BEIRUT: A new round of Syrian peace talks opens in Geneva on Tuesday, overshadowed by a competing process in Astana and with the opposition reeling from a major setback in Damascus.
Since it broke out in March 2011, Syria’s conflict has killed more than 320,000 people, displaced millions and ravaged the country’s economy and infrastructure.
Efforts to end the war are now proceeding along two rival tracks: the formal political peace process hosted at United Nations headquarters in Geneva and, since January, parallel talks in Kazakhstan brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey.
Observers say the UN appears to be scrambling to match Astana’s momentum after a landmark deal signed in Kazakhstan on May 4 that would create four “de-escalation” zones across some of Syria’s bloodiest battlegrounds.
UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura however stressed to reporters on Monday that the Geneva talks were working “in tandem” with the Astana process.
He has said the upcoming talks, which are expected to last just four days, aimed to “hit the iron while it’s hot,” with the hope that de-escalation on the ground can help push forward toward “a political horizon.”
Since the Astana deal came into effect a week ago, fighting has slowed across swathes of the country.
But in Damascus, which is not included in the deal, the regime has secured the evacuation of three opposition-held districts, bringing it closer to exerting full control over the capital for the first time since 2012.
Numerous rounds of UN-backed talks have fallen short of producing concrete results, although during the last round in March the sides finally began discussing four separate “baskets” of issues: governance, a new constitution, elections and combating “terrorism” in the war-ravaged country.
Aron Lund, a fellow at The Century Foundation, said that despite Geneva’s important “symbolic value, it isn’t moving forward in any visible way.”
“In practice, the Geneva track has largely been sidelined by the Astana track, at least for now,” Lund said.
Delegations were arriving in Geneva on Monday, a day before the talks start.
The Syrian regime team will be headed once again by its UN ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari.
The opposition delegation will be represented by the Riyadh-based High Negotiations Committee and led again by Nasr Al-Hariri and Mohammad Sabra.
The HNC has continued to call for the ouster of President Bashar Assad as part of a political transition, a demand seen as a non-starter by the Syrian regime.
“By design, the Geneva process revolves around this dead-end demand for a negotiated transition,” Lund told AFP.
“In terms of actually trying to stabilize Syria, the main effect of pegging peace to transition has been to marginalize the UN in Geneva and shift attention to Astana instead,” he said.
Opposition backer Turkey and regime allies Russia and Iran sponsored the first talks in Astana in late January to reinforce a faltering cease-fire.
They have since returned for several meetings, culminating this month in the safe zones deal.
Assad has brushed off the upcoming Geneva negotiations as “merely a meeting for the media.”
“There is nothing substantial in all the Geneva meetings. Not even one per million. It is null,” Assad said in a recent interview with Belarus’s ONT channel.
“As to Astana, the situation is different... This started to produce results,” Assad said.
De Mistura on Monday downplayed Assad’s comments, pointing out that the Syrian president had sent a large, high-level delegation to Geneva, and “they are empowered to serious discussions and they are here to work.”
He said his dealings with the regime delegation had been “much more substantive than just those general comments that are made for the cameras.”
Syrian peace efforts have also been marked in recent months by Washington’s all-but withdrawal from the process under President Donald Trump.
The previous US administration, in particular then-secretary of state John Kerry, was deeply involved in the Geneva process but since Trump took office Washington has played little apparent role.
But de Mistura said Monday he was “encouraged by the increasing engagement, the increasing interest, by the US administration in finding a de-escalation.”
Syria talks open overshadowed by rival track, opposition losses
Syria talks open overshadowed by rival track, opposition losses
Gaza war death toll could be 40 percent higher, says study
They estimated 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury during this period, about 41 percent higher than the official Palestinian Health Ministry count
LONDON: An official Palestinian tally of direct deaths in the Israel-Hamas war likely undercounted the number of casualties by around 40 percent in the first nine months of the war as the Gaza Strip’s health care infrastructure unraveled, according to a study published on Thursday.
The peer-reviewed statistical analysis published in The Lancet journal was conducted by academics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Yale University and other institutions.
Using a statistical method called capture-recapture analysis, the researchers sought to assess the death toll from Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024.
They estimated 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury during this period, about 41 percent higher than the official Palestinian Health Ministry count. The study said 59.1 percent were women, children and people over the age of 65. It did not provide an estimate of Palestinian combatants among the dead.
More than 46,000 people have been killed in the Gaza war, according to Palestinian health officials, from a pre-war population of around 2.1 million.
A senior Israeli official, commenting on the study, said Israel’s armed forces went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
“No other army in the world has ever taken such wide-ranging measures,” the official said.
“These include providing advance warning to civilians to evacuate, safe zones and taking any and all measures to prevent harm to civilians. The figures provided in this report do not reflect the situation on the ground.”
The war began on Oct. 7 after Hamas gunmen stormed across the border with Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
The Lancet study said the Palestinian health ministry’s capacity for maintaining electronic death records had previously proven reliable, but deteriorated under Israel’s military campaign, which has included raids on hospitals and other health care facilities and disruptions to digital communications.
Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its operations, which the militant group denies.
STUDY METHOD EMPLOYED IN OTHER CONFLICTS
Anecdotal reports suggested that a significant number of dead remained buried in the rubble of destroyed buildings and were therefore not included in some tallies.
To better account for such gaps, the Lancet study employed a method used to evaluate deaths in other conflict zones, including Kosovo and Sudan.
Using data from at least two independent sources, researchers look for individuals who appear on multiple lists of those killed. Less overlap between lists suggests more deaths have gone unrecorded, information that can be used to estimate the full number of deaths.
For the Gaza study, researchers compared the official Palestinian Health Ministry death count, which in the first months of war was based entirely on bodies that arrived in hospitals but later came to include other methods; an online survey distributed by the health ministry to Palestinians inside and outside the Gaza Strip, who were asked to provide data on Palestinian ID numbers, names, age at death, sex, location of death, and reporting source; and obituaries posted on social media.
“Our research reveals a stark reality: the true scale of traumatic injury deaths in Gaza is higher than reported,” lead author Zeina Jamaluddine told Reuters.
Dr. Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Reuters that the statistical methods deployed in the study provide a more complete estimate of the death toll in the war.
The study focused solely on deaths caused by traumatic injuries though, he said.
Deaths caused from indirect effects of conflict, such as disrupted health services and poor water and sanitation, often cause high excess deaths, said Spiegel, who co-authored a study last year that projected thousands of deaths due to the public health crisis spawned by the war.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimates that, on top of the official death toll, around another 11,000 Palestinians are missing and presumed dead.
In total, PCBS said, citing Palestinian Health Ministry numbers, the population of Gaza has fallen 6 percent since the start of the war, as about 100,000 Palestinians have also left the enclave.
Syria monitor says alleged Assad loyalist ‘executed’ in public
- Fighters affiliated with the new authorities executed Mazen Kneneh with a shot to the head in the street
BEIRUT: A Syria monitor said fighters linked to the Islamist-led transitional administration publicly executed a local official on Friday, accusing him of having been an informant under ousted strongman Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighters affiliated with the new authorities executed Mazen Kneneh with a shot to the head in the street in the Damascus suburb of Dummar, describing him as “one of the best-known loyalists of the former regime.”
Japan congratulates Lebanon on electing new President
- The ministry also said that Japan will continue to support Lebanon
TOKYO: The Government of Japan said it congratulates Lebanon on the election of the new President Joseph Aoun on January 9.
A statement by the Foreign Ministry said while Lebanon has been facing difficult situations such as a prolonged economic crisis and the exchange of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the election of a new President is an important step toward stability and development of the country.
“Japan once again strongly demands all parties concerned to fully implement the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon,” the statement added.
The ministry also said that Japan will continue to support Lebanon’s efforts on achieving social and economic stability in the country as well as stability in the Middle East region.
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
- 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.”
