ANKARA: The Syrian regime is on the verge of deploying pro-government forces to help Kurdish rebels caught up in a Turkish offensive in the north of the country, opening a new front in a conflict that is threatening to escalate across the wider region.
Syrian state media reported yesterday that militias backed by the regime of President Bashar Assad will soon be sent to the district of Afrin, near Aleppo, in an attempt to counter Turkey’s assault on the area.
News of the plan brought an immediate reaction from Ankara, which warned that any attempt to protect the Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units, known as the YPG, would fail.
The deployment of the pro-Assad forces comes at a particularly delicate time, with much of the region balanced on a knife edge as outside powers including Israel, Iran, Russia and the US all compete for leverage in the Syrian civil war
Turkey’s offensive, “Operation Olive Branch,” began on Jan. 20, with the aim of targeting Kurdish militants, including members of the YPG and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Turkey views both groups as terrorist organizations and threats to its sovereignty, but Washington has provided the YPG with military and logistical support in the fight against Daesh.
Analysts told Arab News that any alliance between Damascus and the Kurds in Afrin would add a further layer of complexity to an already complicated situation.
Middle East researcher Mete Sohtaoglu, who predicted this latest development in an interview with Arab News last month, said Ankara would not be pressured into ending its offensive early.
“Throughout the operation, Turkey has always set up observation and military posts in the areas it has captured so it cannot be expected to withdraw immediately,” he said.
Damascus has traditionally regarded Kurdish rebels in the country warily and the two sides have often clashed since the Syrian civil war began on the back of a wave of peaceful civil unrest against the Assad regime in 2011.
But they have also shown a willingness to work together when it suits their mutual interests and Sohtaoglu claimed the YPG recently agreed to hand over its heavy weapons to the Syrian government in exchange for military support. This could assuage Ankara’s fears that the arms would otherwise end up in the hands of the PKK, he said.
On a visit to Jordan, Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, told journalists in Amman on Monday that Ankara was still assessing the intentions of the Assad regime.
“If the regime is entering (Afrin) to oust the PKK, YPG, there is no problem,” he said. “But if they are entering to protect the YPG, then no one can stop us and Turkish soldiers.”
Also on Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the situation in Afrin in a phone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani.
Turkey claims that more than 1,600 YPG and Daesh fighters have either been killed, captured or surrendered since “Operation Olive Branch” began. However, the US has warned Ankara not to expand the offensive against its Kurdish allies.
Sohtaoglu told Arab News that a direct military confrontation between Turkish forces and the Assad regime would probably be avoided with the help of mediation from Moscow.
He predicted that “Russian soldiers may be deployed” around Afrin to create a buffer zone between the two sides. Any such move would be yet another sign that the Syrian conflict has degenerated into a proxy war for competing regional powers.
Earlier this month, Iranian militias killed one Turkish soldier and injured five others in an attack on an outpost in Idlib province, southwest of Aleppo city.
Soon afterwards Israel launched a large-scale air raid near Damascus after one of its fighter aircraft was downed by Syrian anti-aircraft fire. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of using its long-term alliance with the Assad regime to try to build a “continuous empire surrounding the Middle East.”
Emre Ersen, a Syria analyst at Marmara University in Istanbul, told Arab News that the Syrian government’s decision to send forces to Afrin needed to be seen within this wider context. Moscow, in particular, stood to benefit from the move, he said.
“We already know that Russia has been uneasy about the implications of ‘Operation Olive Branch’ from the beginning. Nevertheless, it felt obliged to approve Turkey’s military operation in Afrin in order not to alienate Ankara at a time when Turkish-US relations were strained due to the YPG issue,” he said.
Syrian forces prepare to back rebels against Turkish offensive
Syrian forces prepare to back rebels against Turkish offensive
Aid only ‘delaying deaths’ as Sudan counts down to famine: agency chief
- “We have the biggest humanitarian crisis on the planet in Sudan, the biggest hunger crisis, the biggest displacement crisis,” Norwegian Refugee Council chief Jan Egeland said
- “I met women barely surviving, eating one meal of boiled leaves a day“
CAIRO: War-torn Sudan is on a “countdown to famine” ignored by world leaders while humanitarian aid is only “delaying deaths,” Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) chief Jan Egeland told AFP on Saturday.
“We have the biggest humanitarian crisis on the planet in Sudan, the biggest hunger crisis, the biggest displacement crisis... and the world is giving it a shrug,” he said in an interview from neighboring Chad after a visit to Sudan this week.
Since April 2023, war has pitted Sudan’s regular army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing tens of thousands of people and uprooting more than 11 million.
The United Nations says that nearly 26 million people inside Sudan are suffering acute hunger.
“I met women barely surviving, eating one meal of boiled leaves a day,” Egeland said.
One of few organizations to have maintained operations in Sudan, the NRC says some 1.5 million people are “on the edge of famine.”
“The violence is tearing apart communities much faster than we can come in with aid,” Egeland said.
“As we struggle to keep up, our current resources are merely delaying deaths instead of preventing them.”
Two decades ago, allegations of genocide brought world attention to Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur where the then government in Khartoum unleashed Arab tribal militias against non-Arab minorities suspected of supporting a rebellion.
“It is beyond belief that we have a fraction of the interest now for Sudan’s crisis than we had 20 years ago for Darfur, when the crisis was actually much smaller,” Egeland said.
He said Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon and Russia’s war with Ukraine had been allowed to overshadow the conflict in Sudan.
But he said he detected a shift in the “international mood,” away from the kind of celebrity-driven campaigns that brought Hollywood star George Clooney to Darfur in the 2000s.
“More nationalistic tendencies, more inward-looking,” he said of Western governments led by politicians compelled to “put my nation first, me first, not humanity first.”
“It will come to haunt” these “short-sighted” leaders, when those they failed to assist in their homeland join the tide of refugees and migrants headed north.
In Chad, he said he had met young people who just barely survived ethnic cleansing in Darfur, and had made the decision to brave the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean to Europe even though they had friends who had drowned.
Inside Sudan, one in every five people has been displaced by this or previous conflicts, according to UN figures.
Most of those displaced are in Darfur, where Egeland says the situation is “horrific and getting worse.”
The North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher has been under siege by the RSF for months, nearly disabling all aid operations in the region and pushing the nearby Zamzam displacement camp into famine.
But even areas spared the devastation of war “are bursting at the seams,” Egeland said. Across the army-controlled east, camps, schools and other public buildings are filled with displaced people left to fend for themselves.
On the outskirts of Port Sudan — the Red Sea city where the army-backed government and UN agencies are now based — Egeland said he visited a school sheltering more than 3,700 displaced people where mothers were unable to feed their children.
“How come next door to the easiest accessible part of Sudan... there is starvation?” he asked.
According to the UN, both sides are using hunger as a weapon of war. Authorities routinely impede access with bureaucratic hurdles, while paramilitary fighters have threatened and attacked aid workers.
“The ongoing starvation is a man-made tragedy... Each delay, every blocked truck, every authorization delayed is a death sentence for families who can’t wait another day for food, water and shelter,” Egeland said.
But in spite of all the obstacles, “it is possible to reach all corners of Sudan,” he said, calling on donors to increase funding and aid organizations to have more “guts.”
“Parties to conflicts specialize in scaring us and we specialize in being scared,” he said, urging UN and other agencies to “be tougher and demand access.”
Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza
- Abu Obeida’s statement did not further identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed
- The woman had been held with a second female hostage whose life was in danger
GAZA: Hamas’s armed wing said Saturday an Israeli woman taken hostage during the October 2023 attack had been killed in a combat zone in northern Gaza and the Israeli military said it was investigating.
Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida said contact had been restored with the woman’s captors after a break of several weeks and it was established that the hostage had been killed in an area of north Gaza where the Israeli army has been operating.
Abu Obeida’s statement did not further identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed.
The Israeli army told AFP it was looking into the claim.
Abu Obeida said that the woman had been held with a second female hostage whose life was in danger.
During last year’s Hamas attack which triggered the Gaza war, militants took 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the army says are dead.
Ten female hostages, including five soldiers, were believed to remain alive in custody before Abu Obeida’s statement, according to an AFP tally.
During a one-week truce in November last year, 105 hostages were freed, including 80 Israelis who were exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli government has come under immense public pressure to agree a new deal to bring the remaining hostages home while they are still alive.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum campaign group did not wish to comment on Saturday’s claim.
“Nothing is known other than what Hamas is saying. Our only reliable source is the Israeli army,” the group told AFP.
Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 44,176 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Fierce Israel-Hezbollah clashes at flashpoint town: Lebanon state media
- Israel was “attempting to control the town” as it was “a strategic gateway for a rapid ground incursion,” the NNA said
- It said Israeli troops had dynamited houses and were “trying to surround (Khiam) from all sides using extensive air and ground cover“
BEIRUT: Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops engaged in fierce clashes Saturday at the key south Lebanon town of Khiam and in the coastal Bayada area several kilometers north of the border.
The official National News Agency (NNA) reported intense air and artillery bombardment of Khiam, about six kilometers (nearly four miles) from the frontier.
Israel was “attempting to control the town” as it was “a strategic gateway for a rapid ground incursion,” the NNA said.
It said Israeli troops had dynamited houses and were “trying to surround (Khiam) from all sides using extensive air and ground cover.”
Over the past two days, Hezbollah said its fighters had attacked Israeli troops about 20 times in and around the large town.
On September 23, Israel launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon, mainly targeting Hezbollah bastions in the south and east and in south Beirut.
A week later it sent ground troops across the border.
The NNA said Saturday that on the south coast, “the areas of Bayada and Wadi Hamoul are witnessing violent clashes,” and also reported air strikes and shelling.
It said Israeli troops tried to penetrate the area in order to encircle the town of Naqura via Bayada — “a strategic location” on the coast between Naqura and Tyre, 20 kilometers from the border.
Israeli tanks have been operating east of Khiam for more than three weeks, with the NNA reporting on Tuesday that the tanks had moved north of the town.
On October 29, the NNA said Israeli tanks entered Khiam’s outskirts in their deepest incursion yet into south Lebanon.
Khiam has symbolic significance. It was the site of a notorious prison run by the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli proxy militia, during its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.
Israeli forces withdrew from the region in 2000.
The NNA also reported intense Israeli bombardment along the border, including around 70 shells pounding the town of Bint Jbeil alone.
All-out war erupted in September after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of Hamas, following its Palestinian ally’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
The health ministry in Beirut says that more than 3,650 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, with most deaths recorded since September this year.
Lebanon says Israeli strike on eastern town kills at least 8
- The Israeli enemy strike on Shmostar killed eight people, including four children
BEIRUT: Lebanon said eight people were killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday in the east, with state media reporting the attack on a house killed a mother and her children.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Shmostar killed eight people, including four children, and nine others were injured, including four in critical condition,” a ministry statement said, giving a preliminary toll.
The official National Nwes Agency earlier said the attack “killed a family including a mother and her four children.”
Doctor at the heart of Turkiye’s newborn baby deaths case says he was a ‘trusted’ physician
- Dr. Firat Sari is one of 47 people on trial accused of transferring newborn babies to neonatal units of private hospitals
- “Patients were referred to me because people trusted me. We did not accept patients by bribing anyone from 112,” Sari said
ISTANBUL: The Turkish doctor at the center of an alleged fraud scheme that led to the deaths of 10 babies told an Istanbul court Saturday that he was a “trusted” physician.
Dr. Firat Sari is one of 47 people on trial accused of transferring newborn babies to neonatal units of private hospitals, where they were allegedly kept for prolonged and sometimes unnecessary treatments in order to receive social security payments.
“Patients were referred to me because people trusted me. We did not accept patients by bribing anyone from 112,” Sari said, referring to Turkiye’s emergency medical phone line.
Sari, said to be the plot’s ringleader, operated the neonatal intensive care units of several private hospitals in Istanbul. He is facing a sentence of up to 583 years in prison in a case where doctors, nurses, hospital managers and other health staff are accused of putting financial gain before newborns’ wellbeing.
The case, which emerged last month, has sparked public outrage and calls for greater oversight of the health care system. Authorities have since revoked the licenses and closed 10 of the 19 hospitals that were implicated in the scandal.
“I want to tell everything so that the events can be revealed,” Sari, the owner of Medisense Health Services, told the court. “I love my profession very much. I love being a doctor very much.”
Although the defendants are charged with the negligent homicide of 10 infants since January 2023, an investigative report cited by the state-run Anadolu news agency said they caused the deaths of “hundreds” of babies over a much longer time period.
Over 350 families have petitioned prosecutors or other state institutions seeking investigations into the deaths of their children, according to state media.
Prosecutors at the trial, which opened on Monday, say the defendants also falsified reports to make the babies’ condition appear more serious so as to obtain more money from the state as well as from families.
The main defendants have denied any wrongdoing, insisting they made the best possible decisions and are now facing punishment for unavoidable, unwanted outcomes.
Sari is charged with establishing an organization with the aim of committing a crime, defrauding public institutions, forgery of official documents and homicide by negligence.
During questioning by prosecutors before the trial, Sari denied accusations that the babies were not given the proper care, that the neonatal units were understaffed or that his employees were not appropriately qualified, according to a 1,400-page indictment.
“Everything is in accordance with procedures,” he told prosecutors in a statement.
The hearings at Bakirkoy courthouse, on Istanbul’s European side, have seen protests outside calling for private hospitals to be shut down and “baby killers” to be held accountable.
The case has also led to calls for the resignation of Health Minister Kemal Memisoglu, who was the Istanbul provincial health director at the time some of the deaths occurred. Ozgur Ozel, the main opposition party leader, has called for all hospitals involved to be nationalized.
In a Saturday interview with the A Haber TV channel, Memisoglu characterized the defendants as “bad apples” who had been “weeded out.”
“Our health system is one of the best health systems in the world,” he said. “This is a very exceptional, very organized criminal organization. It is a mistake to evaluate this in the health system as a whole.”
Memisoglu also denied the claim that he shut down an investigation into the claims in 2016, when he was Istanbul’s health director, calling it “a lie and slander.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week that those responsible for the deaths would be severely punished but warned against placing all the blame on the country’s health care system.
“We will not allow our health care community to be battered because of a few rotten apples,” he said.
