relations between the two countries had been strained under Assad, with Lebanon’s political factions deeply divided between those supporting and opposing Assad’s rule.
Mikati told journalists following his meeting with Al-Sharaa that the two countries will form a committee to work on demarcation of the border, which has never been officially defined.
Mikati also said they will work together to combat smuggling on the porous frontier.
“Some of the matters on the border need to be fully controlled, especially at illegal border points, to stop any smuggling operation between Lebanon and Syria,” he said.
One particularly knotty issue is the area known as Chebaa Farms, which is currently controlled by Israel as part of the Golan Heights it captured from Syria in 1967 and subsequently annexed. Most of the international community regards the area as occupied.
Beirut and Damascus say Chebaa Farms belong to Lebanon. The United Nations says the area is part of Syria and that Damascus and Israel should negotiate its fate. The fact that the Lebanon-Syria border was never clearly demarcated has complicated the issue.
In response to a question about demarcation of that area, Al-Sharaa did not give a clear answer.
“I think it is too early to talk about all the details of border demarcation,” he said. “There are so many problems in the Syrian reality. We can’t solve it all at once.”
Al-Sharaa said he hopes, meanwhile, that issues at the official border crossing will soon be resolved. Lebanese citizens, who had previously crossed easily into Syria without needing a visa, are currently barred from entry.
“We seek to have social ties between us that increase and not decrease, so any border obstacles between us should be eliminated in the future, but this is a detailed matter for customs officials,” Al-Sharaa said.


Ceasefire is only way to bring Israeli hostages home, Hamas official says

Ceasefire is only way to bring Israeli hostages home, Hamas official says
Updated 12 sec ago
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Ceasefire is only way to bring Israeli hostages home, Hamas official says

Ceasefire is only way to bring Israeli hostages home, Hamas official says
CAIRO: A Hamas official said on Tuesday Israeli hostages can be brought home from Gaza only if a fragile ceasefire is respected, dismissing the “language of threats” after US President Donald Trump said he would “let hell break out” if they were not freed.
Hamas has begun releasing some hostages gradually but postponed freeing any more until further notice, accusing Israel of violating the terms with several deadly shootings as well as hold-ups of some aid deliveries in Gaza. Israel denies holding back aid supplies and says it has fired on people who disregard warnings not to approach Israeli troop positions.
Trump, a close ally of Israel, said on Monday that Hamas should release all the hostages held by the Palestinian militant group by midday on Saturday or he would propose canceling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, which took effect on January 19.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel remained determined to get all the hostages back.
“We will continue to take determined and ruthless action until we return all of our hostages — the living and the deceased,” he said in a statement mourning Israeli Shlomo Mansour after the military confirmed he was killed during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, that triggered the Gaza war.
Ahon Ohel, an Israeli still held hostage in Gaza nearly 500 days after gunmen seized him from a roadside bomb shelter in southern Israel, managed to get a message out from the Gaza tunnel where he was in captivity.
He sent a birthday wish for his sister via two other hostages who had been held with him and were freed on Saturday, his mother Idit Ohel said.
“Alon has been in the tunnels all this time,” Ohel told Reuters in an interview. “(He) hasn’t seen sunlight, doesn’t know the difference between day and night, has gotten little food — about one (piece of) bread a day.”
Trump has enraged Palestinians and Arab leaders and upended decades of US policy that endorsed a possible two-state solution in the region by trying to impose his vision of Gaza, which has been devastated by an Israeli military offensive and is short of food, water and shelter, and in need of foreign aid.
“Trump must remember there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties, and this is the only way to bring back the (Israeli) prisoners. The language of threats has no value and only complicates matters,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Trump has said the United States should take over Gaza — where many homes have been reduced to piles of cement, dust and twisted metal after 15 months of war — and move out its more than 2 million residents so that the Palestinian enclave can be turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump was to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday for what is likely to be a tense encounter over the president’s Gaza redevelopment idea, including a threat to cut aid to the US-allied Arab country if it refuses to resettle Palestinians.
The forcible displacement of a population under military occupation is a war crime banned by the 1949 Geneva conventions.
Palestinians fear a repeat of what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation. Israel denies they were forced out.
“We have to issue an ultimatum to Hamas. Cut off electricity and water, stop humanitarian aid. To open the gates of hell,” far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a conference of the Institute for Ultra-Orthodox Strategy and Policy.
UN chief warns of “immense tragedy”
The Gaza war has been paused since January 19 under the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that was brokered by Qatar and Egypt with support from the United States.
More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, the Gaza health ministry says, and nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been internally displaced by the conflict, which has caused a hunger crisis.
Some 1,200 people were killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities and about 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages, Israeli tallies show.
Trump’s ideas, which include a threat to cut aid to Egypt if it does not take in Palestinians, have introduced new complexity into a sensitive and explosive Middle East dynamic, including the shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
For Jordan, Trump’s talk of resettling some 2 million Gazans comes dangerously close to its nightmare of a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank, echoing a vision of Jordan as an alternative Palestinian home that has long been propagated by ultra-nationalist Israelis.
Amman’s concern is being amplified by a surge in violence on its border with the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Palestinian hopes of statehood are being rapidly eroded by expanding Jewish settlement.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on X on Tuesday that a resumption of armed conflict should be avoided at all costs because that would lead to “immense tragedy.”
“I appeal to Hamas to proceed with the planned liberation of hostages. Both sides must fully abide by their commitments in the ceasefire agreement and resume serious negotiations.”
The idea of a Palestinian state and Israel coexisting in peace has faded since 2014 when Palestinian and Israeli attempts at peacemaking in one of the most volatile and violent regions of the world stalled.

IMF committed to financing MENA countries needing support with $33 billion funding

IMF committed to financing MENA countries needing support with $33 billion funding
Updated 23 min 39 sec ago
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IMF committed to financing MENA countries needing support with $33 billion funding

IMF committed to financing MENA countries needing support with $33 billion funding
  • IMF commits $33 billion support to MENA countries most in need

DUBAI: The International Monetary Fund remains committed to helping countries that need support in the MENA region with financing of $33 billion, IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told the World Government Summit on Tuesday.

“Today the IMF is supporting over 50 vulnerable countries, half of them are in sub-Saharan Africa … more important is we help countries build the foundations to get on a better part,” Georgieva told the WGS during a session with Richard Quest, CNN correspondent and anchor.

“By the way, in this region, $33 billion, IMF is financing for countries that need that support,” she said.

When asked by Quest if she was concerned that inflation was going to resurge, the IMF’s top official said that there was a need to see how things evolved.

“If we are in a situation where in some parts of the world there is a slowdown that may push central banks to bring interest rates down, that actually may not be inflationary … there are many things that we don’t know, but what we do know is that we have a situation in which the US economy has been performing quite strongly and will likely continue to be strong and that pushes the dollar up,” Georgieva explained.

Addressing a packed hall during WGS’s first day, the IMF chief added that the US had outperformed the rest of the G20 members; the only economy to exceed its pre-pandemic trend.

“What does that mean? Capital is moving much more forcefully toward the US … before the pandemic many on the move went to many places, 18 percent went to the United States and today it is over 30 percent.

“So that is the foundation for a strong dollar, and a strong dollar all other things are equal for the majority of emerging markets and developing economies is trouble … so then we have inflationary impact,” she said.

The IMF sees a picture of a “remarkably resilient world economy despite a series of unprecedented shocks,” Georgieva said, elaborating that “we are projecting growth this year 3.3 percent and next year 3.3 percent.”

The Gulf countries were doing quite well, she said, but expressed more concern about “Europe, and some ... (places) are vulnerable emerging markets where they are doing less well.”

Another concern highlighted was “how the tremendous transformations that are happening in the world are integrated in countries’ policies.”

Taking AI as a case in point, Quest asked: “Do you see us having a good handle on the growth of new technologies?”

“So, we look at the front, what is happening with artificial intelligence? It can be a great story, a world that becomes more productive, or it can be a sad story, a world that is more divided … the haves have more, and the have-nots are completely lost.

“What we assess is that AI is already like a tsunami hitting the labor market in advanced economies … 60 percent of jobs over the next period of time will either enhance and become more productive, or transformed or eliminated,” she said. 

Georgieva added that there was a need to recognize that “we are in a multipolar world” so cooperation as it used to be “before when we had a world with one country dominating” was going to be different.

“We still have one economy that is the strongest (the US) but we also have many economies, emerging market economies that are moving forward much faster, usually because of the 3 Ds; deregulate, digitize and diversify. These islands of excellence need to connect more, and we at the IMF are actually promoting more inter-region and cross-region collaboration. I think it is a moment to recognize our host (the UAE) because they are absolutely fantastic in working with everybody,” she said.


Kuwait PM says Trump’s decisions will impact global economy

Kuwait PM says Trump’s decisions will impact global economy
Updated 48 min 2 sec ago
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Kuwait PM says Trump’s decisions will impact global economy

Kuwait PM says Trump’s decisions will impact global economy
  • US president ‘only looking for his own benefits,’ says Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah

DUBAI: Kuwait’s Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah has warned that US President Donald Trump’s economic decisions would have “repercussions” for the entire world.

Speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Tuesday, in a departure from his planned speech, the prime minister said listening to Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, about the direction of the global economy and AI “was a joy.”

He added: “But I need to ask you all to be very attentive to Trump’s decisions.

“He seems to be only looking for his own benefits which will affect the whole world and there will be repercussions.”

On Monday, Trump increased tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to a flat 25 percent, with no exceptions or exemptions.

Trump said his decision was aimed at supporting struggling American industries. But the action risks triggering a global trade war.

While signing the order at the White House, Trump announced plans to follow Monday’s action with reciprocal tariffs on all countries that levy duties on US goods within the next two days.

He also mentioned considering tariffs on cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

(Additional reporting from Reuters)


UN says staff member has died in custody of Houthis

The Houthis have arrested dozens of staffers from the UN and other humanitarian organizations.
The Houthis have arrested dozens of staffers from the UN and other humanitarian organizations.
Updated 43 min 18 sec ago
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UN says staff member has died in custody of Houthis

The Houthis have arrested dozens of staffers from the UN and other humanitarian organizations.
  • “WFP is grief-stricken and outraged about the death of a staff member while in detention in northern Yemen,” the agency said

DUBAI: The United Nations’s World Food Programme (WFP) said Tuesday that a staff member held captive by the Houthis in Yemen has died.
“WFP is grief-stricken and outraged about the death of a staff member while in detention in northern Yemen,” the agency said in a statement on X.
He was identified as a Yemeni staff member “arbitrarily detained by local authorities since 23 January,” though the circumstances of his death were not specified.
The employee, who WFP said had worked for the UN since 2017, left behind a wife and two children.
The United Nations announced the suspension Monday of its activities in Yemen’s Saada region, a Houthi stronghold, after the militia detained multiple personnel there this year.
The Iran-backed Houthis have arrested dozens of staffers from the UN and other humanitarian organizations, most of them since the middle of 2024, as Yemen’s decade-long civil war grinds on.
In January alone, the Houthis detained eight UN workers, including six in Saada, which adds to the dozens of NGO and UN personnel detained since June.
The Houthis claimed the June arrests included “an American-Israeli spy network” operating under the cover of humanitarian organizations — allegations emphatically rejected by the UN Human Rights Office.
A decade of war has plunged Yemen into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, according to the UN.


Equality in the world hindered by lack of connectivity warns telecoms boss

Equality in the world hindered by lack of connectivity warns telecoms boss
Updated 11 February 2025
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Equality in the world hindered by lack of connectivity warns telecoms boss

Equality in the world hindered by lack of connectivity warns telecoms boss
  • Connectivity has become one of the most important ingredients for progress

DUBAI: A massive 5.5 billion people have been connected around the world through such projects as the Edison Alliance, but half as many remain unconnected, Hatem Dowidar, group CEO at e&, told the World Governments Summit on Tuesday.

Dowidar said it was important to ensure this gap was addressed before it led to further economic divide in the future.

He gave the example of two students, one in an advanced economy with access to personalized artificial intelligence programs for education and the ability to collaborate globally with his peers, and another in a less wealthy nation, who had to walk for hours to reach school and had access to only the “very basic training and teaching equipment.”

He said: “These two have to compete in the future … It’s really unfair. And if we don’t do anything today to bridge that divide, it will become a bigger problem in the future.”

Connectivity has become one of the most important ingredients for progress, Dowidar said, adding: “We need to all work together, whether it’s governments, businesses (or) organizations.”

Today with the advancement of AI, this becomes even more critical as “we can really help a lot of the global south with solutions that improve education, healthcare and economic activity.”

Dowidar said there were signs of improvements in technology that would help increase connectivity, such as satellite technology, which was becoming more accessible.

Margherita Della Valle, CEO, Vodafone, said: “For society, connectivity today is essential … There cannot be any real development without connectivity. In Vodafone, we operate in 17 different countries across Europe and Africa, and our mission statement is very simple: We connect everyone wherever they are.”

Della Valle said her company’s most recent evolution — one they are most proud of — has been adding satellite connectivity to their networks.

“I think this is a great opportunity to connect those areas of the world which are most remote. Out of the 2.5 billion people who have no access to the internet, there are around 300 million who are nowhere near any form of connectivity, and satellite can get us there,” Vodafone’s CEO said two weeks ago she made the first mobile space video call in the world using a normal smartphone.

“We are now going to commercially launch the service later this year, and I think it’s a great opportunity to bring connectivity to the most remote areas of the planet,” she said.