Syrians in frantic search for their children after blast

Syrians, who were injured in a suicide car bombing that targeted buses carrying evacuees, sit in a tent on the Syrian-Turkish border in Idlib Monday. (AFP)
Updated 19 April 2017
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Syrians in frantic search for their children after blast

BAB Al-HAWA, Syria: Fatima Rashid was recovering in a Syrian hospital after a deadly suicide blast when she glanced at a teenager with a bloody, disfigured face. She did not recognize her daughter.

The wounded teenager was later taken across the border to Turkey for treatment and now Rashid, like many parents caught up in a horrifying attack on Saturday, is searching frantically for her child.
“I lifted the curtain back in the emergency room and I saw a girl. Half her face was gone and she was bleeding,” Rashid told AFP, speaking at a shelter for displaced families near the Syria-Turkey border.
“I didn’t think about whose daughter she was.”
“When I woke up the next day, the doctors came to show me a picture of that girl. I remembered what my daughter Ghadir had been wearing. That was her,” she said, with tears in her eyes.
At least 68 children were among 126 people killed when a suicide car bomb tore through buses evacuating Foua and Kfraya, two villages in northern Syria under opposition siege.
Dozens of wounded, including 37-year-old Fatima and her children, were rushed to hospitals in nearby opposition-controlled territory, while others were taken to regime-held Aleppo city.
Fatima has no news of Ghadir, her son Adel, 15, her 13-month-old daughter Rimas, or her husband Mohannad.
Only Zahra, 7, is safely at Fatima’s side.
The carnage on Saturday came as thousands gathered to be evacuated from Foua and Kfraya as part of a complex deal that also saw people leave Madaya and Zabadani, towns near Damascus surrounded by pro-regime forces.
“I saw a car distributing potato chips to the children. My daughter asked me to get her a bag, but a little kid came and snatched the bag from me,” Fatima said.
A smile briefly crossed her face before it turned dark again, as she remembered the devastating scene that followed.
“I went to get another one and suddenly something exploded. I flew back onto the ground and there were bodies on top of me.... I pulled myself and my daughter out from under the bodies and ran.”
“They took us to a hospital and treated us well... But when they took Ghadir to Turkey, I didn’t know anything. They didn’t even have her name,” Fatima said.
Dozens of survivors from were squatting on blankets and rugs in the displacement center, awaiting news of relatives of whom they lost track after the explosion.
Several children, some as young as three, sat shell-shocked in a row, staying quiet as people asked for their names or where their parents were.
One woman, whose daughter was taken to another village for treatment, anxiously tried to locate her in unfamiliar opposition-controlled territory.
“Where is this village? How am I supposed to know anything about her?” she called out.
Nearby, Umm Mohammad, her face scratched and her left hand wrapped in gauze, was hysterical.
She was flanked by her two young boys, whose faces were bandaged, but her third child was nowhere in sight.
“I want information about my son. Is he in Turkey? Did he die?” she screamed, as mothers nearby tried to soothe her.
“He’s eight months old, he can’t tell people who he is. No one knows his name. How am I supposed to get to him?”
In a section of the tent reserved for men, Shareef Al-Hussein, 35, waited with his two sons.
Haydar, 10, was lightly wounded in the forehead. All that was visible of four-year-old Hamza’s face from behind his bloodied bandages was his nose.
“My children cry every day because they want to see their mother. We hope to go back one day” to Kfraya, Hussein said.
He and fellow evacuees were besieged for two years by opposition fighters — some of whom helped rescue people hurt in the suicide attack.
“They got us medication and food, they helped us with the kids,” Hussein told AFP, which requested that opposition fighters not be present during the interview.
Osama, a resident of Foua who had joined a local pro-regime militia in the village, said he was “not afraid” of being in opposition-controlled territory.
“Our brothers here are assuring us that we are not their hostages,” he said.
Syria’s six-year war has so bitterly divided its population that many anti-regime fighters and residents of regime-held territory struggled to believe they were under the same tent.
Abu Obeida, a 33-year-old opposition fighter, said he helped rescue wounded civilians after Saturday’s attack, but acknowledged it was “difficult” to say how he would have reacted if a deal between the two sides had not been underway.
“But I had to rescue the children and the old people,” he added.
“It’s a human issue.”


Lebanon PM to visit new Damascus ruler on Saturday

Updated 5 sec ago
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Lebanon PM to visit new Damascus ruler on Saturday

  • Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati will on Saturday make his first official trip to neighboring Syria since the fall of president Bashar Assad, his office told AFP
BERUIT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati will on Saturday make his first official trip to neighboring Syria since the fall of president Bashar Assad, his office told AFP.
Mikati’s office said Friday the trip came at the invitation of the country’s new de facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa during a phone call last week.
Syria imposed new restrictions on the entry of Lebanese citizens last week, two security sources have told AFP, following what the Lebanese army said was a border skirmish with unnamed armed Syrians.
Lebanese nationals had previously been allowed into Syria without a visa, using just their passport or ID card.
Lebanon’s eastern border is porous and known for smuggling.
Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah supported Assad with fighters during Syria’s civil war.
But the Iran-backed movement has been weakened after a war with Israel killed its long-time leader and Islamist-led rebels seized Damascus last month.
Lebanese lawmakers elected the country’s army chief Joseph Aoun as president on Thursday, ending a vacancy of more than two years that critics blamed on Hezbollah.
For three decades under the Assad clan, Syria was the dominant power in Lebanon after intervening in its 1975-1990 civil war.
Syria eventually withdrew its troops in 2005 under international pressure after the assassination of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafic Hariri.

UN says 3 million Sudan children facing acute malnutrition

Updated 11 min 53 sec ago
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UN says 3 million Sudan children facing acute malnutrition

  • Famine has already gripped five areas across Sudan, according to a report last month
  • Sudan has endured 20 months of war between the army and the paramilitary forces

PORT SUDAN, Sudan: An estimated 3.2 million children under the age of five are expected to face acute malnutrition this year in war-torn Sudan, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“Of this number, around 772,000 children are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition,” Eva Hinds, UNICEF Sudan’s Head of Advocacy and Communication, told AFP late on Thursday.
Famine has already gripped five areas across Sudan, according to a report last month by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed assessment.
Sudan has endured 20 months of war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing tens of thousands and, according to the United Nations, uprooting 12 million in the world’s largest displacement crisis.
Confirming to AFP that 3.2 million children are currently expected to face acute malnutrition, Hinds said “the number of severely malnourished children increased from an estimated 730,000 in 2024 to over 770,000 in 2025.”
The IPC expects famine to expand to five more parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region by May — a vast area that has seen some of the conflict’s worst violence. A further 17 areas in western and central Sudan are also at risk of famine, it said.
“Without immediate, unhindered humanitarian access facilitating a significant scale-up of a multisectoral response, malnutrition is likely to increase in these areas,” Hinds warned.
Sudan’s army-aligned government strongly rejected the IPC findings, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.
In October, experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council accused both sides of using “starvation tactics.”
On Tuesday the United States determined that the RSF had “committed genocide” and imposed sanctions on the paramilitary group’s leader.
Across the country, more than 24.6 million people — around half the population — face “high levels of acute food insecurity,” according to IPC, which said: “Only a ceasefire can reduce the risk of famine spreading further.”


Turkiye says France must take back its militants from Syria

Updated 36 min 45 sec ago
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Turkiye says France must take back its militants from Syria

  • Ankara is threatening military action against Kurdish fighters in the northeast
  • Turkiye considers the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as linked to its domestic nemesis

ISTANBUL: France must take back its militant nationals from Syria, Turkiye’s top diplomat said Friday, insisting Washington was its only interlocutor for developments in the northeast where Ankara is threatening military action against Kurdish fighters.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan insisted Turkiye’s only aim was to ensure “stability” in Syria after the toppling of strongman Bashar Assad.
In its sights are the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which have been working with the United States for the past decade to fight Daesh group militants.
Turkiye considers the group as linked to its domestic nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye and is considered a terror organization by both Turkiye and the US.
The US is currently leading talks to head off a Turkish offensive in the area.
“The US is our only counterpart... Frankly we don’t take into account countries that try to advance their own interests in Syria by hiding behind US power,” he said.
His remarks were widely understood to be a reference to France, which is part of an international coalition to prevent a militant resurgence in the area.
Asked about the possibility of a French-US troop deployment in northeast Syria, he said France’s main concern should be to take back its nationals who have been jailed there in connection with militant activity.
“If France had anything to do, it should take its own citizens, bring them to its own prisons and judge them,” he said.


Lebanese caretaker PM says country to begin disarming south Litani to ensure state presence

Updated 10 January 2025
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Lebanese caretaker PM says country to begin disarming south Litani to ensure state presence

  • Najib Mikati: ‘We are in a new phase – in this new phase, we will start with south Lebanon and south Litani’

DUBAI: Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Friday that the state will begin disarming southern Lebanon, particularly the south Litani region, to establish its presence across the country.
“We are in a new phase – in this new phase, we will start with south Lebanon and south Litani specifically in order to pull weapons so that the state can be present across Lebanese territory,” Mikati said.


Tanker hit by Yemen militia that threatened Red Sea spill has been salvaged

Updated 10 January 2025
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Tanker hit by Yemen militia that threatened Red Sea spill has been salvaged

  • The Sounion had been a disaster in waiting in the waterway, with 1 million barrels of crude oil aboard
  • The Houthis have targeted some 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started

DUBAI: An oil tanker that burned for weeks in the Red Sea and threatened a massive oil spill has been “successfully” salvaged, a security firm said Friday.
The Sounion had been a disaster in waiting in the waterway, with 1 million barrels of crude oil aboard that had been struck and later sabotaged with explosives by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militia. It took months for salvagers to tow the vessel away, extinguish the fires and offload the remaining crude oil.
The Houthis initially attacked the Greek-flagged Sounion tanker on Aug. 21 with small arms fire, projectiles and a drone boat. A French destroyer operating as part of Operation Aspides rescued its crew of 25 Filipinos and Russians, as well as four private security personnel, after they abandoned the vessel and took them to nearby Djibouti.
The Houthis later released footage showing they planted explosives on board the Sounion and ignited them in a propaganda video, something the militia have done before in their campaign.
The Houthis have targeted some 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October 2023. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a US-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.
The Houthis maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the UK to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.