BEIRUT: The US-led coalition said Thursday it killed at least 100 pro-regime fighters to fend off an attack on its allies in eastern Syria, in one its deadliest confrontations yet with forces backing Damascus.
The initial attack was carried out by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad on key oil and gas installations in parts of Deir Ezzor province controlled by US-backed Kurdish forces.
Syria described overnight strike as a “war crime” and called for the coalition to be dismantled, Syrian state news agency (SANA) said.
“We demand (that the international community) condemn this massacre and hold the coalition responsible for it,” SANA reported, citing a letter sent by the foreign ministry to the United Nations and saying that the coalition was illegal and should be disbanded.
The clash came against a backdrop of escalating tensions between Washington and Damascus over an uptick in the suspected use of chemical weapons by the regime and allied militia.
Meanwhile, regime warplanes rained bombs for a fourth consecutive day on the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, outside Damascus, where the death toll soared to more than 180 since Monday.
According to the US Central Command (CENTCOM), coalition advisers were present in the area that was attacked by pro-government forces in Deir Ezzor province late on Wednesday.
“The coalition conducted strikes against attacking forces to repel the act of aggression” against its own personnel and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hosting them, it said.
“We estimate more than 100 Syrian pro-regime forces were killed while engaging SDF and coalition forces,” a US military official said on condition of anonymity.
The SDF and the coalition targeted the attacking forces with air strikes and shelling after “20 to 30 artillery and tank rounds landed within 500 meters (yards) of the SDF headquarters location,” the official said.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which only confirmed 45 dead among pro-regime forces, the initial attack took place near Khasham.
The head of the Britain-based monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, said the aim of the attack appeared to be the capture of a key oil field and a major gas plant in an SDF-held area.
The Omar oil field, one of the biggest in Syria, had a pre-war output of 30,000 barrels per day, while the Conoco gas field had a pre-war capacity of 13 million cubic meters a day.
Regime and SDF fighters were involved in several skirmishes in the area last year, as they each conducted parallel operations against some of the Daesh militants group’s last bastions.
Damascus and the US-backed Kurdish militia once worked toward the same goal in the region but they were never allied, and the collapse of the Daesh “caliphate” has further strained an already frosty relationship.
Syrian state media confirmed that dozens were killed in the clash but appeared to deny the forces were army soldiers, describing the victims as “popular forces.”
According to the Observatory, the forces that launched the attack on SDF positions were local tribal fighters loyal to Assad and Afghan militia fighting alongside the regime.
CENTCOM said the attack occurred eight kilometers (five miles) east of the “Euphrates River de-confliction line,” referring to a boundary agreed by Russia and the US, with the former’s area of operations west of the river and the latter’s to its east.
Daesh militants were flushed out of their last strongholds in eastern Syria and over the border in western Iraq late last year.
But the SDF continues to hunt down surviving militants who have reverted to a clandestine insurgency.
Washington has recently ramped up the rhetoric against Damascus over its alleged use of chemical weapons, including on a number of occasions in January and February.
Chlorine-filled munitions are reported to have been fired several times on rebel-controlled areas, including the enclave of Eastern Ghouta.
The regime has stepped upped its bombardment of the enclave, which government forces have has been besieging since 2013.
Warplanes dropped bombs for the fourth consecutive day on Thursday, killing at least 38 civilians and wounding dozens, according to the Observatory.
The latest bloodshed brought the death toll to more than 187 for the week and left medics completely overwhelmed.
With few bulldozers and precious little fuel to operate them, rescue workers have struggled to reach trapped civilians and are having to work under fire.
At a hospital in Erbin, one of the places in Ghouta which was repeatedly hit this week, an AFP reporter saw the bodies of adults and children lined up on the floor.
Nurses at the medical facility cried over the body of one man who had been working as a guard at the hospital.
At least two civilians were killed in retaliatory rebel mortar fire on government-controlled areas of Damascus, according to state news agency SANA.
Eastern Ghouta was one of several so-called de-escalation zones agreed last year by three of the main outside players in the conflict — Turkey, Iran and Russia.
Ankara announced Thursday it would host a new three-way summit to revive efforts to end the war, which has killed at least 340,000 people and displaced millions since 2011.
US-led strikes on Syria pro-regime forces kill 100: US official
US-led strikes on Syria pro-regime forces kill 100: US official
UN chief condemns ‘escalation’ between Yemen’s Houthis and Israel
- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls Israeli strikes on Sanaa airport ‘especially alarming’
NEW YORK: The UN chief on Thursday denounced the “escalation” in hostilities between Yemen’s Houthi militias and Israel, terming strikes on the Sanaa airport “especially alarming.”
“The Secretary-General condemns the escalation between Yemen and Israel. Israeli airstrikes today on Sana’a International Airport, the Red Sea ports and power stations in Yemen are especially alarming,” said a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement.
Israeli air strikes pummeled Sanaa’s international airport and other targets in Yemen on Thursday, with Houthi militia media reporting six deaths.
The attack came a day after the Houthis fired a missile and two drones at Israel.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media he was at the airport during the strike, with the UN saying that a member of its air crew was injured.
The United Nations put the death toll from the airport strikes at three, with “dozens more injured.”
UN chief Guterres expressed particular alarm at the threat that bombing transportation infrastructure posed to humanitarian aid operations in Yemen, where 80 percent of the population is dependent on aid.
“The Secretary-General remains deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation in the region and reiterates his call for all parties concerned to cease all military actions and exercise utmost restraint,” he said.
“He also warns that airstrikes on Red Sea ports and Sana’a airport pose grave risks to humanitarian operations at a time when millions of people are in need of life-saving assistance.”
The UN chief condemned the Houthi militias for “a year of escalatory actions... in the Red Sea and the region that threaten civilians, regional stability and freedom of maritime navigation.”
The Houthis are part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” alliance against Israel.
Bodies of about 100 Kurdish women, children found in Iraq mass grave
TAL AL-SHAIKHIA, Iraq: Iraqi authorities are working to exhume the remains of around 100 Kurdish women and children thought to have been killed in the 1980s under former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, three officials said.
The grave was discovered in Tal Al-Shaikhia in the Muthanna province in southern Iraq, about 15-20 kilometers (10-12 miles) from the main road there, an AFP journalist said.
Specialized teams began exhuming the grave earlier this month after it was initially discovered in 2019, said Diaa Karim, the head of the Iraqi authority for mass graves, adding that it is the second such grave to be uncovered at the site.
“After removing the first layer of soil and the remains appearing clearly, it was discovered that they all belonged to women and children dressed in Kurdish springtime clothes,” Karim told AFP on Wednesday.
He added that they likely came from Kalar in the northern Sulaimaniyah province, part of what is now Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, estimating that there were “no less than 100” people buried in the grave.
Efforts to exhume all the bodies are ongoing, he said, adding that the numbers could change.
Following Iraq’s deadly war with Iran in the 1980s, Saddam’s government carried out the ruthless “Anfal Operation” between 1987 and 1988 in which it is thought to have killed around 180,000 Kurds.
Saddam was toppled in 2003 following a US-led invasion of Iraq and was hanged three years later, putting an end to Iraqi proceedings against him on charges of genocide over the Anfal campaign.
Karim said a large number of the victims found in the grave “were executed here with live shots to the head fired at short range.”
He suggested some of them may have been “buried alive” as there was no evidence of bullets in their remains.
Ahmed Qusai, the head of the excavation team for mass graves in Iraq, meanwhile pointed to “difficulties we are facing at this grave because the remains have become entangled as some of the mothers were holding their infants” when they were killed.
Durgham Kamel, part of the authority for exhuming mass graves, said another mass grave was found at the same time that they began exhuming the one at Tal Al-Shaikhia.
He said the burial site was located near the notorious Nugrat Al-Salman prison where Saddam’s authorities held dissidents.
The Iraqi government estimates that about 1.3 million people disappeared between 1980 and 1990 as a result of atrocities and other rights violations committed under Saddam.
Brother of suspected ‘terrorist’ stabs Tunisia National Guard officer
TUNIS: The brother of a suspected “terrorist” on Thursday stabbed a Tunisian National Guard officer in the eastern Monastir governorate, a judicial source told AFP.
Earlier in the day, a National Guard unit attempted to arrest the suspect — accused by authorities of being a member of a “terrorist group” — at his home, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
During the arrest operation, his brother attacked the officer, the source added.
The source said the officer was hospitalized following the stabbing in his abdomen and was recovering after undergoing surgery.
An investigation was opened by the judicial division combatting terrorism, the source added.
Neither of the brothers, both of whom were taken into police custody, have been named, and the Tunisian interior ministry did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
Tunisia saw a surge in jihadist groups after the 2011 revolution that overthrew the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Attacks claimed by jihadists in recent years have killed dozens of soldiers and police officers, as well as some civilians and foreign tourists.
Jihadist attacks in Sousse and the capital Tunis in 2015 killed dozens of tourists and police, but authorities say they have since made significant progress against extremism.
Palestinian hospital director says Israeli strike kills 5 staff in Gaza
- WHO has described conditions at Kamal Adwan hospital as “appalling” and said it was operating at a “minimum” level
GAZA STRIP: Five staff at one of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals were killed by an Israeli strike on Thursday, the facility’s director said, more than two months into an Israeli operation in the area.
Hossam Abu Safiya, head of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, said “an Israeli strike resulted in five martyrs among the hospital staff.” The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israel has been pressing a major offensive in northern Gaza since October 6, saying it aims to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping.
At the other end of the Palestinian territory, the chief paediatric doctor at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis said three babies had died from a “severe temperature drop” this week as winter cold sets in.
Doctor Ahmed Al-Farra said the most recent case was a three-week-old girl who was “brought to the emergency room with a severe temperature drop, which led to her death.”
A three-day-old baby and another “less than a month old” died on Tuesday, he said.
Meanwhile, in central Gaza, a Palestinian TV channel affiliated with a militant group said five of its journalists were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on their vehicle in Gaza, with Israel’s military saying it had targeted a “terrorist cell.”
Witnesses said a missile struck the van while it was parked outside Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat.
The three-week-old girl, Sila Al-Faseeh, was living in a tent in Al-Mawasi, an area designated a humanitarian safe zone by the Israeli military that is home to huge numbers of displaced Palestinians.
“The tents do not protect from the cold, and it gets very cold at night, with no way to keep warm,” said Farra.
He said many mothers were suffering from malnutrition which affected the quality of their breast milk and compounded the risks to newborns.
Sila’s father Mahmoud Al-Faseeh said it was “extremely cold, and the tent is not suitable for living. The children are always sick.”
The United Nations and other organizations have repeatedly decried the worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, particularly in the north, since Israel began its latest military offensive in early October.
The World Health Organization has described conditions at Kamal Adwan hospital as “appalling” and said it was operating at a “minimum” level.
Earlier on Thursday, Gaza’s civil defense agency said that five other people had been killed by Israeli strikes during the day in the north of Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said a 35-year-old soldier was killed in the central Gaza Strip. It brings to 390 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of ground operations in the Palestinian territory.
The journalists’ employer Al-Quds Today said in a statement that a missile hit their broadcast van while it was parked in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
The channel is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, whose militants have fought alongside Hamas in the Gaza Strip and took part in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.
The station identified the five staffers as Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Ayman Al-Jadi, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed Al-Ladaa.
They were killed “while performing their journalistic and humanitarian duty,” the statement said.
The Israeli military said it had conducted a “precise strike” and that those killed “were Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East arm said in a statement it was “devastated by the reports.”
“Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” it added.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said last week that more than 190 journalists had been killed and at least 400 injured since the start of the war in Gaza.
The war was triggered by the Hamas-led October 7 attack last year, which resulted in 1,208 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,399 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Israeli attorney general orders probe into report that alleged Netanyahu’s wife harassed opponents
- Program uncovered a trove of WhatsApp messages in which Mrs. Netanyahu appears to instruct a former aide to organize protests against political opponents
JERUSALEM: Israel’s attorney general has ordered police to open an investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife on suspicion of harassing political opponents and witnesses in the Israeli leader’s corruption trial.
The Israeli Justice Ministry made the announcement in a terse message late Thursday, saying the investigation would focus on the findings of a recent report by the “Uvda” investigative program into Sara Netanyahu.
The program uncovered a trove of WhatsApp messages in which Mrs. Netanyahu appears to instruct a former aide to organize protests against political opponents and to intimidate Hadas Klein, a key witness in the trial.
The announcement did not mention Mrs. Netanyahu by name, and the Justice Ministry declined further comment.
But in a video released earlier Thursday, Netanyahu listed what he said were the many kind and charitable acts by his wife and blasted the Uvda report as “lies.”
It was the latest in a long line of legal troubles for the Netanyahus — highlighted by the prime minister's ongoing corruption trial.
Netanyahu is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of cases alleging he exchanged favors with powerful media moguls and wealthy associates. Netanyahu denies the charges and says he is the victim of a “witch hunt” by overzealous prosecutors, police and the media.
