DUBAI: Yemen’s army has launched the “Black Mountains” operation, a military offensive against Al-Qaeda militants in the north of Hadramout province in eastern Yemen, Saudi state-news channel Al-Ekhbariya.
Military spokesman, Hisham Jaber, said the operation came after monitoring the movements of Al-Qaeda in those areas.
Jaber said militants used these areas to carry out terrorist acts, the most recent being in Al-Hajjar where 10 soldiers were killed in late March.
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Yemen’s army launches offensive against Al-Qaeda
Yemen’s army launches offensive against Al-Qaeda
Germany urges Israel to ‘abandon’ plan to step up Golan Heights settlement
BERLIN: Germany on Monday urged Israel to “abandon” a plan to double the population living in the occupied and annexed Golan Heights at the southwestern edge of Syria.
A foreign ministry spokesman said “it is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria and that Israel is therefore an occupying power.”
The spokesman, Christian Wagner, added that Berlin therefore called on its ally Israel “to abandon this plan” announced Sunday by the Israeli government.
A foreign ministry spokesman said “it is perfectly clear under international law that this area controlled by Israel belongs to Syria and that Israel is therefore an occupying power.”
The spokesman, Christian Wagner, added that Berlin therefore called on its ally Israel “to abandon this plan” announced Sunday by the Israeli government.
Syria’s Kurds call for end to all military operations in the country
- The Kurds faced discrimination during more than 50 years of Assad family rule
BEIRUT: Syria’s Kurds, who run a semi-autonomous administration in the northeast, called Monday for an end to all fighting in the country and extended a hand to the new authorities in Damascus.
Hussein Othman, the head of the administration’s executive council, called for “a stop to military operations over the entire Syrian territory in order to begin a constructive, comprehensive national dialogue.”
The call, made at a press conference in Raqqa, comes more than a week after Islamist-led opposition forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad after a lightning offensive in which they seized swathes of territory.
In parallel, pro-Ankara groups launched an offensive against Kurdish forces near the Turkish border, announcing they had seized Manbij and Tal Rifaat, two key Kurdish-held areas in the country’s north.
The Kurds faced discrimination during more than 50 years of Assad family rule, and the long-oppressed community fears it could lose hard-won gains it made during the war, including limited self-rule.
Othman said in the statement that “the political exclusion and marginalization that has destroyed Syria must end and all political forces must rebuild a new Syria.”
The statement called for “an emergency meeting in Damascus of Syrian political forces to unify viewpoints on the transitional period.”
It also emphasized the need to “preserve the unity and sovereignty of Syrian territories and protect them from the attacks by Turkiye and its mercenaries.”
The Kurds, which control sweathes of Syria’s oil-producing areas, also called in the statement for “the fair distribution” of the country’s wealth and economic resources.
Kurdish-led forces said Wednesday they had reached a US-brokered ceasefire with Turkish-backed fighters in Manbij, an Arab-majority city in the north, after fighting there left at least 218 dead.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, pro-Turkiye groups are preparing to launch an assault on the Kurdish-held border town of Kobani, also known as Ain Al-Arab.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, spearheaded the fight that defeated Daesh group jihadists in Syria in 2019 with US backing — putting Washington at odds with NATO ally Ankara.
Ankara views the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a key part of the SDF, as an extension of the banned militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has fought a decades-long insurgency inside Turkiye.
Turkish forces have staged multiple operations against the SDF since 2016.
Turkiye, long a Syrian opposition backer, has been among the first countries to reopen its Damascus embassy after Assad’s ouster.
Death toll in Israel’s Gaza offensive tops 45,000
- But real toll believed higher because thousands of bodies are still buried under rubble or in areas that medics cannot access
- Israel claims Hamas is responsible for the civilian death toll because it operates from within civilian areas
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Health officials in the Gaza Strip say the death toll from the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas militants has topped 45,000 people.
The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The Health Ministry said 45,028 people have been killed and 106,962 have been wounded since the start of the war in October 2023. It has said the real toll is higher because thousands of bodies are still buried under rubble or in areas that medics cannot access. The latest war has been by far the deadliest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, with the death toll now amounting to roughly 2 percent of Gaza’s entire prewar population of about 2.3 million.
Israel claims Hamas is responsible for the civilian death toll because it operates from within civilian areas in the densely populated Gaza Strip. Rights groups and Palestinians say Israel has failed to take sufficient precautions to avoid civilian deaths.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the rest were released during a ceasefire last year.
An Israeli strike killed at least 10 people, including a family of four, in Gaza City overnight, Palestinian medics said Monday.
The strike late Sunday hit a house in Gaza City’s eastern Shijaiyah neighborhood, according to the Health Ministry’s emergency service. Rescuers recovered the bodies of 10 people from under the rubble, including those of two parents and their two children, it said.
UN to HTS leader: Syria must have a ‘credible’ transition
- Special envoy underlined ‘the intention of the United Nations to render all assistance to the Syrian people’
DAMASCUS: The United Nations told the leader of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group which toppled Bashar Assad that Syria must have a “credible and inclusive” transition.
The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen who arrived in Damascus on Sunday, has met Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — who now goes under his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa — Pedersen’s office said Monday in a statement on Telegram.
He also met interim prime minister Mohammed Al-Bashir, it said.
Pedersen met them after Saturday’s international meeting on Syria in Jordan, and stressed “the need for a credible and inclusive Syrian-owned and led political transition based on the principles of United Nations Security Council resolution 2254 (2015).”
The UN envoy also underlined “the intention of the United Nations to render all assistance to the Syrian people,” and was briefed on their “challenges and priorities,” the statement added.
It said Pedersen had several engagements planned in the days ahead, but did not elaborate.
Assad was toppled by a lightning 11-day offensive that swept down from northwest Syria, with fighters entering the capital on December 8.
Abandoned by his Russian and Iranian backers, Assad fled into exile in Moscow, bring to an end five decades of abuses by his clan.
The HTS group that led his overthrow is a former branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria, and the United States and other Western governments still classify it as a “terrorist” group.
While hailing Assad’s downfall, several nations have said they will wait to see how Syria’s new Sunni Muslim authorities treat minorities in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country.
Several countries including the United States and Britain have said they have already made contact with Golani.
Leader of Russia’s Chechnya says he is ready to ensure wheat supplies to Syria if necessary
- Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended due to uncertainty about the new government there after two vessels carrying Russian wheat for Syria failed to reach their destinations
MOSCOW: Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said he is ready to step in if necessary and ensure that Syria gets the wheat it needs in what he said was the unlikely event that Russian wheat supplies to the country were disrupted.
Russian and Syrian sources told Reuters on Friday that Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended due to uncertainty about the new government there after two vessels carrying Russian wheat for Syria failed to reach their destinations.
In a message posted on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Kadyrov said that the two rerouted vessels had been carrying “commercial” wheat and that Russian state-backed supplies to Syria had not been affected.
“Even if for some impossible and incredible reasons this does happen, I, as the head of the Chechen Republic, am ready to take responsibility and ensure the necessary amount of wheat for Syria,” Kadyrov wrote.
Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, supplies wheat to Syria through complex financial and logistical arrangements, circumventing Western sanctions imposed on both countries. It is not clear what share of wheat is supplied by the state.
Kadyrov did not specify how he would organize and finance wheat supplies to Syria if he had to step in and where the wheat would come from.
But he said he could act, if necessary, via a charitable fund named after his late father which helped to rebuild some mosques and provided humanitarian aid to Syria during ousted President Bashar Assad’s rule.
Russian analysts estimate Russia’s exports to Syria at 300,000 tons so far this season, with the country ranking 24th among buyers of Russian wheat. They estimate Syria’s total wheat imports at about 2 million tons.
Russia is the main supplier of wheat to Syria, and disruption in supplies could cause hunger in the country of over 23 million people. Sources told Reuters the two sides are in contact regarding supplies. (Reporting by Olga Popova and Gleb Bryanski Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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