BEIRUT: Syria’s lacerating conflict entered its eighth year on Thursday with the country riven by international power struggles, as Turkey encircled a besieged northern Kurdish enclave, while Russian-backed regime forces pounded into shrinking opposition areas near Damascus.
The bloodshed, which has devastated huge swathes of the country since it started on March 15, 2011 when the Bashar Assad regime cracked down on mostly peaceful protests, has splintered into ever more complicated conflicts.
In the latest fighting, Ankara-backed forces launched a bombardment of Afrin and closed in on the main city, in an offensive that could redraw the map in northern Syria.
The development came as regime forces, backed by Moscow, broke into a key town in the beleaguered opposition enclave of Eastern Ghouta late Wednesday, driving further into the last opposition bastion outside Damascus.
More than 1,220 civilians — a fifth of them children — have been killed in the opposition-held enclave since the Syrian regime launched a ferocious air and ground offensive on Feb. 18.
International efforts have consistently failed to stop one of the deadliest wars of the century, with more than 350,000 people killed since the conflict first erupted, and more than half of Syria’s pre-war population of 20 million displaced.
While the past few months saw the collapse of Daesh, world powers have since sought to carve out increased influence in the region.
US-backed Kurds hold oil-rich territory in northeastern Syria covering 30 percent of the country and a motley assortment of Turkey-backed Arab fighters are cutting a third haven in the northwest.
Ankara, which launched a deadly ground and air offensive against the Kurdish-majority enclave of Afrin on Jan. 20, vowed on Wednesday that its encirclement of the main city “will have been completed by the evening,” a Turkish presidency source said.
The claim was laughed off by a top official in the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which controls Afrin.
“It sounds like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is daydreaming when he says Afrin will fall tonight,” Redur Khalil told AFP.
On Wednesday, Turkish bombing raids killed 10 fighters loyal to the Syrian regime, which has deployed pro-government forces to the fray after the Kurds asked for help.
Shells rained down on Afrin city, killing 10 civilians including four children.
Displaced families have swelled the city’s population to around 350,000, and officials feared a humanitarian crisis should Turkish forces draw closer.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday that Turkey-led forces controlled 70 percent of the wider Kurdish enclave, after seizing several villages. On the outskirts of Damascus, hundreds of kilometers south of Afrin, another humanitarian emergency was unfolding in Eastern Ghouta.
The Observatory said regime forces had penetrated into the town of Hammuriyeh in the enclave and were able to take control of parts of it amid heavy bombardment.
On Wednesday, an AFP correspondent saw a man in the doorway of a building holding the bodies of his two dead children.
A doctor in the area said rescue teams could not get to victims because of the intensity of the bombardment.
“The wounded are on the roads. We can’t move them. The war planes are targeting anything that moves,” Ismail Al-Khateeb said.
The UN has called for urgent medical evacuations for more than 1,000 people who desperately need medical treatment outside the besieged area.
A trickle of evacuations from Ghouta’s largest town Douma began Tuesday under a deal with opposition fighters, and more patients were allowed out Wednesday.
At a Red Crescent center in Douma on Wednesday morning, people crowded around buses and ambulances to be evacuated.
Among them, 18-year-old Omran stood leaning on crutches. Badly wounded two years ago in bombardment on Ghouta, he was missing his left leg, right arm, and left eye.
“We haven’t been able to treat some of these cases for more than a year,” said Mohammed Al-Marhum, a doctor.
The patients were transported to the government-controlled Wafideen checkpoint on the edges of Ghouta.
The Observatory said more than 220 people including 60 patients had left the rebel enclave in two days of evacuations.
The UN Security Council demanded a 30-day truce last month to allow for aid deliveries and medical evacuations from Ghouta.
Such evacuations in Syria typically see people taken out of a besieged area for care, and then transported back in after treatment.
The Syrian regime’s assault on Ghouta has split the enclave into three sections, each controlled by different rebels.
The regime has reportedly been pursuing separate tracks of negotiations to secure local truces or evacuations from each zone.
The Russian military said the situation in Douma had “significantly stabilized” and an aid convoy of 20 vehicles was planned to enter the enclave on Thursday.
Fresh regime and Russian bombardment Wednesday killed at least 31 civilians in an isolated southern zone of Ghouta, the Observatory said.
State news agency SANA said five civilians died of their wounds after shelling on Damascus.
Moscow’s strikes also killed a dozen rebels from the Faylaq Al-Rahman faction controlling the area, including two top commanders, the monitor said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday Ghouta fighters were planning to stage a chemical attack to give the US-led coalition the pretext to strike Damascus.
His comments came as his Turkish counterpart visited Moscow for talks.
Syria conflict rages as war enters 8th year
Syria conflict rages as war enters 8th year
‘Protect our people’: Armed Syrian volunteers watch over Damascus
- Local committees have taken over some of the deserted checkpoints, with the authorities’ approval
- Committees had been set up to patrol neighborhoods to prevent crime until the police could take over
After Islamist-led militants ousted former president Bashar Assad in early December, thousands of soldiers, policemen and other security officials deserted their posts, leaving the door open to petty theft, looting and other crimes.
The new Syrian authorities now face the mammoth challenge of rebuilding state institutions shaped by the Assad family’s five-decade rule, including the army and security apparatuses that have all but collapsed.
In the meantime, Damascenes have jumped into action.
In the Old City, Fadi Raslan, 42, was among dozens of people cautiously watching the streets, his finger on the trigger of his gun.
“We have women and elderly people at home. We are trying to protect our people with this volunteer-based initiative,” he said.
“Syria needs us right now, we must stand together.”
Local committees have taken over some of the deserted checkpoints, with the authorities’ approval.
Hussam Yahya, 49, and his friends have been taking turns guarding their neighborhood, Shughur, inspecting vehicles.
“We came out to protect our neighborhoods, shops and public property as volunteers, without any compensation,” he said.
He said the new authorities, led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group, have backed their initiative, providing light arms and training.
Authorities also provided them with special “local committee” cards, valid for a year.
Police chief Ahmad Lattouf said the committees had been set up to patrol neighborhoods to prevent crime until the police could take over.
“There aren’t enough police officers at the moment, but training is ongoing to increase our numbers,” he said.
The Damascus committees begin their neighborhood watches at 22:00 (19:00 GMT) every night and end them at 06:00 (03:00 GMT) the next morning.
Further north, in the cities of Aleppo and Homs, ordinary residents have also taken up weapons to guard their districts with support from authorities, residents said.
The official page of the Damascus countryside area has published photos on Telegram showing young men it said were “volunteering” to protect their town and villages “under the supervision of the Military Operations Department and in coordination with General Security.”
It also said others were volunteering as traffic police.
A handful of police officers affiliated with the Salvation Government of the Idlib region, the militant bastion controlled by HTS before Assad’s fall, have also been deployed in Damascus.
Traffic policemen have been called from Idlib to help, while HTS gunmen are everywhere in the capital, especially in front of government buildings including the presidential palace and police headquarters.
The authorities have also begun allowing Syrians to apply to the police academy to fill its depleted ranks.
Syria’s new rulers have called on conscripts and soldiers to surrender their weapons at dedicated centers.
Since rising to power, HTS and its allies have launched security sweeps in major cities including Homs and Aleppo with the stated goal of rooting out “remnants of Assad’s militias.”
In the capital’s busy Bab Touma neighborhood, four local watchmen were checking people’s IDs and inspecting cars entering the district.
Fuad Farha said he founded the local committee that he now heads after offering his help to “establish security” alongside the HTS-affiliated security forces.
“We underwent a quick training, mainly teaching us how to assemble weapons and take them apart and to use rifles,” he said.
Residents said that the committees had been effective against burglars and thieves.
“We all need to bear responsibility for our neighborhood, our streets and our country,” Farha said.
“Only this way will we be able to rebuild our country.”
Macron says West must be cautious over new Syria rulers
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday the West must not be naive about the new authorities in Syria after the ousting of Bashar Assad and promised France would not abandon Kurdish fighters.
“We must regard the regime change in Syria without naivety,” Macron said in a speech to French ambassadors after Islamist-led forces toppled Assad last month, adding France would not abandon “freedom fighters, like the Kurds” who are fighting extremist groups in Syria.
UN: Over 30 million in need of aid in war-torn Sudan
- Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced
- Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: More than 30 million people, over half of them children, are in need of aid in Sudan after twenty months of war, the United Nations said on Monday.
The UN has launched a $4.2 billion call for funds, targeting 20.9 million people across Sudan from a total of 30.4 million people it said are in need in what it called “an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”
Sudan has been torn apart and pushed to the brink of famine by the war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced, which, in addition to 2.7 million displaced before the war, has made Sudan the world’s largest internal displacement crisis.
A further 3.3 million people have fled across Sudan’s borders to escape the war, which means over a quarter of the country’s pre-war population, estimated at around 50 million, are now uprooted.
Famine has already been declared in five areas in Sudan and is expected to take hold of five more areas by May, with 8.1 million people currently on the brink of mass starvation.
Sudan’s army-aligned government has denied there is famine, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
For much of the conflict, the UN has struggled to raise even a quarter of the funds it has targeted for its humanitarian response in the impoverished northeast African country.
Sudan has often been called the world’s “forgotten” war, overshadowed by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine despite the scale of the horrors inflicted upon civilians.
Jordanian FM discusses rebuilding Syria in Turkiye talks
DUBAI: The Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi highlighted on Tuesday the need to help Syria regain its security, stability, and sovereignty during discussions in Turkiye.
Talks also focused on providing support to the Syrian people and addressing the challenge of rebuilding the war-torn country.
He underscored Jordan's firm stance against any aggression on Syria’s sovereignty, rejecting Israeli attacks on Syrian territory.
The minister also expressed solidarity with Turkey, supporting its rights in confronting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), emphasizing the importance of regional cooperation to ensure peace and stability.
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
