Daesh-claimed attacks on Iran’s parliament, shrine kill 12

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TOPSHOT - Iranian policemen evacuate a child from the parliament building in Tehran on June 7, 2017 during an attack on the complex. The Islamic State group claimed its first attacks in Iran as gunmen and suicide bombers killed at least five people in twin assaults on parliament and the tomb of the country's revolutionary founder in Tehran. / AFP / FARS NEWS / OMID VAHABZADEH
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A still image taken from a video released on the internet by the Daesh-affiliated Amaq News Agency on June 7, 2017, purports to show a person lying on floor with blood stain in an office said to be inside Iranian parliament in Tehran. (Social Media website via Reuters TV)
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Police officers control the scene, around of shrine of late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, after an assault by several attackers in Tehran on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Updated 07 June 2017
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Daesh-claimed attacks on Iran’s parliament, shrine kill 12

TEHRAN: The Daesh group claimed responsibility Wednesday for a stunning pair of attacks on Iran’s parliament and the mausoleum of its modern founder, the first such attack claimed by the Sunni extremist group in the Shiite-ruled nation.
The lethal assaults, which killed at least 12 people and shocked the country, brought Iran’s wars in Iraq and Syria to its capital at a time when emboldened Sunni Arab states — led by Saudi Arabia and backed by US President Donald Trump — harden their position on its Shiite leadership.
The attacks drew condemnations and condolences from the governments of Pakistan and from Iran’s close allies in the Russian and Syrian governments.
The attacks began midmorning when assailants, armed with Kalashnikov rifles and explosives, stormed the parliament building. One of the attackers later blew himself up inside, where a session had been in progress, according to Iran’s state TV.
It was an hours-long siege at the legislature that ended with four attackers dead. In images circulating in Iranian media, gunmen were seen holding rifles near the windows of parliament. Another image, carried in the semi-official Fars news agency, showed a toddler being handed off through a first-floor window to safety outside as an armed man looks on.
The Daesh group’s Aamaq news agency released a 24-second video purportedly shot inside the parliament building during the siege. The video, circulated online, shows a bloody, lifeless body of a man lying on the ground next to a desk.
A voice on the video praises God and says in Arabic: “Do you think we will leave? We will remain, God willing.” Another voice repeats the same words. The two appeared to be parroting a slogan used by Daesh spokesman Abu Mohammad Al-Adnani, who was killed in Syria last year.
As the parliament siege was unfolding, gunmen and suicide bombers attacked the shrine of Iran’s revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which is located just outside Tehran. Khomeini, who died in 1989, is a towering figure in Iran who led the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah and became its first supreme leader.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called the attacks a cowardly act and proof that Tehran has made an enemy of militant Islamic groups through its policies and actions in Iraq and Syria.
“Iran is an active and effective pillar in the fight against terrorists and they want to damage it,” he said.
Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Hossein Zolfaghari told Iran’s state TV the apparently male attackers wore women’s attire. The semi-official Tasnim news agency later reported the siege had ended with four of the attackers killed.
Mizan Online, an Iranian state-run news website, said 12 people were killed and 42 wounded in the two attacks. It quoted Pirhossein Kolivand, the head of Iran’s emergency department.
An Associated Press reporter saw several police snipers on the rooftops of buildings around the parliament. Shops in the area were shuttered, and gunfire could be heard. Witnesses said the attackers were shooting from the fourth floor of the parliament building down at people in the streets below.
“I was passing by one of the streets. I thought that children were playing with fireworks, but I realized people are hiding and lying down on the streets,” Ebrahim Ghanimi, who was around the parliament building when the assailants stormed in, told The Associated Press. “With the help of a taxi driver, I reached a nearby alley.”
Police helicopters circled over the parliament building and all mobile phone lines from inside were disconnected. The semi-official ISNA news agency said all entrances and exit gates at parliament were closed and that lawmakers and reporters were ordered to remain in place inside the chamber during the siege.
Soon after the parliament attack, a suicide bomber and other assailants targeted the mausoleum of Khomeini, located just outside the capital, Tehran, according to Iran’s official state broadcaster. It said a security guard was killed and that one of the attackers was killed by security guards. A woman was also arrested.
An Associated Press reporter saw security forces, some uniformed and others in plainclothes, around the large and ornate shrine.
The Daesh group often claims attacks around the world, even when links to the group cannot be confirmed and appear dubious. Iranian security officials have not said who they suspect is behind the attacks, though state media has referred to the attackers as “terrorists.”
The unusual attacks prompted the Interior Ministry to call for an urgent security meeting. Officials at one point urged people to avoid using public transportation until further notice.
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Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi, Mohammad Nasiri, Mahdi Fattahi and Saeed Sarmadi contributed to this report.


Qatar says sanctions on Syria must be lifted quickly

Updated 9 sec ago
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Qatar says sanctions on Syria must be lifted quickly

DOHA: Qatar called on Tuesday for the quick removal of sanctions on Syria following the ousting of president Bashar Assad by Islamist-led rebels.
“We call for intensified efforts to expedite the lifting of international sanctions on Syria,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari told a regular briefing.
Qatar’s call came a day after a high-level delegation visited Damascus. The Qatari embassy there reopened on Sunday, ending a 13-year rift between the two countries.
“Qatar’s position is clear,” Ansari said. “It’s necessary to lift the sanctions quickly, given that what led to these sanctions is no longer there and that what led to these sanctions were the crimes of the former regime.”
Doha was one of the main backers of the armed rebellion that erupted after Assad’s government crushed a peaceful uprising in 2011.
Unlike several of its neighbors, Qatar had remained a stern critic of Assad and did not renew ties with Syria despite its return to the Arab diplomatic fold last year.
The international community has not rushed to lift sanctions on Syria, waiting to see how the new authorities exercise their power.

Israeli forces kill one Palestinian in West Bank refugee camp

Updated 48 min 43 sec ago
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Israeli forces kill one Palestinian in West Bank refugee camp

  • Palestinian news agency WAFA said Fathi Saeed Odeh Salem died after snipers shot him and fired on the ambulance crew

JERUSALEM: Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in a dawn raid on Tuesday on a refugee camp near the city of Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.
The Israeli military said the man was killed in a “counter-terrorism” operation that resulted in 18 arrests, while the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said Fathi Saeed Odeh Salem died after snipers shot him and fired on ambulance crew.
Hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis have been killed in the West Bank since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel triggered the current war in Gaza and a wider conflict on several fronts.
WAFA said Israeli bulldozers demolished infrastructure in the camp, including homes, shops, part of the walls of Al-Salam mosque, which they barricaded off, and part of the camp’s water network.


Israeli army forces patients out of a north Gaza hospital

Updated 3 min 11 sec ago
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Israeli army forces patients out of a north Gaza hospital

CAIRO: Israeli troops forced the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza and many patients, some of them on foot, arrived at another hospital miles away in Gaza City, the territory’s health ministry said on Tuesday.
The Indonesian Hospital is one of the Gaza Strip’s few still partially functioning hospitals, on its northern edge, an area that has been under intense Israeli military pressure for nearly three months.
Israel says its operation around the three northern Gaza communities surrounding the hospital — Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia — is targeting Hamas militants.
Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to permanently depopulate northern Gaza to create a buffer zone, which Israel denies.
Munir Al-Bursh, director of the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, said the Israeli army had ordered hospital officials to evacuate it on Monday, before storming it in the early hours of Tuesday and forcing those inside to leave.
He said two other medical facilities in northern Gaza, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, were also subject to frequent assaults by Israeli troops operating in the area.
“Occupation forces have taken the three hospitals out of medical service because of the repeated attacks that undermined them and destroyed parts of them,” Bursh said in a statement.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Officials at the three hospitals have so far refused orders by Israel to evacuate their facilities or leave patients unattended since the new military offensive began on Oct. 5.
Israel says it has been facilitating the delivery of medical supplies, fuel and the transfer of patients to other hospitals in the enclave during that period in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, said they resisted a new order by the army to evacuate hundreds of patients, their companions and staff, adding that the hospital has been under constant Israeli fire that damaged generators, oxygen pumps and parts of the building.
Israeli forces have operated in the vicinity of the hospital since Monday, medics said.

NEW STRIKES
Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment continued elsewhere in the enclave and medics said at least nine Palestinians, including a member of the civil emergency service, were killed in four separate military strikes across the enclave on Tuesday.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has since killed more than 45,200 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
A fresh bid by mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States to end the fighting and release Israeli and foreign hostages has gained momentum this month, though no breakthrough has yet been reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said progress had been made in hostage negotiations with Hamas but that he did not know how much longer it would take to see the results.
Gaps between Israel and Hamas over a possible Gaza ceasefire have narrowed, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials’ remarks on Monday, though crucial differences have yet to be resolved.


Syrian ex-rebel factions agree to merge under defense ministry

Updated 7 min 24 sec ago
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Syrian ex-rebel factions agree to merge under defense ministry

DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa reached an agreement on Tuesday with former rebel faction chiefs to dissolve all groups and consolidate them under the defense ministry, according to a statement from the new administration.
Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Bashir had said last week that the ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Bashar Assad’s army.
Sharaa will face the daunting task of trying to avoid clashes between the myriad groups.
The country’s new rulers appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency that toppled Bashar Assad, as defense minister in the interim government.
Syria’s historic ethnic and religious minorities include Muslim Kurds and Shiites — who feared during the civil war that any future Sunni Islamist rule would imperil their way of life — as well as Syriac, Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians, and the Druze community.
Sharaa has told Western officials visiting him that the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group he heads, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, will neither seek revenge against the former regime nor repress any religious minority.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.


Israel PM vows to fight ‘forces of evil’ in message to Christians

Updated 24 December 2024
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Israel PM vows to fight ‘forces of evil’ in message to Christians

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday acknowledged what he described as the steadfast support of Christians worldwide for Israel’s fight against the “forces of evil.”
Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories were preparing for a somber wartime Christmas for the second consecutive year, with the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip casting a shadow over the season.
“You’ve stood by our side resiliently, consistently, forcefully as Israel defends our civilization against barbarism,” Netanyahu said in a video message to Christians across the world.
“We seek peace with all those who wish peace with us, but we will do whatever is necessary to defend the one and only Jewish state, the repository and the source of our common heritage.
“Israel leads the world in fighting the forces of evil and tyranny, but our battle is not yet over. With your support, and with God’s help, I assure you, we shall prevail,” Netanyahu said.
The war in Gaza, which erupted on October 7, 2023 following a deadly Hamas attack on Israel, has significantly impacted the Christian communities in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 45,317 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
Israel is home to approximately 185,000 Christians, accounting for about 1.9 percent of the population, with Arab Christians comprising nearly 76 percent of the community, according to data from the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
According to Palestinian officials, about 47,000 Christians reside in the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip.