SARMAN, Syria: In northwestern Syria, 68-year-old Abu Khaled was among dozens to have set up camp in a field, hoping that Turkish soldiers nearby would shield him from bombardment by Bashar Assad’s regime.
In the country’s last major rebel bastion of Idlib province on Turkey’s border, civilians are scrambling to protect themselves from a possible Russia-backed government offensive.
Fears have mounted that any attack on the region of nearly three million people could spark one of the worst humanitarian disasters in Syria’s seven-year war.
Dressed in a long white robe and wearing a chequered red-and-white scarf of his head, Abu Khaled sat by his tent pitched in a field in the southeast of Idlib.
Around him, children played between poles covered in flowery bedsheets and pitched for shelter in the red earth.
One dangled back and forth on an improvised swing, while a woman prepared food in a large saucepan on an open fire.
“There was bombardment on our villages so we came here, near the Turkish outpost,” Abu Khaled said, crouched on the ground.
“It’s to protect us,” he said, referring to the monitors deployed by rebel backer Turkey just hundreds of meters (yards) away.
Last year, Ankara, as well as regime allies Moscow and Tehran, labelled Idlib a “de-escalation zone” under a deal that saw Turkish monitoring posts set up in the province.
The United Nations has warned that any regime attack on Idlib could displace up to 800,000 people, and urged key players to intervene to avoid a “bloodbath.”
On Friday, the presidents of Turkey, Russia and Iran are set the meet in Tehran in a bid to determine Idlib’s fate.
Russia-backed regime troops have massed around the province in recent weeks, after ousting rebels and jihadists from other parts of the country.
Moscow says it is bent on fighting Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, a group led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate that controls more than half of the province.
Turkey-backed rebels hold much of the rest, while the regime controls a southeastern slither.
Around half of the residents in Idlib and adjacent areas have lost their homes in the conflict, the UN says, and many already depend on humanitarian aid.
The timing and scope of any attack remain unclear, but health care and aid workers are preparing to cope for the worst.
At a hospital in the provincial capital of Idlib this week, staff worked as usual.
Two doctors wearing grey scrubs operated on a patient, while a staff member tested a girl’s eyesight in another room.
But their hospital, like others in the province, is drawing up a contingency plan in case the surrounding area comes under attack.
“Every hospital needs to have a special emergency plan,” said Mustafa Al-Eido, the deputy head of health care in Idlib province.
With no means to defend the hospitals against regime or Russian air strikes, they would have to downsize staff or redeploy doctors and nurses to other locations, Eido said.
“You can’t fortify against Russian military equipment,” he added.
In the first six months of this year, 38 attacks hit medical infrastructure in Idlib province, most blamed on the government or its ally Russia, according to the UN.
To best respond to air strikes across the province, a joint operations committee has been set up to coordinate between the health service’s 50 ambulances and rescue groups such as the White Helmets, Eido said.
Hospitals are grappling with severe medicine shortages, he said, and also trying to stock up on supplies to deal with any chemical attack.
Assad’s regime has repeatedly been accused of using chemical weapons during the conflict, including in an attack that killed more than 80 people in Idlib’s town of Khan Sheikhun last year.
Since then, staff from 16 hospitals in Idlib and adjacent areas have trained with the World Health Organization in Turkey on how to best help the victims of any toxic attack, Eido said.
Aid workers too are getting ready to help.
Just outside Idlib province, at a camp for the displaced, its director Yussef Nur inspected a backup stash of thin foam mattresses, woolen blankets and large outdoor plastic rugs.
“We’ve planned for any sudden displacement of people,” he said.
Outside, rows of white tents stood bright in the summer sun. One man reclined on a thin mattress in the shade.
“We now have around 700 people at the camp” in Mizanaz in the neighboring province of Aleppo, he said.
But “we could take in 1,800 to 2,000 more.”
Syrian civilians brace for regime assault on Idlib
Syrian civilians brace for regime assault on Idlib
- The United Nations has warned that any regime attack on Idlib could displace up to 800,000 people
- Around half of the residents in Idlib and adjacent areas have lost their homes in the conflict
Three Palestinians killed in standoff with security forces in West Bank
Separately, a security forces officer died in what Palestinian Authority (PA) officials said was an accident, bringing to six the total number of the security forces to have died in the operation in Jenin which began on Dec. 5. There were no further details.
The PA denied that its forces killed the 44-year-old man and his son, who were shot as they stood on the roof of their house in the Jenin refugee camp, a crowded quarter that houses descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven out in the 1948 Middle East war. The man’s daughter was also wounded in the incident.
At least eight Palestinians have been killed in Jenin over the past month, one of them a member of the armed Jenin Brigades, which includes members of the armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions.
Palestinian security forces moved into Jenin last month in an operation officials say is aimed at suppressing armed groups of “outlaws” who have built up a power base in the city and its adjacent refugee camp.
The operation has deepened splits among Palestinians in the West Bank, where the PA enjoys little popular support but where many fear being dragged into a Gaza-style conflict with Israel if the militant groups strengthen their hold.
Jenin, in the northern West Bank, has been a center of Palestinian militant groups for decades and armed factions have resisted repeated attempts to dislodge them by the Israeli military over the years.
The PA set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords, exercises limited sovereignty in parts of the West Bank and has claimed a role in administering Gaza once fighting in the enclave is concluded.
The PA is dominated by the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas and has long had a tense relationship with Hamas, with which it fought a brief civil war in Gaza in 2006 before Hamas drove it out of the enclave.
The horror of Saydnaya jail, symbol of Assad excesses
- Saydnaya prison north of the Syrian capital Damascus has become a symbol of the inhumane abuses of the Assad clan, especially since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011
BEIRUT: Saydnaya prison north of the Syrian capital Damascus has become a symbol of the inhumane abuses of the Assad clan, especially since the country’s civil war erupted in 2011.
The prison complex was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomising the atrocities committed by ousted president Bashar Assad.
When Syrian rebels entered Damascus early last month after a lightning advance that toppled the Assad government, they announced they had seized Saydnaya and freed its inmates.
Some had been incarcerated there since the 1980s.
According to the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), the rebels liberated more than 4,000 people.
Photographs of haggard and emaciated inmates, some helped by their comrades because they were too weak to leave their cells, circulated worldwide.
Suddenly the workings of the infamous jail were revealed for all to see.
The foreign ministers of France and Germany — on a visit to meet with Syria’s new rulers — toured the facility on Friday accompanied by members of Syria’s White Helmets emergency rescue group.
The prison was built in the 1980s during the rule of Hafez Assad, father of the deposed president, and was initially meant for political prisoners including members of Islamist groups and Kurdish militants.
But down the years, Saydnaya became a symbol of pitiless state control over the Syrian people.
In 2016, a United Nations commission found that “the Syrian Government has also committed the crimes against humanity of murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance and other inhuman acts,” notably at Saydnaya.
The following year, Amnesty International in a report entitled “Human Slaughterhouse” documented thousands of executions there, calling it a policy of extermination.
Shortly afterwards, the United States revealed the existence inside Saydnaya of a crematorium in which the remains of thousands of murdered prisoners were burned.
War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in 2022 reported that around 30,000 people had been imprisoned in Saydnaya where many were tortured, and that just 6,000 were released.
The ADMSP believes that more than 30,000 prisoners were executed or died under torture, or from the lack of medical care or food between 2011 and 2018.
The group says the former authorities in Syria had set up salt chambers — rooms lined with salt for use as makeshift morgues to make up for the lack of cold storage.
In 2022, the ADMSP published a report describing for the first time these makeshift morgues of salt.
It said the first such chamber dated back to 2013, one of the bloodiest years in the Syrian civil conflict.
Many inmates are officially considered to be missing, with their families never receiving death certificates unless they handed over exorbitant bribes.
After the fall of Damascus last month, thousands of relatives of the missing rushed to Saydnaya hoping they might find loved ones hidden away in underground cells.
But Saydnaya is now empty, and the White Helmets emergency workers have since announced the end of search operations there, with no more prisoners found.
Several foreigners also ended up in Syrian jails, including Jordanian Osama Bashir Hassan Al-Bataynah, who spent 38 years behind bars and was found “unconscious and suffering from memory loss,” the foreign ministry in Amman said last month.
According to the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Jordan, 236 Jordanian citizens were held in Syrian prisons, most of them in Saydnaya.
Other freed foreigners included Suheil Hamawi from Lebanon who returned home after being locked up in Syria for 33 years, including inside Saydnaya.
Israeli strikes kill at least 30 in Gaza as ceasefire talks set to resume in Qatar
- Israel said missiles were fired into the country from Yemen, which set off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and central Israel and sent people scrambling to shelters
- Hospital staff say at least 30 people, including children, were killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes overnight and Friday morning
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza: Israeli strikes killed at least 30 people in Gaza, including children, overnight and into Friday, hospital staff said, as often-stalled ceasefire talks to end the Israel-Hamas war were set to resume in Qatar. Sirens sounded across Israel for missiles fired from Yemen.
Staff at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said that more than a dozen women and children were killed in strikes in central Gaza, including in Nuseirat, Zawaida, Maghazi and Deir Al-Balah. Dozens of people were killed across the enclave the previous day, bringing the total killed in the past 24 hours to 56.
“We woke up to the missile strike. We found the whole house disintegrated,” Abdul Rahman Al-Nabrisi said in the Maghazi refugee camp.
The Israeli army said in a statement Friday that during the past day, it had struck dozens of Hamas gathering points and command centers throughout Gaza. The army asserted that measures were taken to mitigate civilian harm, such as using aerial surveillance.
And it issued a warning for people to leave an area of central Gaza immediately, saying it would attack following launches from there toward Israel. The military said that a few projectiles entered Israel from central and northern Gaza, with no injuries reported.
Freelance journalist Omar Al-Derawi was among those killed on Friday. Associated Press reporters saw friends and colleagues mourning over his body, with a press vest laid on his shroud.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said last month that more than 130 Palestinian reporters have been killed since the start of the war. Israel hasn’t allowed foreign journalists to enter Gaza except on military embeds.
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Israelis also woke up to attacks. Israel said that missiles were fired into the country from Yemen, setting off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and central Israel and sending people scrambling to shelters. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. Israel’s army said that a missile was intercepted. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen often claim responsibility.
Efforts at ceasefire negotiations were expected to resume Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said that he authorized a delegation from the Mossad intelligence agency, the Shin Bet internal security agency and the military to continue negotiations in Qatar. The delegation was leaving for Qatar on Friday.
The US-led talks have repeatedly stalled during nearly 15 months of war. Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed. But the militants, while greatly weakened, have repeatedly regrouped, often after Israeli forces withdraw from areas.
The war was sparked by Hamas-led militants’ attack into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive in retaliation has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up more than half the dead. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally.
Israel’s military says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas. The army says it has killed 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced about 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times. Winter has now arrived, and hundreds of thousands are sheltering in tents near the sea.
French and German foreign ministers urge inclusive transition in Syria during Damascus visit
- Jean-Noel Barrot and Annalena Baerbock in Syrian capital for talks on behalf of European Union
- Ministers toured the cells of Assad's main torture prison
DAMASCUS: The European Union backs a peaceful, inclusive transition in Syria, top French and German diplomats said Friday as they visited Damascus to meet with new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot and his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock were in the Syrian capital for talks on behalf of the European Union, in the highest-level visit by major Western powers since Islamist-led forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad last month.
One of their first stops was the notorious Saydnaya prison, not far from the capital, AFP journalists said.
Accompanied by White Helmet rescuers, Barrot and Baerbock toured the cells and underground dungeons of Saydnaya, the epitome of atrocities committed against Assad’s opponents.
Saydnaya was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances. An advocacy group said more than 4,000 people were freed from the detention facility when rebel forces took Damascus on Dec. 8.
Sharaa, head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), led the offensive that toppled Assad.
The HTS-dominated interim authorities now face the daunting task of rebuilding state institutions, with growing calls to ensure an inclusive transition and guarantee minority rights.
Barrot, in Damascus, expressed hope for a “sovereign, stable and peaceful” Syria.
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It was also a “hope that the aspirations of all Syrians can be realized,” he added, “but it is a fragile hope.”
In a statement, Baerbock said Germany wanted to help Syria become a “safe home” for all its people, and a “functioning state, with full control over its territory.”
She said the visit was a “clear signal” to Damascus of the possibility for a new relationship between Syria and Germany, and Europe more broadly.
Earlier, in a post in X, Barrot said: “Together, France and Germany stand alongside the Syrian people, in all their diversity.”
He added that the two European powers wanted to promote a “peaceful transition.”
Despite “skepticism” about HTS — which is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda and is designated a terrorist organization by numerous governments Baerbock said that “we must not miss the opportunity to support the Syrian people at this important crossroads.”
Berlin was ready to support “an inclusive and peaceful transfer of power” as well as social “reconciliation,” Baerbock said.
She also asked the new regime to avoid “acts of vengeance against groups within the population,” to avoid a long delay before elections, and to avert any attempts at the “Islamization” of the judicial and education systems.
Since Assad’s ousting, a bevy of foreign envoys have traveled to Damascus to meet with the country’s new leaders.
France and Germany had both already sent lower-level delegations last month.
At the start of his visit, Barrot met with representatives of Syria’s Christian communities.
Diplomatic sources said Barrot told the Christian leaders that France was committed to a pluralistic Syria with equal rights for all, including minority groups.
Syria’s civil war — which started in 2011, sparked by the Assad government’s brutal repression of democracy protests — saw Germany, France and a host of other countries shutter their diplomatic missions in Damascus.
The conflict killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and left Syria fragmented and ravaged.
The new authorities have called for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Syria under Assad to allow for reconstruction.
Paris is due to host an international summit on Syria later this month, following a similar meeting in December in Jordan.
Israel army says intercepted missile, drone launched from Yemen
- Israel’s emergency service provider, Magen David Adom, reported that it had treated several people who were injured or experienced panic attacks on their way to shelters
Jerusalem: Israel’s military reported that it shot down a missile and a drone launched from Yemen on Friday, the latest in a series of attacks from the country targeting Israel in recent weeks.
“A missile that was launched from Yemen and crossed into Israeli territory was intercepted,” the military said in a statement posted to its Telegram channel.
“A report was received regarding shrapnel from the interception that fell in the area of Modi’in in central Israel. The details are under review.”
Israel’s emergency service provider, Magen David Adom, reported that it had treated several people who were injured or experienced panic attacks on their way to shelters after air raid sirens sounded in the center and south of the country.
Hours later the military announced that it had also shot down a drone launched from Yemen.
The drone was intercepted before it entered Israel, the military added.
On Tuesday, Israel also said it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen.
Much of Yemen is controlled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have been firing missiles and drones at Israel — as well as at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden — in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The Houthis have stepped up their attacks since November’s ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel has also struck Yemen, including targeting Sanaa’s international airport at the end of December.
