BEIRUT: Missiles struck an air base in central Syria early Monday, its state-run news agency reported. Although the agency said it was likely “an American aggression,” US officials said the US had not launched airstrikes on Syria.
The missile attack followed a suspected poison gas attack Saturday on the last remaining foothold for the Syrian opposition in the eastern suburbs of Damascus. At least 40 people were killed, including families found in their homes and shelters, opposition activists and local rescuers said.
SANA reported that the missile attack on the T4 military air base in Homs province resulted in a number of casualties.
Earlier, President Donald Trump had promised a “big price to pay” for the suspected chemical attack. After the airstrikes were reported, however, Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood said in a statement, “At this time, the Department of Defense is not conducting air strikes in Syria.”
France did not carry out an air strike on a Syrian government air base early Monday that reportedly left several dead and wounded, the French army said.
"It was not us," armed forces spokesman Colonel Patrik Steiger told AFP.
The US launched several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base last year after a chemical attack in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun killed dozens of people. Israel has also struck inside Syria in recent years.
The suspected poison gas attack Saturday on the besieged town of Douma came almost exactly a year after the US missile attack prompted by the Khan Sheikhoun deaths.
In response to the reports from Douma, Trump on Sunday blamed Syrian government forces for what he called a “mindless CHEMICAL attack.” In a series of tweets, Trump held Russia and Iran, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chief sponsors, responsible.
The Syrian government denied the allegations, calling them fabrications.
First responders entering apartments in Douma late Saturday said they found bodies collapsed on floors, some foaming at the mouth. The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense rescue organization said the victims appeared to have suffocated.
They did not identify the substance used, but the civil defense organization, also known as the White Helmets, and the Syrian American Medical Society, a medical relief organization, said survivors treated at clinics smelled strongly of chlorine.
Those reports could not be independently verified because of a government blockade around the town.
Hours after the attack, the Army of Islam rebel group agreed to surrender the town and evacuate their fighters to rebel-held northern Syria, Syrian state media reported. The group also agreed to give up its prisoners, a key demand of the government.
The government agreed to halt its assault after three days of indiscriminate air and ground attacks.
“There’s nothing left for civilians and fighters. We don’t have anything to stand fast,” said Haitham Bakkar, an opposition activist inside the town. He spoke to the Associated Press by WhatsApp.
“People now are going out in the streets looking for their loved ones in the rubble,” Bakkar said. “And we don’t have any space left to bury them.”
More than 100 buses entered the town Sunday night to transport fighters and their families to Jarablus, a town under the shared control of rebels and Turkey, said Syrian state-affiliated Al-Ikhbariya TV.
The preparations follow a pattern of evacuations around the capital and other major Syrian cities as the government reasserts its control after seven years of war.
Human rights groups and United Nations officials say the tactic amounts to forced displacement, a war crime. The UN Security Council planned to hold an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the attack.
The Army of Islam could not be immediately reached for comment.
In his tweets Sunday, Trump called Assad an “animal” and delivered a rare personal criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for supporting him. A top White House aide, asked about the possibility of another US missile strike, said, “I wouldn’t take anything off the table.”
The developments come as Trump has declared his intent to withdraw US troops from Syria in the coming months despite resistance from many of his advisers.
Bakkar said several bombs laced with chemicals landed in Douma Saturday night. Another activist, Bilal Abou Salah, said a large, yellow cylinder smashed through the roof of an apartment building and came to rest on the third floor and started to discharge gas.
The Syrian Civil Defense group documented 42 fatalities but was impeded from searching further by strong odors that gave rescuers difficulties breathing, said Siraj Mahmoud, a spokesman for the group.
A joint statement by the civil defense group and the medical society said that more than 500 people, mostly women and children, were brought to medical centers complaining of difficulty breathing, foaming at the mouth and burning sensations in the eyes. Some had bluish skin, a sign of oxygen deprivation.
The symptoms were consistent with chemical exposure. One patient, a woman, had convulsions and pinpoint pupils, suggesting exposure to a nerve agent, the statement said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights issued a higher death toll, saying at least 80 people were killed in Douma, including around 40 who died from suffocation. But it said the suffocations were the result of shelters collapsing on people inside them.
“Until this minute, no one has been able to find out the kind of agent that was used,” Mahmoud said in a video statement from northern Syria.
The Syrian government, in a statement posted on the state-run news agency SANA, denied the allegations. It said the claims were “fabrications” by the Army of Islam and 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.
The latest assault on Douma came after talks between the Army of Islam and Russia collapsed Friday, ending 10 days of calm for residents trapped inside.
Russia denied any involvement in the attack. Maj. Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko was quoted by Russian news agencies Sunday as saying Russia was prepared to send specialists to Douma to “confirm the fabricated nature” of the reports.
Douma has been crippled by close to five years of siege by government forces. It was once one of the hubs of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising against Assad’s government.
In recent weeks, government forces have recaptured villages and towns in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital. Douma was the only town left holding out.
A 2013 chemical attack in eastern Ghouta that killed hundreds of people was widely blamed on government forces. The US threatened military action but later backed down.
Syria denies ever using chemical weapons during the war and says it eliminated its chemical arsenal under a 2013 agreement brokered by the US and Russia.
Syrian news reports missile attack; US, France denies it fired them
Syrian news reports missile attack; US, France denies it fired them
- US and French officials denies reports of strikes on Syria
- President Donald Trump had promised a “big price to pay”
’No dumping ground’: Tunisia activist wins award over waste scandal
Gharbi “helped spearhead a campaign that challenged a corrupt waste trafficking scheme between Italy and Tunisia,” the Goldman committee said
TUNIS: Tunisian environmentalist Semia Labidi Gharbi, awarded a global prize for her role exposing a major waste scandal, has a message for wealthy nations: developing countries are “no dumping ground.”
Gharbi was among the first to speak out when Italy shipped more than 280 containers of waste to the North African country in 2020.
The cargo was initially labelled as recyclable plastic scrap, but customs officials found hazardous household waste — banned under Tunisian law.
“It’s true, we are developing countries,” Gharbi said in an interview with AFP. “But we are not a dumping ground.”
The 57-year-old was among seven environmentalists from different countries handed this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize — commonly known as the “Green Nobel” — in California last week.
The Goldman committee said her grassroots activism helped force Italy to take the waste back in February 2022.
Gharbi “helped spearhead a campaign that challenged a corrupt waste trafficking scheme between Italy and Tunisia,” the Goldman committee said.
And her endeavours ultimately led to the return of 6,000 tons of “illegally exported household waste back to Italy,” the US-based organization added.
The scandal took on national proportions in Tunisia and saw the sacking of then environment minister Mustapha Aroui, who was sentenced to three years in prison.
A total of 26 people, including customs officials, were prosecuted.
Yet the waste remained at the port of Sousse for more than two years, with Tunisian rights groups criticizing the authorities’ inaction as Italy failed to meet deadlines to take it back.
Global waste trade often sees industrialized nations offload rubbish in poorer countries with limited means to handle it.
“What is toxic for developed countries is toxic for us too,” said Gharbi. “We also have the right to live in a healthy environment.”
She added that while richer countries can manage their own waste, developing ones like Tunisia have “limited capacity.”
The Goldman committee said Gharbi’s campaigning helped drive reforms in the European Union.
“Her efforts spurred policy shifts within the EU, which has now tightened its procedures and regulations for waste shipments abroad,” it said.
Gharbi, who has spent 25 years campaigning on environmental threats to health, said she never set out to turn the scandal into a symbol.
“But now that it has become one, so much the better,” she said with a smile.
She hopes the award will raise the profile of Tunisian civil society, and said groups she works with across Africa see the recognition as their own.
“The prize is theirs too,” she said, adding it would help amplify advocacy and “convey messages.”
‘Deadly blockade’ leaves Gaza aid work on verge of collapse: UN, Red Cross
- “The humanitarian response in Gaza is on the verge of total collapse,” the ICRC warned
- WFP said a week ago that it had sent out its “last remaining food stocks” to kitchens
GENEVA: Two months into Israel’s full blockade on aid into Gaza, humanitarians described Friday horrific scenes of starving, bloodied children and people fighting over water, with aid operations on the “verge of total collapse.”
The United Nations and the Red Cross sounded the alarm at the dire situation in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, demanding international action.
“The humanitarian response in Gaza is on the verge of total collapse,” the International Committee of the Red Cross warned in a statement.
“Without immediate action, Gaza will descend further into chaos that humanitarian efforts will not be able to mitigate.”
Israel strictly controls all inflows of international aid vital for the 2.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
It halted aid deliveries to Gaza on March 2, days before the collapse of a ceasefire that had significantly reduced hostilities after 15 months of war.
Since the start of the blockade, the United Nations has repeatedly warned of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said a week ago that it had sent out its “last remaining food stocks” to kitchens.
“Food stocks have now mainly run out,” Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva Friday via video link from Gaza City.
“Community kitchens have begun to shut down (and) more people are going hungry,” she said, pointing to reports of children and other very vulnerable people who have died from malnutrition and ... from the lack of food.”
“The blockade is deadly.”
Water access was also “becoming impossible,” she warned.
“In fact, as I speak to you, just downstairs from this building people are fighting for water. There’s a water truck that has just arrived, and people are killing each other over water,” she said.
The situation is so bad, she said that a friend had described to her a few days ago seeing “people burning ... because of the explosions and there was no water to save them.”
At the same time, Cherevko lamented that “hospitals report running out of blood units as mass casualties continue to arrive.”
“Gaza lies in ruins, Rubble fills the streets... Many nights, blood-curdling screams of the injured pierce the skies following the deafening sound of another explosion.”
She also decried the mass displacement, with nearly the entire Gaza population being forced to shift multiple times prior to the brief ceasefire.
Since the resumption of hostilities, she said “over 420,000 people have been once again forced to flee, many with only the clothes on their backs, shot at along the way, arriving in overcrowded shelters, as tents and other facilities where people search safety, are being bombed.”
Pascal Hundt, the ICRC’s deputy head of operations, also cautioned that “civilians in Gaza are facing an overwhelming daily struggle to survive the dangers of hostilities, cope with relentless displacement, and endure the consequences of being deprived of urgent humanitarian assistance.”
The World Health Organization’s emergencies director Mike Ryan said the situation was an “abomination.”
“We are breaking the bodies and the minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Cherevko slammed decision makers who “have watched in silence the endless scenes of bloodied children, of severed limbs, of grieving parents move swiftly across their screens, month, after month, after month.”
“How much more blood must be spilled before enough become enough?“
Two killed in safety valve incident at BAPCO Refining plant in Bahrain, 3rd person injured
DUBAI: Two workers have been killed in an incident at one of the Bahrain Petroleum Company’s (BAPCO) units, the country’s Ministry of Interior confirmed in a post on X.com.
Members of the Bahraini civil defense, working in cooperation with Bapco’s emergency teams, dealt with the leakage the post explained.
The Bahrain News Agency later reported that BAPCO Refining had confirmed that all precautionary measures had been taken regarding the leak that happened on Friday morning in a safety valve in one of BAPCO Refining’s units.
The statement added that the situation was under full control, the leak has been stopped and work had resumed.
The statement added that Bapco expressed its “sincere condolences, sympathy, and support” to the families of the two employees who died.
The national ambulance service transferred a third person who was injured to the hospital for treatment.
Illinois landlord to be sentenced in hate crime that left 6-year-old Palestinian American boy dead
- A jury convicted 73-year-old Joseph Czuba in February of murder and hate crime charges in the fatal stabbing of Wadee Alfayoumi and the wounding of his mother, Hanan Shaheen
- The family had been renting rooms in Czuba’s home in the Chicago suburb of Plainfield in 2023 when the attack happened
JOLIET: An Illinois landlord found guilty of a vicious hate crime that left a 6-year-old Muslim boy dead and wounded his mother days after the start of the war in Gaza in 2023 was due in court Friday for sentencing.
A jury convicted 73-year-old Joseph Czuba in February of murder and hate crime charges in the fatal stabbing of Wadee Alfayoumi, who was Palestinian American, and the wounding of his mother, Hanan Shaheen. The family had been renting rooms in Czuba’s home in Plainfield, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from Chicago, in 2023 when the attack happened.
Central to prosecutors’ case was harrowing testimony from the boy’s mother, who said Czuba attacked her before moving on to her son, insisting they had to leave because they were Muslim. Prosecutors also played the 911 call and showed police footage. Czuba’s wife, Mary, whom he has since divorced, also testified for the prosecution, saying he had become agitated about the Israel-Hamas war, which had erupted days earlier.
Police said Czuba pulled a knife from a holder on a belt and stabbed the boy 26 times, leaving the knife in the child’s body. Some of the bloody crime scene photos were so explicit that the judge agreed to turn television screens showing them away from the audience, which included Wadee’s relatives.
“He could not escape,” Michael Fitzgerald, a Will County assistant state’s attorney, told jurors at trial. “If it wasn’t enough that this defendant killed that little boy, he left the knife in the little boy’s body.”
The jury deliberated for 90 minutes before returning a verdict. Czuba is eligible for a minimum prison sentence of 20 to 60 years or life, according to the Will County state’s attorney’s office.
Prosecutors declined to comment ahead of Friday’s hearing and have not said what sentence they will seek. Illinois does not have the death penalty.
The attack renewed fears of anti-Muslim discrimination and hit particularly hard in Plainfield and surrounding suburbs, which have a large and established Palestinian community. Wadee’s funeral drew large crowds and Plainfield officials have dedicated a park playground in his honor.
Czuba did not speak during the trial. His defense attorneys argued that there were holes in the case. His public defender, George Lenard, has not addressed reporters and declined comment ahead of the sentencing.
Shaheen had more than a dozen stab wounds and it took her weeks to recover.
She said there were no prior issues in the two years she rented from the Czubas, even sharing a kitchen and a living room.
Then after the start of the war, Czuba told her that they had to move out because Muslims were not welcome. He later confronted Shaheen and attacked her, holding her down, stabbing her and trying to break her teeth.
“He told me ‘You, as a Muslim, must die,’” said Shaheen, who testified in English and Arabic though a translator.
Police testified that officers found Czuba outside the house, sitting on the ground with blood on his body and hands.
Separately, lawsuits have been filed over the boy’s death, including by his father, Odai Alfayoumi, who is divorced from Shaheen and was not living with them. The US Department of Justice also launched a federal hate crimes investigation.
Lebanon warns Hamas not to carry out any attacks from its territories
- “Hamas and other factions will not be allowed to endanger national stability,” the council said
- “The harshest measures will be taken to put a complete end to any act that infringes on Lebanon’s sovereignty”
BEIRUT: Lebanese authorities warned the Hamas group Friday that it would face the “harshest measures” if it carried out any attacks from Lebanon.
The warning by the Higher Defense Council, Lebanon’s top military body, came weeks after several Lebanese and Palestinians were detained on suspicion of firing rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel.
“Hamas and other factions will not be allowed to endanger national stability,” the council said. “The safety of Lebanon’s territories is above all.”
“The harshest measures will be taken to put a complete end to any act that infringes on Lebanon’s sovereignty,” according to a statement that was read by Brig. Gen. Mohammed Al-Mustafa.
Hamas officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for comment.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, the Palestinian militant group has carried out several attacks against Israel from Lebanon, where it has an armed presence. Israel has since carried out airstrikes that killed Hamas officials including one of its top military chiefs, Saleh Arouri, in Beirut.
Lebanese authorities are seeking to establish their authority throughout the country, mainly in the south near the border with Israel after the 14-month Israel-Hezbollah war that ended in late November with the US-brokered ceasefire.
Authorities last month detained several people, including a number of Palestinians, who were allegedly involved in firing rockets toward Israel in two separate attacks in late March that triggered intense Israeli airstrikes on parts of Lebanon. Lebanon’s Hezbollah group denied at the time that it was behind the firing of rockets.
The meeting of the Higher Defense Council was attended by senior officials including the country’s president, prime minister, army commander and heads of security services.
The council’s statement quoted Prime Minister Nawaf Salam as saying that all “illegal weapons” should be handed over to the state.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to visit Lebanon later this month.
Despite the ceasefire deal with Israel in November, Israel is continuing with near-daily airstrikes on Lebanon that have left dozens of civilians and Hezbollah members dead.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli drone fired three missiles Friday morning at a gas station in the southern village of Houla, wounding five people. On Thursday, Israel said it killed an official with Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force in a drone strike in south Lebanon.
