Erdogan still hopes to meet Assad to repair Turkiye-Syria ties, CNN Turk reports
Erdogan still hopes to meet Assad to repair Turkiye-Syria ties, CNN Turk reports/node/2579158/middle-east
Erdogan still hopes to meet Assad to repair Turkiye-Syria ties, CNN Turk reports
Türkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan said he still hopes to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad to repair ties with the neighboring country, broadcaster CNN Turk reported on Wednesday. (AFP/File)
Erdogan still hopes to meet Assad to repair Turkiye-Syria ties, CNN Turk reports
“Restoring ties with Bashar Assad will soothe regional tensions, hopefully,” Erdogan was quoted as saying
Updated 29 sec ago
Reuters
ANKARA: Türkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan said he still hopes to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad to repair ties with the neighboring country, broadcaster CNN Turk reported on Wednesday.
“Restoring ties with Bashar Assad will soothe regional tensions, hopefully,” Erdogan was quoted as telling reporters on his flight back from Azerbaijan.
Israeli forces kill 22 people in Gaza, force new displacement in the north
Updated 13 sec ago
Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue toward Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said “The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction,” said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 22 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave. Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City. Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue toward Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said. Israel’s campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fueled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers. “The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction,” said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya, who arrived in Gaza City on Wednesday. “North Gaza is being turned into a large buffer zone, Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing under the sight and hearing of the impotent world,” he told Reuters via a chat app. Saed was referring to the 1948 Middle East Arab-Israeli war which gave birth to the state of Israel and saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their home towns and villages in what is now Israel.
NO PLANS FOR SETTLERS’ RETURN The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hard-liners in his government have talked openly about going back. It said forces have killed hundreds of Hamas militants in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun during its new military offensive, which began more than a month ago. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed killing several Israeli soldiers during ambushes and anti-tank rocket fire. Efforts by Arab mediators, Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have so far failed to end the war in Gaza, with Hamas and Israel trading the blame for the lack of progress. Speaking on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel “has accomplished the goals that it set for itself” by taking out Hamas’ leadership and ensuring the group is unable to launch another massive attack. “This should be a time to end the war,” he said. “We also need to make sure we have a plan for what follows,” he said, “so that if Israel decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan so that Israel can get out of Gaza and we make sure that Hamas is not going back in.” Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Blinken’s comments showed: “We are facing one enemy and that the US enmity against the Palestinian people is no less than that of the occupation.” On Tuesday, the United States stressed at the United Nations that “there must be no forcible displacement, nor policy of starvation in Gaza” by Israel, warning such policies would have grave implications under US and international law. Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago. In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added. Later on Wednesday, an Israeli strike on a house in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip killed eight people, medics said. Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year, Palestinian health officials say, and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble, where more than 2 million Gazans are seeking shelter in makeshift tents and facing shortages of food and medicines.
Sudan extends opening of Adre crossing for aid delivery
Updated 13 November 2024
Reuters
DUBAI: Sudan’s sovereign council said on Wednesday it would extend the use of the Adre border crossing with Chad, seen as essential by aid agencies for the delivery of food and other supplies to areas at risk of famine in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.
Experts determined earlier this year that while more than 25 million people across the country face acute hunger, several parts of the country are at increased risk of famine, and that one camp in the Darfur region was already in its throes, the consequence of war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Adre, which was closed by an order from the army-controlled government in February, was re-opened for
three months
in August until November 15, and it had not been clear whether that period would be extended.
Members of the government have protested against the opening, saying it allows for the RSF to deliver weapons.
However, the Sudanese army is not in physical control of the border crossing which lies within territory seized last year by the RSF, which controls most of Darfur.
Aid agencies decided against ignoring directives from the internationally recognized government, and had been bracing themselves for closure of the corridor, seen as a more efficient route than cross-line deliveries from army-controlled Port Sudan or the more remote Al-Tina border crossing.
The re-opening of Adre in August coincided with the rainy season and the destruction of several roads and bridges, meaning that
aid trickled in
at the start.
More than 300 aid trucks with supplies for more than 1.3 million people have since crossed into Sudan through Adre, according to UN humanitarian coordination official Ramesh Rajasingham in a briefing to the Security Council on Tuesday.
The World Food Programme on Saturday moved a convoy of 15 trucks across Adre with food and nutrition for 12,500 people in famine-stricken Zamzam camp, said spokeswoman Leni Kinzli to reporters on Tuesday.
Blinken: Israel has met its goals in Gaza, time to end the war
He called for “real and extended pauses” in fighting to allow essential humanitarian aid to reach those affected by the hostilities
Updated 13 November 2024
Arab News
DUBAI: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that Israel has achieved its objectives in Gaza and that it is now time to pursue an end to the ongoing war.
Blinken said that ending the conflict would be the most effective means of addressing the urgent needs of Gaza’s civilian population.
He called for “real and extended pauses” in fighting to allow essential humanitarian aid to reach those affected by the hostilities and said that Israel holds an ongoing responsibility to facilitate this assistance, urging sustained efforts to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
Blinken also called for increased international pressure on Hamas, seeking “genuine, sustained, and effective pressure” to cease hostilities. He said that achieving peace requires cooperation from all parties involved, with humanitarian access as a central priority.
Russia asks Israel to avoid air strikes near Syrian base
Israel has carried out intensive bombing of Syria but rarely targets Latakia
Latakia, and in particular its airport, is close to the town of Hmeimim that hosts a Russian air base
Updated 13 November 2024
AFP
MOSCOW: Russia has asked Israel to avoid launching aerial strikes as part of its war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah near one of Moscow’s bases in Syria, a top official said Wednesday.
Syrian state media in mid-October claimed that Israel had struck the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad, who is supported by Russia and in turn backs Hezbollah.
Latakia, and in particular its airport, is close to the town of Hmeimim that hosts a Russian air base.
“Israel actually carried out an air strike in the immediate vicinity of Hmeimim,” Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy in the Near East, told the RIA Novosti press agency.
“Our military has of course notified Israeli authorities that such acts that put Russian military lives in danger over there are unacceptable,” he added.
“That is why we hope that this incident in October will not be repeated.”
Israel has carried out intensive bombing of Syria but rarely targets Latakia, to the northwest of Damascus.
Israel accuses Hezbollah of transporting weapons through Syria.
The two warring parties have been in open conflict since September after Israel’s year-long Gaza war with Hamas — a Hezbollah ally — escalated to a new front.
Lavrentiev said that Russia’s air base was not being used to supply Hezbollah with weapons.
Israel stepped up strikes on Syria at the same time as targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian government forces and groups supported by its arch-foe Iran, notably Hezbollah troops that have been deployed to assist Assad’s regime.
Israel rarely comments on its strikes but has said it will not allow Iran to extend its presence to Syria.
Lebanon says at least six killed in Israeli strike south of Beirut
Updated 13 November 2024
AFP
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike killed at least six people on Wednesday in a densely-packed area south of the capital Beirut, outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Aramoun killed six people” and wounded 15 others, the ministry said giving a preliminary toll, adding that “body parts were recovered from the site and their identities are being verified.”
The Israeli army on Wednesday told residents of parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs to leave, the third such warning in 24 hours.
“You are located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah, against which the Israel Defense Forces (military) will act in the near future,” army spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X that included a map of the areas in question.
