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BEIRUT, Lebanon: A Syria war monitor said early Monday that Israeli strikes had targeted military sites in Syria’s coastal Tartus region, calling them “the heaviest strikes” in the area in more than a decade.
“Israeli warplanes launched strikes” targeting a series of sites including air defense units and “surface-to-surface missile depots,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in what it said were “the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012.”
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia on Sunday condemned and denounced the Israeli government’s approval of a plan to double the population of the occupied and annexed Golan Heights.
Israel’s government “unanimously approved” the $11 million “plan for the demographic development of the Golan... in light of the war and the new front in Syria and the desire to double the population,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.
“The Kingdom renews its call to the international community to condemn these Israeli violations, stressing the need to respect Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The statement added that the strategic plateau is occupied Syrian Arab land and condemned Israel’s “continued sabotage of Syria’s chances of restoring its security and stability.”
Israel has occupied most of the Golan Heights since 1967 and annexed that area in 1981 in a move recognized only by the United States.
NAIROBI: Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias, at war with the army, of committing widespread sexual violence in southern Sudan.
It is the latest such report by international monitors alleging sexual violence during Sudan’s 20-month war which has led to what the United States called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
In its new report, HRW said it had documented dozens of cases since September 2023 involving women and girls aged between seven and 50 who were subjected to sexual violence, including gang rape and sexual slavery, in South Kordofan state.
The latest details follow a separate report last week from the New York-based watchdog which more broadly accused the RSF and allied Arab militias of carrying out numerous abuses, mainly against ethnic Nuba civilians, in South Kordofan state from December 2023 to March 2024.
These attacks, it said, “had not been widely reported” and constituted “war crimes.”
Parts of South Kordofan and parts of Blue Nile state are controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a rebel group.
The SPLM-N faction led by Abdelaziz Al-Hilu refused to join other Sudan rebels in signing a 2020 peace deal with the government, as Hilu sought a secular state as a prerequisite.
Many South Kordofan residents are members of Sudan’s Christian minority.
Hilu also at that time refused talks with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, linking him with atrocities.
SPLM-N has clashed with both the army and RSF in parts of South Kordofan since April, 2023 when the war between the paramilitaries and Sudanese Armed Forces began, HRW said.
The conflict has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, internally displaced more than eight million, according to the UN, and forced more than three million others to seek safety in neighboring countries.
According to the HRW report, many of the victims were gang-raped at their or their neighbors’ homes, often in front of families while some were abducted and held in conditions of enslavement.
One survivor, a 35-year-old Nuba woman, described being gang-raped by six RSF fighters who stormed her family compound and killed her husband and son when they tried to intervene.
“They kept raping me, all six of them,” she said.
Another survivor, aged 18, recounted being taken in February with 17 others to a base where they joined 33 detained women and girls.
“On a daily basis for three months, the fighters raped and beat the women and girls, including the 18-year-old survivor, crimes that also constitute sexual slavery,” HRW said.
At times, the captives were even chained together, it said.
“These acts of sexual violence, which constitute war crimes... underscore the urgent need for meaningful international action to protect civilians and deliver justice,” HRW said in its report.
The UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher raised the alarm late in November over an “epidemic of sexual violence” against women in Sudan, saying that the world “must do better.”
In October, the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan said both sides have committed abuses including torture and sexual violence. But it accused the paramilitaries, in particular, of “sexual violence on a large scale.”
These included “gang rapes and abducting and detaining victims in conditions that amount to sexual slavery,” the mission said.
In its initial report last week, HRW urged the UN and African Union to “urgently deploy a mission to protect civilians in Sudan.”
RIYADH: The Muslim World League has condemned a plan by the Israeli government to double the population of the annexed Golan Heights.
The MWL “urged the international community to condemn and take action against the ongoing Israeli violations, which sabotage the prospects for the Syrian people to restore their security and stability after enduring years of injustice and suffering,” the organization said in a statement on Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that the government had “unanimously approved” the $11 million “plan for the demographic development of the Golan... in light of the war and the new front in Syria and the desire to double the population.”
The MWL statement emphasized the “imperative of respecting Syria's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the safety of its citizens.”
The Golan is home to 24,000 Druze, an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam. Most identify as Syrian.
— with input from AFP
DAMASCUS: The Syrian Islamist leader whose group led the offensive that toppled Bashar Assad met Sunday with UN envoy Geir Pedersen, who was visiting Damascus, said a statement on the militants’ Telegram channel.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa, discussed with Pedersen “the changes that have occurred on the political scene which make it necessary to update” a 2015 United Nations Security Council resolution “to suit the new reality,” the statement said.
Golani’s HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda, the Al-Nusra Front, designated a “terrorist” organization by many Western governments.
UN Security Council Resolution 2254 of 2015, to which the militant statement referred, set out a roadmap for a political settlement in Syria, and also mentioned Nusra’s “terrorist” designation.
On Tuesday, Pedersen said the fact that Nusra was listed by the UN Security Council as a terrorist organization was “obviously a complicating factor” in efforts to find a way forward.
However, he stressed that it was important to view HTS, which broke with Nusra in 2016 and has sought to soften its image, through the events of the civil war.
The militant statement Sunday said Golani had emphasized “the need to focus on Syrian territorial unity, reconstruction and achieving economic development.”
He also raised “the importance of providing a safe environment for the return of refugees and providing economic and political support for this,” said the statement.
Earlier Sunday, Pedersen urged a “political process... that is inclusive of all Syrians.
“That process obviously needs to be led by the Syrians themselves” with “help and assistance” from the rest of the world, he said.
AL-QUSAYR, Syria: Residents of Qusayr in central Syria are finally returning home after the departure of Hezbollah fighters, who helped Bashar Assad’s forces seize the city a decade ago and left with his fall.
Many of the houses are now in ruins, after years under the control of the Lebanese armed group, a key Assad ally which had set up a military base and training camp there.
“Most areas in the city of Qusayr were off-limits to us,” said 22-year-old resident Ali Khleif.
“Even the local residents who owned shops and establishments there were prohibited from entering.”
Syria’s military retook Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, in June 2013 after a blistering assault led by Hezbollah fighters.
Qusayr had been used by rebels as a transit point for weapons and fighters from Lebanon, and was strategically vital for the Syrian government because it is close to a major road linking Damascus to the coast.
Hezbollah used the buildings “as warehouses for weapons and ammunition,” said Khleif.
“After the liberation, the residents returned to their shops and land” and have reclaimed them, he said.
“We will begin rebuilding them.”
Hezbollah acknowledged in 2013 that it was fighting in Syria in support of Damascus, two years after war erupted when Assad brutally repressed a pro-democracy uprising.
Now in Qusayr, former Hezbollah posts have been ransacked.
Images of the group’s former chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in September in a huge Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, have been slashed up and destroyed.
The 2013 battle for Qusayr forced thousands to flee, including many Lebanese residents of the area, which maintains close ties to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley across the border.
Hezbollah fighters abandoned the area with the fall of Assad last week, after Islamist-led rebels pressed a lightning offensive, taking the capital on December 8.
Lawyer Ayman Soweid, 30, said that “during Hezbollah’s occupation of Qusayr, our city was regarded as a land bridge for transporting weapons, specifically from Syria and Iran, via Iraq, passing through us to Lebanon.”
Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit the Qusayr area.
Israel, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since 2011, mainly targeting the army and Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah, has rarely commented on individual raids but has repeatedly said it would not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country.
Elsewhere in Qusayr, Samar Harfouch, 38, was surveying piles of rubble.
She said she had returned on Saturday only to find her home destroyed.
“This is my home, and these are the homes of my husband’s brothers — three homes,” she told AFP, also indicating more relatives’ homes nearby.
“All destroyed,” she said.
“Twelve homes reduced to rubble.”
