BEIRUT: The Syrian regime and loyal armed militias are continuing to prevent thousands of displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes in Yarmouk refugee camp, south of Damascus, five years after their displacement.
According to the Saudi Press Agency, Palestinian civil society organizations said in a statement that the tragedy of Yarmouk camp began to appear in 2012 when Assad regime began shelling and siege of the camp.
Since the beginning of the events in Yarmouk, the camp has been subjected to a severe siege and heavy shelling that led to the displacement of more than 80 percent of the camp’s children.
The Palestinian Working Group for Syria documented 1,333 victims of Yarmouk refugee camp during the war.
Some 85,000 Palestinian refugees have arrived from Syria to Europe, while the number of Palestinian refugees, from the camp, in Lebanon is estimated at 31,000, 17,000 in Jordan, 6,000 in Egypt, 8,000 in Turkey and 1,000 displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
Meanwhile, sources said Assad’s Russian allies want to convert military gains into a settlement that stabilizes the shattered nation and secures their interests in the region.
According to Reuters, a year after the opposition’s defeat in Aleppo, Syrian regime forces backed by Russia and Iran have recovered large swathes of territory as Daesh’s “caliphate” collapses.
As UN-backed talks in Geneva fail to make any progress, Russia is preparing to launch its own political process in 2018. President Vladimir Putin declared mission accomplished for the military on a visit to Russia’s Syrian air base this week, and said conditions were ripe for a political solution.
Though Washington still insists Assad must go, a senior Syrian opposition figure told Reuters the US and other governments that have backed the rebellion had finally “surrendered to the Russian vision” on ending the war.
The view in Damascus is that this will preserve Assad as president. A regime official in Damascus said: “It is clear a track is underway, and the Russians are overseeing it.”
“There is a shift in the path of the crisis in Syria, a shift for the better,” the official said. But experts struggle to see how Russian diplomacy can bring lasting peace to Syria, encourage millions of refugees to return, or secure Western reconstruction aid.
There is no sign that Assad is ready to compromise with his opponents. The war has also allowed his other big ally, Iran and its Revolutionary Guard, to expand its regional influence, which Tehran will not want to see diluted by any settlement in Syria. Having worked closely to secure Assad, Iran and Russia may now differ in ways that could complicate Russian policy.
Assad and his allies now command the single largest chunk of Syria, followed by US-backed Kurdish militias who control much of northern and eastern Syria and are more concerned with shoring up their regional autonomy than fighting Damascus.
Anti-regime fighters still cling to patches of territory: A corner of the northwest at the Turkish border, a corner of the southwest at the Israeli frontier, and the Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Eastern Ghouta and the northwest are now in the firing line.
“The Revolutionary Guards clearly feel they have won this war and the hard-liners in Iran are not too keen on anything but accommodation with Assad, so on that basis it is a little hard to see that there can be any real progress,” said Rolf Holmboe, a former Danish ambassador to Syria.
“Assad cannot live with a political solution that involves any real power sharing,” said Holmboe. “The solution he could potentially live with is to freeze the situation you have on the ground right now.”
Russia struck deals with Turkey, the US and Jordan that contained in the war in the west, indirectly helping Assad’s advances in the east, and Washington pulled military aid from the fighters.
Western governments still hope to effect change by linking reconstruction aid to a credible political process leading to “a genuine transition.”
While paying lip service to the principle that any peace deal should be concluded under UN auspices, Russia aims to convene its own peace congress in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The aim is to draw up a new constitution followed by elections.
The senior Syrian opposition figure said the US and other states that had backed their cause had all given way to Russia. Sochi, not Geneva, would be the focal point for talks.
“This is the way it has been understood from talking to the Americans ...,” the opposition figure said. “It is clear that this is the plan, and there is no state that will oppose this ... because the entire world is tired of this crisis.”
Syrian regime prevents return of Palestinian refugees to Yarmouk camp
Syrian regime prevents return of Palestinian refugees to Yarmouk camp
Asma Assad barred from UK to seek cancer treatment
- UK foreign secretary says she is ‘not welcome’ in Britain
- Former Syrian first lady’s passport expired in 2020
LONDON: Asma Al-Assad is effectively barred from returning to the UK after her British passport expired, The Times newspaper reported.
The wife of former Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad will not be able to return to her birthplace, London, despite reports that she is critically ill with leukemia.
The 49-year-old has been given a 50-50 chance of surviving the illness, according to sources.
The news comes as her father, Fawaz Akhras, a renowned cardiologist, left his work at the privately run Cromwell Hospital in Kensington, west London, to care for his daughter in Moscow, where the Assad family was granted asylum this month.
Asma Assad’s British passport expired in September 2020, and it is unclear whether UK ministers have blocked renewal or if the former first lady simply allowed the document’s validity to lapse.
Yvette Cooper, the UK home secretary, said that Assad will be prevented from entering the UK to seek treatment.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that the former investment banker is “not welcome” in Britain.
Asma Assad became Syria’s first lady in 2000 after marrying the country’s new president.
Leaked emails show that she ordered luxury goods in London and Paris during the civil war in her country, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
She played a key role in supporting her husband’s brutal crackdown on opposition protests during the Arab Spring in 2011.
Asma Assad reportedly fled to Moscow weeks before her husband this month during a lighting offensive by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
Her three children, Hafez, 23, Zein, 21, and Karim, 19, are also in Moscow, where the family own luxury properties.
Sources told The Telegraph last week that the former first lady was being kept in isolation during medical treatment.
“Asma is dying. She can’t be in the same room as anyone,” one source said.
Her father and his wife, Sahar, 75, were placed under US sanctions along with Asma’s younger brothers in 2020, although none of her family has been blacklisted by the UK.
Gaza health officials say baby dies from ‘severe cold’
- Jumaa Al-Batran died from the cold, while his twin brother remains in the intensive care unit at a local hospital
- The vast majority of the territory’s residents have been displaced since the Israeli offensive
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza health officials said that a 20-day-old baby died on Sunday from “severe cold” as the war-ravaged Palestinian territory grapples with winter weather.
Jumaa Al-Batran died from the cold, while his twin brother remains in the intensive care unit at a local hospital, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said in a statement.
Marwan Al-Hamas, head of field hospitals in Gaza, confirmed the death. He said it brought to five the total number of children “who have died due to severe cold” in recent weeks.
“There is no electricity. The water is cold and there is no gas, heating or food,” said Yahya Al-Batran, the father of the child.
“My children are dying in front of my eyes and nobody cares. Jumaa has died and I fear that his brother Ali may follow.”
Yahya Al-Batran said he and his wife were living in a tattered tent in the city of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are crammed into unsuitable tents, most of which were hastily set up in Deir el-Balah and in the southern areas of Khan Yunis and Rafah.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October last year, Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have endured severe shortages of electricity, drinkable water, food and medical services.
The vast majority of the territory’s residents have been displaced at least once since the war broke out with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Tourist killed in shark attack in Egypt’s Marsa Alam resort
- There are sharks in the Red Sea but encounters with them are relatively rare
- Ministry said the attack occurred in deep water outside the designated swimming zone near the jetties in northern Marsa Alam
CAIRO: One tourist was killed and another was injured in a shark attack in Egypt’s Marsa Alam resort, the environment ministry said in a statement on Sunday without giving the nationalities of those involved.
There are sharks in the Red Sea but encounters with them are relatively rare.
The ministry said the attack occurred in deep water outside the designated swimming zone near the jetties in northern Marsa Alam, adding that swimming out from the jetties was prohibited and the jetties would be closed for two days from Monday.
Marsa Alam is an Egyptian coastal town known for its coral reefs, marine life and beaches.
The last similar incident was in June 2023 when a tiger shark killed a Russian national in Hurghada, another coastal city on the Red Sea north of Marsa Alam.
Last month a tourist boat capsized in the same area, leaving four dead and seven missing.
Sudan government rejects UN-backed famine declaration
- War between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had created famine conditions
- Both the Sudanese army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war
CAIRO: The Sudanese government rejected on Sunday a report backed by the United Nations which determined that famine had spread to five areas of the war-torn country.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) review, which UN agencies use, said last week that the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had created famine conditions for 638,000 people, with a further 8.1 million on the brink of mass starvation.
The army-aligned government “categorically rejects the IPC’s description of the situation in Sudan as a famine,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The statement called the report “essentially speculative” and accused the IPC of procedural and transparency failings.
They said the team did not have access to updated field data and had not consulted with the government’s technical team on the final version before publication.
The IPC did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The Sudanese government, loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has been based in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan since the capital Khartoum became a warzone in April 2023.
It has repeatedly been accused of stonewalling international efforts to assess the food security situation in the war-torn country.
The authorities have also been accused of creating bureaucratic hurdles to humanitarian work and blocking visas for foreign teams.
The International Rescue Committee said the army was “leveraging its status as the internationally recognized government (and blocking) the UN and other agencies from reaching RSF-controlled areas.”
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted over 12 million people, including millions who face dire food insecurity in army-controlled areas.
Across the country, more than 24.6 million people — around half the population — face high levels of acute food insecurity.
Egypt tests new extension of the Suez Canal
- Two ships used the new extension on Saturday, a statement from the Suez Canal Authority said
- The new extension is set to boost the canal’s capacity by six to eight vessels a day
CAIRO: Egypt has tested a new 10-kilometer extension to the Suez Canal as it tries to minimize the impact of currents on shipping and increase the key waterway’s capacity.
Two ships used the new extension on Saturday, a statement from the Suez Canal Authority said.
Authority chief Osama Rabie said the development in the canal’s southern region will “enhance navigational safety and reduce the effects of water and air currents on passing ships.”
Vessels navigating the waterway have at times run aground, mostly because of strong winds and sandstorms.
In 2021, giant container ship Ever Given became wedged diagonally in the canal, blocking trade for nearly a week and resulting in delays that cost billions of dollars.
The new extension is set to boost the canal’s capacity by six to eight vessels a day, Rabie said, and it will open after new navigational maps are issued.
In 2015, Egypt undertook an $8-billion expansion to the waterway, followed by several smaller development projects.
The Suez Canal has long been a vital source of foreign currency for Egypt that has been undergoing its worst ever economic crisis.
According to the International Monetary Fund, revenue from the canal has been slashed by up to 70 percent since last year because of attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on shipping in the Red Sea.
Before the attacks pushed companies to change routes, the vital passage accounted for around 10 percent of global maritime trade.
