BEIRUT: Syrian opposition activists and rescuers said Sunday that a poison gas attack on a rebel-held town near the capital has killed at least 40 people, allegations denied by the Syrian government.
The alleged attack in the town of Douma occurred late Saturday amid a resumed offensive by Syrian government forces after the collapse of a truce.
The reports could not be independently verified.
Opposition-linked first responders, known as the White Helmets, reported the attack, saying entire families were found suffocated in their homes and shelters. It reported a death toll from suffocation of more than 40, saying the victims showed signs of gas poisoning including pupil dilation and foaming at the mouth. In a statement, however, it reported a smell resembling chlorine, which would not explain the described symptoms, usually associated with sarin gas.
It said around 500 people were treated for suffocation and other symptoms, adding that most medical facilities and ambulances were put out of service because of the shelling.
The Syrian American Medical Society, a relief organization, said 41 people were killed and hundreds wounded.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 80 people were killed in Douma on Saturday, including around 40 who died from suffocation. But it said the suffocations were the result of shelters collapsing on people inside.
Videos posted online by the White Helmets purportedly showed victims, including toddlers in diapers, breathing through oxygen masks at makeshift hospitals.
The Syrian government, in a statement posted on the state-run news agency SANA, strongly denied the allegations. It said the claims were "fabrications" by the Army of Islam rebel group, calling it a "failed attempt" to impede government advances.
"The army, which is advancing rapidly and with determination, does not need to use any kind of chemical agents," the statement said.
Syrian government forces resumed their offensive on rebel-held Douma on Friday afternoon after a 10-day truce collapsed over disagreement regarding the evacuation of Army of Islam fighters. Violence resumed days after hundreds of opposition fighters and their relatives left Douma toward rebel-held areas in northern Syria. Douma is the last rebel stronghold in eastern Ghouta.
The alleged gas attack in Douma comes almost exactly a year after a chemical attack in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun killed dozens of people. That attack prompted the US to launch several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base. President Donald Trump said the attack was meant to deter further Syrian use of illegal weapons.
The Syrian government and its ally, Russia, denied any involvement in the alleged gas attack.
Douma is in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta. A chemical attack in eastern Ghouta in 2013 that was widely blamed on government forces killed hundreds of people, prompting the US to threaten military action before later backing down.
Syria denies ever using chemical weapons during the seven-year civil war, and says it eliminated its chemical arsenal under a 2013 agreement brokered by the US and Russia after the attack in eastern Ghouta.
Assad’ government accused of killing 40 Syrians in gas attacks on Douma
Assad’ government accused of killing 40 Syrians in gas attacks on Douma
Qatar says sanctions on Syria must be lifted quickly
“We call for intensified efforts to expedite the lifting of international sanctions on Syria,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari told a regular briefing.
Qatar’s call came a day after a high-level delegation visited Damascus. The Qatari embassy there reopened on Sunday, ending a 13-year rift between the two countries.
“Qatar’s position is clear,” Ansari said. “It’s necessary to lift the sanctions quickly, given that what led to these sanctions is no longer there and that what led to these sanctions were the crimes of the former regime.”
Doha was one of the main backers of the armed rebellion that erupted after Assad’s government crushed a peaceful uprising in 2011.
Unlike several of its neighbors, Qatar had remained a stern critic of Assad and did not renew ties with Syria despite its return to the Arab diplomatic fold last year.
The international community has not rushed to lift sanctions on Syria, waiting to see how the new authorities exercise their power.
Israeli forces kill one Palestinian in West Bank refugee camp
- Palestinian news agency WAFA said Fathi Saeed Odeh Salem died after snipers shot him and fired on the ambulance crew
JERUSALEM: Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in a dawn raid on Tuesday on a refugee camp near the city of Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.
The Israeli military said the man was killed in a “counter-terrorism” operation that resulted in 18 arrests, while the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said Fathi Saeed Odeh Salem died after snipers shot him and fired on ambulance crew.
Hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis have been killed in the West Bank since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel triggered the current war in Gaza and a wider conflict on several fronts.
WAFA said Israeli bulldozers demolished infrastructure in the camp, including homes, shops, part of the walls of Al-Salam mosque, which they barricaded off, and part of the camp’s water network.
Israeli army forces patients out of a north Gaza hospital
CAIRO: Israeli troops forced the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza and many patients, some of them on foot, arrived at another hospital miles away in Gaza City, the territory’s health ministry said on Tuesday.
The Indonesian Hospital is one of the Gaza Strip’s few still partially functioning hospitals, on its northern edge, an area that has been under intense Israeli military pressure for nearly three months.
Israel says its operation around the three northern Gaza communities surrounding the hospital — Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia — is targeting Hamas militants.
Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to permanently depopulate northern Gaza to create a buffer zone, which Israel denies.
Munir Al-Bursh, director of the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, said the Israeli army had ordered hospital officials to evacuate it on Monday, before storming it in the early hours of Tuesday and forcing those inside to leave.
He said two other medical facilities in northern Gaza, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, were also subject to frequent assaults by Israeli troops operating in the area.
“Occupation forces have taken the three hospitals out of medical service because of the repeated attacks that undermined them and destroyed parts of them,” Bursh said in a statement.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Officials at the three hospitals have so far refused orders by Israel to evacuate their facilities or leave patients unattended since the new military offensive began on Oct. 5.
Israel says it has been facilitating the delivery of medical supplies, fuel and the transfer of patients to other hospitals in the enclave during that period in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, said they resisted a new order by the army to evacuate hundreds of patients, their companions and staff, adding that the hospital has been under constant Israeli fire that damaged generators, oxygen pumps and parts of the building.
Israeli forces have operated in the vicinity of the hospital since Monday, medics said.
NEW STRIKES
Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment continued elsewhere in the enclave and medics said at least nine Palestinians, including a member of the civil emergency service, were killed in four separate military strikes across the enclave on Tuesday.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has since killed more than 45,200 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
A fresh bid by mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States to end the fighting and release Israeli and foreign hostages has gained momentum this month, though no breakthrough has yet been reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said progress had been made in hostage negotiations with Hamas but that he did not know how much longer it would take to see the results.
Gaps between Israel and Hamas over a possible Gaza ceasefire have narrowed, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials’ remarks on Monday, though crucial differences have yet to be resolved.
Syrian ex-rebel factions agree to merge under defense ministry
DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa reached an agreement on Tuesday with former rebel faction chiefs to dissolve all groups and consolidate them under the defense ministry, according to a statement from the new administration.
Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Bashir had said last week that the ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Bashar Assad’s army.
Sharaa will face the daunting task of trying to avoid clashes between the myriad groups.
The country’s new rulers appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency that toppled Bashar Assad, as defense minister in the interim government.
Syria’s historic ethnic and religious minorities include Muslim Kurds and Shiites — who feared during the civil war that any future Sunni Islamist rule would imperil their way of life — as well as Syriac, Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians, and the Druze community.
Sharaa has told Western officials visiting him that the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group he heads, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, will neither seek revenge against the former regime nor repress any religious minority.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Israel PM vows to fight ‘forces of evil’ in message to Christians
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday acknowledged what he described as the steadfast support of Christians worldwide for Israel’s fight against the “forces of evil.”
Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories were preparing for a somber wartime Christmas for the second consecutive year, with the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip casting a shadow over the season.
“You’ve stood by our side resiliently, consistently, forcefully as Israel defends our civilization against barbarism,” Netanyahu said in a video message to Christians across the world.
“We seek peace with all those who wish peace with us, but we will do whatever is necessary to defend the one and only Jewish state, the repository and the source of our common heritage.
“Israel leads the world in fighting the forces of evil and tyranny, but our battle is not yet over. With your support, and with God’s help, I assure you, we shall prevail,” Netanyahu said.
The war in Gaza, which erupted on October 7, 2023 following a deadly Hamas attack on Israel, has significantly impacted the Christian communities in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 45,317 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
Israel is home to approximately 185,000 Christians, accounting for about 1.9 percent of the population, with Arab Christians comprising nearly 76 percent of the community, according to data from the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
According to Palestinian officials, about 47,000 Christians reside in the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip.
