Jordan’s King Abdullah presses Biden to avert Israel offensive in Rafah

US President Joe Biden (R) shakes hands with King of Jordan Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein after delivering remarks to members of the media at the White House on February 12, 2024 in Washington, DC. (AFP)

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Updated 07 May 2024

Reuters

May 07, 2024 00:35

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Jordan’s King Abdullah presses Biden to avert Israel offensive in Rafah

Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
The Biden administration and Israeli officials remain at odds over Israel’s planned military incursion in the southern Gaza city of Rafah where it told Palestinians to start evacuating some parts on Monday

Updated 07 May 2024

Reuters

May 07, 2024 00:35

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WASHINGTON: Jordan’s King Abdullah told US President Joe Biden in a private meeting on Monday that an Israeli offensive in Rafah would lead to a “new massacre” of Palestinian civilians and urged the international community to take urgent action.
“The king warned of the repercussions of the Israeli ground offensive on Rafah, which could cause a regional spillover of the conflict,” a statement from the Jordan royal court said after Abdullah had lunch with Biden at the White House.
Israel carried out airstrikes in Rafah on Monday and told Palestinians to evacuate parts of the city where more than a million people uprooted by the seven-month war are crowded together.
On Sunday, Hamas reiterated its demand for an end to the war in exchange for the freeing of hostages, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flatly ruled that out. Hamas also attacked the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, which Israel said killed three of its soldiers.
In a phone call on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjmain Netanyahu, Biden pressed Netanyahu not to go ahead with a large-scale Israeli military offensive in Rafah. The US president has been vocal in his demand that Israel not undertake a ground offensive in Rafah without a plan to protect Palestinian civilians.
The Jordanian statement said Abdullah in his meeting with Biden “warned that the Israeli attack on Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians are internally displaced as a result of the war on Gaza, threatens to lead to a new massacre.”
“His Majesty stressed the importance of all efforts that seek an immediate ceasefire in Gaza,” it said. “The king and the US president affirmed their commitment to working to reach a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza, stressing the importance of facilitating the delivery of sustainable humanitarian aid to the Strip in light of the dire needs.”
The Biden administration and Israeli officials remain at odds over Israel’s planned military incursion in the southern Gaza city of Rafah where it told Palestinians to start evacuating some parts on Monday.
Biden last met King Abdullah at the White House in February and the two longtime allies discussed a daunting list of challenges, including the looming Israeli ground offensive in southern Gaza and suffering of Palestinian civilians. Jordan and other Arab states have been highly critical of Israel’s actions and have been demanding a ceasefire since mid-October as civilian casualties began to skyrocket.
The war began after Hamas stunned Israel with a cross-border raid on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 252 hostages taken, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed and more than 77,000 wounded in Israel’s assault, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

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Topics: War on Gaza Palestine Gaza US Jordan King Abdullah II

Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive

Updated 13 sec ago

AFP

November 29, 2024 13:53

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Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive

The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor
Militants cut highway linking Aleppo to capital Damascus on Thursday

Updated 13 sec ago

AFP

November 29, 2024 13:53

BEIRUT: Militants and their Turkish-backed allies shelled Syria’s second city Aleppo on Friday, in a major offensive against government troops that has sparked some of the deadliest fighting the country has seen in years.

The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor, most of them combatants on both sides but also including civilians, including 24 dead, most of them in Russian air strikes.

The offensive began at a sensitive time for Syria and the region, with a fragile ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel taking effect earlier this week in neighboring Lebanon.

Syria’s civil war began when President Bashar Assad’s forces cracked down in 2011 on pro-democracy protests.

Since then, it has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure and industry.

Over the years, the conflict has morphed into a complex war drawing in militants and foreign powers, including Assad allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

While the army regained control over most of the territory that it lost earlier in the war, the area where the militants and their allies are based has been subject to a truce since 2020.

This week, militants and factions backed by Turkiye, which neighbors Syria and supported the anti-Assad rebellion, launched a major surprise offensive against government forces.

On Friday, they shelled a university student residence in government-held Aleppo, northern Syria’s main city, according to state media, which reported four civilian deaths in the latest attack.

By Friday, they had wrested more than 50 towns and villages in northern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the biggest advances that anti-government factions had made in years.

The fighters had on Thursday cut the highway linking Aleppo to Syria’s capital Damascus, according to the Britain-based Observatory.

“The highway has now been put out of service, after it was reopened by regime forces years ago,” said the monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “more than 14,000 people — nearly half are children — have been displaced” by the violence.

At a press conference earlier this week, Mohamed Bashir of the militant Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) said: “This operation aims to repel the sources of fire of the criminal enemy from the frontlines.”

HTS, led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls swathes of the northwest Idlib region as well as small parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

The Idlib region is subject to a ceasefire, repeatedly violated but which had largely been holding, brokered by Turkiye and Russia after a Syrian government offensive in March 2020.

An AFP correspondent based in rebel-held areas said there were intense exchanges of fire in an area just seven kilometers (four miles) from the city of Aleppo.

HTS has close ties with Turkish-backed factions, and analyst Nick Heras of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy said the fighters were “trying to preempt the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the region of Aleppo.”

According to Heras, the Syrian government and its key backer Russia had been preparing for such a campaign.

Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, turning the momentum of the conflict in favor of the president, whose forces at the time had lost control of most of country.

Turkiye, Heras said, may be “sending a message to both Damascus and Moscow to back down from their military efforts in northwest Syria.”

Other interests are also at stake.

As well as Russia, Assad has been propped up by Iran and allied militant groups, including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah.

Anti-government forces are, according to Heras, “in a better position to take and seize villages than Russian-backed Syrian government forces, while the Iranians are focused on Lebanon.”

A general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was killed in Syria on Thursday during the fighting, an Iranian news agency reported.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the deadly offensive was “part of a plan by the diabolical regime (Israel) and the US” and called for “firm and coordinated action to prevent the spread of terrorism in the region.”

During its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel intensified its strikes on Iran-backed groups in Syria including Hezbollah.

Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Observatory, said Assad’s forces “were totally unprepared” for the attack.

“It is strange to see regime forces being dealt such big blows despite Russian air cover and early signs that HTS was going to launch this operation,” Abdel Rahman said.

“Were they depending on Hezbollah, which is now busy in Lebanon?”

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Israeli tanks retreat from central Gaza camp, medics say 30 killed

Updated 15 min 3 sec ago

Reuters

November 29, 2024 10:17

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Israeli tanks retreat from central Gaza camp, medics say 30 killed

Some tanks remained active in the western area of the camp
Freed Palestinians, detained during the war, have complained of ill-treatment and torture

Updated 15 min 3 sec ago

Reuters

November 29, 2024 10:17

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians overnight in the Gaza Strip, most of them in the Nuseirat camp at the centre of the enclave, medics said on Friday after some tanks pulled back from an area they had raided.
Medics said they had recovered 19 bodies of Palestinians killed in the northern areas of Nuseirat, one of the enclave's eight long-standing refugee camps.
Some tanks remained active in the western area of the camp and the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said teams were unable to respond to distress calls from residents trapped inside their houses.
The rest were killed in the northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, medics added. There was no fresh statement by the Israeli military on Friday, but on Thursday it said its forces were continuing to "strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip".
Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities released around 30 Palestinians whom it had detained during the ongoing offensive in Gaza in the past months. The released people arrived at a hospital in southern Gaza for medical checkups, medics said.
Freed Palestinians, detained during the war, have complained of ill-treatment and torture in Israeli detention after they were released. Israel denies torture.
Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold.
A ceasefire in the parallel conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities that had escalated sharply in recent months and had overshadowed the Gaza conflict.
Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,200 people and displaced nearly all the enclave's population at least once, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the territory are in ruins.
The Hamas-led militants who attacked southern Israeli communities 13 months ago, triggering the war, killed some 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages, Israel has said.

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Topics: War on Gaza

France envoy urges Lebanon to pick president

Updated 26 min 39 sec ago

AFP

November 29, 2024 10:01

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France envoy urges Lebanon to pick president

Jean-Yves Le Drian’s visit to Lebanon follows a fragile ceasefire to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah
Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022

Updated 26 min 39 sec ago

AFP

November 29, 2024 10:01

BEIRUT: France’s special envoy on Friday said it was urgent for Lebanon to elect a president, after a parliamentary vote to end over two years without a head of state was announced for January.
Jean-Yves Le Drian’s visit to Lebanon follows a fragile ceasefire to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
“I came to Lebanon immediately after the ceasefire announcement to signal France’s support for its full implementation and to stress the urgent need, more than ever, to elect a president and restart the institutional process,” he said on Friday.
He said he was in support of Thursday’s announcement by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri of a presidential election to be held on 9 January.
Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022, with neither of the two main blocs – the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its opponents – having the majority required to elect one.
However, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a wartime speech that Hezbollah would “bring an effective contribution to the election of a president.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Wednesday he hoped the ceasefire agreement would mark “a new page for Lebanon,” calling for a swift presidential election.
Le Drian held talks with Lebanese officials and foreign diplomats from the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – countries working to address Lebanon’s presidential crisis.
The special envoy has visited Lebanon several times since being appointed to the position by French President Emmanuel Macron in June 2023.

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Topics: Lebanon France Jean-Yves Le Drian

Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive

Updated 46 min 25 sec ago

AFP

November 29, 2024 13:29

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Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive

The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor
The fighters had on Thursday cut the highway linking Aleppo to Syria’s capital Damascus