You are here

War on Gaza

Israel kills 36 Palestinians in Gaza, targets volatile aid route

Update Israel kills 36 Palestinians in Gaza, targets volatile aid route
Men stand guard on the side of the truck carrying humanitarian aid as it drives on the main Salah al-Din road in the Nuseirat refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip on December 7, 2024. (AFP/File)
Short Url

https://arab.news/25969

Updated 12 December 2024
Follow

Israel kills 36 Palestinians in Gaza, targets volatile aid route

Israel kills 36 Palestinians in Gaza, targets volatile aid route
  • Many of those killed in the attacks on Rafah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza had links to Hamas, medics and Palestinian residents said
  • The 13 were among 36 Palestinians killed in separate Israeli attacks on Thursday
Updated 12 December 2024
Follow

CAIRO: Israel killed 13 Palestinians in two airstrikes on Thursday that Gaza medics and Hamas said were part of a force protecting humanitarian aid trucks, but Israel’s military said they were Hamas militants trying to hijack the shipment.
Many of those killed in the attacks on Rafah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza had links to Hamas, medics and Palestinian residents said. The 13 were among 36 Palestinians killed in separate Israeli attacks on Thursday, the medics said.
The Israeli military said in a statement the two airstrikes aimed to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas members of planning to prevent the aid from reaching Gaza civilians who need it.
The statement said the Hamas members aimed to hijack the aid “in support of continuing terrorist activity.”
Armed gangs have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks after they roll into the enclave, and Hamas formed a task force to confront them. The Hamas-led forces have killed over two dozen members of the gangs in recent months, Hamas sources and medics said.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA initially reported those killed in the two airstrikes were guarding the aid trucks.
Hamas said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 700 police tasked with securing aid trucks in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023. It has accused Israel of trying to protect acts of looting and “creating anarchy and chaos to prevent aid from reaching the people of Gaza.”
Children were among seven people killed when a residential building in Gaza City’s Al-Jalaa Street was bombed in a separate attack, WAFA said.
Another Israeli bombing killed 15 people in a house where displaced people were taking shelter, west of Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, medics and WAFA said.
In the northern Gaza refugee camp of Jabalia, where the army has operated since October, health officials said an orthopedic doctor, Saeed Judeh, was shot dead by Israeli forces while on his way to Al-Awda Hospital where he usually treated patients.
The health ministry said his death raised to 1,057 the number of health care workers killed since the war began in October last year.
Months of ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to conclude a deal between the two warring sides.
On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to demand an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire and the immediate release of all hostages seized in Israel in October 2023 and held by Hamas in Gaza.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began after Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages back to Hamas-run Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel’s military has leveled swathes of Gaza, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing more than 44,800 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where violence has surged since the Gaza war began, Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians, at least one of them a militant, in separate raids in Nablus and Qalqilya, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.
Around 810 Palestinians, including many militants and civilians, have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the Gaza war erupted on Oct. 7.

Topics: War on Gaza Israel Palestinian

Related

Israeli forces deepen raid in Rafah, kill 27 people across Gaza
Middle-East
Israeli forces deepen raid in Rafah, kill 27 people across Gaza
Israeli forces advance in southern Gaza, tanks in Rafah
Middle-East
Israeli forces advance in southern Gaza, tanks in Rafah

Kyiv ready to supply food to Syria as Russia supplies suspended

People walk with food in plastic bags, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar Assad, in Damascus on Thursday.
People walk with food in plastic bags, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar Assad, in Damascus on Thursday.
Updated 42 min 53 sec ago
Reuters
Follow

Kyiv ready to supply food to Syria as Russia supplies suspended

People walk with food in plastic bags, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar Assad, in Damascus on Thursday.
  • Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended over uncertainty about the new government
Updated 42 min 53 sec ago
Reuters

KYIV: Ukraine, a global producer and exporter of grain and oilseeds, is ready to supply food to Syria following the fall of Bashar Assad, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Vitaliy Koval told Reuters on Friday.
Russian and Syrian sources said earlier that Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended over uncertainty about the new government and payment delays.
Syria imported food from Russia during the Assad era and it is unclear how relations between Damascus and Moscow will take shape under the new government.
“Where it is difficult, we have to be there with our food. We are open to supplying our food and if Syria needs food — then we are there,” Koval told Reuters.
Ukraine’s exports were buffeted by Russia’s February 2022 invasion, which severely reduced shipments via the Black Sea. Ukraine has since broken a de facto sea blockade and revived exports from its southern ports of Odesa.
Kyiv traditionally exports wheat and corn to Middle Eastern countries, but not to Syria.
Traders say that only about 6,000 metric tons of Ukrainian corn reached the Syrian market in the 2023/24 season, out of a total corn export volume of 29.4 million tons.
However, small parcels of Ukrainian-origin grain may have reached Syria from neighboring countries, but not been captured by those statistics, analysts said.
Since the fall of Assad, a close Russian ally, Kyiv has voiced a desire to restore relations with Syria.
Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said Kyiv was ready “to pave the way for the restoration of relations in the future and reaffirm our support for the Syrian people.”

Topics: Fall of Assad Ukraine Syria

Related

Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule
Middle-East
Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule
Syrians celebrate during a demonstration following the first Friday prayers since Bashar Assad's ouster, in Damascus' central sq
World
Austria offers Syrian refugees 1,000 euros to return home

Blinken meets Iraq PM in unannounced stop on Syria crisis tour

Blinken meets Iraq PM in unannounced stop on Syria crisis tour
Updated 13 December 2024
AFP
Follow

Blinken meets Iraq PM in unannounced stop on Syria crisis tour

Blinken meets Iraq PM in unannounced stop on Syria crisis tour
  • The top US diplomat flew to Baghdad from Ankara
Updated 13 December 2024
AFP

BAGHDAD: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Iraq’s prime minister on Friday in an unannounced visit as he seeks to coordinate a regional approach to Syria following the overthrow of Bashar Assad.
The top US diplomat flew to Baghdad from the Turkish capital Ankara and headed into talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, an AFP journalist traveling with Blinken said.

Topics: Fall of Assad US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken

Related

Update Blinken sees ‘encouraging signs’ on reaching Gaza ceasefire
Middle-East
Blinken sees ‘encouraging signs’ on reaching Gaza ceasefire
Blinken meets Erdogan for talks in Turkiye
Middle-East
Blinken meets Erdogan for talks in Turkiye

Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule

Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule
Updated 13 December 2024
Reuters
Follow

Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule

Syrian Shiites and other minorities flee to Lebanon, fearing Islamist rule
  • Their accounts reflect fears of persecution despite promises of protection by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham
  • Shiite communities have often been on the frontline of Syria’s 13-year civil war
Updated 13 December 2024
Reuters

BEIRUT/NUBL: Tens of thousands of Syrians, mostly Shiite Muslims, have fled to Lebanon since Sunni Muslim Islamists toppled Bashar Assad, fearing persecution despite assurances from the new rulers in Damascus that they will be safe, a Lebanese official said.
At the border with Lebanon, where thousands of people were trying to leave Syria on Thursday, a dozen Shiite Muslims interviewed by Reuters described threats made against them, sometimes in person but mostly on social media.
Their accounts reflect fears of persecution despite promises of protection by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) — the Sunni Islamist group which has emerged as the dominant force in the new Syria but is far from being the only armed faction on the ground.
Shiite communities have often been on the frontline of Syria’s 13-year civil war, which took on sectarian dimensions as Assad, from the minority Alawite faith, mobilized regional Shiite allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, to help fight Sunni militants.
The senior Lebanese security official said more than 100,000 people, largely members of minority faiths, had crossed into Lebanon since Sunday, but could not give an exact number because most of them had used illegal crossings along the porous border.
At the main border crossing between Syria and Lebanon, Samira Baba said she had been waiting for three days to enter Lebanon with her children.
“We don’t know who sent these threats, on WhatsApp and Facebook,” she said. “The militants in charge haven’t openly threatened us, so it could be other factions, or individuals. We just don’t know. But we know it’s time to leave,” she said.
The new Syria holds uncertainty for many, especially minorities. Shiites are thought to number around a tenth of the population, which stood at 23 million before the war began.
While HTS, which has cut its ties with the global jihadist network Al-Qaeda, is the most powerful of the constellation of factions that fought Assad, there are numerous other armed groups, many of which are Islamist.
Ayham Hamada, a 39-year-old Shiite who was serving in the army when Assad fell, said the government’s collapse was so sudden that it left him and his brother, also a soldier, scrambling to decide whether to stay or go.
They fled to Damascus where they received threats, he said, without elaborating. “We are afraid of sectarian killings... this will be liquidation.”
Despite assurances voiced by HTS leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Hamada said minorities have been left without protection after Assad’s sudden flight. “Bashar took his money and fled and didn’t pay attention to us,” he said.
Many of the Shiites at the border were from Sayyeda Zeinab, a Damascus district home to a Shiite shrine where fighters from Hezbollah and other Shiite militias were based. Supported by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Shiite militias also came from Iraq and Afghanistan, and recruited some Syrian Shiites.
Elham, a 30-year-old nurse, said she had been waiting at the crossing for days without food or water with her 10-day-old niece and two-year-old son.
A Shiite from Damascus, she said she fled to rural areas when the government fell. When she returned, she found her house looted and torched. She and others said that armed, masked men raided their homes and ordered them at gunpoint to leave, or be killed.
“They took our car because they said it’s theirs. You daren’t say a word. We left everything and fled.”
Reuters could not immediately reach HTS officials for comment on threats received by minorities.

’WE ARE ALL ONE PEOPLE’
In parts of Syria’s north, however, some residents who fled when HTS went on the offensive in late November said they now felt confident to return.
“My wife is Sunni. We are all one people and one nation,” Hussein Al-Saman, 48, a Shiite father of three told Reuters, next to the main mosque in the Shiite town of Nubl, where Hezbollah once stationed fighters.
He praised HTS leader Sharaa for his efforts to protect the community, saying he “enabled us to come to our houses.”
“We were a minority and didn’t have a choice but to stand with (Assad). But now that the war is over we are free... I hope for my children to just live comfortably under the new government.”
Bassam Abdulwahab, an official overseeing the returns, said essential services had been restored. “Security was provided to protect the minorities,” he said, adding that this “is the approach of the commanding leadership.”
“We carry the responsibility of protecting the minorities in Syria. What happens to us happens to them,” he said.
At the entrance to Nubl, a statue of Assad lay toppled. Further into the town, residents cleaned stores and repaired damaged buildings, while officials in military fatigues coordinated the return of those who had fled.
“The (Assad) government forced the minorities here to live in a situation where they had to be enemies of their neighbors,” said Muhyie Al-Dien, who works in mining. “The government played its game so it could divide us and our Sunni brothers.”
While some in Nubl spoke hopefully of the future, one 41-year-old man, who gave his name as Hami and declined to speak on camera, was more cautious. “We are Shiite and the new leadership is Sunni. We don’t know what will happen,” he said.

Topics: Fall of Assad shiite Sunni Lebanon Syrians

Related

Syrians head home from Turkiye to ‘a better life’ after rebellion
Middle-East
Syrians head home from Turkiye to ‘a better life’ after rebellion
Red Cross urges Syrians not to exhume their own dead
Middle-East
Red Cross urges Syrians not to exhume their own dead

‘Syria freed!’: thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque

‘Syria freed!’: thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque
Updated 13 December 2024
AFP
Follow

‘Syria freed!’: thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque

‘Syria freed!’: thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque
  • At the capital’s famed Umayyad Mosque, men, women and children gathered to celebrate on the first Friday prayers since Assad’s ouster
  • The scenes were reminiscent of the early days of the 2011 uprising
Updated 13 December 2024
AFP

DAMASCUS: Thousands of Syrians converged on a landmark Damascus mosque for Friday prayers, waving opposition flags and chanting — a sight unimaginable just days ago before rebels ousted president Bashar Assad.
At the capital’s famed Umayyad Mosque, men, women and children gathered to celebrate on the first Friday prayers since Assad’s ouster, later streaming into the city streets and squares.
The scenes were reminiscent of the early days of the 2011 uprising, when pro-democracy protesters in Syrian cities would take to the streets after Friday prayers — but never in Damascus, long an Assad clan stronghold.
“We are gathering because we’re happy Syria has been freed, we’re happy to have been liberated from the prison in which we lived,” said Nour Thi Al-Ghina, 38.
“This is the first time we have converged in such big numbers and the first time we are seeing such an event,” she said, beaming with joy.
“We never expected this to happen.”
In 2011, Assad’s crackdown on peaceful protesters triggered a 13-year civil war that tore Syria apart, killing more than half a million people and displacing millions more.
Exhilarated crowds chanted “One, one, one, the Syrian people is one!” on Friday.
Some held the Syrian independence flag, used by the opposition since the uprising began.
Dozens of street vendors around the mosque were selling the three-star flags — which none would dare to raise in government-held areas during Assad’s iron-fisted rule.
Dozens of pictures of people who were disappeared or detained in Assad’s prisons hung on the mosque’s outer walls, the phone numbers of relatives inscribed on the images.
At the core of the system Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centers used to eliminate dissent by jailing those suspected of stepping away from the ruling Baath party line.
War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in 2022 that more than 100,000 people had died in the prisons since 2011.
Earlier Friday, the leader of the Islamist rebels that took power, Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani — who now uses his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa — called on people to take to the streets to celebrate “the victory of the revolution.”
Last month, rebel forces led by his Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group (HTS) launched a lightning offensive, seizing Damascus and ousting Assad in less than two weeks.
Omar Al-Khaled, 23, said he had rushed from HTS’s northwestern stronghold of Idlib, cut off from government areas for years, to see the capital for the first time in his life.
“It was my dream to come to Damascus,” the tailor said.
“I can’t describe my feelings. Our morale is very high and we hope that Syria will head toward a better future,” he said, adding: “People were stifled... but now the doors have opened to us.”
On Thursday, the interim government vowed to institute the “rule of law” after years of abuses under Assad.
Amani Zanhur, a 42-year-old professor of computer engineering, said many of her students had disappeared in Assad’s prisons and that she was overjoyed to be attending the prayers in the new Syria.
“There can be nothing worse than what was. We cannot fear the situation,” she told AFP, expressing support for a state based on Islamic teachings.
Thousands flocked to the nearby Umayyad Square, raising a huge rebel flag on its landmark sword monument and chanting.
“Let’s not discuss details that might separate us now and focus only on what brings us together: our hatred for Bashar Assad,” said Amina Maarawi, 42, an Islamic preacher wearing a white hijab.
Mohammed Al-Saad, 32, was overjoyed. The HTS political cadre in a smart jacket had come with colleagues from Idlib province to help set up the new government.
“We’ve been waiting 13 years for this,” he said. “We’ve come to get work started.”

Topics: Fall of Assad Umayyad Mosque Damascus

Related

Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families
Middle-East
Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families
Freed Syrian prisoners return to their ‘death dormitory’
Middle-East
Freed Syrian prisoners return to their ‘death dormitory’

Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families

Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families
Updated 13 December 2024
Reuters
Follow

Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families

Red Cross opens hotlines to try to reunite Syrian families
  • Stephan Sakalian, head of delegation for ICRC in Syria, told reporters that it had opened two hotlines this week
  • “We can provide them with mental health and psychosocial support”
Updated 13 December 2024
Reuters

GENEVA: The Red Cross said on Friday it had opened two new telephone hotlines to try to reunite Syrians who have been missing for years with their families, but warned that many cases will take months or years to resolve.
Since the start of Syria’s civil war over 13 years ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has received over 35,000 cases of missing people and is stepping up its efforts to help trace them.
Stephan Sakalian, head of delegation for ICRC in Syria, told reporters that it had opened two hotlines this week: one for prisoners and one for families to try to connect them.
“We can provide them with mental health and psychosocial support ... we can even help them financially if they need to be reunited,” he told a Geneva press briefing via video link from Damascus. Legal aid and health care are also available, an ICRC statement said.
The opening of president Bashar Assad’s detention system has raised hopes for reunions, with some prisoners re-emerging who were thought by their families to have been executed years ago. But Sakalian sought to temper expectations.
“Let’s make no mistake: giving answers to people will take weeks, months and maybe years, given the amount of information to process,” he said. “The work is tremendous,” he added.
The ICRC is also looking for three of its colleagues who were abducted in 2013. “Like everyone we want to have hope and seek any signal or any news that may bring some closure to their families, but for the moment, we do not have any news,” he added.

Topics: Fall of Assad International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Syria

Related

Freed Syrian prisoners return to their ‘death dormitory’
Middle-East
Freed Syrian prisoners return to their ‘death dormitory’
Syria Kurds warm up to new leaders but fear for hard-won gains
Middle-East
Syria Kurds warm up to new leaders but fear for hard-won gains

Latest updates

Saudi Arabia, UK agree to increase bilateral trade to $37.5 billion by 2030
Saudi Arabia, UK agree to increase bilateral trade to $37.5 billion by 2030
Usyk vs. Fury II: Riyadh braces for a heavyweight showdown of legacy and redemption
Usyk vs. Fury II: Riyadh braces for a heavyweight showdown of legacy and redemption
Ukraine’s Zelensky to meet European leaders in Brussels on Wednesday
Ukraine’s Zelensky to meet European leaders in Brussels on Wednesday
Guardiola needs Man City stars to return as crisis mounts
Guardiola needs Man City stars to return as crisis mounts
Kyiv ready to supply food to Syria as Russia supplies suspended
People walk with food in plastic bags, after rebels seized the capital and ousted Syria's Bashar Assad, in Damascus on Thursday.

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2024 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.