WASHINGTON: Despite dire US warnings and fears of a humanitarian disaster, the Trump administration has little leverage to stop Russia, Iran and Syria pressing ahead with a massive military assault against Syria’s northwest Idlib province.
Washington has threatened military action in case of a chemical weapons attack but its mixed messaging on retaining a US presence in Syria and a cut in aid has diminished its already limited influence over the seven-year conflict.
So the administration, which has criticized former President Barack Obama for his inaction on Syria after the war started in 2011, risks appearing powerless to prevent the three nations’ plan to retake Syria’s last rebel-held area. It’s an operation that many warn will cause major bloodshed among a vulnerable population of 3 million people.
And on Saturday, Syrian government and Russian warplanes targeted the province’s southern edge in what activists described as the most intense airstrikes in weeks. More than 60 air raids killed at least four civilians in southern Idlib, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and rescue workers.
While the new US special envoy for Syria said this week that America will stay in Syria until the complete eradication of the Daesh group, there’s little assurance that President Donald Trump won’t again seek the withdrawal of the roughly 2,000 US troops in the country. And in a sign of the administration’s shrinking commitment to Syria, it has pulled more than $200 million in stabilization funding for liberated areas, telling other nations they should step up to pay.
A summit in Tehran on Friday between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was seen as a chance for a diplomatic solution before a full-scale assault on Idlib. The three nations are all tacitly allied against IS and in support of a unified, stable Syria, but have differing views of how to achieve those ends.
After Friday’s talks, the UN envoy for Syria told the UN Security Council there were indications that the three leaders intend to continue talking to avoid a catastrophe. But above all, the summit highlighted the stark differences among these allies of convenience, with Putin and Rouhani opposing Erdogan’s call for a cease-fire.
As they discussed the fate of Idlib, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was talking tough in New York, telling the Security Council that the United States would consider any assault on the province as a “dangerous escalation” of the conflict that has already claimed more than 400,000 lives and forced more than 5 million Syrians to flee the country.
“If (Syrian President Bashar) Assad, Russia, and Iran continue, the consequences will be dire,” said Haley, who was chairing the council meeting. “The Assad regime must halt its offensive ... Russia and Iran, as countries with influence over the regime, must stop this catastrophe. It is in their power to do so.”
Those remarks capped a week of rising US rhetoric opposing the Idlib operation.
On Monday, Trump tweeted: “President Bashar Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!“
A day later, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expanded on the tweet, and renewed calls for the conflict to be resolved through the UN-led Geneva Process, which has been stalled for years. And on Thursday, the man Pompeo chose to be his point-man on getting the Geneva process back on track, veteran diplomat James Jeffrey, reiterated Trump’s message, saying the US would use all the “tools” it has to respond to a chemical attack.
Another “tool” in the US arsenal is economic pressure. The US Treasury Department slapped sanctions on nine people and companies for assisting weapons or fuel transfers to the Assad regime on Thursday. But sanctions have been ineffectual since they first began to be applied during the Obama administration.
Even American airstrikes launched against the Assad government have had limited impact in the past.
Twice before the US has resorted to missile strikes in response to chemical weapons attacks, only to see them used again. As Syrian forces prepare for the assault on Idlib, US and UN officials again see signs that those internationally prescribed weapons are being readied for the battlefield.
“There’s lots of evidence that chemical weapons are being prepared,” Jeffrey told reporters Thursday.
Officials and analysts will be watching Idlib closely over the next week ahead of UN-led talks on Syria in Geneva on Sept. 14.
“The Trump administration is really at a Hail Mary moment,” said Nicholas Heras, a Syria analyst and fellow at the Center for New American Security. Idlib is the last opportunity for the US to increase leverage in Syria, he said, and if the province falls before the Geneva talks, Trump administration efforts to re-engage with peace talks will likely fail.
Heras warned that the Trump team is late to formulate a coherent Syria policy.
“It’s like trying to save the house as it’s burning down,” he said.
US lacks leverage as assault on Syrian enclave looms
US lacks leverage as assault on Syrian enclave looms
- Syrian government and Russian warplanes targeted the province’s southern edge
- US officials have cautioned Syrian President Bashar Assad against "recklessly attacking" Idlib
Stampede at central Damascus mosque kills three: governor
The Al-Watan newspaper said it happened during the distribution of free meals
DAMASCUS: A stampede at the landmark Umayyad Mosque in Syria’s capital on Friday killed three people, the governor of Damascus said.
The crush “during a civilian event at the mosque... resulted in the death of three people,” Governor Maher Marwan told state news agency SANA.
The White Helmets rescue group said the crush in the afternoon killed three women, adding that five children suffered fractures.
They added that they managed to rescue a girl from the crowd.
The Al-Watan newspaper said it happened during the distribution of free meals by a social media personality.
A YouTuber called Chef Abu Omar, who has a restaurant in Istanbul, had earlier posted a video of preparations for the distribution of free meals at the Ummayyad Mosque.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had visited the mosque in the morning.
Israel strikes Yemen Houthis, warns it will ‘hunt’ leaders
- “A short while ago... fighter jets struck military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime,” the Israeli military said
- It said it also struck military infrastructure in the ports of Hodeida and Ras Issa
JERUSALEM: Israel struck Houthi targets in Yemen on Friday, including a power station and coastal ports, in response to missile and drone launches, and warned it would hunt down the group’s leaders.
“A short while ago... fighter jets struck military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime on the western coast and inland Yemen,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
It said the strikes were carried out in retaliation for Houthi missile and drone launches into Israel.
The statement said the targets included “military infrastructure sites in the Hizaz power station, which serves as a central source of energy” for the Houthis.
It said it also struck military infrastructure in the ports of Hodeida and Ras Issa.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement after the strikes, said the Houthis were being punished for their repeated attacks on his country.
“As we promised, the Houthis are paying, and they will continue to pay, a heavy price for their aggression against us,” he said.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel would “hunt down the leaders of the Houthi terror organization.”
“The Hodeida port is paralyzed, and the Ras Issa port is on fire — there will be no immunity for anyone,” he said in a video statement.
The Houthis, who control Sanaa, have fired missiles and drones toward Israel since war broke out in Gaza in October 2023.
They describe the attacks as acts of solidarity with Gazans.
The Iran-backed rebels have also targeted ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, prompting retaliatory strikes by the United States and, on occasion, Britain.
Israel has also struck Houthi targets in Yemen, including in the capital.
Since the Gaza war began, the Houthis have launched about 40 surface-to-surface missiles toward Israel, most of which were intercepted, the Israeli army says.
The military has also reported the launch of about 320 drones, with more than 100 intercepted by Israeli air defenses.
Gaza war death toll could be 40 percent higher, says study
- Researchers sought to assess the death toll from Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024
- They estimated 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury during this period, about 41 percent higher than the official Palestinian Health Ministry count
LONDON: An official Palestinian tally of direct deaths in the Israel-Hamas war likely undercounted the number of casualties by around 40 percent in the first nine months of the war as the Gaza Strip’s health care infrastructure unraveled, according to a study published on Thursday.
The peer-reviewed statistical analysis published in The Lancet journal was conducted by academics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Yale University and other institutions.
Using a statistical method called capture-recapture analysis, the researchers sought to assess the death toll from Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024.
They estimated 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury during this period, about 41 percent higher than the official Palestinian Health Ministry count. The study said 59.1 percent were women, children and people over the age of 65. It did not provide an estimate of Palestinian combatants among the dead.
More than 46,000 people have been killed in the Gaza war, according to Palestinian health officials, from a pre-war population of around 2.1 million.
A senior Israeli official, commenting on the study, said Israel’s armed forces went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
“No other army in the world has ever taken such wide-ranging measures,” the official said.
“These include providing advance warning to civilians to evacuate, safe zones and taking any and all measures to prevent harm to civilians. The figures provided in this report do not reflect the situation on the ground.”
The war began on Oct. 7 after Hamas gunmen stormed across the border with Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
The Lancet study said the Palestinian health ministry’s capacity for maintaining electronic death records had previously proven reliable, but deteriorated under Israel’s military campaign, which has included raids on hospitals and other health care facilities and disruptions to digital communications.
Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its operations, which the militant group denies.
STUDY METHOD EMPLOYED IN OTHER CONFLICTS
Anecdotal reports suggested that a significant number of dead remained buried in the rubble of destroyed buildings and were therefore not included in some tallies.
To better account for such gaps, the Lancet study employed a method used to evaluate deaths in other conflict zones, including Kosovo and Sudan.
Using data from at least two independent sources, researchers look for individuals who appear on multiple lists of those killed. Less overlap between lists suggests more deaths have gone unrecorded, information that can be used to estimate the full number of deaths.
For the Gaza study, researchers compared the official Palestinian Health Ministry death count, which in the first months of war was based entirely on bodies that arrived in hospitals but later came to include other methods; an online survey distributed by the health ministry to Palestinians inside and outside the Gaza Strip, who were asked to provide data on Palestinian ID numbers, names, age at death, sex, location of death, and reporting source; and obituaries posted on social media.
“Our research reveals a stark reality: the true scale of traumatic injury deaths in Gaza is higher than reported,” lead author Zeina Jamaluddine told Reuters.
Dr. Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Reuters that the statistical methods deployed in the study provide a more complete estimate of the death toll in the war.
The study focused solely on deaths caused by traumatic injuries though, he said.
Deaths caused from indirect effects of conflict, such as disrupted health services and poor water and sanitation, often cause high excess deaths, said Spiegel, who co-authored a study last year that projected thousands of deaths due to the public health crisis spawned by the war.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimates that, on top of the official death toll, around another 11,000 Palestinians are missing and presumed dead.
In total, PCBS said, citing Palestinian Health Ministry numbers, the population of Gaza has fallen 6 percent since the start of the war, as about 100,000 Palestinians have also left the enclave.
Syria monitor says Assad loyalist ‘executed’ in public
- The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighters affiliated with the country’s new rulers executed Mazen Kneneh on Friday morning
- Fighters shot Kneneh in the head on the street in Dummar
BEIRUT: A Syria monitor said fighters linked to the Islamist-led transitional administration publicly executed a local official on Friday, accusing him of having been an informant under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Contacted by AFP, the Damascus authorities did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighters affiliated with the country’s new rulers executed Mazen Kneneh on Friday morning, describing him as “one of the best-known loyalists of the former regime.”
Fighters shot Kneneh in the head on the street in Dummar, a suburb of the capital Damascus, said the Britain-based monitor.
It said he was “accused of writing malicious security reports that led to the persecution and jailing of many young men” who were tortured in prison under Assad, whose rule came to an end on December 8.
A video circulating online, which AFP was unable to independently verify, purportedly showed the man’s slumped body tied to a tree trunk, his clothes bloodied from what looked like a bullet wound to the head.
Members of the public including children gathered around the body, according to the video, some filming with their mobile phones and others beating the body with sticks or high-kicking it in the head.
In recent days, Syrian authorities launched security sweeps targeting “remnants of the regime” of the deposed leader in several areas.
Anas Khattab, the new General Intelligence chief, has pledged to overhaul the security apparatus, denouncing “the injustice and tyranny of the former regime, whose agencies sowed corruption and inflicted suffering on the people.”
Japan congratulates Lebanon on electing new President
- The ministry also said that Japan will continue to support Lebanon
TOKYO: The Government of Japan said it congratulates Lebanon on the election of the new President Joseph Aoun on January 9.
A statement by the Foreign Ministry said while Lebanon has been facing difficult situations such as a prolonged economic crisis and the exchange of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the election of a new President is an important step toward stability and development of the country.
“Japan once again strongly demands all parties concerned to fully implement the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon,” the statement added.
The ministry also said that Japan will continue to support Lebanon’s efforts on achieving social and economic stability in the country as well as stability in the Middle East region.
