Deadly attacks in Sudan’s Darfur ‘shocking’: WHO chief
Deadly attacks in Sudan’s Darfur ‘shocking’: WHO chief/node/2582786/middle-east
Deadly attacks in Sudan’s Darfur ‘shocking’: WHO chief
The World Health Organization voiced alarm Thursday at recent attacks in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, which it said had killed dozens of people and injured many more. (REUTERS)
Deadly attacks in Sudan’s Darfur ‘shocking’: WHO chief
The World Health Organization voiced alarm Thursday at recent attacks in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, which it said had killed dozens of people and injured many more
Updated 50 sec ago
AFP
GENEVA: The World Health Organization voiced alarm Thursday at recent attacks in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, which it said had killed dozens of people and injured many more.
“The most recent attacks in Kabkabiya, North Darfur, that claimed at least 80 lives and injured hundreds of people are shocking,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, adding “our sympathies go out to the affected communities in Sudan.”
The pro-democracy Emergency Lawyers group had given an even higher toll from Monday’s strike on Kabkabiya, a town about 180 kilometers (112 miles) west of El-Fasher, the state capital that has been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since May.
The lawyers group, which has been documenting human rights abuses during the conflict, said an air strike “took place on the town’s weekly market day, where residents from various nearby villages had gathered to shop, resulting in the death of more than 100 people and injury of hundreds, including women and children.”
They were among at least 176 people killed in two days of army and paramilitary strikes across Sudan this week, according to an AFP tally of tolls provided by officials, activists and lawyers.
Both the army and the RSF, who have been at war since April 2023, have been accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians and deliberately bombing residential areas.
Sudan’s civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 12 million.
Nearly nine million of those are displaced within Sudan, most in areas with devastated infrastructure and facing the threat of mass starvation.
Across the country, nearly 26 million people — around half the population — are facing acute hunger, according to the United Nations.
Darfur, a region the size of France, is home to around a quarter of Sudan’s population but more than half its displaced people.
Nearly all of it is now controlled by the RSF, which has also taken over swathes of the southern Kordofan region and central Sudan, while the army holds the country’s north and east.
Tedros warned Thursday that “health facilities in Darfur are barely managing to meet health needs with non-functional equipment and limitations of medical supplies.”
The UN health agency, he said, had “managed to deliver trauma and surgery supplies earlier this month, which can help to treat the injured and prevent further loss of life.”
Saudi Arabia among Syrian people’s ‘strongest’ supporters, says latter’s UN representative
Qusay Al-Dahhak rejects Israel’s attacks on Syrian soil
New leaders ‘working hard’ to defend nation’s interests
Updated 12 December 2024
Arab News
DUBAI: Saudi Arabia was one of several Arab countries which showed the “strongest support” for Syria’s people after the fall of Bashar Assad’s government.
This is according to Qusay Al-Dahhak, permanent representative of Syria to the UN, who made the comments in an interview with AlHadath on Tuesday.
“The strongest support came from the Arab countries, especially from Saudi Arabia. We received many messages of support that reiterated their support for the Syrian people and the rejection of any Israeli aggression on the land and people,” he explained.
Assad fled Syria after a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group and its allies, which brought to a spectacular end more than five decades of rule by his clan.
Syrians across the country and around the world erupted in celebration, after enduring a stifling era during which anyone suspected of dissent could be thrown into jail or killed.
With Assad’s overthrow plunging Syria into the unknown, its new leaders have sought to assure members of the country’s religious minorities that they will not repress them.
“Changing the Syrian flag at the UN headquarters has a protocol which involves the government and requires the Syrian government to officially implement the new flag in order to raise it in the building,” said Al-Dahhak.
“Through different embassies, Syrian representatives are working hard to defend the interests of Syria and follow all the orders of officials coming from Damascus,” explained Al-Dahhak.
“Prime Minister Mohammad Al-Bashir ordered embassies and Syrian diplomats to protect Syria’s interests. At the UN we spread Syria’s message that is currently going through a historical change while the new regime is being put into place,” he said.
54 journalists killed in 2024, a third by Israel — Reporters Without Borders
Israeli armed forces were responsible for deaths of 18 journalists this year, 16 in Gaza, two in Lebanon
RSF has filed four complaints with ICC for “war crimes committed against journalists by the Israeli army”
Updated 12 December 2024
AFP
PARIS: Fifty-four journalists were killed worldwide while carrying out their work or because of their profession in 2024, a third of them by the Israeli army, according to an annual report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published Thursday.
According to the press freedom NGO, Israeli armed forces were responsible for the deaths of 18 journalists this year — 16 in Gaza and two in Lebanon.
“Palestine is the most dangerous country for journalists, recording a higher death toll than any other country over the past five years,” RSF said in its annual report, which covers data up to December 1.
The organization has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “war crimes committed against journalists by the Israeli army.”
It said that in total “more than 145” journalists had been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since the start of the war there in October 2023, with 35 of them working at the time of their deaths, RSF said.
It described the number of killings as “an unprecedented bloodbath.”
In a separate report published Tuesday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reported that 104 journalists were killed worldwide in 2024, with more than half of them in Gaza.
The figures differ between the IFJ and RSF due to two different methodologies used in calculating the toll.
RSF only includes journalists whose deaths have been “proven to be directly related to their professional activity.”
Israel denies that it intentionally harms journalists but admits that some have been killed in air strikes on military targets.
“We don’t accept these figures. We don’t believe they are correct,” Israeli government spokesman David Mercer told a press conference on Wednesday.
After Gaza, the deadliest places for journalists in 2024 were Pakistan with seven deaths, followed by Bangladesh and Mexico with five each.
In 2023, the number of journalists killed worldwide stood at 45 in the same January-December period.
As of December 1, there were 550 journalists imprisoned worldwide, compared to 513 last year, according to RSF figures.
The three countries with the highest numbers of detained journalists are China (124, including 11 in Hong Kong), Myanmar (61), and Israel (41).
Furthermore, 55 journalists are currently being held hostage, including two abducted in 2024. Nearly half — 25 in total — are in the hands of the Daesh group.
In addition, 95 journalists are reported missing, including four new cases reported in 2024.
Sednaya’s liberation exposes decades of systematic torture under Syria’s Assad regime
Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham captured the infamous regime jail on Dec. 8 after a dramatic 10-day campaign to oust Bashar Assad
uilt in the 1980s, Sednaya became a symbol of state terror, with rights groups calling it a ‘human slaughterhouse’
Updated 12 December 2024
Nadia Al-Faour & Robert Edwards
DUBAI/LONDON: As jubilation spread across Syria following the overthrow of Bashar Assad on Dec. 8 after 13 years of civil war, Sednaya prison — a name synonymous with unspeakable horrors — finally fell into opposition hands.
Thousands of Syrians flooded the gates of the infamous facility near Damascus on Monday, desperate for news of loved ones who had vanished into the prison’s labyrinthine depths, many of them decades ago.
For years, Sednaya had been a black hole of despair, where political prisoners, activists and regime critics were detained, tortured and often executed.
Built in the 1980s under the rule of Assad’s father, Hafez, Sednaya began as a military prison but quickly morphed into a symbol of state terror.
A woman looks at a cell inside Sednaya prison, known as a slaughterhouse under Syria’s Bashar al-Assad rule. (Reuters)
Human rights groups have described it as a “human slaughterhouse,” a moniker reflecting the industrial-scale torture and execution that defined its operations.
Former detainees recount harrowing tales of abuse within its walls. Testimonies shared with Amnesty International, the rights monitor, detailed how prisoners were beaten, sexually assaulted and left to die of untreated wounds and diseases in squalid, overcrowded cells.
Others faced mass hangings after sham trials that lasted only minutes. Between 2011 and 2015, Amnesty estimates that up to 13,000 people were executed. The methods of torture were both medieval and methodical, including beatings, stabbings, electric shocks and starvation.
The horrors extended beyond death. The US has previously accused the Assad regime of using a crematorium at Sednaya to dispose of bodies, while surviving detainees described “confession” protocols involving sadistic torture.
On Sunday, Sednaya’s gates were forced open by opposition fighters from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham after a 10-day campaign led by opposition chief Abu Mohammed Al-Golani that toppled the Assad regime.
Thousands of detainees spilled out of the jail, some barely able to crawl after years of abuse. Videos circulated online showed women, children and elderly prisoners emerging from filthy cells, their emaciated forms bearing witness to the atrocities they had endured.
One video showed hundreds of traumatized women emerging from filthy cells, among them a three-year-old child and scores of teenage girls.
People look at pictures of bodies believed to be of prisoners from Sednaya prison. (Reuters)
Among the freed prisoners was Ragheed Al-Tatari, a former Syrian air force pilot imprisoned for 43 years after refusing to bomb civilians during the 1982 Hama massacre. Al-Tatari’s survival shocked even those accustomed to Sednaya’s grim history.
Another video circulating online showed an elderly lady in a squalid cell. The unidentified woman was only capable of laughing and repeating what the rebels told her, “the regime fell, the regime fell, the regime fell,” through her laughter.
Like her, countless prisoners seem to have lost their minds and are unable to comprehend what is happening.
Men dressed in Syrian army uniforms using shovels to bury alive a man they accuse in the video as being a citizen journalist. (Youtube video)
Others emerged from their incarceration desperate to learn the fate of their loved ones outside. A QudsN clip circulating on social media shows a man who, on being released, immediately went to visit the graves of his children, who had reportedly been killed by the regime.
Tragically, not all inmates survived long enough to see liberation.
The decomposing body of activist Mazen Hamadeh, who had traveled the world detailing the horrors he had endured during a previous stint in the regime’s dungeons before being lured back to Syria in 2021 under false promises of security, was found inside.
Members of the Syrian civil defence group, known as the White Helmets, search for prisoners underground. (Reuters)
He bore signs of recent blunt-force trauma.
For many Syrians, the fall of Sednaya has been bittersweet. Thousands remain unaccounted for, and families desperate for closure have scoured its grounds for clues.
Volunteers from the Syrian civil defense, known as the White Helmets, armed with maps and sniffer dogs, have searched for hidden cells and underground chambers. Despite rumors of secret detention areas, they reported finding no evidence of additional prisoners.
Sednaya’s facilities reveal the systematic cruelty that defined the Assad regime. Surveillance rooms with wall-to-wall monitors allowed guards to oversee detainees at all times.
Paraphernalia of torture, including ropes for hanging and devices for crushing bodies, were found in abundance. Mass graves and decomposing bodies near the Harasta hospital — where corpses were sent from Sednaya — underscore the scale of atrocities.
The “red wing” housed political prisoners, subjected to the worst abuses. Survivors describe being denied water, beaten into unconsciousness, and forced to relieve themselves in their cells.
Inmates were often forbidden from making noise, even during torture. Every morning, guards collected the dead for burial in unmarked graves, recording causes of death as “heart failure” or “respiratory issues.”
As the White Helmets and opposition fighters continued to make their way into Sednaya to ensure no cell had been left unopened, they came across several decomposed bodies and others that had been partially dissolved in acid.
The horrors extended beyond death. (AFP)
Sednaya’s reputation as a site of systemic abuse predates Syria’s civil war. In the 1980s, it became a repository for Islamists the regime had once encouraged to fight US forces in Iraq but later deemed threats.
Following the 2011 Arab uprisings, the prison’s role expanded dramatically. Protesters, journalists, aid workers and students were detained en masse, many never to be seen again.
The prison’s practices bear the fingerprints of Alois Brunner, a Nazi war criminal who trained Syrian intelligence officers in interrogation and torture techniques.
Once a high-ranking Gestapo officer who oversaw the deportation of more than 128,000 Jews to death camps during the Second World War, Austrian-born Brunner was on the run until he was offered protection by Hafez Assad.
Assad refused on multiple occasions to extradite Brunner to stand trial in Austria and Germany in the 1980s, but later came to see him as a burden and an embarrassment to his rule.
In the mid-1990s, Hafez ordered Brunner’s “indefinite” imprisonment in the same squalor and misery the former Nazi officer had taught Syrian jailors to inflict on their prisoners. He died in Damascus in 2001 aged 89.
The White Helmets, armed with maps and sniffer dogs, have searched for hidden cells and underground chambers. (Reuters)
Despite overwhelming evidence, Bashar Assad consistently denied allegations of abuse. “You can forge anything these days. It is the fake news era,” he told Yahoo News in 2017 when confronted with Amnesty’s findings.
His denials, however, are contradicted by testimonies and reports such as the Caesar files — a cache of 53,000 images taken in Syria’s prisons and military hospitals and smuggled out by a defector — which document the regime’s crimes in horrifying detail.
On Monday, Fadel Abdul Ghany, director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, broke down in tears during a televised interview when asked about the fate of missing detainees. “It is most probable that those who have been arbitrarily disappeared by the regime are dead,” he said.
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Abdul Ghany later posted on social media: “I deeply regret having to share this distressing announcement, but I feel it is my responsibility to share it.”
Syrian activist Wafa Ali Mustafa, whose father was forcibly disappeared in 2013, said on X that she has been searching “through harrowing videos, clinging to any chance” that he might be among the survivors.
A man holds a noose found inside Saydnaya prison. (Reuters)
The prison’s fall has prompted calls for accountability. “The blood that was spilled here cannot just run. They must be held to account,” Radwan Eid, a former detainee, told Reuters news agency.
Sednaya is also not the only regime jail where such abuses are claimed to have taken place. There are multiple facilities across the country, including Mezzeh military prison, Tedmor, and Fereh Falasteen, from which evidence of further horrors are likely to emerge.
The challenge now lies in preserving evidence and ensuring that Sednaya’s perpetrators face trial.
The International Committee of the Red Cross and other organizations have urged the armed opposition to protect records and prevent further destruction. However, looting and chaos at Sednaya has complicated these efforts.
A uniform of a member of the Syrian army hangs from a wire fence outside Sednaya prison. (Reuters)
As Bashar Assad and his acolytes have been granted asylum in Russia, it seems unlikely the deposed president and others in the upper echelons of his regime will stand trial for their role in the crimes perpetrated at Sednaya.
While the road to justice may be long, Sednaya’s liberation represents a turning point. For survivors and families, it offers a rare opportunity to confront the truth and honor the memories of those lost.
The dismantling of Sednaya’s imprisonment machinery is a symbolic step toward rebuilding the nation and serves as a reminder of the resilience of those who survived, and the enduring need for accountability.
54 journalists killed in 2024, a third by Israel: media group
Fifty-four journalists were killed worldwide while carrying out their work or because of their profession in 2024
Updated 12 December 2024
AFP
PARIS: Fifty-four journalists were killed worldwide while carrying out their work or because of their profession in 2024, a third of them by the Israeli army, according to an annual report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published Thursday.
According to the press freedom NGO, Israeli armed forces were responsible for the deaths of 18 journalists this year — 16 in Gaza and two in Lebanon.
“Palestine is the most dangerous country for journalists, recording a higher death toll than any other country over the past five years,” RSF said in its annual report, which covers data up to December 1.
The organization has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “war crimes committed against journalists by the Israeli army.”
It said that in total “more than 145” journalists had been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since the start of the war there in October 2023, with 35 of them working at the time of their deaths, RSF said.
It described the number of killings as “an unprecedented bloodbath.”
In a separate report published Tuesday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reported that 104 journalists were killed worldwide in 2024, with more than half of them in Gaza.
The figures differ between the IFJ and RSF due to two different methodologies used in calculating the toll.
RSF only includes journalists whose deaths have been “proven to be directly related to their professional activity.”
Israel denies that it intentionally harms journalists but admits that some have been killed in air strikes on military targets.
“We don’t accept these figures. We don’t believe they are correct,” Israeli government spokesman David Mercer told a press conference on Wednesday.
After Gaza, the deadliest places for journalists in 2024 were Pakistan with seven deaths, followed by Bangladesh and Mexico with five each.
In 2023, the number of journalists killed worldwide stood at 45 in the same January-December period.
As of December 1, there were 550 journalists imprisoned worldwide, compared to 513 last year, according to RSF figures.
The three countries with the highest numbers of detained journalists are China (124, including 11 in Hong Kong), Myanmar (61), and Israel (41).
Furthermore, 55 journalists are currently being held hostage, including two abducted in 2024. Nearly half — 25 in total — are in the hands of the Daesh group.
In addition, 95 journalists are reported missing, including four new cases reported in 2024.
Shooting at Israeli bus in occupied West Bank wounds 4
Updated 12 December 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: A gunman wounded four people including a 12-year-old when he opened fire Wednesday on an Israeli bus in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military and medics reported.
The attack at around 11:30 p.m. (2130 GMT) happened south of Jerusalem, near Bethlehem at the so-called tunnels checkpoint.
Israel’s emergency medical service Magen David Adom said its medics treated four people, including “a 12-year-old child in serious condition with gunshot wounds.”
The boy was “in a critical condition,” according to Hadassah hospital, west of Jerusalem.
The military said: “Israeli security forces are pursuing the terrorist, setting up roadblocks and encircling the area of Bethlehem.”
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the war in Gaza erupted on October 7 last year after Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 790 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.
Palestinian attacks on Israelis have also killed at least 24 people in the West Bank in the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
