RAQQA, Syria: Across the ruins of Raqqa, the streets are cloaked in grey, the color of bare cement and rubble left behind by the bombing campaign that finally drove out Daesh militants. Among the people of this Syrian city, the fear, anger and desperation are palpable.
Six months after Daesh’s ouster, residents feel they have been abandoned as the world moves on. They are trying to rebuild their lives, but they say they fear everyone around them: the Kurdish-led militia that administers the majority Arab city; the Syrian government, which has forces nearby; criminal gangs who kidnap or rob whoever shows signs of having money; and Daesh militants who may still be hiding among the people.
“Daesh is still among us,” said a businessman. To give an example, he said, a man lobbed a hand grenade at a recent funeral when mourners played music, something extremists view as sacrilegious.
The Associated Press spoke to over a dozen residents on a recent visit, most of who spoke of their woes on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety. The businessman asked to be identified by the diminutive of his first name, Abdu.
After fleeing Raqqa during the coalition-led assault on the city last year, Abdu returned once the militants were driven out in October. He found his restaurant and his home next to it destroyed. He was angry, but practical. His life has been on hold for too long and he wanted to get on with his business. So he hired workers and started to rebuild.
But local gangs had eyed him. He was kidnapped and held for $10,000 ransom, until his tribe intervened and rescued him without paying, he said.
He, like many others, lamented the loss of security, which he said was one prize feature of living under Daesh. He faulted the Kurdish-led forces for hastily recruiting local Arabs to boost their ranks and appease the local Arab tribes.
“We end up with thieves or former Daesh in the force,” he said.
For three years, Raqqa was the de facto capital of the Daesh group’s “caliphate” stretching across much of Iraq and Syria. In the campaign of the US-led coalition and Iraqi and Syrian partners, the group has been uprooted from almost that entire territory.
UN officials say Raqqa has been left the most devastated city in all of Syria’s seven-year-old war, a conflict that has also seen Syrian government forces backed by Russian and Iranian forces battling rebels. All of Raqqa suffered intense airstrikes by the US-led coalition and the whole population of at least 350,000 had to flee. The infrastructure was destroyed, as were 65 percent of civilian homes, said Leila Mustafa, a member of the US-backed Raqqa Civil Council that now runs the city.
A prominent Arab tribesman escorted the AP to see a building he owned that was gutted by airstrikes. He angrily complained that coalition bombing was indiscriminate. Like many, he said there should be compensation but didn’t expect any would be given.
“I wish I even found the bone of an Daesh member in there! But nothing. No reason,” he said. “Now, who will pay for this?” He refused to give his name, fearing his criticism would undermine his chances of ever getting money to rebuild.
Nothing is unaffected by the bombardment. Mosques, schools, squares and buildings have all taken hits, some repeatedly. Trees on the street are burned. Insects and dust saturate the air.
The stench of death rises from crushed buildings and remains long after the bodies are removed. Civil workers say they have pulled nearly 500 bodies from under the rubble in the past three months, working with just one bulldozer.
Some streets have been cleared of wreckage, giving way to a scene even more haunting because of how organized it is. Scrap metal and debris are neatly stacked in heaps at the foot of destroyed buildings. Row after row of buildings reduced to concrete skeletons run like a pattern through the city. Large chunks of cement dangle from twisted rebar above sidewalks like cryptic decorations. At least 8,000 explosives riddle the city center.
Major overpasses have been hit, as well as bridges across the Euphrates River, which cuts through the city. Residents and their cars cross on small barges.
Yet the buzz of activity is startling. Nearly 100,000 residents have returned, according to UN accounts. Mustafa said it was likely much higher.
Women in colorful scarves punctuated the grey monotone in the markets. A market for scrap metal has sprung up at one end of the city. Meat grills lined some streets, and warehouses were full of soft drinks, water, grains and other stock. Bulldozers drilled into the wreckage of buildings.
Workers from nearby provinces have come looking for opportunities. The driver of a truck full of mattresses with job hunters sitting on top said they came from the northwestern city of Aleppo.
“They can’t do it all alone,” a construction worker from the neighboring province of Deir Ezzor said at the site of a destroyed bridge.
Those with money rebuild. Painters added some color to the facade of a former car dealership. Its owner, who asked only to be identified as Ismail, said Daesh had used its back rooms as a prison.
When he came back to Raqqa, he heard of masked gangsters who rob returnees. But it has not stopped him. He is turning his dealership into an Internet cafe, much needed in a city that has no phone lines and relies heavily on personal generators for electricity.
He said he paid $600 to clean the wreckage from his street. “I want to make it feel safe,” he said.
Mustafa, the council member, said most of the restoration work was self-financed, with some US money, though she would not say how much. On Thursday, with American officials attending, she inaugurated a new pre-fab bridge to connect the city to neighboring villages. One US official said installing the bridge cost $7,000.
The city is getting “very limited” support — “no match to the size of the needs,” she said. Infrastructure was totally destroyed, as were 65 percent of civilian buildings, and mines and rubble still need to be cleared, she said. She could not say the total cost for rebuilding since it is constantly being reevaluated.
Raqqa paid a “hefty price” for the war on terrorism, she said, but “international organizations and some countries didn’t live up to their responsibilities.”
US officials have led operations to clear land mines and restore basic services like water and electricity in the city. But those programs would likely have to be called off if President Donald Trump goes forward with plans to withdraw American troops within five or six months. In meeting with national security aides, he has railed against the trillions the US has spent in the Mideast, saying it brought no return.
Instead, Trump has asked Saudi Arabia to contribute $4 billion toward reconstruction and stabilization in Syria.
Despite the devastation, signs of Daesh remained around Raqqa.
The infamous Naim Square — Arabic for “Paradise” — where Daesh militants displayed hanged bodies or heads, was empty aside from a single chair in the street that marked a former checkpoint of the militants. On the other end were remains of a Daesh media center with broken chairs and a stand where the screen was once set to show Daesh videos to the public.
A juice shop and a supermarket were the only signs of life in the square, surrounded by destroyed buildings. Seals used by Daesh were still visible on the metal shutters of shops, numbering them for tax collection purposes.
Nahla Mustafa walked absent-mindedly nearby, pulling her seven-year old son Baseel behind.
Asked how she is, she immediately said, “Everything is lost,” and her eyes welled with tears. The war had impoverished her well-to-do family. Militants confiscated her husband’s clothing store. The three homes they owned were destroyed in coalition strikes and she had multiple miscarriages, which she blamed on fear from the bombing.
She now makes clothes for a living and asks around houses for odd jobs. Looking at her purse, she said, “I have 3,000 liras ($7) in here. What do I do with this?” Her husband works in a grocery store, earning the equivalent of $45 a month.
“I am tired and I am scared,” she said. “When will we be able to save to fix our homes — when (my husband) is 100?” Her son doesn’t go to school because she worries about land mines.
“What will become of his future? What is our fault in all of this?“
Syrians in Raqqa afraid, angry, frustrated as they rebuild
Syrians in Raqqa afraid, angry, frustrated as they rebuild
Jailed PKK leader Ocalan says armed struggle with Turkiye over
In the recording, dated June and released by Firat News Agency, which is close to the PKK, Ocalan urged Turkiye’s parliament to set up a commission to oversee disarmament and manage a broader peace process.
The PKK, which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years and is labelled a terrorist organization by Turkiye, the United States and the EU, decided in May to disband after an initial written appeal from Ocalan in February.
“The phase of armed struggle has ended. This is not a loss, but a historic gain,” he said in the video, the first time since he was jailed in 1999 that either footage of him or a recording of his voice has been released.
“The armed struggle stage must now be voluntarily replaced by a phase of democratic politics and law.”
Ocalan, seated in a beige polo shirt with a glass of water on the table in front of him, appeared to read from a transcript in the seven-minute video. He was surrounded by six other jailed PKK members all looking straight at the camera.
He said the PKK had ended its separatist agenda.
“The main objective has been achieved – existence has been acknowledged,” he said. “What remains would be excessive repetition and a dead end.”
Ocalan added that Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party, the third largest in parliament in Ankara, should work alongside other political parties.
South Sudan says US deportees under government care
- The South Sudanese foreign ministry released a statement on the migrants saying: “They are currently in Juba under the care of the relevant authorities, who are screening them and ensuring their safety and well-being”
JUBA: War-torn South Sudan has said it is looking after a group of eight criminal migrants controversially deported from the United States.
Only one of them is from South Sudan. The administration of US President Donald Trump is trying to move unwanted migrants to third countries as some nations refuse to accept returnees.
The rest comprise two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico.
The decision has been fought in American courts.
“They are currently in Juba under the care of the relevant authorities, who are screening them and ensuring their safety and well-being,” the South Sudanese foreign ministry statement said late Tuesday.
It did not give details, but said the “careful and well-studied decision” was part of “ongoing bilateral engagement.”
“South Sudan responded positively to a request from the US authorities as a gesture of goodwill, humanitarian cooperation, and commitment to mutual interests,” it added.
United Nations experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the UN, have criticized the move.
“International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to ... torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,” 11 independent UN rights experts said in a statement.
The deportees left the United States for South Sudan in May but their flight ended up in Djibouti when a US district court imposed a stay on third-country deportations. That ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court earlier this month.
The group arrived in South Sudan on June 5 with an official, speaking on condition of anonymity, saying they had been returned by US Marines.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Apuk Ayuel Mayen said Juba maintains a strong commitment to its people, including “its nationals returning under any circumstances” and “persons with recognized links to South Sudan.”
Simmering rivalry between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his vice president Riek Machar boiled over into open hostilities in March.
The tensions have raised fears of a return to full-scale war in the world’s youngest country, where a civil war killed some 400,000 people in 2013-2018.
Ghost camp: Israeli operations in West Bank push wave of Palestinians from their homes
- Israeli operations are pushing tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians out of their homes
- Around 40,000 residents from the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps have been displaced by the military operation this year
TULKARM: Malik Lutfi contemplated which of his family’s belongings to salvage in the few moments he was given while Israeli troops carried out home demolitions in the Tulkarm refugee camp where he grew up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Now 51, the father of six has rented a small room in the nearby city of Tulkarm, but without access to his electronic repair shop in the cordoned-off camp, he has no income to meet the rent, sparking anxiety about his family’s future.
With bulldozers roaring outside, he said: “They kicked us out six months ago and we are still out. When you go back you try to bring anything you can, but in two hours with only our hands, you cannot bring many things.”
He said he knew many families in a worse situation even than his, pushed to living in crowded schools or on patches of farmland.
“We are waiting for help,” he said.
Israeli operations are pushing tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians like Lutfi out of their homes, says B’Tselem, the independent Israeli human rights information center for the occupied territories.
Around 40,000 residents from the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps have been displaced by the military operation this year, B’Tselem said.
Israel says it is acting against flashpoints of militancy, including the northern cities of Tulkarm and Jenin.
“This requires the demolition of buildings, allowing the forces to operate freely and move unhindered within the area,” an Israeli military spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The decision to demolish these structures is based on operational necessity and was made only after considering alternative options,” the statement said.
Israeli demolitions have drawn widespread international criticism and coincide with heightened fears among Palestinians of an organized effort by Israel to formally annex the West Bank, the area seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Reuters witnesses this week saw bulldozers plowing through buildings and wide, new roads lined by rubble that bulldozers had carved out by demolishing concrete homes. Residents piled chairs, blankets and cooking equipment onto trucks.
Tulkarm’s governor Abdullah Kamil said in recent weeks the destruction had intensified, with 106 homes and 104 other buildings in the nearby Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps destroyed.
“What is happening in Tulkarm is an Israeli political decision, the issue has nothing to do with security,” Kamil, the Palestinian governor, said. “There is nothing left in the camp, it has become a ghost camp.”
Israel’s northern West Bank operation which began in January has been one of the biggest since the Second Intifada uprising by Palestinians more than 20 years ago, involving several brigades of troops earlier this year backed by drones, helicopters and, for the first time in decades, heavy battle tanks.
SIMMERING SITUATION
As efforts ramp up in Washington and Qatar to secure a Gaza ceasefire deal, some international officials and rights groups say they are also worried about the simmering situation for Palestinians in the West Bank.
“In the northern West Bank, Israel has begun replicating tactics and combat doctrines honed in its current offensive on Gaza,” said Shai Parnes, public outreach director at B’Tselem.
“This includes increased ... widespread and deliberate destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, and forced displacement of civilians from areas designated by the military as combat zones.”
Israeli hard-liners inside and outside the government have called repeatedly for Israel to annex the West Bank, a kidney-shaped area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) long that Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state, along with Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israeli government ministers deny that the West Bank operation has any wider purpose than battling militant groups. The Israeli military in its statement said it was following international law and targeting militancy.
Kamil, the Palestinian governor, said displacement was putting pressure on a community already reeling economically, with thousands sheltering in mosques, schools and overcrowded homes with relatives.
Returning for the first time in six months, Lutfi said he was shocked at the scale of damage.
“Most people when they come back to look at their homes, they find them destroyed, the destruction that meets them is enormous: wide streets, destroyed infrastructure and electricity,” he said. “If we want to rebuild, it will take a long time.”
Gaza doctors say Israel’s killing of a prominent colleague leaves a hard-to-fill void
- More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations
JERUSALEM: When the onetime director of a Gaza Strip hospital was killed by an Israeli airstrike last week, he joined a growing list of prominent Palestinian doctors who have died during 21 months of war that has devastated the territory’s health system.
The death of Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, a 49-year-old cardiologist, was described by colleagues as a major blow personally and professionally, leaving another void in Gaza’s medical establishment that will not be easily replaced.
“He was one of two cardiologists, so by losing Dr. Marwan, thousands of people will lose and suffer,” said Mohammed Abu Selmia, a close friend of his for 15 years, and the director of Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility.
A photograph from 2022 shows Abu Selmia, Al-Sultan and 30 other leading doctors and medical experts in Gaza, all faculty smiling after the graduation of medical school students from Islamic University in Gaza City. At least five of those veteran doctors, mentors to the next generation, are now dead – each killed by Israeli airstrikes, except for one who died while in captivity in Israel.
Al-Sultan and three other specialists in the 2022 photo who were killed in airstrikes died during off-duty hours, though it is not clear if these were targeted killings.
When asked why Al-Sultan’s building was attacked last Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had struck a “key terrorist” from Hamas, without elaborating. The military said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals” and that the “the incident is under review.”
It will take years to educate a new generation of surgeons and other specialists to replace the ones killed during the war between Hamas and Israel, Abu Selmia said. For now, hospitals have too few experts to provide urgent care at a time of extraordinary need, he said.
Hospitals across Gaza also face supply shortages amid steady Israeli bombardment that is resulting in a high number of wounded people seeking treatment on a near-daily basis.
A health care system in crisis
More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations.
The Israeli military has raided or laid siege to hospitals throughout the war, accusing Hamas of using them as command centers and to hide fighters, though it has only provided evidence for some of its claims. The World Health Organization has documented nearly 700 attacks on health care facilities during the war.
Al-Sultan gained respect and notoriety within Gaza’s medical community because he refused to leave his hospital in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya, even when it came under attack. He was outspoken on social media about the dangers health workers faced in the hospital under Israeli bombardment and siege.
Al-Sultan was the last director of the Indonesian Hospital, the largest in northern Gaza before the Israeli military forced it to close in early June because of military operations around it.
In May, Al-Sultan described the difficult situation health workers at his facility faced. “We will keep holding on for our patients, for our jobs and our people,” he said in a video posted online by his hospital’s backers.
Al-Sultan had plenty of opportunities to practice medicine in other countries, said Dr. Mohammed Al-Assi, who studied with him in Jordan. But he decided to go home to serve in Gaza in 2019. Al-Assi, inspired by his friend, followed him.
When he heard the news of his killing, Al-Assi was shattered. “I’m wondering as any doctor would, was it his fault that he was helping people?”
Other former colleagues were similarly overwhelmed by news of Al-Sultan’s death.
“A wave of emotion hit me as I suddenly remembered our last video call — how he kept asking me about me and my family when it should have been the other way around,” said Dr. Emad Shaqoura, a former vice dean of the medical faculty at Islamic University who is now in the UK
The missile that killed Al-Sultan struck the third-floor apartment he was renting with his family in the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal Al-Hawa, witnesses and doctors said. His wife, a daughter, and son-in-law were also killed.
Another daughter, Lubna Al-Sultan, said the missile crashed into his room around 2 p.m., leaving other units in the building intact. The Al-Sultan family had been displaced from their home.
“It was not collateral damage,” said Dr. Hadiki Habib, chairman of the Indonesian humanitarian organization that built and funded the Indonesian hospital.
The day before he was killed, Al-Sultan spoke with Abu Selmia about how they would prepare a new schedule for cases and treatment. He was one of two doctors left capable of performing a procedure to diagnose and treat heart problems, said Abu Selmia.
“Dr. Marwan was the trainer and mentor for all those students in Shifa Hospital and in the entirety of Gaza City,” Abu Selmia said.
Other prominent doctors in Gaza have also been killed
In the 2022 photo of Islamic University’s faculty of medicine, four other members are also no longer alive.
— Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, once the head of Shifa’s orthopedics department, died in Israeli detention, allegedly of ill-treatment, according to Palestinian authorities and advocacy groups. An independent autopsy on his body, which has not been returned to his family, has not been conducted. His wife said repeated requests to return his body have not been answered.
— Dr. Hammam Alloh, a kidney expert, was killed at home with his family by an airstrike in November 2023.
— Dr. Mohammed Dabbour, Gaza’s first cancer pathologist, was killed in an airstrike on October 2023, along with his father and son.
— Dr. Rafat Lubbad, head of internal medicine at Shifa and one of few specialists in autoimmune diseases, was killed in November 2023, along with 7 family members, in Gaza City.
Hospitals overwhelmed with casualties
Only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational, according to the WHO, which says that all are struggling with severe supply shortages. Of the hospitals that are functioning, only 12 provide services beyond basic emergency care.
Conditions in northern Gaza, where Al-Sultan lived and worked, are particularly dire. The area has been site of some of the most intense Israeli military operations since the start of the war, and although there were many evacuation orders, many of its residents remain.
Abu Selmia considers what the future might hold for the doctors still alive and forever smiling in that 2022 medical school graduation photo. There are barely enough of them to tend to the vast numbers of sick and wounded, he said.
But he holds on to some small hope.
Al-Sultan’s son, Ahmed, is a medical student. “God willing, he will follow his father’s footsteps.”
Tunisia hands lengthy prison terms to top politicians and former security officials
- A total of 21 were charged in the case, with 10 already in custody and 11 having fled the country
TUNIS: A Tunisian court on Tuesday handed jail terms of 12 to 35 years on high-profile politicians, including opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi and former security officials, a move that critics say underscores the president’s use of the judiciary to cement authoritarian rule.
Among those sentenced on charges of conspiring against the state in the major mass trial, were Nadia Akacha, the former chief of staff to President Kais Saied, local radio Mosaique FM said. Akacha who fled abroad received 35 years.
Ghannouchi, 84, veteran head of the Islamist-leaning Ennahda party, was handed a 14-year term.
Ghannouchi who was the speaker of the elected parliament dissolved by Saied, has been in prison since 2023, receiving three sentences of a total of 27 years in separate cases in recent months.
A total of 21 were charged in the case, with 10 already in custody and 11 having fled the country.
The court sentenced former intelligence chief Kamel Guizani to 35 years, former Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem to 35 years, and Mouadh Ghannouchi, son of Rached Ghannouchi, to 35 years. All three have fled the country.
Saied dissolved the parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree, then dissolved the independent Supreme Judicial Council and sacked dozens of judges, a move that opposition called a coup which undermined the nascent democracy that sparked in 2011 the Arab Spring uprisings.
Saied rejects the accusations and says his steps are legal and aim to end years of chaos and corruption hidden within the political elite.
Most opposition leaders, some journalists, and critics of Saied have been imprisoned since he seized control of most powers in 2021.
This year, a court handed jail terms of 5 to 66 years to opposition leaders, businessmen and lawyers on charges of conspiring as well, a case the opposition says is fabricated in an attempt to stamp out opposition to the president.
Human rights groups and activists say Saied has turned Tunisia into an open-air prison and is using the judiciary and police to target his political opponents.
Saied rejects these accusations, saying he will not be a dictator.
