Syria’s Sharaa pleas for communal peace as clashes continue

Syria’s Sharaa pleas for communal peace as clashes continue
FILE PHOTO: Syria’s interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa talks to attendees during a national dialogue, a key milestone in the transition to a new political system after decades of Assad rule, in Damascus, Syria February 25, 2025. (REUTERS)
Short Url
Updated 09 March 2025
Follow

Syria’s Sharaa pleas for communal peace as clashes continue

Syria’s Sharaa pleas for communal peace as clashes continue
  • Syrian security sources said at least two hundred of their members were killed in the clashes with former army personnel owing allegiance to Assad
  • Two days of fighting in the Mediterranean coastal region amounted to some of the worst violence for years in a 13-year-old civil conflict.

CAIRO: Syrian leader Ahmed Sharaa called for peace on Sunday after hundreds were killed in coastal areas in the worst communal violence since the fall of Bashar al Assad.
“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together,” Sharaa, the interim president, said as clashes continued between forces linked to the new Islamist rulers and fighters from Assad’s Alawite sect.
“Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival,” Sharaa said in a circulated video, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighborhood of Mazzah in Damascus. “What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.”
Syrian security sources said at least two hundred of their members were killed in the clashes with former army personnel owing allegiance to Assad after coordinated attacks and ambushes on their forces that were waged on Thursday.
The attacks spiralled into revenge killings when thousands of armed supporters of Syria’s new leaders from across the country descended to the coastal areas to support beleaguered forces of the new administration
The authorities blamed summary executions of dozens of youths and deadly raids on homes in villages and towns inhabited by Syria’s once ruling minority on unruly armed militias who came to help the security forces and have long blamed Assad’s supporters for past crimes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said on Saturday the two days of fighting in the Mediterranean coastal region amounted to some of the worst violence for years in a 13-year-old civil conflict.
Clashes continued overnight in several towns where armed groups fired on security forces and ambushed cars on highways leading to main towns in the coastal area, a Syrian security source told Reuters on Sunday.


Five Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike on school shelter in central Gaza

Five Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike on school shelter in central Gaza
Updated 49 sec ago
Follow

Five Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike on school shelter in central Gaza

Five Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike on school shelter in central Gaza
  • 28 Palestinians have been killed due to Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday
  • The school west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza has stopped offering full-time education

LONDON: Five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike overnight in a school-turned-humanitarian shelter in the central Gaza Strip after Israel launched an extensive military operation to occupy the coastal enclave.

Medical sources reported that at least five people were killed and several others injured, mostly children, in an Israeli airstrike on Al-Hasayna School, which had been converted into a shelter for displaced families.

The school west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza has stopped offering full-time education, and it belongs to the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which was spared from extensive destruction or damage from the war.

According to Wafa news agency, 28 Palestinians have been killed due to Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday, including 16 in Khan Yunis.

Since late 2023, the war in Gaza has displaced around 1.9 million Palestinians — about 90 percent of the population — with many facing multiple displacements. According to a UN report, schools have suffered severe damage due to Israeli actions, with 501 out of 564 schools requiring either full reconstruction or significant rehabilitation to be functional again.

In early May, an Israeli airstrike targeted a UN-run school in Al-Bureij, central Gaza, killing at least 30 people who were sheltering there. The facility had accommodated 2,000 displaced individuals.


Sudan’s army chief names former UN official Idris as new premier

Sudan’s army chief names former UN official Idris as new premier
Updated 6 min 10 sec ago
Follow

Sudan’s army chief names former UN official Idris as new premier

Sudan’s army chief names former UN official Idris as new premier
  • Idris, a career diplomat and past presidential candidate, was the director general of the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization

KHARTOUM: Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan appointed on Monday former UN official Kamil Idris as the country’s new prime minister, more than two years into a brutal war.

Idris, a career diplomat and past presidential candidate, was the director general of the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization and has also served in Sudan’s permanent mission to the UN.

“The chairman of the sovereignty council issued a constitutional decree appointing Kamil El-Tayeb Idris Abdelhafiz as prime minister,” a statement from Sudan’s ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council read.

In 2010, Idris ran in the presidential elections against longtime Islamist-military ruler Omar Al-Bashir.

Since April 2023, the war in Sudan has pitted Burhan’s army forces against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and created what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Idris replaces veteran diplomat Dafallah Al-Hajj Ali, who was appointed by Burhan at the end of April and served less than three weeks as acting prime minister.

Burhan had earlier said that he would form a technocratic wartime government to help “complete what remains of our military objectives, which is liberating Sudan from these rebels.”

In April, the RSF announced it would form a rival government, a few weeks after signing a charter in Kenya with a coalition of military and political allies.

The move has raised international fears that Sudan would be permanently divided between the two sides, both of which have been accused of war atrocities.

The conflict has already carved up Sudan, with the army holding the north, east and center while the RSF dominates nearly all of Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.


Amnesty: US strike on Yemen migrant center may constitute humanitarian ‘violation’

Amnesty: US strike on Yemen migrant center may constitute humanitarian ‘violation’
Updated 19 May 2025
Follow

Amnesty: US strike on Yemen migrant center may constitute humanitarian ‘violation’

Amnesty: US strike on Yemen migrant center may constitute humanitarian ‘violation’
  • Amnesty International called on the U.S. to investigate a deadly airstrike on a migrant detention center in Yemen that killed 68 African migrants, citing potential violations of international humanitarian law
  • The strike, part of the U.S. campaign against the Houthis, targeted a known detention site, prompting Amnesty to demand a transparent and independent inquiry into the civilian deaths

DUBAI: Rights group Amnesty International urged the United States on Monday to investigate possible violations of international law in a deadly strike on a migrant detention facility in Yemen.
Last month’s attack, which prompted international alarm and was part of the US bombardment campaign against the Houthis, killed 68 people held at a center for irregular migrants in Saada, the rebel authorities said at the time.
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, said that “the US attacked a well-known detention facility where the Houthis have been detaining migrants.”
The dead were all migrants from African countries, the Houthis had said.
To Callamard, “the major loss of civilian life in this attack raises serious concerns about whether the US complied with its obligations under international humanitarian law.”
“The US must conduct a prompt, independent and transparent investigation into this air strike,” she added.
A US defense official had told AFP in the aftermath of the strike that the military launched “battle-damage assessment and inquiry” into “claims of civilian casualties related to the US strikes in Yemen.”
Amnesty cited people who work with migrants and refugees in Yemen and visited two hospitals that treated the victims, saying that they had seen “more than two dozen Ethiopian migrants” with severe injuries including amputations.
The morgues at both hospitals had run out of space, the witnesses told Amnesty.
In mid-March, the United States began an intense, near-daily military campaign against the Houthis after they had renewed threats to attack vessels in the vital Red Sea and Gulf of Aden shipping lanes.
The campaign ended with a US-Houthi ceasefire agreement earlier this month.
The Houthis, who control large swathes of Yemen, began firing on Israel and Israeli-linked shipping in November 2023, weeks into the Gaza war triggered by an attack by the Yemeni rebels’ Palestinian ally Hamas.
Amnesty said it had analyzed satellite imagery and footage from the site of last month’s strike on Saada, in Yemen’s north.
The group said it was “unable to conclusively identify a legitimate military target” within the targeted prison compound, citing Houthi restrictions on independent investigations.
“Any attack that fails to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects on the one hand, and legitimate military targets on the other, even within the same compound, constitutes an indiscriminate attack and a violation of international humanitarian law,” Amnesty said.


Syria says foiled attempt to smuggle out 4 million captagon tablets

Syria says foiled attempt to smuggle out 4 million captagon tablets
Updated 19 May 2025
Follow

Syria says foiled attempt to smuggle out 4 million captagon tablets

Syria says foiled attempt to smuggle out 4 million captagon tablets
  • The tablets were seized in the key port city of Latakia — the coastal heartland of deposed president Bashar Assad’s Alawite minority

DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities on Monday announced that they had thwarted an attempt to smuggle out four million tablets of captagon, an amphetamine-like narcotic that has flooded the region.
The interior ministry said in a statement that authorities seized “over four million captagon tablets that were tightly hidden inside industrial equipment designed for manufacturing flour used for human consumption.”
It said they had acted on “accurate information received from our sources about a shipment of drugs hidden inside industrial equipment prepared for smuggling outside the country.”
The tablets were seized in the key port city of Latakia — the coastal heartland of deposed president Bashar Assad’s Alawite minority.
Under Assad’s rule, captagon became Syria’s largest export during the civil war that erupted in 2011 and a key source of illicit funding for his government.
Since Assad’s ouster last December, the new Islamist authorities have discovered millions of captagon pills in warehouses and on military bases.
The interior ministry said those involved in the latest operation have been “arrested, the equipment containing the drugs has been seized, and the arrested individuals have been referred for investigation based on a decision issued by the public prosecution.”
Last week, Syrian authorities announced the seizure of around nine million captagon tablets that were headed for Turkiye, after a month-long operation.
Drug smuggling has persisted in Syria despite the new rulers’ efforts, with neighboring countries occasionally seizing large quantities of captagon.
Iraqi security forces seized more than a ton of captagon smuggled from Syria via Turkiye in March, and Jordan thwarted a smuggling attempt from Syria in April, confiscating “hundreds of thousands” of captagon tablets.


Netanyahu: Israel must avert Gaza famine ‘for diplomacy’ while pressing for full territorial control

Netanyahu: Israel must avert Gaza famine ‘for diplomacy’ while pressing for full territorial control
Updated 19 May 2025
Follow

Netanyahu: Israel must avert Gaza famine ‘for diplomacy’ while pressing for full territorial control

Netanyahu: Israel must avert Gaza famine ‘for diplomacy’ while pressing for full territorial control
  • Israel's blockade of Gaza since March 2 came under increasing international pressure to restore aid
  • Netanyahu vows full military control of Gaza as humanitarian crisis deepens and international warnings mount
  • The Israeli military issued an evacuation order for residents of Khan Younis

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel must prevent famine in Gaza for “diplomatic reasons,” even as he vowed to press ahead with military operations to “take control of all” of the war-torn territory.

His comments came amid mounting international concern over a deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and as Israeli forces launched what they called extensive new ground operations against Hamas.

“The fighting is intense and we are making progress. We will take control of all the territory of the Strip,” Netanyahu said Monday in a video posted to his Telegram channel.

“We will not give up. But in order to succeed, we must act in a way that cannot be stopped.”

‘Prevent Famine for Diplomacy’

Netanyahu also said it was necessary for Israel to prevent a famine in Gaza for “diplomatic reasons,” after his government announced it would allow limited food aid into the territory.

The premier’s defense of the decision to at least partially lift a more than two-month aid blockade followed criticism from far-right members of his coalition who opposed the move.

“We must not let the population (of Gaza) sink into famine, both for practical and diplomatic reasons,” Netanyahu said the Telegram video, adding that even friends of Israel would not tolerate “images of mass starvation.”

Israel has said its blockade since March 2 was aimed at forcing concessions from the Palestinian militant group.

But it came under increasing international pressure to restore aid to Gaza, where UN agencies have warned of critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines.

The territory was at “critical risk of famine,” with 22 percent of the population facing an imminent humanitarian “catastrophe,” the UN- and NGO-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said this month.

Neytanyahu on Monday shrugged off criticism of the aid resumption as “natural,” calling the decision “difficult, but necessary.”

Evacuation Order

The Israeli military on Monday issued an evacuation order for residents of Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, and nearby towns.
Avichay Adraee, a military spokesperson, posted the order on his social medial accounts, saying the entire area “will be considered a dangerous combat zone.”
The evacuation order comes as Israel escalates its war in Gaza with new operations.