BEIRUT/MOSCOW: Russia will establish a humanitarian corridor and implement a five-hour daily truce in Syria’s eastern Ghouta, it said on Monday, after a UN Security Council resolution demanding a 30-day cease-fire across the entire country.
Russia’s defense minister was cited by the RIA news agency as saying President Vladimir Putin had ordered a daily cease-fire in eastern Ghouta from 9am (0700 GMT) to 2pm (1200 GMT) each day and for the creation of a “humanitarian corridor” to allow civilians to leave.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a statement the pauses will start as of Tuesday. He said Russia will work to create a “humanitarian corridor” to help evacuate civilians but said the location has not been decided yet.
Shoigu also mentioned a refugee camp in Tanf, near the border with Iraq which is “under US control” — where Russia is also suggesting calling for a humanitarian pause as well.
Over the past week Syria’s army and its allies have subjected the rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta near Damascus to one of the heaviest bombardments of the seven-year war, killing hundreds.
On Sunday health authorities there said several people had suffered symptoms consistent with chlorine gas exposure and on Monday rescue workers and a war monitor said seven small children were killed by air and artillery strikes in one town.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to the warring sides to abide by the cease-fire. Speaking at the start of a session of the UN-backed Human Rights Council, the comments were his first remarks to the UN body since the resolution was adopted.
“Eastern Ghouta cannot wait,” he said. “It is high time to stop this hell on Earth.”
Guterres said he welcomes the resolution but added that council resolutions “are only meaningful if they are effectively implemented.” He added that he expects the “resolution to be immediately implemented and sustained” and also called for safe, unimpeded and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid and services, as well as evacuations of the sick and wounded.
At the Geneva gathering, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein echoed calls for a “full implementation” of the truce but said that “however, we have every reason to remain cautious” about the cease-fire as airstrikes continue on Damascus suburbs.
He also decried “seven years of failure to stop the violence, seven years of unremitting and frightful mass killing” in Syria.
Meanwhile, the EU’s diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini on Monday demanded the cease-fire in Syria be implemented “immediately,” describing the resolution as an “encouraging” step but needed to be followed up with action.
The Security Council resolution was a “necessary and encouraging step but a first step,” Mogherini said.
“Now that resolution needs to be immediately implemented, to have monitoring mechanisms.”
The bloc also added Syria’s new information and industry ministers to its sanctions blacklist following their appointment last month. A total of 257 people are now subject to EU travel bans and asset freezes over their role in the Syrian conflict.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said the situation in Ghouta was a “disgrace,” describing it as like the “Middle Ages.”
Fighting has raged across Syria since Saturday’s resolution, as Turkey presses its offensive against a Kurdish militia in Afrin, rival rebel groups fight each other in Idlib and a US-led coalition targets Daesh in the east.
The Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, did not say whether the Syrian government or other allied forces had agreed to abide by the five-hour daily truce.
Mohamad Alloush, the political chief of one of eastern Ghouta’s biggest rebel factions, said the Syrian army and its allies had launched “a sweeping ground assault” after the UN resolution, adding it was vital that the truce be implemented.
“We hope for real, serious, practical action,” he said.
There was a relative calm in the besieged area in the immediate aftermath of the resolution, which was unanimously approved Saturday by the 15-member council. It demands a 30-day truce in all of Syria but excludes fighting with Daesh and Al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
However, violence has since picked up and military operations have killed at least 30 people, including women and children, in eastern Ghouta in the last 48 hours, while shelling on Damascus continues from the rebel-held area, a United Nations spokeswoman said on Monday.
“The United Nations has mobilized and is ready to immediately support life-saving aid convoys to several areas in eastern Ghouta as soon as conditions allow, as well as hundreds of medical evacuations,” Linda Tom, a UN humanitarian spokeswoman in Damascus, said in emailed comments.
DEATHS
A picture issued by Civil Defense rescue workers, which could not be independently verify, showed seven small bodies lying next to each other, wrapped in white and blue sheets, after air and artillery strikes on the town of Douma in eastern Ghouta.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said four of them were among a single family of nine killed by an air strike. The other three were among seven killed by shelling in the same town, it said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said allegations the Syrian government was responsible for any chemical attack, after reports of people suffering symptoms of chlorine gas poisoning, were aimed at sabotaging the truce.
The Syrian government has consistently denied using chemical weapons in the war, which will soon enter its eighth year having killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced half of Syria’s pre-war population of about 23 million from their homes.
The bombardment of eastern Ghouta over the past week has been one of the heaviest of the war, killing at least 556 people in eight days, according to a toll compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor.
The intensity of the bombardment has diminished since the UN resolution, the Observatory said, but it added that 21 people had been killed in eastern Ghouta on Monday, including the seven small children in the photograph.
Rebel shelling has caused 36 deaths and a number of injuries in Damascus and nearby rural areas in the last four days, Zaher Hajjo, a government health official, told Reuters.
Speaking in Riyadh, deputy director general of the World Health Organization, Peter Salama, said the WHO urgently needed to evacuate 750 medical cases from eastern Ghouta.
“We also need sustained access for medical equipment and for medical drugs and commodities,” he said, adding that some supplies had been “systematically removed from convoys.”
RELATIVE LULL
In eastern Ghouta, people were making use of a relative lull in the bombardment to find provisions, said Moayad Hafi, a rescue worker based there.
“Civilians rushed from their shelters to get food and return quickly since the warplanes are still in the sky and can hit at any moment,” he told Reuters in a voice message.
Lavrov said the cease-fire would not cover either the Ahrar Al-Sham or the Jaish Al-Islam factions, describing them as partners of the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front.
The two major rebel factions in eastern Ghouta are Jaish Al-Islam and Failaq Al-Rahman. Tahrir Al-Sham, an alliance of militants including Nusra, also has a small presence there.
“Partners of Al-Nusra are not protected by the cease-fire regime. They are also subject to the legitimate actions of Syrian armed forces and all those who support the Syrian army,” said Lavrov.
In Idlib, Ahrar Al-Sham and Tahrir Al-Sham have been battling each other in recent days, rather than working in partnership.
Syrian state television reported that army units had advanced against militants near Harasta in eastern Ghouta. State news agency SANA also reported that the army had stopped a car bomb being driven into Damascus.
The Nusra Front has consistently been excluded from cease-fires in Syria, and the opposition says the government has used this as an excuse to keep up its bombardments.
Russia orders five-hour daily truce in Syria’s eastern Ghouta
Russia orders five-hour daily truce in Syria’s eastern Ghouta
Egypt’s middle class cuts costs as IMF-backed reforms take hold
- The world lender has long backed measures in Egypt including a liberal currency exchange market and weaning the public away from subsidies
Cairo: Egypt’s economy has been in crisis for years, but as the latest round of International Monetary Fund-backed reforms bites, much of the country’s middle class has found itself struggling to afford goods once considered basics.
The world lender has long backed measures in Egypt including a liberal currency exchange market and weaning the public away from subsidies.
On the ground, that has translated into an eroding middle class with depleted purchasing power, turning into luxuries what were once considered necessities.
Nourhan Khaled, a 27-year-old private sector employee, has given up “perfumes and chocolates.”
“All my salary goes to transport and food,” she said as she perused items at a west Cairo supermarket, deciding what could stay and what needed to go.
For some, this has extended to cutting back on even the most basic goods — such as milk.
“We do not buy sweets anymore and we’ve cut down on milk,” said Zeinab Gamal, a 28-year-old housewife.
Most recently, Egypt hiked fuel prices by 17.5 percent last month, marking the third increase just this year.
Mounting pressures
The measures are among the conditions for an $8 billion IMF loan program, expanded this year from an initial $3 billion to address a severe economic crisis in the North African country.
“The lifestyle I grew up with has completely changed,” said Manar, a 38-year-old mother of two, who did not wish to give her full name.
She has taken on a part-time teaching job to increase her family’s income to 15,000 Egyptian pounds ($304), just so she can “afford luxuries like sports activities for their children.”
Her family has even trimmed their budget for meat, reducing their consumption from four times to “only two times per week.”
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, is facing one of its worst economic crises ever.
Foreign debt quadrupled since 2015 to register $160.6 billion in the first quarter of 2024. Much of the debt is the result of financing for large-scale projects, including a new capital east of Cairo.
The war in Gaza has also worsened the country’s economic situation.
Repeated attacks on Red Sea shipping by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza have resulted in Egypt’s vital Suez Canal — a key source of foreign currency — losing over 70 percent of its revenue this year.
Amid growing public frustration, officials have recently signalled a potential re-evaluation of the IMF program.
“If these challenges will make us put unbearable pressure on public opinion, then the situation must be reviewed with the IMF,” President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said last month.
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly also ruled out any new financial burdens on Egyptians “in the coming period,” without specifying a timeframe.
Economists, however, say the reforms are already taking a toll.
Wael Gamal, director of the social justice unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said they led to “a significant erosion in people’s living conditions” as prices of medicine, services and transportation soared.
He believes the IMF program could be implemented “over a longer period and in a more gradual manner.”
’Bitter pill to swallow’
Egypt has been here before. In 2016, a three-year $12-billion loan program brought sweeping reforms, kicking off the first of a series of currency devaluations that have decimated the Egyptian pound’s value over the years.
Egypt’s poverty rate stood at 29.7 percent in 2020, down slightly from 32.5 percent the previous year in 2019, according to the latest statistics by the country’s CAPMAS agency.
But Gamal said the current IMF-backed reforms have had a “more intense” effect on people.
“Two years ago, we had no trouble affording basics,” said Manar.
“Now, I think twice before buying essentials like food and clothing,” she added.
Earlier this month, the IMF’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva touted the program’s long-term impact, saying Egyptians “will see the benefits of these reforms in a more dynamic, more prosperous Egyptian economy.”
Her remarks came as the IMF began a delayed review of its loan program, which could unlock $1.2 billion in new financing for Egypt.
Economist and capital market specialist Wael El-Nahas described the loan as a “bitter pill to swallow,” but called it “a crucial tool” forcing the government to make “systematic” decisions.
Still, many remain skeptical.
“The government’s promises have never proven true,” Manar said.
Egyptian expatriates send about $30 billion in remittances per year, a major source of foreign currency.
Manar relies on her brother abroad for essentials, including instant coffee which now costs 400 Egyptian pounds (about $8) per jar.
“All I can think about now is what we will do if there are more price increases in the future,” she said.
Iraq blast kills three security personnel: officials
A blast from an explosive device on Sunday killed three members of Iraq’s security forces and wounded three others in the northern province of Salaheddin, officials said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in Tuz Khurmatu, which borders a province plagued by sporadic jihadist attacks.
Iraq declared victory over the Daesh group in late 2017, but its jihadists remain active in the country, particularly in rural areas.
Sunday’s blast killed an army regiment commander, another officer and a security service member, said Zulfiqar Al-Bayati, mayor of Tuz Khurmatu.
A security official confirmed the death toll to AFP, adding the victims had been in a vehicle when the explosion occurred.
Those killed were members of the Peshmerga forces of the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan, while the wounded were members from the Iraqi army.
The Iraqi defense ministry paid tribute to the three soldiers who “fell as martyrs... while carrying out their duty.”
The Daesh group overran large swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, proclaiming its “caliphate” and launching a reign of terror.
It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led military coalition, and in 2019 lost the last territory it held in Syria to US-backed Kurdish forces.
A report by United Nations experts published in July estimated there were around 1,500 to 3,000 jihadists remaining in Iraq and Syria.
Gaza civil defense says 26 dead, 59 missing after Israeli air strike
- The Gaza health ministry said 43,799 people have been confirmed dead since Oct. 7, 2023
GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defense said 26 people were killed on Sunday, including children, and at least 59 were missing after an Israeli air strike hit a building in the Palestinian territory’s north.
Following the strike early Sunday, 26 bodies were pulled from the rubble of the five-story residential building in Beit Lahia, “including children and women,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
He added that at least 59 people were still trapped under the debris.
AFP images showed men covered in dust scrambling to reach people under the rubble, while some of the bodies were taken away on a donkey-pulled cart.
Other AFP images showed the flattened building with broken concrete and twisted metal sticking out from the ruins as more bodies covered in blankets lay nearby.
Hamas, which runs the territory, accused Israel of committing a “massacre” which it said is “a continuation of the genocidal war and revenge against unarmed civilians.”
Earlier on Sunday, Gaza’s civil defense said other Israeli strikes killed at least 20 people, including four women and three children, across the war-torn territory.
Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry on Sunday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war had reached 43,846.
The majority of the dead are civilians, according to ministry figures, which the United Nations considers reliable.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Hezbollah spokesman killed in Israel strike on Beirut
- “The strike on Ras Al-Nabaa killed Hezbollah media relations official Mohammed Afif,” the security source said
- Ali Hijazi, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch of the Baath party, “confirmed the death of Hezbollah media official” Afif
BEIRUT: A Lebanese security source said Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif was killed in an Israeli strike Sunday in central Beirut that hit the Lebanese branch of the Syrian Baath party.
“The strike on Ras Al-Nabaa killed Hezbollah media relations official Mohammed Afif,” the security source said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to brief the media.
Ali Hijazi, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch of the Baath party, “confirmed the death of Hezbollah media official” Afif, the official National News Agency reported.
The Israeli army declined to comment.
Lebanon’s health ministry said the strike killed one person and wounded three others, adding that the toll was provisional and that work was ongoing to remove rubble from the site of the strike.
Afif for years had been responsible for Hezbollah’s media relations, and provided information to local and foreign journalists under the cover of anonymity.
The NNA said the strike by “enemy aircraft” caused “great destruction,” reporting an unspecified number of people “trapped under the rubble” in Ras Al-Nabaa, an area near the French embassy and a university.
It said “one of the residents of a neighboring building had received a warning call urging evacuation but it was not taken seriously.”
Since the assassination in late September of longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a huge Israeli strike, Afif had held several press conferences in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
In one such event last month, Afif announced that Hezbollah had launched a drone targeting the residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
That press conference was cut short when the Israeli army warned it would strike a building nearby.
Israeli military reports soldier killed in battle north of Gaza on Saturday
CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Sunday that a fighter in the Nachshon Regiment (90), Kfir Brigade, was killed in battle north of Gaza on Saturday.
