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Israel, WHO say evacuated dozens of Gazans for medical care

Israel, WHO say evacuated dozens of Gazans for medical care
A Palestinian woman holds a sleeping child as people say goodbye to patients and the wounded before they are transferred for medical treatment abroad, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, November 6, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 07 November 2024
AFP
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Israel, WHO say evacuated dozens of Gazans for medical care

Israel, WHO say evacuated dozens of Gazans for medical care
  • The WHO said the “patients included those with autoimmune diseases, blood diseases, cancer, kidney conditions and trauma injuries”
Updated 07 November 2024
AFP
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JERUSALEM: Israel and the World Health Organization said more than 200 Gazans, both patients and their carers, were evacuated to the United Arab Emirates or Romania Wednesday for medical treatment.
In total, the group numbered some 230 people, according to the WHO and COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories.
“This is the largest number of patients and caregivers who have left through the Kerem Shalom crossing in recent months,” COGAT said in a statement.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with the UAE, the European Union and the WHO, it added.
The WHO said the “patients included those with autoimmune diseases, blood diseases, cancer, kidney conditions and trauma injuries.”
The patients were transferred from Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel, and then to Ramon Airport near Eilat in southern Israel.
The WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, Rik Peeperkorn, had said Tuesday that those on the evacuation list were among up to 14,000 people currently waiting in Gaza to be evacuated for medical reasons.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,391 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to Gaza health ministry figures which the United Nations considers to be reliable.
The ministry also lists 102,347 people as having been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began.
Peeperkorn said Tuesday that fewer than 5,000 people had been granted medical evacuations out of the territory since the war began.

Topics: War on Gaza Israel WHO Gazans

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Assad denies ‘planned’ departure from Syria

Assad denies ‘planned’ departure from Syria
Updated 22 sec ago
AFP
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Assad denies ‘planned’ departure from Syria

Assad denies ‘planned’ departure from Syria
Updated 22 sec ago
AFP
DAMASCUS: Bashar Assad said Monday his departure from Syria was not planned and that Moscow requested his evacuation from a military base that was under attack, in the former president’s first statement since his ouster.
“My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles,” said a statement on the ousted presidency’s Telegram channel, adding “Moscow requested... an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday December 8” after he moved to Latakia early that day.
“When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose,” the statement added.

Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region

Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region
Updated 30 min 44 sec ago
AFP
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Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region

Syria war monitor says heavy Israeli strikes hit coastal region
  • It called the raids “the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012.”
Updated 30 min 44 sec ago
AFP

TARTUS: Israeli strikes targeted military sites in Syria’s coastal Tartus region overnight, a war monitor said Monday, calling them “the heaviest strikes” there in years.
“Israeli warplanes launched strikes” targeting a series of sites including air defense units and “surface-to-surface missile depots,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It said 18 raids “targeted strategic locations on the Syrian coast,” added the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside the country.
It called the raids “the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012.”
Tartus province also has a naval base belonging to Russia, a close ally of president Bashar Assad whom Islamist-forces ousted just over a week ago after capturing swathes of the country in a lightning offensive.
In the village of Bmalkah in the hills above Tartus, an AFP journalist saw roads filled with shattered glass and shreds of roller doors.
The force of blasts had stripped the leaves of olive trees in groves surrounding the village, and smoke still rose from nearby hillsides.
Residents told AFP that explosions began shortly after midnight and continued until almost 6:00 am (0300 GMT).
“It was like an earthquake. All the windows in my house were blown out,” said 28-year-old Ibrahim Ahmed, an employee in a legal office.
Clean-up crews sawed at fallen trees that had blocked the road to the next community. They also swept up missile and shell parts, even as the valley echoed to more blasts as pockets of stockpiled munitions caught fire.
“The village did not sleep last night. The kids were crying,” said one middle-aged man in a blue sweatshirt who refused to give his name.
“Most of the people had already left their homes toward the city, now they have lost their houses,” he added.
At a nearby military complex, smoke billowed from arched concrete bunkers cut into the hillside, and secondary explosions threw out shrapnel that fell among the trees.
Broken parts of mortars, rockets and missile launch tubes littered the hillsides.
According to the Observatory, 473 Israeli strikes have targeted military sites in Syria since the opposition alliance toppled Assad on December 8.

Topics: Fall of Assad Syria

Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail

Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP
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Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail

Turkish rescuers search infamous Syria jail
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP

ANKARA: A team of Turkish rescuers began an in-depth search of Syria’s infamous Saydnaya prison on Monday, a spokesman for Turkiye’s AFAD disaster management agency told AFP.
Located just north of Damascus, the prison has become a symbol of the rights abuses of the Assad clan, especially since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.
Prisoners held inside the complex, which was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, were freed early last week by the oppoition forces who ousted Syrian strongman Bashar Assad on December 8.
AFAD said it had sent a team of nearly 80 people to conduct a search-and-rescue operation to “find people thought to be trapped in Sadnaya military prison,” with its director due to give a press conference outside the prison about its mission, spokesman Kubilay Ozyurt told AFP.
The complex is thought to descend several levels underground, fueling suspicion more prisoners could be being held in as yet undiscovered hidden cells.
But the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), believes the rumors are unfounded.
AFAD said the team, which is specialized in “heavy” urban search and rescue operations, would work with “advanced search and rescue devices,” the Anadolu state news agency reported.
The prison complex was thoroughly searched by Syria’s White Helmets emergency workers but they wrapped up their operations on Tuesday, saying they were unable to find any more prisoners.
Rescuers have punched holes in walls to investigate rumors of secret levels housing missing prisoners, but found nothing, leaving many thousands of families disappointed — their relatives are probably dead and may never be found.
ADMSP said the opposition forces freed more than 4,000 prisoners from Saydnaya, which Amnesty International has described as a “human slaughterhouse.”
The organization, which is based in southern Turkiye, believes more than 30,000 prisoners died there as a result of execution, torture, starvation or a lack of medical care between 2011 and 2018.

Topics: Fall of Assad

Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement

Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP
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Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement

Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement
  • A foreign ministry spokesman said it is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP

BERLIN: Germany on Monday urged Israel to “abandon” a plan to double the population living in the occupied and annexed Golan Heights at the southwestern edge of Syria.
A foreign ministry spokesman said “it is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria and that Israel is therefore an occupying power.”
The spokesman, Christian Wagner, added that Berlin therefore called on its ally Israel “to abandon this plan” announced Sunday by the Israeli government.

Topics: Fall of Assad Israel Golan Heights

Syria’s Kurds call for end to all military operations in the country

Syria’s Kurds call for end to all military operations in the country
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP
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Syria’s Kurds call for end to all military operations in the country

Syria’s Kurds call for end to all military operations in the country
  • The Kurds faced discrimination during more than 50 years of Assad family rule
Updated 16 December 2024
AFP

BEIRUT: Syria’s Kurds, who run a semi-autonomous administration in the northeast, called Monday for an end to all fighting in the country and extended a hand to the new authorities in Damascus.
Hussein Othman, the head of the administration’s executive council, called for “a stop to military operations over the entire Syrian territory in order to begin a constructive, comprehensive national dialogue.”
The call, made at a press conference in Raqqa, comes more than a week after Islamist-led opposition forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad after a lightning offensive in which they seized swathes of territory.
In parallel, pro-Ankara groups launched an offensive against Kurdish forces near the Turkish border, announcing they had seized Manbij and Tal Rifaat, two key Kurdish-held areas in the country’s north.
The Kurds faced discrimination during more than 50 years of Assad family rule, and the long-oppressed community fears it could lose hard-won gains it made during the war, including limited self-rule.
Othman said in the statement that “the political exclusion and marginalization that has destroyed Syria must end and all political forces must rebuild a new Syria.”
The statement called for “an emergency meeting in Damascus of Syrian political forces to unify viewpoints on the transitional period.”
It also emphasized the need to “preserve the unity and sovereignty of Syrian territories and protect them from the attacks by Turkiye and its mercenaries.”
The Kurds, which control sweathes of Syria’s oil-producing areas, also called in the statement for “the fair distribution” of the country’s wealth and economic resources.
Kurdish-led forces said Wednesday they had reached a US-brokered ceasefire with Turkish-backed fighters in Manbij, an Arab-majority city in the north, after fighting there left at least 218 dead.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, pro-Turkiye groups are preparing to launch an assault on the Kurdish-held border town of Kobani, also known as Ain Al-Arab.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, spearheaded the fight that defeated Daesh group jihadists in Syria in 2019 with US backing — putting Washington at odds with NATO ally Ankara.
Ankara views the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a key part of the SDF, as an extension of the banned militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has fought a decades-long insurgency inside Turkiye.
Turkish forces have staged multiple operations against the SDF since 2016.
Turkiye, long a Syrian opposition backer, has been among the first countries to reopen its Damascus embassy after Assad’s ouster.

Topics: Fall of Assad

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