After seven years of suffering, US-led raids crush Assad’s deadly arsenal

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A badly injured survivor of a chemical weapons attack in the opposition-held Eastern Ghouta area of Damascus. Reuters
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UN inspectors hold a bag containing testing samples from the site of an alleged chemical attack in Ain Tarma. Reuters
Updated 15 April 2018
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After seven years of suffering, US-led raids crush Assad’s deadly arsenal

LONDON: The US military on Saturday insisted its missile strikes against three targets in Syria had dealt a “severe blow” to Bashar Al-Assad’s ability to produce chemical weapons.
American cruise missiles flattened a research center on the edge of Damascus and destroyed another site used as a command center and storage facility in the Syrian capital. French and British jets destroyed a facility near Homs and another at Shayrat.
The strikes significantly limited Assad’s ability to produce chemical weapons, Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, director of the US military’s Joint Staff said, adding it would set back the regime’s ability to produce such weapons “for years.”
His confidence in the success of the mission and the assertion that the targets were the “heart” of the Syrian chemical weapons program, raised a broader question that goes to the core of the failure of Western policy on the conflict: How has the Syrian president been allowed to get away with repeatedly using poisoned gas on his own people?
Barack Obama first set his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons in 2012. When that line was crossed in August 2013, a doomed attempt was launched by UN experts to rid the country of Al-Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles.
The futility of that exercise was fully exposed when dozens more died from symptoms similar to that caused by sarin, after an air raid on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province last year. Keen to act decisively in the way his predecessor had failed, Donald Trump ordered missile strikes on an airbase that were little more than a rap on the knuckles for the Syrian government.

Stockpiles
The ineffective policies of the two administrations were highlighted again in Douma last week with the all-too-familiar images of Syrian infants gasping for breath. Assad stands accused of the third major chemical weapons attack unleashed during the seven-year conflict, and countless reports of lower-level use of chemicals against civilians.
The Pentagon said yesterday that the missile strikes last year that damaged aircraft, hangars, and runways at the Shayrat airbase had targeted the “means of delivery”, while this time around they had gone after the main facilities of the program.
“I would say there is still a residual element of the Syrian program that’s out there,” McKenzie said. “I’m not going to say that they’re going to be unable to continue to conduct a chemical attack in the future. I suspect, however, they’ll think long and hard about it.”
Karl Dewey, an expert on chemical, biological and nuclear assessments at defense Jane’s by IHS Markit, said it remained to be seen if the strikes would deter the future use of chemical weapons.
“The US strike last April did not provide a consistent response to the on-going allegations and failed to deter chemical attacks,” he said.
Syria began stockpiling chemical weapons in the early 1970s, according to US assessments. With the help of the Soviet Union, Damascus started to gather the knowledge and materials to develop its own weapons in the 1980s.
Before the uprising against Al-Assad in 2011, the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre was believed to operate at least four manufacturing plants for chemical agents, and dozens of storage facilities were built across the country.

Rocket attack
In 2012, Israel accused Syria of having one of the world’s largest chemical weapons stockpiles, including sulfur, mustard, sarin and VX nerve agents.
A French military assessment from 2013 said Assad had a vast array of weapons systems that could deliver the chemicals. The section of the military responsible was the highly loyal “Branch 450” from the same Allawite religion as the president.
Syria’s horrifying capability was realized in August 2013, when an opposition-held area on the edge of Damascus was struck by rockets containing sarin. More than 1,000 people are estimated to have died in the strike on Eastern Ghouta. The US and other countries said they were certain the attack was carried out by Assad’s forces.
The red line set by Barack Obama had been crossed, but instead of a military response, a US-Russian agreement was signed to destroy the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons.
Assad’s government was forced to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
A year after the Eastern Ghouta attack, the White House declared that 581 tons of sarin and 19.8 tons of mustard gas had been destroyed under the OPCW’s supervision.
For the Syrian civilians still suffering the horrors of attacks using chemical weapons, it clearly wasn’t enough.


Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 43,391

Updated 4 sec ago
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Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 43,391

The toll includes 17 deaths in the previous 24 hours

GAZA STRIP: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Tuesday that at least 43,391 people have been killed in the year-old war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 17 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 102,347 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands

Updated 22 min 44 sec ago
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Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands

  • At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents
  • Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps

ATHENS: Some islands in the southeast of the Aegean sea, including Rhodes, are seeing an increase in migrants arriving by boat from Turkiye, Greek migration and asylum minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said Tuesday.
“The southeast of the Aegean and the island of Rhodes are experiencing migratory pressure right now,” he said on public television station ERT, though he said the increase does not appear to be linked to rising tensions in the Middle East.
At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents and local authorities.
According to local media Rodiaki, more than 700 migrants arrived during the last week of October.
Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps on the mainland or in other islands.
Previously, Aegean islands further north such as Lesbos and Samos had received the brunt of migrants crossing from Turkish shores.
Crete, which has likewise seen an increase in arrivals from Libya, also needs to build facilities to process migrants.
Greece has seen a 25 percent increase this year in the number of people fleeing war and poverty, with a 30 percent increase alone to Rhodes and the south-east Aegean, according to the Migration Ministry.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 48,158 arrivals have been recorded so far in 2024, of which around 42,000 arrived by boat and 6,000 by crossing the land frontier with Turkiye.
“The camps on the islands have an occupancy rate of 100 percent. But on the mainland they are only 55 percent full, which provides a margin in the event of an increase in arrivals on the islands,” Panagiotopoulos said.


Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

Updated 35 min 21 sec ago
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Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

  • Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s army-backed government on Tuesday accused neighboring Chad of supplying arms to rebel militias, likely referring to the paramilitary forces it is battling.
The northeast African country has been engulfed by war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the regular army, led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Justice minister Muawiya Osman said Burhan’s administration had lodged the complaint against Chad at the African Union.
Speaking to reporters, including AFP, Osman said the government demanded compensation and accused Chad of “supplying arms to rebel militias” and causing “harm to Sudanese citizens.”
“We will present evidence to the relevant authorities,” he added from Port Sudan, where Burhan relocated after fighting spread to the capital, Khartoum.
Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF.
“We do not support any of the factions that are fighting on Sudanese territory — we are in favor of peace,” foreign minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said at the time.
The United Nations has been using the Adre border crossing between the two countries to deliver humanitarian aid.
Sudan had initially agreed to keep the crossing open for three months, a period set to expire on November 15. Authorities in Khartoum have yet to decide whether to extend the arrangement.
The Sudanese war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders.


Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

Updated 53 min 31 sec ago
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Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

  • The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations

ANKARA: An explosion at an oil refinery in northwestern Turkiye on Tuesday left at least 12 employees slightly injured, the company said. A fire at the facility was quickly brought under control.
The Turkish Petroleum Refineries company, TUPRAS, said a fire broke out at its facilities in Izmit, in Kocaeli province, during maintenance work on a compressor. The company’s emergency teams responded immediately to the incident, it said in a statement.
The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations, the company said.
The company said the unit where the incident occurred “was deactivated in a controlled manner” and that other operations at the refinery were “continuing as normal.”
Earlier, Tahir Buyukakin, the mayor for Kocaeli told private NTV television that the blast occurred during a drill. The fire was quickly brought under control by the company’s own crews and no request for help was made, he said.
Video footage from the site showed smoke rising from the refinery, which is one of Turkiye’s largest. Izmit is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Istanbul.
The Borsa Istanbul stock exchange temporarily halted trading of TUPRAS shares, until the company provides a detailed explanation of the incident.


Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

Updated 05 November 2024
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Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

BEIRUT: At least one Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in a beach town south of Beirut on Tuesday, Lebanese state media said, as other deadly strikes hit scattered locations across the country and armed group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel.
The attack on the beach town of Jiyyeh left a massive smoke column billowing out of an apartment building. It was not immediately clear if the strike was an assassination attempt, and no evacuation warning was given before it was carried out.
The Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been exchanging fire for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war, but hostilities have escalated over the last six weeks. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them since late September, according to health authorities.
Israeli strikes on Tuesday also killed five people near the city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, including two killed in a strike on a car, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Lebanon’s state news agency said on Tuesday that it estimated Israeli air strikes and widespread detonation of homes had destroyed more than 40,000 housing units in the country’s border region.